Likelihood to Recommend SharpSpring is great for creating and tracking campaigns that span multiple channels. With the Salesforce integration, we are able to keep our Sales team focused inside Salesforce without them needing to learn a new tool. Our Marketing team uses SharpSpring to nurture leads before handing them off to the Sales team. Though the features are available, SharpSpring would not be suitable for social media management or blogs; our third-party tools do a better job at that.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review 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. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review 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
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review 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
Read full review Reliability and Availability Manticore hardly ever has "product down time" and almost never during a normal work day for our company
Read full review Performance 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
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review The Manticore team is very knowledgeable, I haven't had an issue where a ticket was left unanswered or unresolved
Read full review Online Training 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
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review 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
Read full review Alternatives Considered We use different CRMs for different clients, mostly due to budget and other requirements. SharpSpring from Constant Contact is in the middle, price-wise, but is slightly more user-friendly than
ActiveCampaign when it comes to certain things, such as drip campaigns and workflows. Though the price can be prohibitive to some clients, it is extremely robust. I definitely prefer the list-building, the ability to send smart emails and the WYSIWYG editor.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review 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 Read full review ScreenShots —