Ortto Reviews

It seems to me that Autopilot does only one thing - but it does that one thing REALLY well. I tested Autopilot briefly for a few weeks as an alternative to the drip program functionality in our Marketing Automation software. I was extremely impressed with how easy it is to build a drip program (called a "Journey" within Autopilot), as well as with the breadth of logic and functionality offered. Autopilot really sets itself apart with some amazing - seriously amazing - integrations and functionality that our Automation platform doesn't offer, such as sending SMS text messages or physical postcards.

I really like that Autopilot offers in-app chat support, and that you generally don't need to wait longer than 5 minutes to get someone to help you out.

During the few weeks I tested Autopilot, I found a few issues that prevented me from really continuing to use the software for my use-case. The integration with Salesforce was clunky and un-intuitive, and most concerningly, it seemed that when the platform saw leads that already existed in Salesforce, it would stop them from progressing through the drip program. This was a real frustration, and I ended up just disconnecting Autopilot from the CRM in order to finish my test.

Another concern we had was that after testing the emails I had configured using mail-tester.com, there was an error identified that could only be resolved by getting a dedicated IP address - something which adds a significant additional monthly cost to the cost of the program.

Because of the visual workflow (or journeys, as they appropriately call them) builder, this is an easy platform to catch on to. Getting the team to dive in and build our or edit journeys is quick and simple and doesn't require two days of reading documentation and tutorials to understand. Autopilot has done an amazing job of making the building of the workflows collaborative as well. Being able to annotate, comment, add images etc helps not only the team understand the goals, but is killer for reminding you why you built something the way you did a month later.

The email, CRM, Slack integrations are all easy to set up and use as well.

I believe they are working on it since there have been a lot of updates recently, but the email manager could use a bit more love - it just doesn't stand out as well against the rest of the platform. Building and editing an individual email is simple enough, but managing the full list can be tricky.

The reporting on the messaging bot is also lacking - but that feature is easy to use and helpful. It's easy to trust that they will continue to improve this.

I can not withstand the temptation to compare Autopilot to Intercom. So.. 2 rewievs in 1?
It is somehow more stable than Intercom and overall offers a bit smoother experience. API server are bit more stable, less 500.
Dashboard is ... standard. I mean at some point Autopilot and Intercom dashboards become prety much the same having the main differences in namings.
Autopilot have journeys which are the same as Intercoms lifecycles (onboardings), there are the same chats, same integrations, same conversation channels.
API recently got a long awaited updated and email is no longer the sole unique key - the thing that drove a number of customers including me away, because sometimes it is required to have different customers with a same email or without email at all. Well, now it is fixed.

Autopilot offers no client libs except for JavaScript. You want to use it - you write your own client library, this is something you better keep in mind if your scenario includes server side events.
It's API is somewhat cumbersome to understand.
The technical support is a bit better that Intercoms, but I can not say it was of a much help.
Probably the biggest issue we faced with autopilot is constant feeling that product developers would prefer not to meet client's need, they are living in a world where clients solve their problems on their own.
Ivory tower one could say, huh?

Ortto offers a wide range of tools and templates to help you design a workflow and keep track of every aspect of it. In addition to the Ortto analytics that indicate how many customers reply and interact with messages, I love the ready-made templates that allow me to design campaigns and send them to lists of contacts. When it comes to reporting to management, the reporting system and dashboard are quite efficient. It's also great to have Ortto's automated functionality for adding new consumers and iteratively replicating prior campaigns while also updating target lists. Using automation, we can arrange our email sending dates so that we may target clients with our messages at specific times and dates. To me, Ortto's most appealing feature is the fact that it brings together a wide range of marketing tools into one platform where I can analyze and report on all of these elements at once. When it comes to reworking the subject lines, a copywriting helper can be an excellent solution to overcome writer's block. In addition, I greatly appreciate the Ortto team's responsiveness to clients' needs, since they are always ready to reply to any questions or requests.

Because Ortto is so user-friendly and has so many resources for learning how everything works, there aren't any drawbacks worth mentioning. Additionally, the system's ease of use makes it easy for new employees to learn how the system works and to integrate it with other systems that the business uses.

- Slack Integration
- Segment Integration
- Easy to build complex logic, visually
- Dashboard to keep track of latest events
- Many journey and email templates to get you started
- Built-in email open/link tracking is helpful to find your engaged users
- Good support
- Great blog with ideas of how others use Autopilot
- They are continuing to develop cool new features
- User idea voting for features not yet developed

- Ability to access email / Slack templates seems inefficient (need to dig into the journey to find them)
- With all of the capabilities that Autopilot offers, you can easily have your custom contact lists get out of hand - remember to KISS so that others on your team can pick up where you left off

I like the simplicity and the design of the tool. It's very easy to understand and to set up. There a lot of connections with other platforms such ad Google Ads Facebook and CRMs.

I do not like the price model, it's quite expansive. Be careful. And the connectivity with Pipedrive is not very good.

You can plan multiple campaigns visually and then share the boards (completed with annotations) with the client. This means everyone is on the same page and understands how the campaign will proceed. The customer support is also second to none - really good. It's also very visual - as someone who gets easily distracted and bored easily, being able to visualise campaigns in a physical way really helps.

The reporting in the email side of things could be better. Mailchimp, for example, provides decent reporting with easy actions (like automatic re-send to non-openers' - AP requires you do smart segmenting (which is actually better in the long term), but the mental journey to sort this out would be impossible without the customer support (so it isn't an issue).

Easy to use, affordable to everyone, and world class support.

I really can't find a fault in the service Autopilot delivers, if they add any additional features the only thing I would suggest is they beef up the CRM functions. But as a service offered, its the best!

Autopilot's Visual Journey Builder is super simple and easy to use. The triggers and conditions are well differentiated making it easy to explain to others too. The team has also been very helpful in solving critical challenges.

The software needs more integrations to be built. Right now they integrate with very limited number of applications which can be a challenge syncing data across platforms.

Unlike some others Autopilot is super easy to use even for the first time user.

A bit on the pricier side. I would love to see them offer better pricing.

Autopilot has a large number of email templates that allow us to track the embedded link of our committed users. In addition, Autopilot allows the Marketing team to create a coherent funnel, with intelligent and easy-to-use segments. Another thing is that it is able to cover a large number of tasks, such as sending email newsletters and creating an advanced link based on various factors, such as default fields, potential customer owners, rules, among others. Another thing is Autopilot support, which offers an in-app chat service within the same application, so we can usually get in touch with them in just a few minutes.

There is much to be desired from the Autopilot WYSIWYG editor, which I hope can be improved with the next updates. Some actions related to APIs are very limited, so it would be good if they could provide a little more freedom. In addition, Autopilot allows very few integrations, and it would be excellent to work together with other marketing automation software to work faster.

I love the fact that it tracks my whole business from lead generation (that helps me fill in routes based on a map) to setting up the contract (with recurring services and pre-scheduled packages) to crew management (with photo uploads and clock-in/clock-out of jobs and contacting customers) to invoicing (which can be automatic) to receiving payment (even by credit card on the mobile app!). Keeping records on paper and trying to run schedules for weekly, bi-weekly and tri-weekly services would be a nightmare! This really is an AutoPilot software. It is a complete solution that tracks everything which allows it to be the ultimate solution for reporting. I can look at sales close ratios, revenue per lead source, job completion times against budgeted hours, past-due invoices and so much more! I have worked with the system from Property Maintenance Technician to Sales Rep to General Manager and have not been disappointed.

Their asset management portion is in its beginning stages and is not incredibly useful at the moment, but they continue to build on their system and I suspect that they will soon have a robust equipment and vehicle management system.

Autopilot is a marketers dream tool. You can create a 'journey' for almost any task, from sending out an email newsletter to creating an advanced nurture journey based on segmentation, rules, lead owners, default and custom fields, website actions and much, much more. If you use tools such as Salesforce and Segment then you can get even more out of the tool with less work, but I personally don't use either and I still get a huge ROI on the product. They also just updated the email building tool which was a very welcome update.

It would be great if the tool worked with other CRM's than just Salesforce. Some of the actions and triggers, particularly when it comes to API triggers are quite limited so some improvements with that would be great. The price can get quite high with large numbers of contacts and the business plan selected (A/B testing, API triggers and more). I would also like to see an end-user subscription management feature added so that I can fully move away from other email tools (i.e. MailChimp) whilst being compliant with the likes of GDPR.

Two features really stand out to me, and prove the usefullness of Autopilot: the UI and the analytics.

The graphical UI for building email journeys is very intuitive, and super easy to use. However, it's also super powerful. We've pluged in Salesforce, several different databases, and our customer support system, and using the fun shapes on the Journeys page. It's as simple as dragging objects onto the staging area and connecting them. In just a few minutes, you can have a analytics-focused email campaign ready to go, all without a bit of code.

And once your journey is started, and your email send, the real-time data you get from your targets extremely granular. We get updates down to the second for events as small as vertical scrolling and mouse hovers over hotlinks. It's very impressive.

Autopilot feels very heavy in the browser. I really can't explain why it's as slow as it is sometimes. Pages can take up to 30 seconds to load, and that's on high end desktop workstations. I know there is a very complex backend for Autopilot, but on occassion the slow performance is inexcusable. It could just be that we manage dozens of journeys and hundreds of thousands of entries at the same time, but Autopilot can be quite slow.

Also, sometimes the autofill feature in autopilot is erratic. This is a minor complaint, but you will notice it if you use Autopilot a lot.

The visual feedback of the journeybuilder makes automation easy and enjoyable to construct
The wealth of options available for triggering, and for actions to trigger in journeys
The contact-tracking functions are extensive and sophisticated
Support is quick and helpful

Segment-building is rudimentary, and once a segment is deployed, the criteria cannot be edited, which leads to a logjam of similar segments for various automations that have to be either maintained and organized, or carefully deleted.
Journeys, segments, and emails can easily become cluttered and lead to a general feeling of disorganization
The Salesforce integration has become increasingly expensive

The only thing I like about this platform is its ability to directly integrate with Slack, which allows us to easily incorporate internal alerts in our nurture programmes.

- Autopilot has poor usability experience that makes tasks longer to do despite the visual feel of the UI.
- You cannot copy email module HTMLs so email modules always have to be built from scratch.
- Inefficient folder structure.
- Segment criteria and names cannot be edited.
- No auto-populate / picklist on fields so field values need to be memorised by the user.
- No automated a/b testing.
- Does not have a global dynamic content feature which allows you to edit common content like email footers in one place.
- VERY basic report -only shows numbers like email engagement, and journey ejects. There is no ability to customise reporting by users / cohorts, which limits performance analysis.
- Reporting is inaccurate (ie. If you’d like to see open and click rates in a specific date range, it will also pick up the opens and clicks outside that date range which pushes the rates up).
- No built-in journey membership fields.
- There are issues with data timings. It makes data update really slow, delaying the lead to reach the sales team.
- You can’t combine ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ operators on segments / triggers logic.
- Does not have any advanced features that can be really useful (like sandbox, marketing calendar, webinars, web personalisation, predictive content etc).
- Slow pace of innovation (if any). Their email manager has been on 'beta' for two years.
- We've encountered several serious bugs caused on their end.

AutoPilot is an amazing piece of software, it just works and works well. They achieve exactly what they promise and it is a joyful user experience.

They used to have a cheaper plan for smaller accounts which I found useful for managing my startup. When they removed this, it became a choice of staying with them and taking the hit on the pricing or to keep with them. I stayed with them - great decision!

The absolute best feature of this product is that it has full control over Pipedrive. Based on observed behaviors from email campaigns, digital ads, chat or site/page performance, Autopilot can update Contacts, Deals, and Organizations, assign activities, notes increase deal values, stages, assign work to sales people and move deals through the pipeline. This tool makes Pipedrive 200% better and it's already really good.

The only knock on the product is the inability to filter out your synchronization with Pipedrive based on custom fields or some other value. When you sync, you sync all Contacts and your license fee pays for contacts you may do nothing with. If they could add a filter capability, this tool is about as good as it gets.

If your creative and are or have access to developers you can make Autopilot handle just about anything you want. Unlike Pardot, Marketo and other marketing automation systems, Autopilot has allowed me to create, send, and sync customer data across platforms.

If it exists you can connect and send data to it - just maybe not right out of the box.

Where Autopilot excels at creating amazing journeys and automation, its reporting and contact management isn't quite as robust.

Affordability for a small contact list
Ease of use
Visual Journey Builder
Salesforce integration
Features for price

Limits in contact segmentation
Limits in triggers for actions
Email editing suite can be a little basic

Being a non-developer in developer-heavy environment, I greatly value products that allow you to set up stuff in graphic editor. While it was not so easy at first, once I worked with it for a while I find it intuitive, smart, and allowing you to quickly get to what you need. It also allows you to set up complicated journeys relatively easy!

If you won't have a colleague to show you the ropes, it may be challenging to start using. The pricing is rather steep and pays off only if you want to heavily personalize your journeys - if you are looking for bulk simple solutions, then the pricing is suboptimal.

I really like how easy it is to set campaign, even the one where you want to use multiple conditions along the road. You just don't need any tech knowledge to set it up. It integrates great with Pipedrive so you can automatically remove contacts from your email campaign. Big kudos for Reporting section.

Deliverability of emails - we've compared it with other players on the market and with big campaigns it is an issue.

Its a very easy to use solution and has a robust feature set. Their journey creator is flawless and even a non-techinical person can use it with ease.

The have very robust APIs and you can confirgure autopilot pretty easily with their APIs.

It would be great we can use our custom mail server to send the mails, like Mailgun or SendGrid.

I have been using Autopilot for over two years and have enjoyed every moment of the journey. The price is excellent and I love the heads up feature. This feature alone has increased conversions considerably for me. I like that Autopilot is easy to integrate and like the journey builder. I love that you can customize the experience depending on weather someone has clicked, opened, left unread. It's everything you could want.

I wished they had their own form builder. Currently the software will scan forms and integrate that way but it would be great if we could build own own from withing Autopilot. Other than that there aren't any other cons for me.

I like the ease of use with this software. It is easy to toggle between searching formats and to find customers.

The software can be slow at times and you have to restart your system so that it can fix itself and it freezes.