I was recently given the opportunity to review a plugin called fusewp and I went ahead and took that opportunity because fusewp looks to me like a light version of one of my favorite plugins ever, which is WP Fusion. Now, I’m going to go in here and I’m going to show you around what Fuse WP can do and what I’m going to make a few comparisons to WP Fusion and to be clear, it’s not on the same level as WP Fusion and that will become clear. However, for what it does do, it can be quite useful. So let’s dive into fuswp.

Now, first, let’s cover what fusewp does. As you can see here on their website, it connects WordPress to your CRM or email marketing platform, very similar to what WP Fusion does. Now, WP Fusion, as you may know, is one of my favorite plugins ever because basically it does bidirectional syncing between a myriad of different WordPress plugins and WordPress core and a whole host of CRMs. It also does permissions control, so you could add a tag and automatically enroll them into a learndash course or put a tag and unlock a bunch of content. And so it’s extremely useful.

And I love WP Fusion and their support is fantastic, their documentation is fantastic. So when they approached me for FuseWP, I had to take a look, just because it’s in the same wheelhouse as WP Fusion and I was kind of curious how it stacks up. And it does a similar thing. It connects WordPress to your CRM in much the same way. He’s got an overview video here.

And then the way it works is you’ve got these user these sync rules, and you set up a sync rule, you choose your source and you choose your destination. And I’ll show you this in just a minute. But your sources can include user roles, it could be WooCommerce subscriptions, things like that. And then based on things that happen in those plugins, you can turn it into a particular list and tag and map custom fields and things like that. Now, the one big thing, and again I’ll show you this in just a second, is that it doesn’t seem as if this was a bidirectional sync, meaning you cannot make a change in an outside system and that will then reflect inside the CRM.

This is basically a thing where you’re just syncing to your email list. So that’s a pretty big difference from WP Fusion right there. But it does what it does. It works with a whole lot of different plugins here. You can see some of the lists here.

Learndash, WooCommerce subscriptions. I use a lot of MemberPress Tutor LMS, et cetera, et cetera. Advanced custom fields. Of course, down here we got the integrations with the different CRMs. Now, the one I use the most myself is Fluent CRM, but it works with a host of other ones here with Kit.

And what other ones are popular? AWeber drip. I used to use that one myself. It doesn’t activecampaign. It sees keep is there?

Yeah, so it’s got a lot of the main ones. And chances are the CRM that you’re using this thing probably does it. And it does custom fields and it does support tagging. So with that being said, let’s go ahead and hop into a Test install of WordPress and have a peek around. All right, so I’m inside of a Test install of WordPress.

Now. This is actually started off as a clone of the WordPress install that I was using for my membership, my building a membership site series here on YouTube. And so a lot of the stuff has already been set up, but what I went ahead and did is I turned off WP Fusion and I went ahead and reinstalled FuseWP. So here we are. Now, if you go to the settings screen for Fuse WP again, let’s pretend all this stuff is not here.

This is all just clutter. But there’s not a lot of settings. Okay. You’ve got the list of integrations with the various things that we can connect it to, but there’s not a lot of settings. It’s certainly nothing like I’m used to with WP Fusion, but we can enable other sync on Profile update.

I guess they check this box if you want to trigger segregation for remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Fixed database, which seems like it’s redundant right now, but I guess if something goes wrong, if I uninstall it, I can have everything removed from the database. That’s always a nice function in terms of fluentcrm because that’s what I’m integrating here.

We can sync the double opt in. So this will I guess be. If FuseWP inserts them into the list. We would enable double opt in by default if I check that. But that’s all there is actually in terms of settings.

Okay. Now a lot of the actual work seems to go over here in the sync rules. And if we go to add a sync rule, we could choose our source. So what we’ve got so far is user roles. I’ve got WooCommerce subscriptions installed.

I’ve got WooCommerce installed. So it does this. I’ve also went ahead and put on learndash just to see what it does. And so we can see here if they enroll in a course or they go into a learndash group. We can do certain things.

But for example, if we go to WooCommerce subscriptions, I can choose any or any of the membership options that I have. I’ll go ahead and choose any, any. Then we come down here to destination. Subscription status would be okay. So I guess we’ll sync our active people to fluentCRM.

All right. And then we got the tags. Okay, we’ll put them in the members tag. Now this was an interesting like. Well, I guess it allowed me to do it the, the first time.

It would not allow me to save this because no list was selected. And you can see with this asterisk that it is required field. And that was an interesting thing because I’m used to focusing on tags when it comes to WP fusion. And so the lists are kind of redundant. I actually don’t make a whole lot of use of the individual email list inside of fluidcrm but fusewp sort of wants to force me to use the list.

So I went ahead and created this one called Main just to shut it up. And we could do that if we want. And then once I do that, then I have the ability to map custom field. So I can take certain Data from the WordPress user profile. I can get a whole bunch of data from WooCommerce subscriptions like trial period, billing interval.

It’s really nice that I can access all this and then I can map that to custom fields that I’ve set up inside of fluentcrm and we can control the data type. And so that’s actually really nice now. And then if we do one for Active, I guess we would have to do another one for say canceled and fluentcrm and we’d have to once again choose a list because it won’t even grant me custom field access without it. And then I guess I don’t have a tag for canceled, but that would be the main idea. And then you set up these sync rules and it will then run.

Now as you can tell from these sync rules, it looks like this is a one way street, meaning these things happen in WooCommerce subscriptions and it will send to fluentcrm but not the other way around. I’m not getting any indication here. The Fuse WP can go the other way, whereas I could add a tag inside AffluentCRM and it would then activate a subscription. I’m not seeing that capability, but let’s go ahead and save this. Okay, so there we go.

There’s the interface for Active and for Canceled. And then I guess if we wanted to come over here, we could have a variety of different rules and stuff like that. Back over on their website, looking at their documentation, which is always important, we pop over here and it, it does document what they’ve got going on. Now one thing I definitely wish is that they had a search function because right now they don’t have any type of search function that I can find. And but when you pop into these things, it does what it needs to do.

Like when here we’re, they’re documenting. Connecting to fluentCRM tells you what it does tells, tells you where the settings are. I mean there’s not a lot to know. So what it does do, it does. But one thing I was noticing when I wanted to come in here and search for any sign of bidirectional sync, I could not find it because I had to poke around.

There was just no search function. That’s something they should have. One of the great things about WP Fusion is just how involved their documentation is. They, it’s just, it’s in a whole different realm in that particular department. So essentially that’s Fused WP in a nutshell.

There’s not a lot else to go through. It’s basically a collection of sync rules. So to be clear, and we’ll talk about this in just a minute, it’s not in the same league as WP Fusion. It’s just not. I was very clear with the author of the of Fuse WP who reached out to me that I said, listen, you, you probably know that I’m already a big user of WP Fusion and so one of the things I want to naturally do is compare the two.

And he seemed cool with that because he hooked me up with it. And so I’m going to do that, but only on a very shallow thing because some of the differences are going to be quite obvious. But I also want to make a point that what FuseWP seems to be really doing is just simply taking activity that happens in some of these plugins that it supports, some forms, plugins, WooCommerce subscriptions, WooCommerce orders, things like that. You can go through the list of integrations and it adds them to the email list. Okay.

And you could tag them and you can match up some fields, but that’s pretty much all that it does. And it is a one way sync. It does not work the other direction. It does not have any form of permission control such as what that WP Fusion does. The other thing too is that I want to be clear, there are other ways of doing this.

I mean, so if you’re using something like Automator WP or Uncanny Automator or something like that, you can kind of do the same thing. So you don’t really need Fuse WP if you’ve already got a plugin like that. The other thing is that sometimes you may be using a plugin that has its own integrations in with, you know, with your CRM. And so you may not need fuseWP, but in some cases it definitely plugs a hole. There’s no doubt about it.

I mean, that’s one of the things I liked about WP Fusion is that it plugs a really big hole. And if you’re wondering how you can get people onto your list with everything matched up and the proper custom fields and the whole thing into your CRM, FuseWP can do that. But there are other ways of doing it with some of the automator plugins for WordPress. Okay, now like I said, I have to compare FuseWP with WP Fusion. I mean, it even has the word fuse sort of built into both of them.

So it’s just, just a natural comparison between the two. But here’s the thing. The truth of the matter is Fuse WP and WP Fusion are in completely different leagues. And WP Fusion most definitely wins out. Now, I’ll show you this in a minute, but WP Fusion also costs a lot more, so you’re gonna have to take that into account on what features that you need.

But WP Fusion just does all kinds of things. It’s like my Swiss Army Knife plugin. It integrates with basically everything under the sun. I mean, look at all this. IT integr so many things.

Way more plugins than fusewp can do. It also integrates with a lot more CRMs than fusewp can do. Now, I think fusewp does a pretty good job of covering the ones that are probably most common, but they definitely don’t cover anywhere nearly as many as WP Fusion when it comes to some of the other things that it can do. Let’s pop up here to the feature features list. One of the big things that stands out to me is the fact that there’s no bidirectional sync.

I’ve mentioned that one of the things I like with WP Fusion is the fact that I can go into a CRM profile, add a tag and I can automatically just unlock a bunch of stuff for people. Everything changes. I can add a tag to somebody’s profile and it will automatically put them into a course in learndash. You, you know, you don’t have functionality like that with fuseWP. FuseWP can make it so that if one enrolls in a course in learndash we put them onto a list.

It can do that with no problem. But then you’re at a point where you have to figure out okay, how do you get, are they going to have to buy it with learndash? Are you going to have to have another plugin? So that then way when they Purchase it in WooCommerce, it enrolls them in the course and then FuseWP takes over and puts them onto the list. It just, it’s, it doesn’t bridge as big of a gap as what WP Fusion can do where you can actually link a course with a tag and simply by adding the tag to the profile they’re enrolled.

It’s as simple as that. So fusewp does not do permissions control. That’s a really big thing. Therefore you can’t use it as a membership site plugin. Okay, you have to integrate it with a membership site plugin but it cannot be the membership site plugin because it cannot control permissions whereas WP Fusion can.

There’s also add ons. With WP Fusion you can control logins. I mean it integrates with, I mean it just does so many more things when you really get right down to it. And so it, the, it’s almost unfair to make a comparison between the two. Yeah, here’s the permissions.

I’ve talked about this in my Build a membership site series on how to use WP Fusion to control permissions. You can auto enroll users into courses by applying tags in your CRM. It’s got an event tracking add on for WP Fusion where they could track everything that they’re doing across your whole site and just add a tag and trigger marketing automations that way it’s in a different league and it just is what it is. Okay, now let’s look at pricing. So with FuseWP they are $99 a year for one site.

For three sites is 199 and for a whole big old pile of sites Unlimited It’s 399 a year. And they do have a lifetime option here. And so, so 11.99 for unlimited sites. Okay. So it’s not too bad.

And let’s go ahead and compare that over to WP Fusion where they do have a light version. I don’t remember if, if, if Fuse WP had a light version for some reason somewhere I thought maybe they, they did. Oh yeah, they do have a light version. I have not checked out the difference. But it does have a live version.

So WP Fusion does have one. And then it starts out at $297. Okay. And so there’s a pretty big price hike there. Okay.

And. And then it goes up to 427 and go. And then it’s 647. Now for. So for unlimited websites with all the different add ons is 647 bucks a year versus 399.

So it’s definitely a big difference in, in the pricing. But again what you’re getting is a different caliber of plug in. And I’m not going to sit here and use a Fuse WP review to sit here and promote WP Fusion to you. I don’t know, I think that would feel a little bit unfair. But this is.

WP Fusion is definitely a more expensive plugin. That being said, it also just does more things and it is what it is. Let’s check out their lifetime pricing. So for three sites it’s about $2,000 come to over here for lifetime and we’re talking about 799. So it’s a very different caliber of pricing but of course that’s for very different caliber of products.

And so that’s the basic rundown. FuseWP looks like it does a good job at what it does. It’s designed to take the activity and the profiles, the user profiles of WordPress and some of the plugins that it integrates with and put them into the CRM. I don’t know if I’d call it a full Fusion because it’s not the bi directional sync that WP Fusion has. It also does not have any access control, so you can’t use it in that regard.

It does what it does, which is to put people on your email list, match up the custom fields and add the list and the tags and it will do that and it will do it reliably. But to compare it with WP Fusion almost feels a little unfair. And because WP Fusion just clearly does so much more, the documentation is better and stuff like that, it really comes down to whether you think the price of WP Fusion is worth your money. It does do more things. It also does cost more.

I am not going to be switching anytime soon. I commend FuseWP for what they have done. It does solve a need, but it’s not the only way to do it because its main job is to put people on your email list. And you can do that with other options such as Uncanny Automator. You know, there’s a lot of, you know, Automator wp.

There are other ways to go about it if that’s what you want her to do. But when it comes to WP Fusion and what it does, I’m really not aware of a true competitor to it. And so once again we’re talking about two different plugins and two different leagues and it’s like a little bit like comparing apples and oranges. To wrap this up, I want to thank the folks at FuseWP for allowing me to review the plugin. I really, really do appreciate it.

If you would like more just off the cuff, you know, in plain English, no holds barred reviews and comparisons of various WordPress plugins. That’s something I do do around here sometimes and so remember to subscribe to the channel if you’re not already subscribed. I don’t. I think a lot of people who search for these things are probably not subscribed to the channel, so maybe you’ll find that to be an interesting option for you. And of course, if you’d like to learn more about what I am doing and get subscribed to my weekly newsletter that is designed for business owners that use WordPress, head on over to blogmarketingacademy.com you can learn more about what I do there, including the concierge program where I will basically help maintain your site and help you build it out and do it.

Does all kinds of stuff, honestly. And also the WP Fusion plug. It is included in my concierge toolkit because I use it all the time. Like a lot of my clients are using that thing and they’re doing it through me as well. So anyways, that’s where you can find more about me@blogmarketingacademy.com enough chatter from me.

I’ll see you on the next video.