Why I couldn’t Keap Infusionsoft

When I started my business Infusionsoft was the gold-standard. They understood customer care, pushed the boundaries with new and useful tools inside the application and gave business owners so many ways to track metrics that I knew I could never fully explore them all.

So what changed to turn me from a raving fan into a raging customer? Why didn’t I Keap Infusionsoft?

The name change was the least of my concerns when they transitioned the software name from Infusionsoft to Keap by Infusionsoft in 2019. I already knew I was leaving after Infusionsoft cost me hundreds of dollars. Here’s why…

#1 Infusionsoft does not Keap customers informed

If I only had a dollar for every time an employee told me they would be personally updating me on my tech support request, they were unlike all those other people and would email me, call, reach out as soon as I knew something, then I’d have enough money to buy the company and retrain their employees.

When I say I never got a reply after reporting a tech issue, I mean I NEVER got a reply. And I’m a person who is at Inbox Zero daily. Nothing slipped through the cracks of my inbox.

Obvious lies about follow up aside, this created a huge issue for me plus my clients. If we were dealing with a campaign issue we didn’t want to spend money on ads only to have the emails go unsent. I didn’t want to share, proudly, about a program I was selling only to have the API misfire and no one receive their access.

Not informing your customers when their problem is resolved leaves them in an uneasy limbo. For weeks.

#2 Infusionsoft breaks. A lot. 

I get it, keeping on the forefront of technology is hard and I can only imagine with thousands of clients there are any myriad of things that your customers want implemented. The difficulty with Infusionsoft is that everything interconnects. So that one tag that keeps getting applied to buyers that you can’t track? It could be triggering an email with incorrect information, a bonus you didn’t intend to deliver or even an external client happiness gift you did not intend.

Every time this happens it is untold hours of searching the software for an answer, waiting on hold while incredibly unhelpful support staff try to figure it out, managing customer expectation and sending apology emails, even manually doing the task Infusionsoft was designed to do.

I recall once that I needed to apply tags to a medium list, maybe 100 people. The easiest way to do this, for me, is to upload the name and emails of all 100 people as an import, apply a tag upon import and then merge them into the existing contact records. Not exactly day 1 stuff but easy enough once you know your way around. Except for some reason Infusionsoft had delayed the import and it was hours before it was queueing up. Since I had to get those tags applied so the people on my list would receive an important email, I ended up looking up 100 emails in search and manually applying tags.

The next day the list finally imported.

#3 Some of those Infusionsoft breakdowns cost me hundreds of dollars.

While this is a somewhat unique situation, I have warned every other user I know about it as Infusionsoft never found a solution to the problem (more on that in a minute).

Last Fall I wrapped up work with a fantastic client who was on a retainer. By the client’s request we did not have the retainer amount (several thousand dollars) auto-charge so the client could rotate between credit cards to maximize airline miles. Some of the cards were also used for Facebook ads so if the charges went through simultaneously it would create cash flow issues. Note however that my client was never late in paying, simply requested that we check in before charging the agreed upon retainer.

The problem started one month after we finished the retainer and stopped the charges. My client was charged again and I was mortified. We talked, I immediately reversed the charge (incurring fees on my end) and double checked everything in Infusionsoft. The product amount was set to zero. The end date was last month. The purchase was marked “do not auto charge” and, as a last ditch effort, I removed the client’s credit card from the system.

Infusionsoft continued to incorrectly change my client for 2 more months using inactive credit cards on the client’s record.

I was livid.

Worse, when I talked to anyone at Infusionsoft, they implied it was my own stupidity. One going so far as to say that unless I had video evidence that I’d properly unclicked a box then it must have been my fault.

I didn’t even know I could convey “bitch, please” via silence over the phone.

In the end the only solution was to delete the record of the payments, delete all the credit cards, the client’s record and eventually all the products associated with that client as well.

So not only did I have to do a ton of unnecessary work over 3 months, I lost a ton of data in my business because of it.

#4 Infusionsoft doesn’t take responsibility when they hurt your business bottom line.

Want to know what the last (ever) customer service agent I talked to about the retainer issue said? “Let’s wait and see what happens next month.”

No.

Hell No.

Fuck No.

I, very calmly but firmly, explained to that idiot that it was only due to my experience in business and reputation with the client that I wasn’t being sued because of their negligence. Every time I had to deal with an incorrect charge I was the one incurring fees and screwing up my bookkeeping. I was the one on the phone with them at Christmas, trying to fix the issue. This was not a “wait and see” type problem.

Additionally, so many of the people I spoke to refused to take any responsibility for the havoc their software errors caused. Add in the non-existent follow up and you might be wondering why I didn’t leave sooner.

Infusionsoft is an all-in-one vault of information and as much as you may want to quit it is a lengthy and complicated process. In my next blog I’ll share some of the how-to behind getting out of Infusionsoft without losing your mind or your content as well as where I migrated and why.

For now I’ll just say I am so happy I didn’t keap Infusionsoft with all their issues, lack of responsibility and follow up.