Ontraport vs. Spokal

Starting a business you have enough stuff to deal with. Ontraport takes the headache out of the tech side. Everything works together and you don't ever get left alone to figure things out. I would beg any new business to invest in Ontraport. Or if you want to grow and scale an existing business it would be great. I think it more for service-based business.

Incentivized

For current Wordpress users Spokal is outstanding and highly recommended. For clients who don't already have a Wordpress blog it's a bit tricky as I need to first sell the benefits of using Wordpress in order to get them on board, but in all honestly I would recommend Wordpress anyway, it just slows the process down having to design and install Wordpress before we can get started.

• Campaign builder. The visual campaign builder is very easy to use and feels pretty modern.
• CRM: customizing what type of data I'd like WHERE has been great. Custom fields, being able to move them around.
• Task Management: one of the things that set ONTRAPORT apart from other similar automation platforms is the tasks. You can trigger automated tasks that cause your salespeople to take action, and the tasks stay in the queue until the salesperson takes that action and checks it off. This is great for putting together a web of accountability.

• Very clear interface that easily guides you through the necessary steps to post content.
• Great customer service!
• Keyword recommendations that are helpful in creating content.

• Ontraport is a very powerful and robust system capable of a great many things. The time it takes to get to know the program is a little intimidating. Don't get me wrong, you can get started right away, but a year in I know I am still not making the most of all Ontraport can do. I am UK based so access to their advanced trainings means international travel, maybe some online events could be initiated.

• Allowing the import of audience/customers from Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign (they are working on this as we speak)
• The unique visitors number is different in Spokal from Google Analytics. Not sure why this is.
• The blog editor is better in Wordpress, so I end up creating my posts directly on my Wordpress site rather than through Spokal. I'll try this again but I had an easier time creating the post in my Wordpress site.

My client was already using Ontraport and had a decent investment in the tool. As soon as we turn around the revenue situation with my client's products, we will be ditching OAP immediately, despite the significant re-implementation cost we are going to face moving to a new system. I am part of a high-end, professional marketing group, and the overwhelming sentiment with these other professionals is that one should run away from this as fast as humanly possible. I thought their words were just ungrounded opinion, and I deeply regret that I did not heed them more closely before sinking still more time and effort into OAP.

Best combined product I've seen so far to run a WordPress based website. When it comes to solutions that replace multiple others and even to the combined feature set, it's a no brainer to start using that solution. Spokal is one of these tools I felt to have found that I want to use every day as it saves a ton of time.

The software is just easy to use. The UI is fairly intuitive. The help system is pretty good. I find it is pretty quick to get my work completed and if I don't document my things well, I can always figure out how I did something when I need to make changes. When I have a problem the tech support is easy to deal with and when things need to get escalated they are resolved quickly.

Spokal takes away some of the complexity and noise that Wordpress has. Offering a separate login and dashboard to allow a user to create blog posts, check on backlinks, see ranking keywords, social engagement and tracks visitors/ contacts. Spokal provides a lot of functionality that would typically require the purchase of several products e.g. Hootsuite, SEO Moz, SEO pressor, Hubspot. What I really like is the content calendar. I simply drag and drop of my blog posts into my calendar to post to twitter, linkedin and facebook. This is an easy way to repost evergreen content and build my following on twitter. The twitter builder is constantly looking for relevant profiles and conversations based on my defined criteria. The tool automatically likes the twitter user which drives traffic to my sight and actually helps me find followers and potential influencers. This product is ideal for people new to internet marketing or small business owners who don't want to be overwhelmed by the effort to learn, manage and run several tools or wordpress plugins. I have been with Spokal since the start and I continue to be impressed by the support and raft of new functionality being added.

Most of the time OP runs fine. But I've had to submit more support tickets this year do to messages, seq.'s or rules not running correctly. Also experienced slow response times moving in and around OP.

The techs are reasonably savvy, highly courteous and want to do right by their customers. Unfortunately, the product they are supporting is so deeply flawed that there's only so much they can do when your legitimate business requirements are simply not supported.

The guys at Spokal listen and act upon every single message I send. Nothing escapes their attention and they always seem delighted to be going out of their way for me and deliver outstanding customer service - probably the best I've ever received. That's no exageration, they show a genuine care for feedback and a practical approach to executing requests. When you see something you've suggested being implemented into the software you're using, there is no greater indicator that somebody is listening. Great guys, can't praise them enough.

I went to their Ontrapalooza event, and it opened my mind as to how the software can be used.

If you know your business, ONTRAPORT is easy

We used it because it was recommended by other coaching companies. It meets well the need we have which is mostly about creating different type of access based on when the clients joined our program. You can easily create automations and rules to be notified when clients evolve in the program. It allows us to send them our messages at the right moment.

Incentivized

Know and like Hubspot. Its solid but may be cost prohibitive for some firms. It also has bit of a learning curve and 3rd party skills are not cheap if you need help from external agencies. Looked at Orbtr - this is an excellent product, also wordpress based. Looked at Leadius. A swedish company that has a very solid looking platform leaning more towards the hubspots but somewhat more affordable

With the new lower priced options, it's now easier for newer businesses to start with a more basic version and upgrade as they need more features.

• ONTRAPORT has helped us as we continue to segment our users - we're able to quickly determine what messaging is working and what isn't.
• Their form loading is so slow at times that it negatively affects signup conversion rates on our website.
• They have an open API that let's us connect to other productivity and marketing tools without hiring programmers.

Incentivized

• More engaged Twitter following
• We procured a client because of our blogging & Spokal's platform to marketing the blog posts on social media