Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring) Reviews

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

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

- 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.

- 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.

Marketing automation features are very helpful.

- 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.

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

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

Onboarding and set-up guidance. They help during a window of time however, there is a lot required to get you up and going. They refer often to the EDU and Classroom hours for help. This actually helps but you should anticipate 30-60 days with your current schedule to be up and running. Validation of leads, the assignment from leads to opportunities and the lead scoring, with automation helps salespeople realize where they are in the pipeline with prospects. We wanted to have more integration from forms to collecting leads, company and associated sub-accounts organized with individual opportunities. The ability to replace MailChimp, Lead Pages and Pipedrive while adding more functionalities was beneficial and outweighed the cons. This puts us in a good position to walk other customers through the process correctly and have longer-term contracts with them.

Onboarding and set-up. We underestimated all that would be needed to get this up and going and likely they know the challenges a company can face. I'd imagine that hinders sales but they should really let a user know the team and tasks to consider/ required based on the company size.

We love the automation and the social media calendar for planning and execution. The workflows have allowed us to communicate more efficiently and the personas more personally.

Some of the features aren't very intuitive and are a little clunky. You can tell that the dev. team is still working some kinks out.

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.

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

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.

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

ease of use, excellent (and growing) tools

we've experienced issues from time to time with email lists and sender status.

SharpSpring is easy to use, simple to set up and has unlimited functionality to help you reach your clients in a timely and focused manner.

I'd like to attribute all aspects, forms etc, to campaigns.

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.

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.

SharpSpring is extremely user friendly. It allows for automation through the entire sales funnel. From its Social Media capabilities to its impactful email marketing feature, SharpSpring improves our productivity from management to rep usage!

In doing research, there was supposed to be an automatic integration with Qwilr. We have found that is not the case.

The biggest plus is its affordability - all the features you need at a price that is accessible. It has all the core functions one needs in a marketing automation platform, with a powerful sales pipeline and lead management component that provides an exceptional, integrated experience. Added bonuses are chatbox and book-time features included in the price, and the ability to sync Outlook emails to a contact's record. Lead scoring

The email editor can be a bit clunky and formatting copy and layouts can be finicky. The email previewer can be cumbersome. Visual workflows can be arduous to make

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.

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.

It has a lot of features and they keep adding new ones. From only one platform I'm able to keep track of my client's websites, create the forms, and manage the submissions, leads can schedule meetings with specialists without having to wait (or to interact with another human being) and I can keep track of everything with the help of the Life of the Lead. The automations available are a big deal as well, everybody in the team is aware of their responsibilities and the platform helps them never forget to follow-up.

The email builder could use some improvements, maybe something more intuitive, more templates, more flexibility while making changes. Also, de contact manager is still kinda coarse, should work more like a database and not only as a display, it could be more flexible. And allow to bulk-import contacts with no emails could be huge.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where do I begin?! SharpSpring is a high functioning, easy to use marketing automation system. It has a wide range of functionalities and helpful automation capabilities.

SharpSpring allows us to monitor our user interactions with our website and paid social campaigns. This allows us to better understand and track our users and help determined the best platforms to promote our campaigns. The campaign manager is a great tool, it allows you to effectively track your leads and determine where they came form.

To top it off, the support team is phenomenal. They are very professional, responsive and provide solutions to any issue you may have. I can always count on the support team to provide quick and easy solutions when I am having difficulties.

The only con I can think of is the lack of display/functionality options in the form and landing page builder. SharpSpring give you the option of building a custom stylesheet but it can become time consuming. Other than that, I haven't run into any issues with the software.

Sharpspring has an easy interface and do a great integration between marketing automation and CRM, helping these teams to work without any gaps, fully integrated. Reports are very easy to generate and personalize.

The Email designer and Landing Pages Designer is not the ideal yet, is a little difficult to use.
Other problem is the incapacity to separate invoices and charges to my clients in Brasil. I need to receive from my clients separately and pay for all Sharpspring licences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The biggest benefit of SharpSpring is having visibility into the leads we generate. In the past we could see impressions and clicks and website visits from our campaigns. Now we are seeing the actual leads and being able to follow activity after the initial contact. The added visibility has been an absolute game changer in the value we can provide our clients.

I really like the Life of the Lead feature where once you have a lead in the system you can track all their activity in great detail, seeing when they came back to the website, what pages they went to, if they opened emails, etc.

We've even had instances where clients claimed they were not getting leads from our campaigns and once SharpSpring was installed, not only could we now provide reports of leads we were generating, but we caught a hole in their customer service where leads we were providing were not getting responses from scheduling staff. So we not only provided reports of the leads we generated, but helped close a gap in a serious customer service issue that was happening.

It takes quite a bit of effort to get up to speed on SharpSpring as there are a lot of moving parts. But their support is great and always gets back to us quickly and efficiently to keep us on track.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Customer/Partner support is simply amazing. Over the last 4 years working with Sharpspring, partner support had helped us in many and different ways solving 100% of our questions and cases that we need additional help. The support team replies incredibly fast and always friendly.

The landing page editor. Minor coding knowledge may be required.