Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring) Reviews

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

My favorite thing about Sharpspring is the ability to track and analyze the entire life of a lead, from start to finish. It allows us to optimize our funnels and nurture prospects from interest to sale. It is a really powerful tool and offers (almost) everything you need for marketing automation from automated workflows to landing pages and forms to email design. I also love their lead scoring.

Cons

Though it offers a lot of features, it's not all that usable compared to similar products. There are countless small usability issues. Landing pages are pretty difficult to create. Support is usually great – but can at times be entirely unhelpful. Automation has some key features other tools allow. Overall, there are just a lot of features that still need to be added in order to really compete.

Alternatives Considered

BenchmarkONE and Keap

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Price was the primary reason.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

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

We really needed a robust CRM for longer B2B buying cycles. Though all other tools were awesome, Sharpspring won out there.

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

It is an easy-to-use platform that allows me to access and use its numerous features without requiring extensive technical knowledge. I like that the platform is adaptable, I can simply tailor the platform to my specific marketing requirements, allowing me to streamline my marketing efforts and get greater outcomes. also, The reporting and analytics tools are robust and extensive, providing me with loads of data and insights into my marketing campaigns. I value the platform's extensive analytics, which allow me to track performance and monitor lead activity.

Cons

While the email templates are limited in number and may not be as visually appealing, I don't have any other concerns or complaints about the platform.

Pros

Being a Partner for 4+ years has allowed us to grow with them. When they were a startup, we were able to really see the changes the partners were requesting and the software has come a long way. They really value their Partners (agencies).

Cons

Sometimes SharpSpring likes to release new features, while they need to also work on continually improving their existing features.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Act-On

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Marketo was very expensive and did not allow us to resell to clients. Also not user friendly.

Switched From

Marketo Engage

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

Much less expensive and really built for agencies like us. The others also really charged a lot for the number of contacts we would have, making them not feasible.

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

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

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

Looking to get the best out of my email marketing, Sharpspring gives me the chance to reach out to my whole list with a modicum of effort. The best part is the automation--triggers and the ability to build out a complex program make a big difference in efficacy and efficiency.

Cons

The email builder inside of the program--WYSIWYG. You can do this, but it's frustrating to make the thing look like you want it to.

Alternatives Considered

VBOUT

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Mailchimp felt very limited in scope. Delivery with mailchimp was restricted, it seemed like I never could end up in the gmail inbox tab, always relegated to the offers tab.

Switched From

Mailchimp

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

Features.

Pros

We love the fact that we can white label the product and resell to our clients. It adds a new source of recurring revenue for our business that we would not have without this capability

Cons

We’ve had some challenges setting up billing for our managed client accounts - that said, the SharpSpring team has been helpful and very responsive in sorting out our challenges.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

HubSpot just became too expensive for us to justify and it did not give us the white label capability that we were seeking.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

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

SHarpSpring was the only solution to offer a white label alternative

Pros

What I mostly appreciated about using sharpspring was the diverse range of features within the platform, since they identify and capture prospect information much easier; wich is very valuable in terms of sales optimization.

Cons

Sharpspring has a very accelerated rate for putting out new features, to keep up and compete with other platforms, wich is a pro; however, the new features often need updates. Video Calling, for instance, was great by the time the pandemic began; however, it might not be as established as other video conference competitors.

Pros

All the marketing automation is incredible and so easy to use. We have been using the chatbot feature and love it! It is easy to set up and we have it integrated with Slack to make the ability to manage it simple. The email automation and workflow automation makes me day to day job so easy as well. I can set up new prospects in my sales workflow and they get moved down my funnel with just automation. It saves me a ton of time.

Cons

I love SharpSpring but the overall user interface is not the most beautifully designed one. However, I am getting so many features and resources for an incredible price that this is not a big issue at all. And it really isn't that bad.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot Sales Hub

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

HubSpot is a great service and is beautifully designed but I felt that I was being overcharged for tools that I didn't need and the ones I did need I couldn't scale it without paying an arm and a leg. For a smaller marketing agency, SharpSpring is the way to go. Great price, great service, and great tools!

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

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

Better price, better service, and better tools!

Pros

The email builder, landing page builder and form builder are all straightforward and fairly easy to learn. There are also help/support articles for pretty much anything I need help with or get stuck on. The "life of the lead" view is helpful to see a contact's interactions with our brand.

Cons

The email and landing page builders offer a lot of flexibility in layout/design, but sometimes they are a bit too restrictive in terms of moving elements around.

Alternatives Considered

Insightly, NetSuite, GreenRope and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

The previous platform was a lot more expensive and under-utilized.

Switched From

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

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

The abundance of features for the price. Specifically, number of contacts allowed, emails sent and ability to manage clients in addition to our agency business.

Pros

I love using this software on a daily basis and using it to manage my leads. As a salesperson, it is challenging to find a CRM that actually works for you, not where you have to work for it. I like the ease of use with the kanban boards as well as the marketing automation for drip campaigns.

Cons

The mobile app is inoperable and not relevant. Sometimes the search feature is challenging to use- sometimes you need to use the companies name, sometimes you have to use the contacts name. When working in the drip campaigns you have to be really specific about which dates you select.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

The ease of use for marketing automation and ability to synchronize emails for communication transparency.

Switched From

Zoho CRM

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

Pricing, ease of use, and presentation from the SharpSpring staff. Hubspot made us feel like we were taking up their time and not valued. Salesforce was too much for what we needed. SharpSpring made us feel valued and explained their product well by asking us questions first and tailoring their presentation around our needs, not just sending us through a powerpoint.

Pros

I love the way the tracking is displayed on a timeline so you can see everywhere a prospect went. The built-in CRM and sales funnel pics up where the marketing funnel leaves off and keeps the automation going during and after the sale to upset and resell. The new retargeting and (soon to be) advertising feature is amazing, not only retargeting your visitors but it finds similar customers to target. Overrall, it's really intuitive and easy to use, and I've used many marketing automation platforms over the years. This is the least expensive. No long-term contracts to sign but still has all the features of the much more expensive ones. And the LiveChat feature you can put on your Web site that was just added (at no additional cost) brings a huge feature that other companies charge more than the entire cost of the SharpSpring subscription.

Cons

No complaints at all. The learning curve wasn't very steep and the price is right. They even have evening support hours.

Pros

Ease-of-use: SharpSpring is very user-friendly and intuitive. It's easy to edit or create an email, set up workflows, and navigate around the platform.
Versatile: SharpSpring is an all-in-one tool that you can use for your email program, sales pipeline, CRM, marketing automation, and social media.
Customer service: I often frequent the online help center that has a lot of easy-to-understand solutions to many questions that come up. If this doesn't solve the issue, tech support is very responsive and the account management team is also very accommodating.

Cons

Reporting: There are some basic reports that you can pull from the data in SharpSpring, but I would love to see some more robust reporting overall, especially with the sales feature. Aggregated reports across multiple pipelines, for example, would be great to have access to.
Customer segmentation: The platform could use a bit more in-depth customer segmentation features. I sometimes feel the list-building is not as intuitive as it could be.

Alternatives Considered

Campaign Monitor and Delivra

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

We were looking for a more agile, better UI product for our Marketing Automation/Email Marketing program.

Switched From

Campaign Monitor and Delivra

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

Of the alternate products, SharpSpring was the best fit for our needs in the organization and we felt we could utilize this tool well. The pricing model was also the most straightforward and matched our needs the best.

Pros

Everything you need to grow a business is in one place. The interface is easy to use and very intuitive. However, my favorite part of the company is the awesome support staff! Migrating from another platform, there is always a learning curve and workflow adjustment. If there was something we didn't know how to achieve in SharpSpring their friendly staff would explain with great detail how to get it done and integrate into the workflow we created.

Cons

Their social posting, responding section of the software is still a bit weak and we do utilize another piece of software to get this done, but we remember their software is about the automation and converting leads to customers and it does that very well, so this is an easy area to compromise.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

The price point was the biggest initial reason. We moved from another large product that pieced everything together making it out of reach for the smaller businesses. SharpSpring has all the major pieces as one at a lower cost. Had I known about the great customer service... I would have moved over a long time ago!

Switched From

HubSpot Sales Hub

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

Price Price Price.... and now... Service Service Service!!!!! They really care about my business doing well and help with non-product related questions. As I mentioned prior, they go above and beyond!

Pros

We manage a wide range of clients using SharpSpring, and you can not beat the cost and functionality delivered in a mid-high level automation platform - one that continues to evolve and grow.

Cons

We have really had no complaints with SharpSpring over the past 5 years we have been using it for ourselves and our clients.

Alternatives Considered

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

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Cost/Value and the strong focus SharpSpring has on supporting agencies.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

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

See comments above

Pros

SharpSpring offered us a way to implement marketing automation at a price that our business could afford. The features are more than enough for us to compete with companies that are much larger than we are. So the pricing got us to commit, but since then their customer service has proved to be nothing short of spectacular.
The onboarding was laid out for us step-by-step. We have a specialist that we talk to frequently that keeps us on task. When we did hit a snag, support stepped in to resolve it quickly and accurately.
The video training shows click by click what to do and how to do it. An added value is a webinar series on implementation and use.
The platform is modeled in a way that replicates our business model, so our employees found it logical and easy to implement their pieces of the big picture.

Cons

It's been working well for us, so it's kinda hard to come up with a dislike, but if I had to pick something it would be the fact that the weekly webinars "SharpSpring at Work" just went from weekly to bi-weekly. The upside is that they are planning at making them more in-depth.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

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

It was the price, features and integration abilities that led us to choose SharpSpring.

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

There are a lot of features. Almost too many, actually. I can't imagine a company that could possibly use all of them successfully. Regardless, it's nice to know the option is there if a situation arises in which a certain feature becomes useful. My favorite function/feature has to be the lead tracking system. I love being able to see every interaction each lead has with my client's business. The automated actions on top of that in response to customer interaction is the main reason we use the software. It makes drip email campaigns a breeze. I like that it tracks conversions as well (although you have to set it up to do so which isn't necessarily the easiest process ever). All in all, though, it does the job we need it to do.

Cons

The SharpSpring system is VERY non-intuitive for non-marketers (and heck, even for marketers sometimes). There are just too many ways you can screw up and have to start an email, action, or workflow completely over again. We have several clients who we act as their entire marketing department for and trying to get their sales representatives to use the system the way it's intended is next to impossible. They just don't understand it or even it's purpose, even after we've done training after training after training with them. We've even had SS support do training directly with them, to no avail. I ended up creating my OWN versions of step-by-step tutorials for our clients just to make things easier to understand.

The other major drawback is it's way too easy to get "blacklisted" (aka hit spamtraps and honeypots), which I realize is a problem with email marketing in general, but SS doesn't have enough safeguards in place for preventing this type of situation. We have one client who likes to import their email lists in from an on-site wifi sign-on system, which inevitably leads to poor list quality regardless of how many safeguards (email weed-out) parameters we put in place ourselves. Getting on SS's blacklist is pretty much the worst thing that can happen because you still have to pay for the service even though you can't use it until your un-blacklisted, which can take a while.

Lastly, their email-design interface is terrible and trick to navigate.

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

The system is easy to use -from training to the online help docs (i.e., self-training) - to the excellent support team, I feel very confident when using the system and making modifications. I know if I can't figure out how to do something I want to do - I can either jump on live chat or call support and someone will happily help me figure it out.

Cons

Reporting capabilities are still growing. They recently launched a new reporting dashboard with canned "custom" reports but I would like the idea to select the variables myself and run a report on my data - including my custom fields. If the fields exist, I'd like to run reports on them. I have figured out, however, that, I can export a lot into excel and create my own reports when needed.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Basecamp and Marketo Engage

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

Cost, support and customization