Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring) Reviews

Pros

SharpSpring is a great tool for small to mid range companies looking to build email marketing campaigns. It has great templates which allow you to create emails that look great and are functional sales tools. There are also great automation tools for drip campaigns and re-targeting.

Cons

The visual email builder can be finicky at times, resulting in editing directly in the code. If you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable formatting HTML code it can be overwhelming. Also, the social media tools are weak. It would be nice if I could schedule and post content directly from SharpSpring.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Constant Contact did not have the functionality of automation and drip campaigns that we needed.

Switched From

Constant Contact

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

SharpSpring has all of the functionality of Hubspot at a fraction of the cost. I used Hubspot at a previous position but I have found that I can do everything I want to do in SharpSpring without having to pay a fortune. SharpSpring also offers significantly more functionality than MailChimp or Constant Contact.

Pros

The support is top-notch. They go above and beyond to ensure all questions are answered. If there is a key feature needed in the software, they'll work to make sure that you get that feature or have a workaround. They respond quickly, and they are incredibly knowledgeable.

It's hard to list just one thing I like best! It's the most competitively-priced tool on the market... and it's a fraction of the cost of nearly any other marketing automation tool on the market.

Cons

With their constant upgrades, SharpSpring occasionally can be a bit buggy while features get ironed out. Nearly all issues have easy workarounds, and the fixes come fast. It's a minor quibble for a service that is basically as good as it gets.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Better support. Better functionality. Better interface. Better price.

Pros

Seemed like a great and more affordable option compared to HubSpot. Not much else to say here since we had a boat load of issues with it.

Cons

Everything was cumbersome. From onboarding to implementation. Even getting someone on the phone from the right department to help us when we had issues with email was a problem. Overall, really clunky and outdated. We ended up going to Hubspot and it's SO much better and not even that much more expensive especially when we think of all of the time we all wasted trying to get sharpspring to work.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

price.

Pros

We like the fact it is much cheaper in cost as compared to HubSpot and other marketing automation platforms. The ease of using the platform has made it easy to early adoption of the end users and we are able to fully track our MQL and ROI.

Cons

SharpSpring has an extremely high demand on email accuracy rate of 98% so quite often we get suspended due to bounced back emails. Sometimes it is difficult to have an almost 100% list when people leave companies. We have as a solution, pay for 3rd party email checker services,to help mitigate this and we also send a larger portion of emails though mailchimp.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Dynamics 365 and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

We wanted to have a solution that could do more analytics and tracking on engagement. SharpSpring was able to do this.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Dynamics 365 and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

cost, no locked in contract, larger user base capability and ease of use

Pros

SharpSpring is best for clients who want to generate lots of leads and convert them to clients. If you look for a complete solution for marketing automation, social media, emailmarketing, Google Ads and a CRM, this is the go to solution. If you are only looking for emailmarketing without the rest then this is not the best fit.

Cons

Social media monitoring could be beter. No other cons.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

ROI, price is very good for what you are getting

Pros

The ability to create a clear sales funnel and track your client through the sales process is really easy and highlights areas where more work and focus might be needed in your sales process.

There is a ton of features to engage users and build your audience, you just need to spend time and be open to exploring ideas.

Implementing dynamic content which changes depending on the customer persona is cool.

The support team always reply same day, there is online chat (US times) too.

Cons

There are some definite bugs such as data fields 'locking' when creating a landing page and the later it becomes editable again. Strangely the design side of emails and landing pages is not cohesive. So you have a limited range of fonts in forms but lots of customisation for colours for headings, then the reverse for landing pages. Thinks like buttons for GDPR can't currently be customised which looks odd.

Also, the onboarding process for Squarespace websites is different and this is not mentioned anywhere.

Just needs to have someone invest some time to deal with all these issues and implement a decent upgrade.

Generally, all very minor things but stacked up can provide a bit more challenging onboarding process than what it needs to be.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Cost, ease of use of platform and the support.

Pros

The amazing customer support that is offered. Anytime I have a question I can either look it up myself in their library of resources with tutorials and instructional videos, or I can call their partner support line and speak to a real person who even follows up after the call to make sure all of the needs were met.

Cons

I wish you could edit Life of Lead to be able to put custom events in there. We uploaded a prospect database we had been tracking since 2017 and it had every time we touched a prospect. Unfortunately, once we uploaded this list into SharpSpring we were not able to edit their Life of Lead prior to the upload date. While this is barely an issue, it would be nice to see how long we have been tracking some of these prospects to give us a better prediction at how many touches it takes for a prospect to convert to a customer.

Alternatives Considered

Lead Forensics

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

SharpSpring seemed like the best deal on the market by far. For only a few hundred dollars a month we were able to start using our first marketing automation/CRM software. With SharpSpring you are able to cut off using other services, so we are actually paying less than we did before, but getting so much more in return!

Pros

- Price
- Easy of use
- Easy to implement and learn
- Fast support
- Active community and many updates
- Possible to have skype calls and team sessions with SharpSpring to spar.

Cons

- The Social Media part in the software is not optimal, we still use other software next to it.
- CRM feature is small, great for small companies, but bigger ones can come short.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

After running the demo of each software, the price, easy of use, and SharpSpring had a better fit with our type of costumers.

Pros

SharpSpring is a game-changer! Getting an all-in-one platform that allows us to go from capturing lead information and behavior all the way through to identifying qualified leads through marketing campaigns is amazing. Having one place for marketing emails, landing pages, social media, blogging, meetings, video chats, and more is almost unheard of. Match that with a really robust CRM that tracks leads, beautifully outlines the life of a lead, and allows you to easily manage the sales pipeline and one-on-one engagements with pre-qualified leads with lead scoring is amazing.

Cons

Seriously, there isn't much negative to say about this platform. The onboarding was amazing, the self-guided trainings were awesome, it's a great platform. The only downside is it's not as "pretty" as some platform, but hey, I'd rather have a functioning product helping me make more money and something pretty to look at.

Pros

What I like most about SharpSpring is how much you get for the money. It packs every feature you'd expect from the expensive marketing automation platforms but doesn't throw exorbitant costs on those features. I also like the ease of integration with other platforms.

Cons

I highly dislike the recent shift in having clients pay for their own accounts with separate billing. We were sold this platform as one we could completely white-label for clients, but now we are required to put a client CC on file.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

We chose SharpSpring solely because it was cheaper than HubSpot.

Pros

Originally it was transparency and pricing that made us move. But since then it's the fact that Sharpspring have continued to develop the platform with great new features (like the inbuilt CRM, Sales Automation and integrated Meeting booking functionality) many of which at no additional cost (unlike Hubspot) that means we continue to use and recommend Sharpspring over any other platform for our SMB clients.

Cons

I would like SMS functionality to be built in as well as email (I appreciate it's not as big in the USA where Sharspring's biggest customer base is) but it's big here in the UK

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Pricing and poor client support. As an agency "WE" were the client, but they treated as merely as someone selling their product.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Pricing mainly

Pros

1. Customer service is highly responsive.
2. Templates for emails and landing pages are easy to use without design or development expertise.
3. Incredibly easy to customize: add fields, pipelines, dashboards, automations particular to your processes without coding or other specialized knowledge.

Cons

1. Landing page builder is kind of basic. However, new releases come regularly and is probably not a big deal if you have an html developer handy.
2. Integrated social scheduler functionality is a bit basic.
3. If you have significant custom complex report needs, this is not the platform for you. They have great canned reports that any layman can find value in, you can download csv files of many things, and you can customize a dashboard with report "widgets." But not a lot of ability to dig into raw data.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Creating additional sales pipelines required an upgrade to another Salesforce product. For the B2B tech startups our agency served, Salesforce was already a bit much for what they needed -- even before adding on needed marketing automation platforms like Marketo or Pardot. They just didn't have the dedicated resources needed for managing those complex systems.

Switched From

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

1. SharpSpring's unlimited user model was a big plus for my clients. No need to get in touch with Sales and create a contract addendum. Takes 60 seconds to add a new user. 2. From the agency perspective, being able to manage multiple client instances from a single platform made it easy for my small team to administer. 3. The all-in-one platform makes it easy to connect marketing to sales to upsells for a complete view of the customer experience. 4. Adding a new field to the contact record or a new pipeline is super simple. No development or platform expertise needed. A huge bonus, especially when these requests turn out to be of negligible value and/or rarely used.

Pros

Our customers are benefitting as much as we are and it starts with the automated services. We can route inquiries to sales reps faster and continue conversations with customers instantaneously through dynamic messaging.

Cons

We need to understand Sales Optimizer better. It may be a software solution that we don't necessarily fit with, but we still think this is something we can improve with, but right now its a slice of the pie that we struggle with.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Pipedrive, Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

SharpSpring brought more to the table from a customer experience and data management tool.

Switched From

Sage CRM

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Cost and the fact that we weren't buying ala'carte, rather we felt like we were buying into a partner experience.

Pros

First, fantastic price. Personalization can drive amazing results. SharpSpring gives you a solid set of tools that all communicate with each other flawlessly and for an exceptional value. It's a sophisticated tool with a lot of depth, but the certifications, demos, videos, tools, customer service all make it very easy to use. Just when I think I've figured out the edge of the depth on the tool, I realize there's another level. The automation is top notch. The ability to track so many actions, behaviors and then to take action to help the customer go further along the funnel. It fulfills the needs of so many other tools - HootSuite, Sprout, Calendly, Mailchimp, CRM, Sales CRM, TypeForm, and WhoIsVisiting (to name a few).

Cons

Not a lot so far. I'll always take more templates, pre-made content. Don't get me wrong, it has content, but the more the merrier.Billing can be a little confusing, but I know they have an update coming very soon. In fact, I just received an update email about it. I'd love to see more progress on the SharpSpring iOS app.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, Mailchimp and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

I've worked with HubSpot, Adobe, Marketo, Pardot and a myriad of other digital marketing tools. I've used tools that cost 1-2 million a year, spent months on integrations. I've honestly never found a tool that is so capable, so easy to implement, and does not require 6 figures of budget to fund it as I have in SharpSpring. I think SharpSpring is a no-brainer tool for any small to medium sized organization. It may even cut it for larger organizations. While I'm very impressed, I see the company continuing to strive towards an even higher level of greatness.

Pros

When choosing a marketing automation platform for my agency, I knew I wanted something robust and customizable. I'm very hands on, and I don't like being constrained by the limitations of drag-and-drop editors or controlled interfaces. I want to be able to tailor my tools exactly to each client I work with, without compromising on functionality or efficiency. That's why SharpSpring has been a perfect fit for me! Not only is it affordable for a small agency like mine, who works with small businesses, but it's extremely powerful, and capable of executing any strategy my team or my clients require. The most complete and functional marketing automation platform out there!

Cons

Because of the large range of features, it can be a little intimidating to learn for some. But the onboarding team does a great job of walking you through implementation and getting you set up for success! Our agency focuses a lot on providing social media and content marketing services to our clients, and the SharpSpring content calendar is definitely not as robust or streamlined as some other platforms I've used. However, it's definitely not the focus of the platform, and there are workarounds for most of the issues I've run into with it. The SharpSpring team is also super responsive to feedback, and are constantly improving their product. I've already seen some great changes in the time I've been using the platform, and I'm confident the content calendar and scheduling tools will only continue to improve!

Alternatives Considered

Zoho Social, HubSpot Marketing Hub and Zoho CRM

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

It was the most affordable option for my agency. It was also the only one which allowed me to effectively implement it for all my clients as well, without exorbitant costs to me!

Pros

It was very quick to deploy, fast to get my team trained, and effective in demonstrating results for clients.

In addition, the feature functionality vs. price balance is fantastic. Other tools have lots of bloatware and tools that you will never use.

Cons

I wish it had some built-in SEO tools and I wish their email list management was more forgiving on spam traps.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Pipedrive and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Cost and HubSpot's lack of flexibility.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

It was a combination of feature vs. price. In addition, SharpSpring was much easier to use and get operational quickly.

Pros

Cost vs. benefit. Has all of the features our clients want or need, without a bunch of stuff we have to pay for that they don't need.

Cons

It's a struggle to find something I don't like, but if it was one thing over the past two years, it would be the lack of support on the sales side for our clients. More customized training and presentations for client side would be great.

Pros

The SharpSpring Marketing Automation Software provides the following features and benefits that make it a stand out product for my business;
1. The 24/7 support incorporated into the monthly fees; Ensuring no surprises down the line.
2. No requirement to pay fees annually upfront.
3. New landing page feature.
4. Blog page feature.
5. New integration with the Litmus test.
6. Link up with Zapier integration to allow connection to hundreds of 3rd party software providers with the Zapier integration and SharpSpring APIs.
7. Training platform library; In-depth and with video availability to walk through processes. This along with 24/7 support, in my opinion, are the two most important features out with cost of course which set SharpSpring apart as the right platform for our boutique digital marketing agency.

Cons

1. Monthly fees in dollars do not convert via local UK sterling currency rates, unlike other US marketing software providers. You pay in £ sterling the same monthly fee as in US $ dollars.
2. Email builder while it is satisfactory it could be even more user friendly.

Pros

It is a platform that cover the manage of the commercial proccess and the use of information from the salers, this feed our Marketing Strategies and give us a continous improvement. Is easy to share tools between commercial and marketing teams about new campaings and we can obtain all the data to support, if a campaing was succesfully with a ROI that has the detail of each lead, opportunity and sales earned.

Cons

There is not automation proccess to include automatically changes in account's flelds. Sharpspring is working constantly in improving features, that is why we do not worry.

Pros

SharpSpring is a sleek system that offers outstanding tools for marketing automation. We researched a lot of platforms ranging from free to $1000s before going with SharpSpring. They have just the right amount of features that makes it the most useful for all of our clients, leaving off the bells and whistles that would inflate the price.

Their interface is top-tier which makes using their system a breeze. The dashboard gives you a comprehensive look at everything you're running. Moving around the system is super simple and they make it easy to jump to different areas when you're building a sales program. I'd urge you to check out all the features on their website because there are too many to list, but I can say that what they have offered us is unbelievably comprehensive.

We've also taken full advantage of their support which is outstanding. They have always been knowledgable and very friendly. Moreover, they won't let you off the phone until they are sure that the problem has been resolved! They also offer FREE continuing education programs like webinars to help make you more proficient at their program.

SharpSpring is a superior marketing automation platform, with a very intuitive interface and offer the kind of support we have rarely seen in tech companies. They have worked harder to earn and keep our business than any other vendor we've ever worked with. You would do yourself a giant favor to give their system a test drive.

Cons

I was not prepared for the steep learning curve that is required to take full advantage of this platform. I was a bit discouraged at first by everything there was to learn but I realized it's part of working with such a comprehensive platform. It's like moving to a new town and trying to figure out all the roads and highways. I don't know if that's really a con but it is something you must be aware of. You're going to need to spend some serious time learning it but once you do, navigating the system easily becomes second nature.

Pros

Looking all around the market, you will find sharpspring, with a slightly different business model that can make some eye turn but after you understand you will love it.

The fact that you can buy directly from agencies that know the product and already know your objectives and product, is brilliant since no one will understand more your client than their selves and you that is emerging on his market, some platform forces you to buy their onboarding package that in the end, you don't leave with much.

A platform with that many features on the begging can be a little overwhelming, but with time, you understand the reason for each feature.

I use them for lead management, campaign, sales pipeline, and don't feel that i am using their potential 100% already

Cons

the learning curve needed for the platform, all platform have their learning curve, but once you pass it, this service is awesome!

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Mid-tier price with top-tiers features.

Switched From

ActiveCampaign and RD Station

Reasons for Switching to Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Mid-tier price with top-tiers features.

Pros

SharpSpring is an automated marketing platform with features of third-party CRM integration, universal CMS compatibility, fully integrated call tracking, landing pages, blog builder and much more. It provides unlimited users for all plans, unlike its competitors. What it says vs. what it delivers: It says: It offers behavioral-based email automation with “after-the-click” tracking for personalized messaging. Yes, it delivers: With the feature, we were able to identify the cost of a lead. It also helped to decrease the unaddressed customer complaints It says: It offers in-depth analytics with statistics of clicks, bounces, and deliveries. It also enables to track the visitor’s conversions, the life cycle of a lead – from click to attending social events. No, it does not deliver: The reports and analytics are not in detail, though they provide the performance of campaigns. It misses the specifications on minute details of the strategy. It says: It offers customization in every feature such as customized conversion forms, buyer personalities, reports and much more. Yes, it delivers: My team at e-Intelligence were able to customize the tool for lead preferences, campaign performance, and email automation

Cons

Nothing that I can think of! I suggest making the most of this tool for your marketing needs. You can overlook minor glitches as they are not affecting the tool’s performance to a large extent.

Pros

SharpSpring has a plethora of tools and is always introducing new ones to assist you in creating an effective email marketing campaign. SharpSpring's customizability is excellent, which simplifies all tasks. Additionally, importing and configuring contact lists is a breeze. SharpSpring You may construct unique campaigns by utilizing the numerous concepts and custom templates that it generates, as well as editing and saving them as drafts for future use. You'll receive notifications and data about client replies in real time. This exact approach is easily replicable in subsequent marketing initiatives. I appreciate the ability to conceal and reorganize unnecessary dashboard elements. As a consequence, the business team will be able to more effectively manage and cooperate with the customer database, as well as all stages of advertising, email marketing, customer tracking, contact pages, and marketing job automation, among other things.

Cons

I encountered no technical difficulties when using it. SharpSpring is a critical component in optimizing email marketing operations for both small and large enterprises. For optimal utilization, additional training is required; SharpSpring developers provide numerous videos and tutorials, and the support team is always available to answer your questions.

Pros

At first, I was hesitant to jump on board with SharpSpring as I have used the bulkier parent company software from Constant Contact and did not love... I thought this would be similar and I was already familiar with HubSpot's array of marketing automation applications; however, I was a little wrong! I still prefer HubSpot for larger, more profitable or sizable I guess I should say, companies. For my non-profit and social enterprise ventures, however, it is actually very much aligned to the effectiveness as the aforementioned competitor but for half the price. I like that I can get detailed analytics while setting up true smart content triggers for pre-existing materials in a way that makes sense and is strategic for my audience at the right time in the right way.

Cons

The interface to me feels almost too simplistic as if it is dumbed down, even aesthetics wise. I am big on the look and feel of a system, especially if I'm going to be in it regularly. Also the social media capabilities and deeper, detailed analytics for lead management and creation at the top of the marketing funnel (or circulating flywheel if you're into more "modern times" industry lingo) are not up to snuff in comparison to HubSpot. But in comparison to the rest of the product market, SharpSpring is up there within the ranks!

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Ortto, ActiveCampaign and HubSpot CRM

Pros

Ease of use, good templates, built in CRM (although you can integrate with 3rd party CRM if you need.) Cost saving compared to competing products - especially if you can dispense with a full-fat CRM like Salesforce which is bloated and over priced for SME market in my opinion.

Cons

Occasional glitches. Sometimes you have to refresh the page to see the result of a change that you have made. For example - the number of members in a list - can take a few minutes after saving the query to report a true number. But you soon learn to live with minor issues like this.