Item: Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM
Rating: 2
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I manage CRM and marketing tool deployments for a boutique agency. SharpSpring is one of the tools that we use/have used in the past.

In this role, I have used SharpSpring for internal marketing/sales, launched several SharpSpring sandboxes, set up several accounts, trained people, and supported with email campaign and automation builds.

Pros and Cons

Decent price.
Decent feature set.

Sub-par customer services.
Horrible email builder.
Strange missing features.
Higher than average email send issues.
Frequent outages.

Return on Investment

Negative. Due to the feature set and price my agency deployed SharpSpring for several clients. Each of them have been disappointed and underwhelmed. All but one moved to a different platform within a year.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and ActiveCampaign

HubSpot beats SharpSpring in every area with the exception of sales pipelines, an area where I think SharpSpring has a slight edge.

SharpSpring's horrendous email builder and sub-par customer service are the areas that make HubSpot look the best in comparison.
There is a certain premium feel to HubSpot that SharpSpring lacks. While many of the features are the same, you will spend much less time troubleshooting things in HubSpot, as they just work intuitively. I live in CRMs and Marketing tools, spending hours a day. Even after using SharpSpring for years, simple tasks still feel way too complicated. HubSpot I got a feel for within a week of using it for the first time.

ActiveCampaign is a great budget platform. It offers a much higher price to value than SharpSpring. While it lacks a lot of features and depth, if you need a simple CRM and Marketing Hub, ActiveCampaign is the snappiest, easiest to use tool in its class.

Key Insights

Do you think Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM again?

Other Software Used

HubSpot Marketing Hub, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot Sales Hub

Usability

SharpSpring's marketing tools are hopelessly unintuitive, taking much longer to perform simple tasks.
The email builder alone makes it a nightmare to use for most deployments.

Support Rating

It's fine. Slightly below average. Most cases needed to be escalated 2-3 times, but this happened quickly and naturally.
Support often took a little longer than I would prefer to reply. Compared to the competition, SharpSpring is lacking.

Likelihood to Recommend

SharpSpring is a good budget CRM for an organization that needs HubSpot but can't afford it. It tries to be HubSpot at every step but falls short in every category but price.

If you don't plan to send many email campaigns, don't plan on launching many landing pages, and mostly just need a solid sales CRM, SharpSpring is a solid choice. Their pipeline builder is among the best.

If you plan to use this primarily for emails, go anywhere else. The editor is unnecessarily complex, unintuitive, and plagued by glitches. Simple email builds take 2-3x more time than HubSpot or ActiveCampaign would.

SharpSpring falls into the trap of trying to do too much and doesn't do much of it particularly well. Their customer service is not great, taking hours to reply to a simple question and rarely knowing the answer. Most problems take 3-4 steps up the ladder to be resolved. They do treat customers well, and are somewhat responsive (falling well behind ActiveCampaign and HubSpot in response time however), usually providing an answer to a question within 24 hours.

There are better options out there.

Overall Satisfaction with SharpSpring