Before I go into "I'm upset" mode, I figured I would post what I think I read, then ask for Infusionfolks to respond.

So.. here's what I paid in to become an Infusion-head 1.5 years ago:

$5000 startup. Ow.
$299 a month.
+$99 for affiliate marketing (which I did for a while, then cancelled)

For this I get:
-unlimited contacts. (Yippie.. if I ever break 25,000 that would be a small miracle.)
-crm, email, salesforce auto

If I started today, at the $299 level and $0 startup (wow).. I would get:
-25,000 contacts (plenty for me!)
-crm, email, salesforce auto
-AND affiliate marketing
oh.. and $5000 more in my pocket.

I guess what I'm saying is...
-why am I not automatically granted the affiliate
module, if I'm already at the $299 level
and
-why am I not back-credited $5000 (or forward-credited 16 months of monthly service) just because I decided to sign up when "there was a risk"?

There's no risk now, and the reward is for NEW members, not existing "risk takers who put down $5000 when we didn't even have it" like me.

Ready to listen.

-Jeremy Moskowitz
Infusiongeek

Hellooooo...?? Anyone in Infusionsoft central care to tackle my conundrum?

Jeremy,

Thanks for sharing your concern with the community. I completely respect your perspective and want nothing more than people to be happy that we're advocating for them all the time.

My apologies for not responding sooner -- I usually peruse all the boards at least a couple times daily, but just haven't had the chance to in the past week.

You raise a few interesting points that I believe require a response.

~~~

About 1.5 years ago, the software was much more difficult to use. It was also hand-provisioned per customer and it was rather challenging to get over the first hump in implementation.

Due to this, we needed to provide hands-on consulting for customers who used our product to ensure they would be successful. (And their services and consulting have been invaluable to the long-term success of our customers.)

During that time, our development team (and everyone in between) has been working very hard at making our software easier to use. Specifically, making our software easy to use from day one. We've accomplished that. We still have more hurdles to plow through, but we're getting there.

Customers prior to July 7th receive higher sending and capacity limits than new ones today. They also receive priority consulting time with their consultant should they have remaining time.

You do bring up an important topic -- the Affiliate Module. We identified a number of customers who were not receiving that (you're one of them.) We'll be activating those at no charge. We'll have our systems team enable this for everyone on Deluxe or Pro. (It IS enabled by default right now).

I hope this helps you see the value in what we're doing (and what you got). We understand that you did take a big risk in choosing Infusionsoft before; just like in technology, we evolve and grow with the needs of users, too.

~Joseph

I'm greatful for the affiliate module coming back. That's nice. Thanks.

But I paid in $5000 to start, Infusionsoft conference fees for conference #2 (I think) before it was free, the startup and monthly fees for the affiliate module for almost a year.

Basically, I paid in the MAXIMUM someone could have possibly paid in (or darn close to it.)

And then ALL those items .. all of them (the $5000, the conferece the startup and monthly fees for the affiliate module, and year's worth of affiliate module).. are now free to anyone who signs up.. now.

I've singlehandedly reported at LEAST 20 bugs and used ALL my "uservoice" credits to provide additional suggestions to benefit everyone.

I guess what I'm saying is... I'm the kind of guy who's put in his time, and provided feedback to MAKE infusionsoft better and easier to use than ever.

My initial fees and sweat and phone calls and bug squashing and uservoice entries, etc.. enabled "the next guy" to pay $0 in startup. $0 in affiliate and $0 every month for the affiliate module.

But I have to admit -- I kinda feel like an early iPhone adopter.

People waited on lines and paid $1000 (or whatever) on day 1 to get one. Then 30 days later, the price dropped to $500.

At least Apple provided some kind of voucher to use at the apple store to those initial customers who showed loyalty.

I'm still happy I've chosen Infusionsoft. I'm glad I did it when I did. It's helped me out a lot. I'm happy with the company overall, but not happy to learn how much I could have saved (in trouble and in dough) by waiting it out a bit.

That's my two cents on the subject.

Well put, and thanks for putting it out there. Not that it will put any money back the pockets of those who put out $4000 or $5000 to start-up. I'm not a happy camper.

He might see it but I don't. I don't feel nearly as gracious about this as Mr Manna seems to be. The argument that you had to charge your customers $5000 because your software was too hard to use just doesn't fly. The 6 hours of consulting I received was helpful getting up and running, but $4000 (that's what I paid) for an import and 6 hours of consulting, between $500 and $600 an hour, give me a break. Similar consulting services run between $100 and $125 an hour. I can't blame you for my anxiety and stupidity paying it but I'm certainly looking for other options so I can cut my losses. I've spent a total of $8000 plus many many hours trying to make this work for me only to find limitation after limitation.

Perhaps I'm just not bright enough to see it, but this newest beta version doesn't seem to offer much. I was never able to view the offered video (no sound) then it disappeared altogether. Your customizable home page offers virtually nothing. While I might be interested in putting some of the offered statistics on my current home page, losing the calendar functionality isn't worth it.

The more I think about the money I've spent the unhappier I get. For me the value just isn't there.

Frankly I think it's outrageous that Infusionsoft hasn't tried to make amends with all those who shelled out the Initial fee and continues to charge us the affiliate fee for this monthly service when everybody else gets it free.
I think Infusionsoft should at least return some (if not all) of that money in the form of credits and stop charging us the monthly affiliate fee - at the very least!

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. We will review and discuss your contributions to the topic and hold them under consideration for the leadership team.


Thanks,
Joe

Ok, I'll put forth my own thoughts about the recent removal of the initial license fee.

I've been an InfusionSoft user for about 2 years now. I remember when I was trying to negotiate with my sales rep for a reduction in the license fee, his response was "The price is what it is". I respected that and finally agreed to signing up for an account because InfusionSoft had all of the features I had been searching for.

Although this initial $4997.00 license fee was a tough expense to cover, throughout my 2 years of using InfusionSoft, I felt like I had an upper edge over my competitors because I knew they weren't in a situation to spend that kind of money.

When I read the announcement regarding InfusionSoft no longer charging the license fee, I had mixed emotions.

As an entrepreneur, I understand that businesses must adapt to the current market in order to continue to grow. I had always wondered if at some point InfusionSoft was going to reduce the license fee. (I never thought they'd completely do away with it.)

Like others have pointed out in this thread, a lot of us long-time users of InfusionSoft have been responsible for helping the company come out with better features. We had essentially provided the venture capital that allowed InfusionSoft to make their product much more user-friendly, which has now led to the facilitation of training new users.

We've reported bugs, suggested new features, helped other new users setup their new accounts by providing in-depth tutorials specific to their business models, come up with clever workarounds for features that should have been available but that weren't, etc.

I'm sure you knew that when you decided to stop charging the initial license fee, you were going to have some existing users who would be upset about it. I'm a bit surprised that you hadn't discussed a way to show your appreciation to those of us who had helped you grow to what you now have grown to.

I don't think anyone really expects you to reimburse the $5k license fee they paid. I certainly don't expect that. (perhaps those who joined within the past 1-2 months would/should expect it.) But I would feel a lot better about the whole situation if I knew that you had extended an offer/deal that was exclusive to only those users who paid the license fee. Something with some real value behind it.

I personally would like to have a significant discount on each of my user accounts. But that's only because I use a lot of user accounts. If you were to offer that option to everyone, there would be a lot of people who that wouldn't benefit. The same thing applies to the Affiliate Module. While some people might really love that module, those who would never use it, would get no value out of it. Increasing the allowable amount of monthly emails that can be sent would be great for some, but not for those who would never even reach their current level.

Why not come up with several different types of special offers that are catered to a variety of users who have completely different business models? Survey your users and see what they'd like and then meet with the powers that be at InfusionSoft to come up with some viable solutions.

By creating a variety of offers for those of us who helped you get to where you are today, you'll be making it so that we still have an upper edge over those who snoozed until your product was priced as low as so many of the other CRM's on the market.

I liked what your product offered 2 years ago and made the $5k investment and was glad I did, because it truly has helped my business. But now that others can use it for so much less, it makes me feel like I made a poor business decision.

I've done my fair share of helping others throughout this forum in the past, but don't really care to share my two years of knowledge with those who are now joining. That's not because I don't want to help people...it's the principle behind it. If your product now requires less resources because of how much easier it is to use, then your employees can simply be the only ones to provide assistance here. My job appears to be done now that my investment has allowed you to build your product to the level it is now at.

Ok, ok...I'll still help others in here...but that's only because I enjoy teaching people things. But I'm sure other people share my frustrations and won't be heard from again in here.

Thanks for listening to my rant everyone,

Scott

I think you've hit the nail on the head here.

That's exactly the kind of thing we need to see from Infusionsoft.

I certainly don't expect a reimbursement of my upfront fee... but it sure would be nice for Infusionsoft to a) show some customer appreciation to all those who helped it get going and supported it and b) stop charging me (and others) for the affiliate module when every newbie gets it for free.

I have 2 separate accounts for 2 separate businesses it would be great to get something in return for that initial investment.

I too am surprised no one in infusionsoft thought of this before ditching the fees. But hopefully they're listening now and do the right thing.