SharpSpring

Avantages

Ease-of-use: SharpSpring is very user-friendly and intuitive. It's easy to edit or create an email, set up workflows, and navigate around the platform.
Versatile: SharpSpring is an all-in-one tool that you can use for your email program, sales pipeline, CRM, marketing automation, and social media.
Customer service: I often frequent the online help center that has a lot of easy-to-understand solutions to many questions that come up. If this doesn't solve the issue, tech support is very responsive and the account management team is also very accommodating.

Inconvénients

Reporting: There are some basic reports that you can pull from the data in SharpSpring, but I would love to see some more robust reporting overall, especially with the sales feature. Aggregated reports across multiple pipelines, for example, would be great to have access to.
Customer segmentation: The platform could use a bit more in-depth customer segmentation features. I sometimes feel the list-building is not as intuitive as it could be.

Avantages

Originally it was transparency and pricing that made us move. But since then it's the fact that Sharpspring have continued to develop the platform with great new features (like the inbuilt CRM, Sales Automation and integrated Meeting booking functionality) many of which at no additional cost (unlike Hubspot) that means we continue to use and recommend Sharpspring over any other platform for our SMB clients.

Inconvénients

I would like SMS functionality to be built in as well as email (I appreciate it's not as big in the USA where Sharspring's biggest customer base is) but it's big here in the UK

Avantages

Being a Partner for 4+ years has allowed us to grow with them. When they were a startup, we were able to really see the changes the partners were requesting and the software has come a long way. They really value their Partners (agencies).

Inconvénients

Sometimes SharpSpring likes to release new features, while they need to also work on continually improving their existing features.

Avantages

There are a lot of features. Almost too many, actually. I can't imagine a company that could possibly use all of them successfully. Regardless, it's nice to know the option is there if a situation arises in which a certain feature becomes useful. My favorite function/feature has to be the lead tracking system. I love being able to see every interaction each lead has with my client's business. The automated actions on top of that in response to customer interaction is the main reason we use the software. It makes drip email campaigns a breeze. I like that it tracks conversions as well (although you have to set it up to do so which isn't necessarily the easiest process ever). All in all, though, it does the job we need it to do.

Inconvénients

The SharpSpring system is VERY non-intuitive for non-marketers (and heck, even for marketers sometimes). There are just too many ways you can screw up and have to start an email, action, or workflow completely over again. We have several clients who we act as their entire marketing department for and trying to get their sales representatives to use the system the way it's intended is next to impossible. They just don't understand it or even it's purpose, even after we've done training after training after training with them. We've even had SS support do training directly with them, to no avail. I ended up creating my OWN versions of step-by-step tutorials for our clients just to make things easier to understand.

The other major drawback is it's way too easy to get "blacklisted" (aka hit spamtraps and honeypots), which I realize is a problem with email marketing in general, but SS doesn't have enough safeguards in place for preventing this type of situation. We have one client who likes to import their email lists in from an on-site wifi sign-on system, which inevitably leads to poor list quality regardless of how many safeguards (email weed-out) parameters we put in place ourselves. Getting on SS's blacklist is pretty much the worst thing that can happen because you still have to pay for the service even though you can't use it until your un-blacklisted, which can take a while.

Lastly, their email-design interface is terrible and trick to navigate.

Avantages

SharpSpring is an automated marketing platform with features of third-party CRM integration, universal CMS compatibility, fully integrated call tracking, landing pages, blog builder and much more. It provides unlimited users for all plans, unlike its competitors. What it says vs. what it delivers: It says: It offers behavioral-based email automation with “after-the-click” tracking for personalized messaging. Yes, it delivers: With the feature, we were able to identify the cost of a lead. It also helped to decrease the unaddressed customer complaints It says: It offers in-depth analytics with statistics of clicks, bounces, and deliveries. It also enables to track the visitor’s conversions, the life cycle of a lead – from click to attending social events. No, it does not deliver: The reports and analytics are not in detail, though they provide the performance of campaigns. It misses the specifications on minute details of the strategy. It says: It offers customization in every feature such as customized conversion forms, buyer personalities, reports and much more. Yes, it delivers: My team at e-Intelligence were able to customize the tool for lead preferences, campaign performance, and email automation

Inconvénients

Nothing that I can think of! I suggest making the most of this tool for your marketing needs. You can overlook minor glitches as they are not affecting the tool’s performance to a large extent.