I really wanted to love Forento. It has a great feature set for coaches and course creators and the team behind it is personable and very approachable. It's simplicity and ease of use is a definite draw, but it's also the reason I'm reconsidering if I want to continue. I'm giving this qualified review because I realize it may be the perfect solution for many other needs, even if it falls short for mine.

The first thing to understand is that Forento offers three levels -- Basic, Start, and Scale -- and the highest level is not available as a Lifetime offer. There's a workaround, but just to be clear: you cannot purchase a lifetime plan to the highest level.

That means that several key features are unavailable from the get-go: bundles, content dripping, Zapier integration, and more than one community channel. If the unavailability of any of these features is a deal-breaker, take note.

Also, all Lifetime Plans (Basic or Start) come with sales commissions: either 10%, 5%, or 2%, depending on how much you want to pay up front. This surely beats paying $15 or $39 a month (the cost to website purchasers), but it's still a recurring cost, IF you plan on using Forento for anything other than a free resource.

Forento is a pretty basic platform, even moreso than Podia. At the Basic level you can sell courses, videos, downloadables and coaching sessions. The next-up plan lets you build a website (nice, feature-rich builder) and a community (one channel). There's no CRM, no funnel builder, no email marketing or newsletter capability (transactional emails only). And, since the Zapier integration is saved for the highest tier (Scale) plan, no chance of integrating with any other softwares for those purposes. This is an important consideration.

As I mentioned above, there IS a workaround: Forento offers a Scale add-on to AppSumo customers for $49 a month. Now, that's a huge improvement over their regular $119 per month, but still -- fifty bucks a month is fifty bucks a month, not something the average AppSumo customer is necessarily interested in. Most of us want to minimize our monthly charges, and this one is pretty significant.

Truth be told, I need drip marketing and I need Zapier integration. So, for me, Forento just isn't worth it. But everyone's needs are different. So give careful consideration to the points I'm making here, and decide what you're willing to live without, and choose accordingly. This may be the perfect option for you.