Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM vs. Wishpond Propel IQ

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

It's a great platform if you're looking for something to run contests that provide leads and drive user engagement, but if they also incorporated social media management and scheduling, Wishpond would be a 10 by far. It's definitely worth looking into specifically for running contests throughout the year, for a wide variety of companies and industries.

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.

• Very small learning curve, thanks to wonderful real-time tutorials and help, and drag-and-drop editors.
• Easy to navigate - there are only 3 main sections of the site (content, lists, and emails).
• Excellent customer service. I've always gotten prompt answers to any questions I've had.

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

• They added keywords to campaigns we'd specifically said not to.
• They should tweak campaigns with a 0.06 ROAS.
• They should provide the services that are promised.

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 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

There is no support at Wishpond. I contacted my project manager's manager over a week ago without a reply. When I responded to the automated 'How is your experience' email saying how awful it was there was no follow-up. When I had trouble and had to escalate things it resulted in some new procedures being put in place that changed nothing and they never checked in to see if things were fixed.

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

We choose Wishpond as our first option since we were a startup e-commerce. Klaviyo was a little bit expensive for us and Wishpond really suits pretty well in our budget. Besides, if you don't have so many clients, at a first glance, there are a lot of features that would not be taken advantage of. That is why Wishpond was a better option when we started.

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.

• Negative google ROI.
• A few conversions in September on paid social then none - negative ROI.
• Between ad spend and Wishpond fees every month is negative ROI. Can’t wait until I can get out of this contract.
• Emails don’t perform as well as my own for open rates or clicks.