Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM vs. Square Customers

Constant Contact is excellent for small businesses wanting a simple email to their customers and leads. We've found that it's not the most robust solution for more complex funnels involved in e-commerce or information publishing. For instance, setting up specific flows based on user behavior, VIP status, and other attributes is lacking.

Incentivized

Square is absolutely brilliant if you are just starting out and your business has both an in-person and an online component to it, as Square will solve both in-person POS and online booking/billing. Square also offers the option to create a free website for your company, though it is a very basic site, if you don't have a website yet, this is a VERY helpful option, as it takes away a huge cost. Square allowed us to be up and running in no time, taking away the need to worry about an expensive appointment-setting add-on from our current website provider (Square integrates quite nicely with our current site). Square is probably less ideal for more advanced users or companies with a need for more detailed inventory/service management. But even then, Square will more than likely be able to get the job done!

Incentivized

• Their Emailers are very easy to construct and user-friendly. It takes your Newsletter and sales emails to the next level, especially with the action groups and trigger functionalities.
• The life of the lead functionality allows you to see when leads get warmer, so you know when to send them what. Helps improve conversions.

• Sales pipeline
• Customer engagement
• Marketing

Incentivized

• The landing page builder is a bit hard to use. Doesn’t have much flexibility.
• Sometimes confusing between types of workflows to use. Opportunity versus visual.
• If you imported contacts that weren’t formatted correctly. It is hard to delete a bull amount. Need to type DELETE for each one manually. No bull options to make changes.

Incentivized

• Some of the build quality on the peripherals could feel a bit better.
• Have more options for businesses with more credit card transactions such as monthly or discounted per transaction once a certain number is reached.
• Have functionality to allow for a typed card number without the higher fee if the software verifies there is a hardware/read error with the card.

Incentivized

We have been very impressed with all aspects of this software and the potential for it to radically change how we operate is huge! Support has been exceptional and we have discovered many extra uses for the software than originally thought. Not only will it give us benefits for our company's growth, but for our client's growth as well.

Incentivized

This rating is coming from an administrative perspective. With so many features, workflows, dashboards, and more, there is certainly a lot going on, and even the most savvy software user can get a little overwhelmed when trying to decide how to best implement and utilize the platform to its full potential. That being said, the SharpSpring platform is well-implemented and well-organized, with most solutions being fairly intuitive, once you have a grasp of the software. It is fairly easy to learn, but difficult to master. Just like any powerful platform, however, the complexity is worth it, and once you are comfortable navigating and problem solving within SharpSpring, it becomes a great marketing and sales tool which can do virtually anything you need it to.

Incentivized

The user interface is easy to navigate - that's not always the case for some software! I look for something that is intuitive, easy to use, and doesn't take a ton of training to get up and running quickly.

Incentivized

The support is great which really helps overcome challenges if you become stuck and the training videos are great too. Same-day replies are great and I even got some help with some CSS code on the chat. Not many organizations would do this or even respond.

Incentivized

Square is mostly focused on FAQs and online support, and they do a very good job creating a rich knowledge base. But, if you are not very tech savvy, it could be easy to feel a bit overwhelmed. I would recommend that they add a direct line or chat feature to call, rather than email or Knowledge base first. This might be due to staffing issues at Square, so perhaps it is the best they can do for now.

Incentivized

Overall I would say to be patient and bring everyone who will be touching the platform to the onboarding sessions. The Virtual Classroom lets you onboard as quickly or slowly as you want. Sales, marketing, design, account management, get 'em all in on it. For the most part, they will be happy to use this platform. I recommend getting as many people as possible to see the SharpSpring demo.

Incentivized

Pros of SharpSpring:

• Design unlimited custom fields
• Can send content & templates to Sales to send in their reach-outs (Outlook extension)
• Ad retargeting
• Social listening tool
• Social media scheduling
• Email builder: dynamic content
• Landing pages: dynamic content, rebrandable domain name
• Chatbot Platform seems intuitive to use
• Forms auto-complete for known visitors
• Instant 2-way sync with Salesforce
• Trigger automated workflows from social media
• It was easy to receive demo, streamlined sales process

SharpSpring: approx. $13,000 USD per year + $2,000 USD one-time for onboarding Pardot: $32,400 USD per year + $3,000 to $5,000 USD one-time for onboarding HubSpot: $20,381 USD per year + $3,000 USD one-time for onboarding Marketo: $29,015 USD per year + $4,500 USD one-time for onboarding

Incentivized

A lot easier to use than Infusionsoft!!

Incentivized

• Streamlined Processes - sales and marketing are now all in the same place.
• Reduced Number of Platforms/Tools - CRM/lead management, email, automation, landing pages, forms, etc are all in the same place rather than using multiple tools.
• Time-saving - sales pipeline is very easy to use for sales. For marketing, we have dozens of workflows that eliminate much of our manual processes from the past.
• Return on Investment - We're more focused on moving the building the business than ever before because SharpSpring has simplified so many of our business operations and we're seeing massive results!
• Lead generation - Up SIGNIFICANTLY (between 3x & 4x) since setting up SharpSpring.

• This has allowed me to accept credit / debit transactions without having to have a monthly subscription to a service and lose money on times of no to little use, allowing me to have a broader customer range as checks are risky.
• All of my initial equipment was free and there were no startup costs so my return was immediate.
• The small fee taken out of the transaction is very much worth the ability to accept nearly all plastic transactions.

Incentivized