Lead Gen & CRM Reviews

Sharp Spring - A great email marketing tool and more!

Comments: SharpSpring is a complete email marketing tool that we use to reach out to clients and market to new leads. We use the automation tools to create drip campaigns and re-marketing campaigns for potential leads. We also use the page builder to build simple landing pages and sales funnels. The contact manager has the ability to mange our list of 30,000+ without any extra costs. It used by both our sales teams and client care teams to help the business grow. As a marketer I use SharpSpring to create campaigns that convert to sales and retention.

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.

SharpSpring Great Platform With Amazing Support

Comments: Overall the platform is powerful at a great price, and the team at SharpSpring wants you to succeed, and that shows in their support, courses, documentation, and forums. Not only does SharpSpring benefit Right to Evolve internally, but our clients and the work we do see the benefits as well.

Pros:

SharpSpring has features to create marketing operations and track those campaigns either manually or automatically. Considering I can tie all the potential avenues of a campaign into one spot and see how users interact with is a great win. At a glance, it is essential to read the data and make the right decisions; SharpSpring brings all the data to one platform. It makes work more enjoyable that we can create a single campaign with a list of contacts, email templates, unique forms, dynamic pages, trackable media, automation, and analytics in one spot. Not to mention, once we create this base campaign and all its numerous pieces, I can then quickly use all the parts as a template to do another or a third, and so on. Making it very efficient over time. SharpSpring has a lot of features, but I am thrilled with our CRM, email marketing, ads, funnels, all in one location. All this and the support team have been top-notch every step of the way. I also like to learn myself, which they provide via courses, updated videos, and documents that my team and I can reference.

Cons:

Interface and design consistency are my two significant cons for this platform. Like most, once you know the platform and its interface, you can be very successful. No difference here except that the design process between creating emails, pages, and forms all have their unique process. I believe it would improve user efficiency if the page and email creator, for instance, had a standard procedure and the same layout of tools. The platform has a lot of features with more coming, so you have to know where all the pieces are between the settings, marketing, and sales menu layout.

Sharpspring Has Moved Our Marketing Business To The Next Level

Comments: Honestly, it has been a proper delight working with their team. They are highly professional, friendly, helpful, and just genuinely care about adding value to our business. We're so grateful to have found them.

Pros:

Sharpspring has created a vacuum in my business for the better. Marketing as a service only gets to its final stage once you have a powerful way to leverage the data in your client's businesses to their advantage. We could never do this for our clients until we found Sharpsring. They gave us an easy, straightforward and enjoyable way to offer automated marketing over and above our regular lead-generating offerings - all while making a positive dent in our cash flow from the additional licences we sell. In short - Zebrand is already greatly profiting financially from the experience, as are our clients.

Cons:

Having a few more APIs available out of the box would have been nice, but it has not altered our love for Sharpspring at all.

Review

Comments: Started out fine until we realized that all the report data within SharpSpring was false. We understand that data accountability is an issue in the marketing automation industry as a whole, but SharpSpring is especially terrible at this. The fact that upper management in IT recognizes that email report data is different between what's in SharpSpring email reports, what's in SharpSpring Life Of The Lead, and what's in the exported email report excel list and subsequently admits that none of it is entirely correct is beyond me. The software is meant to provide genuinely insightful feedback to track user activity and potential conversions, however, the development team.

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.

A Comprehensive Review of SharpSpring

Comments: Overall, I am very pleased with SharpSpring. The platform is incredibly powerful and user-friendly. I have been able to achieve great results with my marketing campaigns and I'm sure that I will continue to do so in the future.

Pros:

SharpSpring is an incredibly intuitive and powerful marketing automation platform. It is incredibly easy to get started and its robust feature set allows for deep customization and segmentation of customer data.

Cons:

The pricing of SharpSpring can be a bit steep for smaller businesses. The customer support can also be a bit slow at times.

A powerful platform, but still has a long way to go

Comments: We use Sharpspring for email automation, marketing automation, lead tracking, reporting, as a CRM, and as a sales tool. It allows us to track contact interactions from first touchpoint through sale. It has been a huge help.

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.

SharpSpring: The All-In-One Marketing Automation Platform

Comments: SharpSpring helps me solve my marketing automation needs by providing a variety of features, including email marketing, lead generation, social media management, and comprehensive analytics and reporting with ease and at a relatively low expense.

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.

Double Take On This One

Comments: Once we hired an outside support person who had to learn the system from ground zero, the system became very useful. Companies

Pros:

Lots of options for the price tag. More marketing automation than what we originally thought this would bring.

Cons:

SharpSpring simply did not have enough support people to assist in the start up of the system.

SharpSpring amazing tool for markting

Comments: A good platform that helps with marketing and campaign management. It helps in managing e-mail, its price is reasonable, and it has a highly trained and efficient staff.

Pros:

Easy to collect data in one place, campaign tracking is easy and fast. Creating the campaign and its various parts is done very efficiently. Email marketing with this platform is excellent. Many templates can be created quickly and used in different ways. The support team works in a professional way to serve customers.

Cons:

The platform must be constantly developed and improved, new features must be added, and the efficiency of e-mail management must be raised. The efficiency of creating lists must be increased.

Good value for the cost

Pros:

The ability to embed forms on our website and easily connect it to the Sharp Spring interface was a great tool to provide our client with leads.

Cons:

The cost is a little high for our smaller clients but very reasonable for the features it offered.

Best ROI for Small Medium Sized Business

Comments: We are one of the earliest SharpSpring agencies and users. We selected SharpSpring for its price/performance for SMB companies. We have worked extensively with HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot and others - but for small businesses, it is hard to beat the full-stack solution and feature set in SharpSpring.

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.

Economical and POWERFUL Marketing Automation Solution

Comments: SharpSpring is a great tool and I have been so pleased with the automation and resources I have at my fingertips. The have great new features coming out all the time and their customer service and team members are always so helpful and enjoyable to talk to.

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.

Great Solution for a Small Agency

Comments: It has been a great enabler for our business and has really become and extension of our capability that we deliver our clients

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.

Sharpspring made sales tracking so much easier for me and my team

Comments: What really makes Sharpspring stand out from other platforms is their excellent customer service and constant improving of the features within the platform. Although the platform still has a few improving points, my experience overall has been very satisfying. I would recomend this 100% to other coleagues.

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.

SharpSpring is full featured, low price, and amazing tech and account support

Comments: I've helped a number of businesses drive revenue with this software and it always drives more revenue for them. Of course, you have to understand how marketing automation works (I teach it at a local business school) and how to use the software correctly but there is a ton of documentation and how-to videos and when that fails, there's always a support person to walk you though whatever you're trying to do and they stick with you. My "customer success manager" will even get on the phone with a prospective client and help with a demo. Just a great company

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.

We moved ourselves and our clients over from Hubspot

Comments: The support is always there for us if we need them, but any new feature is introduced with great support materials (how-to guides/videos etc) so the need for my team to refer to them is minimised. The pricing is great when you compare to others with similar functionality and they go from strength to strength.

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

Comprehensive Marketing Automation Software

Comments: SharpSPring has been a massive help to our business. We are agency partners and we have grown our business by using the software and demonstrating the power of the software to others. SharpSpring themselves are always looking to improve the software and often realse new features or updates which improve the overall experience. They are constantly evolving and I like that. It's what is needed to keep at the forefront of today's marketing.

Pros:

SharpSpring has a comprehensive range of tools to help you get the most from Marketing Automation. It integrates with your website easily and can track visitors to your site from all your differing campaigns. The tools are easy to use, once you have been through the training and can be manipulated to work together to suit your business. Delivering insights and analytics to help you tweak your marketing and increase your ROI.

Cons:

The software is comprehensive, so there is a learning curve. You can get started easily with it, but you have to continue to learn to get the real powerful insights from it. Setting up takes quite a lot of tweaking to get the results you need, but it is simple and powerful to use and delivers results right from the get go.

Great Marketing Automation Software Alternative for Agencies

Comments: The onboarding experience was easy and helpful. They helped convert our old database into ready to import SharpSpring csv. Once we were onboarded the team helped us implement other features. As previously stated, their live chat and support is so far unmatched by any other CRM tool i've used.

Pros:

The software is easy to use and is constantly being updated with new features. Within our first year of using the tool, at least 4 new features were rolled out, all of which were useful. Their live support is great. They are thorough and they followup. There have been several instances where the team has followed up after the fact to check in and see if additional support was needed

Cons:

I would love more training. The videos are good and useful, but would love more virtual webinars or if being a partner allowed for more 1-on-1 type training. I also wish some of the CRM fields had more customization instead of being default/standard.

I love this CRM

Comments: I love that fact of being able to add buyer personas to the contact info and I love the personalization that is used on the Software. Oh and the templates that they provide are great and easy to use.

Pros:

I like that I can do everything in one location. Also, I love the fact that Sharpspring is always adjusting with new things adding the system. If the software does not do something that you want to do. They put in to start working on that method or idea.

Cons:

If you get a hard bounce you can not update that contact with the new info on your own - you have to deal with support and send them the list of changes to be done.

Great for an agency, but trying to get clients involved is next to impossible.

Comments: We joined the SS family mainly as a means of sending automated drip marketing emails on behalf of our clients, which it does well. We also like being able to see the life of every individual lead directly within the program. It lets us know where our strongest leads lie and where we need to do better. All in all, it gets the job done despite the interface headaches we frequently encounter.

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.

SharpSpring is the number one Marketing Automation Platform for small to mid-sized digital agencies.

Comments: We are a small boutique digital marketing agency based in the UK. We spent six months researching all the marketing platforms available.
It was vital to have 24/7 support available within the fees payable, favourable fee rates for an agency of our size (which did not require upfront annual payment), the option to have access to support within GMT timelines for our UK clients and last but not least a marketing automation provider who were developing new features on a near-quarterly basis. We decided that SharpSpring and their team would provide all of these features and benefits.
We commenced our inbound integration mid-2016, and the integration ran extremely efficiently with amazing support within GMT timeline availability. The support since and the new features constantly being added without any impact on fee rates have made the decision to choose SharpSpring, the absolute correct choice for our company. They have over delivered every step of the way for our company. Their team are highly knowledgeable, patient and supportive.
I would not choose any other platform now we are with SharpSpring.

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.

SharpSpring is YES for my company, e-Intelligence.in

Comments: I recommend to use the software as it: Provides customized reports and other features that fit your marketing needs Comes with powerful features of marketing automation with easy functionalities Offers cost-effective pricing plans Updates itself continuously Combines with most CRM, eliminating the concerns of the type of hosting platform Gives amalgamation of functions in one platform for delivering marketing results, lead conversions, and easy ROI measurement However, you need to spare some time to understand the software’s deliverables. But they offer free webinars to help you to understand the tool.

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.

SharpSpring is a phenomenal marketing automation platform.

Comments: 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.

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.

The best way to create an effective email marketing campaign.

Comments: SharpSpring has aided in the efficiency of your email marketing efforts and provided us with fresh ideas for organizing and distributing them effectively. Their analyses aided in our comprehension of the target sample.

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.

SharpSpring is Coming Up The Ranks for Our Automation & Analytics!

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!