Makesbridge vs. Sales Engine International

Makesbridge is great for email marketing and Salesforce integration. It is great for a startup or large company. Support is terrific. You can't go wrong with the service.

We used the Manticore Marketing Automation solution for almost/just over 2 years, and initially, it was a great solution. Everything just seemed to work. When Manticore Technology, Inc. and Sales Engine International merged on May 31st of 2012, the overall product quality began to decline. As browsers and other programs (like our CRM environment) went through updates and new releases, Manticore just didn't keep up. Parts of the program became incompatible with certain browsers, forcing us to change where and how we logged into the back-end of the system. It was a silly workaround, but not the end of the world. When we learned that other client-facing portions didn't work with certain browsers, we brought it to their attention, and were told that we needed to find some way to work with it, and that the changes to the system were not possible. We ended up having to change our 200+ landing pages/forms, and could no longer have the State/Province field as a required field for registrations. That is just one example of our experience, and there have been others that are just as troublesome.

• Makesbridge had the highest reviews in customer service on the Salesforce app exchange. This was the major reason that I chose them. Some of the implementation was over my head, but this was not a problem since they were always available to help with any issues that came up.
• The team has even taken suggestions and implemented them quickly when I voiced a need for a particular Salesforce integration. Makesbridge has been a fantastic addition to my company.

• Awesome integration with CRM/SFDC.
• Support is US-based, free with subscription, and very helpful.
• Best workflow capability (drag and drop) I've seen in any comparable product.
• Custom templates are available for purchase and are great for branding.
• Easy to use landing pages.

• I would like for users to be able to see campaigns and templates created by other non-admin users. I'd like the option as the sysadmin to select which parts of the application should be open to all users, and which I'd like to gate. (Permissions, if you will).
• Configuration of training materials. The content is great, I just have had difficulty locating the specific article that would be most relevant to the situation. I'd love step-by-step guides for campaign creation, etc.

• List Building for Resends - I like to resend my email campaigns to non-openers and there is no easy way to pull this list within Manticore (If did not open this email is not an option). Typically I pull the report for the campaign, then re-import my list of non-openers to create a new list.

Great product, exceptional support. I'm going to be honest and say that I was apprehensive that the Makesbridge team was actually as wonderful as the app exchange reviews claim...How often does that actually happen?! But now, I can honestly say that the glowing reviews are spot-on, and my only concern is that they do not do justice in describing the product, support and service Makesbridge provides.

I've been incredibly pleased with Manticore/SEI and have selected them at several companies now. It's worked in a variety of different business environments, both big and small, and everyone on both the sales and marketing side have been extremely pleased with the results

I'm not an IT guru. The layout and workflows make sense, and I appreciate not having to involve a developer for every change I'd like to make.

Some of the actions require you to be in a specific section before actions are available to you, like adding a list. You first have to navigate to that section for options to be available to you

Their tech support staff is the BEST I have worked with!

Manticore hardly ever has "product down time" and almost never during a normal work day for our company

Best tech support in the software industry.

Email campaigns are deployed instantly when you launch, unlike other Marketing Automation tools I've used in the past that queue emails in batches and can take hours to complete a send

While their phone/chat support is outstanding, I wish there was more documentation and how-to information available online. There are many features that I have not used because I don't understand how to use them as well as I should

The Manticore team is very knowledgeable, I haven't had an issue where a ticket was left unanswered or unresolved

Training was done online, but was one-on-one, giving me a lot of time to ask very specific product questions. They also walk you through setting up a test campaign, email, and landing page

It was the easiest integration and implementation that I've ever experienced. I've implemented other CRM integrated services before that provided the same services as Manticore that were extremely technical and expensive to integrate with Salesforce.com or Microsoft CRM Dynamics, or just plain couldn't integrate

Makesbridge was easier to use and has a much better help desk. We were originally impressed with sales and then the technical side. At one point we handled e-mails with an internal program, what a headache, especially the list management.

We migrated to Marketo approximately 6 months
ago, and were extremely happy with the change. Besides the higher sticker
price and the "everything's a sales pitch" communications from
Marketo, we can't find any fault.

Sales
Engine International - Manticore (commonly referred to as Manti-beast
internally) created many problems for us. And while they did integrate
with our Microsoft Dynamics environment, the software quickly ate through our
purchased storage and forced us to constantly purchase more. That alone
cost us many hundreds of dollars in Microsoft Dynamics CRM storage every year.
And, when confronted about it, Manticore support flat out lied about how
much storage their activities were taking up in our system. So, while it
integrates, it's a very poor integration.

• Good customer service and allows us to use our leads without much restriction.
• Price still considered quite high for a very small business like us.

• Errors in forms led to a decrease in registrations - found workaround to correct it, but was never informed of certain incompatibilities
• Reports have been inaccurate and very inflexible, and have not allowed for reliable forecasting/planning