Office Autopilot or Premium Web Cart or Other???

This is a good question and is on the mind of newcomers of Infusionsoft. The Quick-Start Services are services that make migration easy and literally help get new users moving and using the software the way it was meant to rather than *only* email or CRM.

However, it is a large investment for startups and we know very well that we're not for everyone.

As an alternative, you might want to consider a combination of AWeber + 1ShoppingCart. I've found that AWeber has their stuff together and is generally more reliable for email marketing than other solutions on the market.

Here are several things to think about in your decision:
- Customer service and their availability and/or costs. Are they attentive to customers online?
- Email marketing, what is their performance (emails per second), deliverability and reputation?
- Data retention, do you have full control over your data?
- How will you collect the cash from customers?
- Strategic alignment, does the company help your business grow?
- How often do they update their service/software?
- Uptime, what is the percentage of uptime their production servers have? Industry excellence is defined by "five-nines" (99.999%+)

Hope this helps. Let us know how your quest goes.

I'm in the unusual situation of having been a customer of Infusionsoft for a couple of years, temporarily switched to Premium Webcart, then switched to Office Autopilot.

What follows are my experiences. Yours may vary, of course.

Infusionsoft as I'm sure everyone knows is incredibly powerful, but pretty difficult to use.

About 6 months ago I decided I'd had enough. I was spending far too much time on simple stuff like creating new optin forms and getting all the tagging and starting sequences right. With Infusionsoft even very linked things are on completely different parts of the menu system in obscure places.

What tipped me over the edge was finding that the Classic email builder (needed to create plain html emails) just started losing my updates. I had to start doing everything in a text editor, then upload 2 or 3 times before it stuck.

I switched to Premium Webcart for a while. The shopping cart aspects are very good - very similar to 1shoppingcart - and they can apparently get recurring orders to work on paypal standard which other carts can't do.

The autoresponder side is a bit unusual. Rather than sequences, people are put in funnels and can follow one of many "sales paths" within the funnel. You can reproduce a lot of what Infusionsoft does with these funnels/paths - but not everything. There's no "if then" logic based on tags, for example. Nor can you chain one sequence after another yet.

I found a couple of bugs - like in email signatures, for examples - which seemed to randomly appear and disappear and didn't get resolved. So I didn't get a great feeling about stability.

The membership site site can only really control access to pages created on premium webcart's own system - not a wordpress site. it does integrate with Wishlist Member pretty well though.

I ended up going with Office Autopilot. It's almost got the same functionality as Infusionsoft but it's MUCH easier to use. When I first strated using it I created a bunch of forms and sequences in 10 minutes that would have taken me hours
to do in Infusionsoft.

Their membership system Pilotpress works with wordpress too. And the tracking facilities are second to none - you can track what people who've opted in actually do on your site.

They also do postcards (in the US) as well as emails and can do PURLs too which I haven't tried yet.

They can also split test emails properly which Infusionsoft can't do.

The shopping cart is quite basic. it basically does single orders - no cart functionality. But that's OK for me - that's all I need.

Another weakness is that they only support a few merchant gateways. If you're in the US it's no problem, they have authorize.net and some other big ones. Outside of the US you can use eway in Australia, but the only thing that would work as a proper gateway for UK based folks is paypal website payments pro.

Both premium webcart and Infusionsoft have more gateway options.

But overall, for combined power and ease of use I went with Office Autopilot.

Their support team have been really good too - very responsive. I had some problems with website payments pro which they helped me resolve.

Ian

PS Inevitably, things change. When I cancelled my Infusionsoft subscription they told me about a new easier to use version they're currently trialling. Too late for me - my mind was made up - but maybe worth looking into if you're still with Infusionsoft and struggling with the complexity.

Oh - PS - Office Autopilot seem to put a lot of effort into deliverability. If you check out their wiki (google "office autopilot wiki") they've obviously put lots of work into that side of the system.

Ian

Office autopilot usually leads to hassle if you have a team working for you, especially if it's outsourced work..

Hi Andrew

It appears that you did take Premium Web Cart for a short test drive about a year ago but in software, especially at PWC, this is a HUGE time period.

To put it in perspective, OAP didn't even have a shopping cart in their system at that time so you would really need to compare their system to ours without their shopping cart or any improvements made to their system since then.

1 glance at the PWC blog will show you just how much we've added in the last 3 months alone.

Going back a full year would simply take too much time and space but I do want to directly address the "speaks to each other" comment made as this is an impressive selling point for Premium Web Cart and one that is not accurately represented in your comments:

So short and sweet:

CRM & Cart - Fully integrated with product specific actions triggered in the CRM by the Cart. The order details are in the CRM in a "Cliff Notes" format for brevity with the full details of each order 1 click away... all fully automatic.

CRM & Ticket System - Access all customer tickets in the CRM customer details, add manual tickets from the customer CRM details, add "non-customers" to the CRM from the Ticket System with 1 click of an icon, pull up full customer details from the CRM into the ticket system with 1 click of an icon.

CRM & Live Chat - Pull up full customer details of a person on chat with 1 click of an icon, add new prospects from chat into the CRM with 1 click.

CRM & Affiliate System - Integrated for direct access and marketing/ communication to all your affiliates.

Project Manager & Ticket System - Customer tickets can be used to generate a Project Task with 1 click of an icon and the Ticket and Task become linked together with color coded icons to communicate the status of the Project Task. Might seem like a small integration but is extremely useful in "real life".

There's more but I think this is enough to demonstrate that there is an impressive amount of "speaking" amongst our various business systems.

Lead Scoring - We have it (we did not last year though so you would not have seen it)

Action Links - Complete segmenting and actions from 1 click in emails, etc.

To be certain, OAP is not PWC and vice versa.

Nobody else does what PWC offers and I think it's pretty easy to see that folks using OAP for the cart/ CRM, and Basecamp for project management, and ZenDesk for ticket support, and LivePerson for live chat, will happily shed all those logins, and monthly bills, to have everything under one system with Premium Web Cart.

Tom Reed

PWC is easier to get setup and running with for sure, but when I used it, it forced you to login to each section (ie CRM/Tickets/Project Management).

I'm fine with an external project management system. I'm pretty picky about those. I used to use Basecamp but am now using TeamworkPM.

I'm not saying it's not a good product. It just wasn't right for me!

I will not suggest you to subscribe the office autopilot. You should do it yourself with organic traffic. You will get stuck by autopilot traffic generating.

We are using PremiumWebCart (Elite level). They have a lot of the functionality that we had in UltraCart but are much easier to use. Their support, while it blows that of UltraCart away, still leaves much to be desired.

For example, we went with their hosting (RackSpace) because we wanted company.com and not company.pwcstores.com. Our email is running through Google Apps, and they have no one on hand during normal business hours that can change the MX records! This is a change that literally only takes minutes to do, but because of their odd staffing, our business email is now down for the entire day.

--

EDIT: An hour after this was posted, they fixed our MX records.

closing thoughts here... after having to stay up many nights to speak to support because the email and ticket system don't seem to get answered without special pressure, I figured out that PWC can only track email click throughs in a way that you set up a special link for each email, then attach a tag to that link, and then search the database for the people who clicked that link.

Sorry, Tom, this is a really labour intensive way of tracking if somebody clicked a link in an email or not to know how emails perform... we are in 2012, it can't be that difficult!

You are so defensive here about your product, but the support and documentation is just very much lacking behind, if I can't easily see how many people clicked on my damn link in the email... if I need to stay up a couple of nights past midnight to speak to support because tickets are not answered and no documentation is there to explain this complicated set up to do an essential function for an auto-responder, then something is severely wrong.

Then multiple logins and bills that add up to the same amount seem to be more advisable...

Sorry to have that discussion here in public, but I think other Warriors should know about these pitfalls before they waste a month on the system like I have...

Stuff that could have been set up in 2 days max, with the right kind of tutorials...

I've been using PWC and have been very happy with them but waiting over 2 weeks now just to have my cart calculate shipping correctly.

I have no idea how something so important could go unfixed for so long.

I still get nothing but a we are working on it, for a reply.

At 200$ a month, I expect a little more than that...

Sorry to post up dirty laundry here, but I've been MORE than patient.
Maybe someone will see this and get something done.

I agree with Vitus, it's a huge investment getting these carts set up so
I have no problem posting both the good and the bad because a cart is a big investment in both
time and money.

I really like PWC for wishlist integration. It works super awesome. It's easy to use.

I also use 1sc for hard good products. AND I have aweber for lists.

Just signed up for OAP. I can use the 1sc cart. It integrates in OAP via API. OAP will handle my member site too starting with new people. So then, it's all integrated. PWC can't touch OAP in many areas, including list delivery rates.

So, in time I will phase out PWC and be left with OAP and 1sc.

THEN when OAP makes it's own cart, I can phase out 1sc.

Having hard goods, wishlist wordpress site, kajabi site, etc.. I needed an all in one place...especially for the affiliate program.

OAP and Infusion were the only real solutions. PWC is clunky when it moves beyond it's cart.

That said, for a basic cart or member site cart, PWC is great. Great staff too.

It's just I'm outgrowing it all, and need something sleeker and more robust. See Ontraport.com to see what OAP is becoming. They are on the rise.

However, if it's between 1sc and PWC... go PWC. (unless you need future OAP integration) ACK!

Has anyone here outsourced their PWC or OAP set-up to someone they would recommend?

Delavo does what Premium Cart and Office Autopilot can do. And it's cheaper and way more feature full. No many people know about it, as it's not heavily promoted. DELAVO Gold | Simply the best eCommerce platform for Internet Marketers

Hi Taajah

I can answer 2 of your questions:

1. Templates - The templates provides cover all the basic layouts, etc. Many have the large slider, sales videos, product videos, product reviews, etc. But one thing we changed a few years back was to make the free templates less configurable to make it easier to add advanced functionality with a simple "click" of the mouse.

Want Live Chat? Click the check box and it's on your site. Affiliate system, same, Click to Call, same, Ticket System, same, etc, etc.

We also found that if we offered enough variety and version layouts, people could more easily choose a template, upload their products and images, and be online faster. It was counter intuitive to our original thinking that people wanted maximum flexibility... when really they wanted maximum ease of use.

We liken it to buying a spec house with a floor plan you like versus building a full custom house. There are only so many logical house floor plans and there are only so many logical website structures... and the rest comes down to the "decoration" of the website with colors and images.

...but having said that, we do offer semi-custom and full custom options based upon your design / screen shot / PSD / "bench marked" competitors site, etc. The full custom sites are very affordable and can be online in about a week after requested.

2. Support - This one is always tricky as "support" means different things to different people. Because we offer an e-Business Advisor, we can run into issues where things are beyond "support" and into the "do it for me" mode (which is not the intent of our support).

We take some hits from folks that believe the "support versus doing it for them" is different from our definition. Not saying you're in this position as I have no clue, I'm just pointing out that it's harder to answer this one accurately.

So here's the real test - CALL us and select the SUPPORT option versus the SALES option. If you get through to us before you become a paying customer, there's a really good chance you'll get through to us after you're a customer.

Most companies will be really good on the Sales line so it's critical that you check their Support line! Make sure you try it several times as 1 call can be a fluke in either direction but f you call 5 times, you'll really know what to expect going forward.

Not sure if you need a Scheduling / Billing system but that has ben added since your last trial. Makes life really easy for coaches, consultants, webinar folks, etc.

1. Coaches = Unlimited

2. Module Login - This is a common misconception as logging in through the "main" or "master" login gives you immediate access to every business module. It's only when you wish to limit access would you have people log in directly to that specific module.

For example, if you have an outsourced support person that handles tickets or live chat for you, then they can log directly into the live chat or the ticket module as there is no need to give them access to the cart / orders.

This really comes into play with the Project Manager system as it is very common to have a 3rd party webmaster or graphic artist, etc. working on a project with you but they should never have access to other areas of your business. In this way, our Project Manager will operate as an independent Project Manager alternative to Basecamp, etc. while offering the benefit of being integrated with your other business modules when used for "internal only" projects. Now you have the best of both worlds.

Blogs that "we created" - LOL, we only have 1 blog and it's on our site. Affiliate blogs would be more likely but we also have a significant number of people / customers that simply "like" us.

But really, you're on the right track with the trial. Call us, test our support responsiveness before wasting a minute on a trial, but then take the trial to find out what we're really about. Sometimes we're simply not the right fit as every business has unique needs but we cover a LOT of territory which means we win a lot more than we lose.

Tom I sent you a PM.

Assuming you work for or own Premium Web Cart.

premium web we had for 1 year and, had to leave on the reason the cs support went to null. the site doesn't update for credit cards security nor can you reach them to have any files uploaded into the system. Called 8 times a day for 8 days no answer. and didn't call back when option chosen. tried texting with their system wait time said 3 min wait for 4 hrs., and I gave up. We did this for days. Don't go there you will be sorry. also if you cancel your account you will have to cancel your credit card to get it done. The reason why is no way to do it unless it is by contact and you won't get that.