Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring) reviews

Marketing automation features are very helpful.

- There is no escalation process for customer support requests that are above a customer support reps expertise
- Email report data is BS and one of the heads of IT at SharpSpring admitted it. The report data within SS differs from the data exported; the excel file has duplicate headline titles with different meanings/data; email data is shit - we sent test emails internally and didn't open them and it shows we opened them 3 times in SS and 4 times in the exported report
- Life of the Lead is the most valuable data within SS and yet you cannot automate based on any of it
- Life Of The Lead duplicates email "opens" and "clicks" based on how many people are in the chain, giving a false view of engagement from customers
- Email clicks are a load of BS - it shows that emails were opened and every link clicked within 10 seconds of sending because of spam bots/filters. SharpSpring doesn't filter this data out, so we can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not. "Can't we export the excel sheet and do that filtering ourselves?" Nope - as stated before, one of the head IT guys at SharpSpring validated our concerns that the excel email report is indeed, shit data. None of it is usable
- Rather than creating a backlog of needed updates and releasing them as a batch update on non-business-hours, SharpSpring product development teams push updates during work hours, breaking crucial functionality for 3+ hours/week, leaving our sales staff twiddling thumbs and complaining.

- Price
- Easy of use
- Easy to implement and learn
- Fast support
- Active community and many updates
- Possible to have skype calls and team sessions with SharpSpring to spar.

- The Social Media part in the software is not optimal, we still use other software next to it.
- CRM feature is small, great for small companies, but bigger ones can come short.

We love the automation and the social media calendar for planning and execution. The workflows have allowed us to communicate more efficiently and the personas more personally.

Some of the features aren't very intuitive and are a little clunky. You can tell that the dev. team is still working some kinks out.

Our customers are benefitting as much as we are and it starts with the automated services. We can route inquiries to sales reps faster and continue conversations with customers instantaneously through dynamic messaging.

We need to understand Sales Optimizer better. It may be a software solution that we don't necessarily fit with, but we still think this is something we can improve with, but right now its a slice of the pie that we struggle with.

First, fantastic price. Personalization can drive amazing results. SharpSpring gives you a solid set of tools that all communicate with each other flawlessly and for an exceptional value. It's a sophisticated tool with a lot of depth, but the certifications, demos, videos, tools, customer service all make it very easy to use. Just when I think I've figured out the edge of the depth on the tool, I realize there's another level. The automation is top notch. The ability to track so many actions, behaviors and then to take action to help the customer go further along the funnel. It fulfills the needs of so many other tools - HootSuite, Sprout, Calendly, Mailchimp, CRM, Sales CRM, TypeForm, and WhoIsVisiting (to name a few).

Not a lot so far. I'll always take more templates, pre-made content. Don't get me wrong, it has content, but the more the merrier.Billing can be a little confusing, but I know they have an update coming very soon. In fact, I just received an update email about it. I'd love to see more progress on the SharpSpring iOS app.

For several years now, SharpSpring has been my secret weapon. I work largely with educational, startup, and nonprofit ventures - so we are always resource constrained. SharpSpring's platform allows me to leverage a small (or solo) shop into something of competitive size, then scale up as we grow. And it doesn't break the bank. When you're working with a skeletal or non-existent team, the ease of use and customer support become critical: SharpSpring always "wows" me on this. Plus, the automation lets me optimize the resources I have while the intelligence tools keep me from wasting time on projects with low ROI. SharpSpring delivers the functionality that gets me noticed by the higher ups. (In one role, we doubled all major KPIs within a year's time.) I couldn't do my job without it!

Marketing Intelligence software is complex and the learning curve can be challenging, even with great support. Also, not everything in SharpSpring is where I expect it to be - I often use the chat support function to find tools. Oh, and if you are West Coast, start your SharpSpring projects early as chat support wanes after 3pm Pacific due to the company being headquartered in Florida.

SharpSpring has a comprehensive range of tools to help you get the most from Marketing Automation. It integrates with your website easily and can track visitors to your site from all your differing campaigns. The tools are easy to use, once you have been through the training and can be manipulated to work together to suit your business. Delivering insights and analytics to help you tweak your marketing and increase your ROI.

The software is comprehensive, so there is a learning curve. You can get started easily with it, but you have to continue to learn to get the real powerful insights from it. Setting up takes quite a lot of tweaking to get the results you need, but it is simple and powerful to use and delivers results right from the get go.

All the marketing automation is incredible and so easy to use. We have been using the chatbot feature and love it! It is easy to set up and we have it integrated with Slack to make the ability to manage it simple. The email automation and workflow automation makes me day to day job so easy as well. I can set up new prospects in my sales workflow and they get moved down my funnel with just automation. It saves me a ton of time.

I love SharpSpring but the overall user interface is not the most beautifully designed one. However, I am getting so many features and resources for an incredible price that this is not a big issue at all. And it really isn't that bad.

I love the way the tracking is displayed on a timeline so you can see everywhere a prospect went. The built-in CRM and sales funnel pics up where the marketing funnel leaves off and keeps the automation going during and after the sale to upset and resell. The new retargeting and (soon to be) advertising feature is amazing, not only retargeting your visitors but it finds similar customers to target. Overrall, it's really intuitive and easy to use, and I've used many marketing automation platforms over the years. This is the least expensive. No long-term contracts to sign but still has all the features of the much more expensive ones. And the LiveChat feature you can put on your Web site that was just added (at no additional cost) brings a huge feature that other companies charge more than the entire cost of the SharpSpring subscription.

No complaints at all. The learning curve wasn't very steep and the price is right. They even have evening support hours.

Looking all around the market, you will find sharpspring, with a slightly different business model that can make some eye turn but after you understand you will love it.

The fact that you can buy directly from agencies that know the product and already know your objectives and product, is brilliant since no one will understand more your client than their selves and you that is emerging on his market, some platform forces you to buy their onboarding package that in the end, you don't leave with much.

A platform with that many features on the begging can be a little overwhelming, but with time, you understand the reason for each feature.

I use them for lead management, campaign, sales pipeline, and don't feel that i am using their potential 100% already

the learning curve needed for the platform, all platform have their learning curve, but once you pass it, this service is awesome!

The biggest benefit of SharpSpring is having visibility into the leads we generate. In the past we could see impressions and clicks and website visits from our campaigns. Now we are seeing the actual leads and being able to follow activity after the initial contact. The added visibility has been an absolute game changer in the value we can provide our clients.

I really like the Life of the Lead feature where once you have a lead in the system you can track all their activity in great detail, seeing when they came back to the website, what pages they went to, if they opened emails, etc.

We've even had instances where clients claimed they were not getting leads from our campaigns and once SharpSpring was installed, not only could we now provide reports of leads we were generating, but we caught a hole in their customer service where leads we were providing were not getting responses from scheduling staff. So we not only provided reports of the leads we generated, but helped close a gap in a serious customer service issue that was happening.

It takes quite a bit of effort to get up to speed on SharpSpring as there are a lot of moving parts. But their support is great and always gets back to us quickly and efficiently to keep us on track.

SharpSpring has a plethora of tools and is always introducing new ones to assist you in creating an effective email marketing campaign. SharpSpring's customizability is excellent, which simplifies all tasks. Additionally, importing and configuring contact lists is a breeze. SharpSpring You may construct unique campaigns by utilizing the numerous concepts and custom templates that it generates, as well as editing and saving them as drafts for future use. You'll receive notifications and data about client replies in real time. This exact approach is easily replicable in subsequent marketing initiatives. I appreciate the ability to conceal and reorganize unnecessary dashboard elements. As a consequence, the business team will be able to more effectively manage and cooperate with the customer database, as well as all stages of advertising, email marketing, customer tracking, contact pages, and marketing job automation, among other things.

I encountered no technical difficulties when using it. SharpSpring is a critical component in optimizing email marketing operations for both small and large enterprises. For optimal utilization, additional training is required; SharpSpring developers provide numerous videos and tutorials, and the support team is always available to answer your questions.

Ease of use, good templates, built in CRM (although you can integrate with 3rd party CRM if you need.) Cost saving compared to competing products - especially if you can dispense with a full-fat CRM like Salesforce which is bloated and over priced for SME market in my opinion.

Occasional glitches. Sometimes you have to refresh the page to see the result of a change that you have made. For example - the number of members in a list - can take a few minutes after saving the query to report a true number. But you soon learn to live with minor issues like this.