Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring) Reviews

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

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

ActiveCampaign, 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

Marketing automation features are very helpful.

Cons

- There is no escalation process for customer support requests that are above a customer support reps expertise
- Email report data is BS and one of the heads of IT at SharpSpring admitted it. The report data within SS differs from the data exported; the excel file has duplicate headline titles with different meanings/data; email data is shit - we sent test emails internally and didn't open them and it shows we opened them 3 times in SS and 4 times in the exported report
- Life of the Lead is the most valuable data within SS and yet you cannot automate based on any of it
- Life Of The Lead duplicates email "opens" and "clicks" based on how many people are in the chain, giving a false view of engagement from customers
- Email clicks are a load of BS - it shows that emails were opened and every link clicked within 10 seconds of sending because of spam bots/filters. SharpSpring doesn't filter this data out, so we can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not. "Can't we export the excel sheet and do that filtering ourselves?" Nope - as stated before, one of the head IT guys at SharpSpring validated our concerns that the excel email report is indeed, shit data. None of it is usable
- Rather than creating a backlog of needed updates and releasing them as a batch update on non-business-hours, SharpSpring product development teams push updates during work hours, breaking crucial functionality for 3+ hours/week, leaving our sales staff twiddling thumbs and complaining.

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

- 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

SharpSpring provides all necessary features for successful marketing automation while being affordable.

Cons

The Visitor ID system is not working outside of the US. I am based in Europe.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Switched From

Copper

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

SharpSpring has all the important features and is much more affordable.

Pros

I really like that they are constantly innovating, adding new features and functionalities. I also think that having great support, right here in the U.S. is one of the most important things they offer.

Cons

Currently, their data is not easily integrated with my reporting tool TapClicks.

Alternatives Considered

Freshmarketer

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

insufficient features, no integration with CRM

Switched From

Mailchimp

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

ability to build landing pages, schedule social posts, social listening and superior automation workflows

Pros

I love the simplicity of the CRM and the ability to see the life of the lead activity across both sales and marketing. SharpSpring can do so many things and the cost can't be beat compared to equivalent offerings. You can begin using this tool very quickly.

Cons

The set up does take some commitment and patience, but the customer service is outstanding and the tracking and functionality are worth the effort.

Pros

Pretty easy to figure out, if you're just using it as a glorified email marketing list building and automation tool.

Drag and drop email template manager is easy to use. So is the visual automation builder.

Forms can be customized and embedded on websites easily to capture lead information.

Out of the box stuff is pretty simple, but you can always get to the CSS to customize everything if you're a developer and want a deeper dive.

Cons

Support has become horrible since launch. You can never get anyone on the phone, it's become a call back system. If you're an agency and managing client accounts, usually you need help immediately, not by end of day or via a random email.

Their billing platform is absolutely ridiculous. They bill your clients directly, and not the agency using the platform saying that the client is the end user, not the agency managing the account. This makes retainer fees or internal billing a nightmare. You'll also have to talk your client into putting their banking routing numbers into a platform they don't understand. If you manage SparpSpring on behalf of your client (like they never login) - Good luck selling it.

There is no Facebook connect to capture lead information!

They keep changing how you export reports by date range. Annoying if you need monthly reports for your client. Sometimes they work, sometimes they move them.

The certification videos and courses are currently outdated after a year of feature pushes.

Biggest annoyance - lead history. You can view lead history in a timeline, but if a lead fills out a form multiple times requesting different information on different dates, you can not scroll through that history in the contact view, it only updates the leads custom fields with the latest information. You can only export the most recent custom fields too, even though you can still see the history and different information in the lead history timeline.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, ActiveCampaign and Drip

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Our agency network started moving to it and someone drank the hype Kool-Aid so we did too.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub, ActiveCampaign, Drip and Leadpages

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

1/3 the cost of other comparable platforms - but you get what you pay for.

Pros

We moved to SharpSpring from another leading marketing automation software provider and SharpSpring provide 95% of the features for less than half the cost. The software itself is easy to understand and navigate (much easier than our previous system) and the support team are responsive, friendly and helpful. We've been very happy with our migration to SharpSpring and intend to be a user for the foreseeable future. It meets our needs as a specialist life science marketing agency perfectly.

Cons

There are some features that are missing from SharpSpring vs our previous provider, but on balance we felt that either 1. We wouldn't use them 2. We could live without them for the cost savings and other benefits of SharpSpring. Dynamic forms would be great to have, and the analytics sometimes don't match our other analytics software. What I will say is that SharpSpring seem more responsive to requests for new features vs our old provider.

Pros

Complete integrated tech stack for marketing and sales that includes the core functionality a business needs to execute full-funnel marketing and sales campaigns and manage the sales pipeline.

Cons

SmartMail provides 1:1 direct IMAP email, but it would be nice if there was a sales-driven email automation feature for low volume 1:1 emails to prospects.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, Keap and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Price performance and the agency model. SharpSpring provides lartely equivalent functionality for 1/3 the cost and the agency model is better.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

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

Cost effectiveness, ease of use, full stack functionality (CRM and Marketing Automation) and the strong agency model

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, Zoho Mail, 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

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

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

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

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 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

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 approached me with a very interesting mailer. It was enough to get my attention and learn who they were and what they did. After they bought my crew lunch and I sat through a presentation I decided to join. The minimum monthly bought me 3 accounts plus a free one for my agency. There are a lot of features in SharpSpring and they appear to be adding more, which is nice. They represent themselves as marketing automation for agencies. They offer a lot of white labeling which is a requirement for me when working with 3rd party softwares.

Cons

Late 2019 it was announced that SS would change their billing policies to require that THEY bill my clients. WAIT, WHAT? You're a whitelabeled SaaS service, why the **** would YOU bill MY clients. That's the opposite of the point. Since I haven't set up my clients in their billing interface they've locked me out of my account. And when I went to cancel they reminded me of the 30 days cancellation notice I'm required to give. OH, AND, they decided to up the rate $75/account. I'm so unhappy with where they're going as a company I can't even consider the new features that they're bringing in.

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

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

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.