If you’re going to do business online, then using some of the integrated ecommerce packages can save you so much time and make so many things easier that honestly it’s just better to use them over trying to “piece meal” thing together from multiple different vendors..
What I’m going to do is compare two integrated systems for managing the “back end” of your business. Systems that provide, email list management, autoresponder, payment processing, shopping cart, and so on in a way that integrates all of it: 1ShoppingCart and InfusionSoft.
1ShoppingCart is probably the most usedintegrated solution, used by more web businesses than any other; but how does it compare to InfusionSoft which is probably the most expensive?
Does 1ShoppingCart “deserve” it’s most popular position? Is InfusionSoft “worth” the additional cost?
Lets first talk about the two of them on an individual basis and give them a grade on each of five major categories. The grades will be based on cost, list management, shopping cart/payment processing, ease of use, and their sohistication. A point system giving points out of a maximum of 10 possible will attempt to make the grading objective. Let me say now however that since a single person is doing the grading a certain amount of subjectivity is obviously going to present in how the final score comes out.
For the relatively low price (compared to InfusionSoft), 1Shopping cart comes with a fairly impressive set of features. When you figure that if you get the Aweber autoresponder/list management system, that alone will cost a minimum of $19 and will climb quite quickly from there if you start to build contacts of any significant amount, the price for this service definitely falls into the “reasonable” category. However at $99 per month it isn’t exactly “cheap” either so I don’t want to give it the top grade.
Price: 9 out of 10
However, as I stated, the other “basic” items are there. List management, autoresponder, the ability to broadcast messages, the ability to put people into various lists, and the ability to send messages to people in one list but having a “not if” they are in a second list.
List Management: 5 out of 10
They allow recurring billing, and “one click up sells” as well as providing an affiliate management system (making it easy for other people to sell your stuff) as well as providing a mechanism to protect any digitally downloaded information you want to sell.
Like I said, all of this is fully integrated with their list management, providing at decent “customer relationship management” to help you send people through you marketing funnel in a way that is automated.
Shopping Cart: 7 out of 10
Ease of Use: 10 out of 10
Sophistication: 5 out of 10
Further, with 1ShoppingCart you’d be foolish not to go with their most expensive plan. With InfusionSoft, most businesses will likely only need the second cheapest plan.
However, that “second cheapest” plan is still over 3 times the price of the top end of 1ShoppingCart.
Price: 3 out of 10
In fact, InfusionSoft provides entire components designed specifically for Customer Relationship Management that aren’t present at all in 1ShoppingCart.
Further, they provide a set of components to integrate with multiple social media properties. Like I said, their list management goes so far beyond what everyone else provides as to almost defy comparison.
List Management 10 out of 10 (and honestly I’d go higher, this section alone makes InfusionSoft worth the price in my opinion)
I also really like their inventory management.
Shopping Cart: 10 out of 10
Long story short, InfusionSoft is not (by a long shot) the easiest tool to use in this space and might possibly be the most complex.
Ease of Use: 5 out of 10
Sophistication: 10 out of 10
However that score doesn’t really tell the whole picture.
Here’s the thing. I would actually say that InfusionSoft is far better than 1ShoppingCart. The problem is that it is also quite expensive for many smaller businesses with a cost of basically $300 per month.
So let me say this, if cost is a major factor then you probably don’t even need many of the services provided by InfusionSoft. In fact the simplicity of 1ShoppingCart is probably a good thing. With it you can get set up and running much quicker. There is no question that taking action and doing something is much preferable to waiting around doing nothing until you “can afford” the better tool. Much better to just go with 1ShoppingCart now.
Having said that, if your business succeeds then you will soon be finding yourself really wanting the features provided by InfusionSoft and changing these kinds of service providers is a pain-in-the-rear (if you’ve ever tried to change autoresponder companies then you know what I’m talking about here). So if you can afford it, and if the additional time and difficulty of fully setting it up isn’t too much of a barrier, then I definitely recommend just starting with InfusionSoft.
However, if you can at all afford it there is no question in my mind that you should be going with InfusionSoft. The addiitional features that you get allows for doing things with customers, and tracking of results in ways that you can’t with any other system I am familiar with.
What I’m going to do is compare two integrated systems for managing the “back end” of your business. Systems that provide, email list management, autoresponder, payment processing, shopping cart, and so on in a way that integrates all of it: 1ShoppingCart and InfusionSoft.
1ShoppingCart is probably the most usedintegrated solution, used by more web businesses than any other; but how does it compare to InfusionSoft which is probably the most expensive?
Does 1ShoppingCart “deserve” it’s most popular position? Is InfusionSoft “worth” the additional cost?
Lets first talk about the two of them on an individual basis and give them a grade on each of five major categories. The grades will be based on cost, list management, shopping cart/payment processing, ease of use, and their sohistication. A point system giving points out of a maximum of 10 possible will attempt to make the grading objective. Let me say now however that since a single person is doing the grading a certain amount of subjectivity is obviously going to present in how the final score comes out.
1ShoppingCart
Cost
Prices for 1ShoppingCart range from $34 per month up to $99 per month.For the relatively low price (compared to InfusionSoft), 1Shopping cart comes with a fairly impressive set of features. When you figure that if you get the Aweber autoresponder/list management system, that alone will cost a minimum of $19 and will climb quite quickly from there if you start to build contacts of any significant amount, the price for this service definitely falls into the “reasonable” category. However at $99 per month it isn’t exactly “cheap” either so I don’t want to give it the top grade.
Price: 9 out of 10
Email List Management
Email list management however is really only “basic”. Earlier I made a comparison to Aweber and talked about how much this cost in comparison to the cost of just using 1ShoppingCart. To be fair, Aweber really is one of the top players in the list management “game”. Having said that, it seems like 1ShoppingCart could do a better job with this by providing integration with other social networks. The other thing that I don’t like is that I can’t set up mailings so that any given letter in a series is only sent to people that didn’t click on a link in the previous message.However, as I stated, the other “basic” items are there. List management, autoresponder, the ability to broadcast messages, the ability to put people into various lists, and the ability to send messages to people in one list but having a “not if” they are in a second list.
List Management: 5 out of 10
Shopping Cart/Processing
What I like about these kinds of services is that you can put people into a given mailing list (and take them out of others) when they purchase from you (I know this goes back to the previous topic, but it involves buying so I’m putting it here).They allow recurring billing, and “one click up sells” as well as providing an affiliate management system (making it easy for other people to sell your stuff) as well as providing a mechanism to protect any digitally downloaded information you want to sell.
Like I said, all of this is fully integrated with their list management, providing at decent “customer relationship management” to help you send people through you marketing funnel in a way that is automated.
Shopping Cart: 7 out of 10
Ease Of Use
The thing that I like the most about 1ShoppingCart is that their system is incredibly easy to use. Most things are push-button-simple and you can have everything configured and ready to go in a very minimum amount of time. If you’re looking for an integrated back office system for your site, it doesn’t get any easier than this.Ease of Use: 10 out of 10
Sophistication
It wouldn’t be fair to compare these two, give a score for ease of use, and then not also do the same for how sophisticated you can get with your set up. While there is no question that 1ShoppingCart is easy to use, it’s ability to be sophisticated is also all but entirely non-existent. This lack of sophistication can be seen in their email list management pieces which lack what is in my mind some very important functionality.Sophistication: 5 out of 10
InfusionSoft
1ShoppingCart got its moment in the sun, now lets talk about the other major player in this space, InfusionSoft.Cost
With pricing that ranges from a low of $199 up to $999 per month, when compared to the price of 1ShoppingCart, there is no question that InfusionSoft is “more than a bit” expensive. That said, InfusionSoft also offers a bit more as well.Further, with 1ShoppingCart you’d be foolish not to go with their most expensive plan. With InfusionSoft, most businesses will likely only need the second cheapest plan.
However, that “second cheapest” plan is still over 3 times the price of the top end of 1ShoppingCart.
Price: 3 out of 10
Email List Management
In this regard, InfusionSoft completely smokes pretty much everyone. You can do things with InfusionSoft that plain and simply can’t be done with any other provider. If you have multiple sales people their list management/customer relationship management system is so complete that it makes it easy to give different tasks to different people.In fact, InfusionSoft provides entire components designed specifically for Customer Relationship Management that aren’t present at all in 1ShoppingCart.
Further, they provide a set of components to integrate with multiple social media properties. Like I said, their list management goes so far beyond what everyone else provides as to almost defy comparison.
List Management 10 out of 10 (and honestly I’d go higher, this section alone makes InfusionSoft worth the price in my opinion)
Shopping Cart/Processing
In this regard, InfusionSoft is mostly the same as other providers in the space including 1ShoppingCart, providing every single thing that they do. However, InfusionSoft’s integration of its shopping cart with the other components does, in my opinion, just make this piece better as well.I also really like their inventory management.
Shopping Cart: 10 out of 10
Ease Of Use
InfusionSoft is incredibly complete, comes with a ton of features, and is also “more than a little” complicated. To make full use of this tool requires quite a bit of planning and understanding of how the various tools work together. You really do want to spend some time going through the various training tools they provide before starting to implement to make sure you get everything done in the best way possible. 1ShoppingCart on the other hand is so easy only the most technology challenged will need to look at any training.Long story short, InfusionSoft is not (by a long shot) the easiest tool to use in this space and might possibly be the most complex.
Ease of Use: 5 out of 10
System Sophistication
Just like 1ShoppingCart is incredibly easy to use but also incredibly nonsophisticated … InfusionSoft is the exact opposite. Not very easy to use but incredibly sophisticated. There are not very many limitations to what you can do.Sophistication: 10 out of 10
The Scores
From a pure “score” scenario, InfusionSoft wins, beating out 1ShoppingCart 40 to 36.However that score doesn’t really tell the whole picture.
Here’s the thing. I would actually say that InfusionSoft is far better than 1ShoppingCart. The problem is that it is also quite expensive for many smaller businesses with a cost of basically $300 per month.
So let me say this, if cost is a major factor then you probably don’t even need many of the services provided by InfusionSoft. In fact the simplicity of 1ShoppingCart is probably a good thing. With it you can get set up and running much quicker. There is no question that taking action and doing something is much preferable to waiting around doing nothing until you “can afford” the better tool. Much better to just go with 1ShoppingCart now.
Having said that, if your business succeeds then you will soon be finding yourself really wanting the features provided by InfusionSoft and changing these kinds of service providers is a pain-in-the-rear (if you’ve ever tried to change autoresponder companies then you know what I’m talking about here). So if you can afford it, and if the additional time and difficulty of fully setting it up isn’t too much of a barrier, then I definitely recommend just starting with InfusionSoft.
The Bottom Line:
If cost is a factor, then go with 1ShoppingCart (but I highly recommend their $99/month package, if you can’t afford that, then go with Aweber for your list management and some other very low cost or even free shopping cart). The integration they provide makes the additional cost over just a “plain” autoresponder company like Aweber, 1contact, MailChimp, GetResponse, and others well worth it. Like I said, there are some things they could certainly do better, however for the cost 1ShoppingCart is honestly an incredible value.However, if you can at all afford it there is no question in my mind that you should be going with InfusionSoft. The addiitional features that you get allows for doing things with customers, and tracking of results in ways that you can’t with any other system I am familiar with.
Thank you. This was very helpful to me. I do have one question. Why do you recommend going with the $99 option with 1 Shopping Cart?
ReplyDeleteI dislike AWeber and after years of using it, I just switched to GetResponse. I just signed up with 1ShoppingCart - then got nervous wondering if I should have gone with InfusionSoft. My plan is to use the $34 plan plus GetResponse. The rep at 1SC said I could integrate email marketing for $59/month.
Your post really helped me affirm that 1SC is the right choice, but I'm still wondering whether I should have used their AR as well. Although if it is AWeber, I'd rather stick with GetResponse. Thanks again!
Janet
The post is a little old and the 1SC autoresponder wasn't quite "up to snuff" then. A few minor enhancements have made MAJOR improvements. It's much better now. If I were you, I'd go with the 99 per month 1SC and use the 1SC autoresponder if you don't like Aweber (and incidentally, I don't either, I use MailChimp)
ReplyDelete