SharpSpring

The email builder, landing page builder and form builder are all straightforward and fairly easy to learn. There are also help/support articles for pretty much anything I need help with or get stuck on. The "life of the lead" view is helpful to see a contact's interactions with our brand.

The email and landing page builders offer a lot of flexibility in layout/design, but sometimes they are a bit too restrictive in terms of moving elements around.

The only pro to this product is the pricing is enticing. The margin for an agency is solid. Customer support is good buyer beware you will get to know them very well even for creating the simplest of tasks!

CRM - In each contact, you can see all the touchpoints in a timeline.

The worst marketing automation and CRM tool that I've ever deployed, company lacks integrity. It's the 2nd time I fell into the SharpSpring trap, the product looks good in the demo but has significant gaps.

1. Agency Billing Model - They want to bill your clients and then bill you 30-days later, it's very confusing.
2. Forms - Horrible still CSS, dealing with coding your forms, takes forever, each form is customized.
3. Lead Scoring
4. Nurturing Campaigns
5. Calendar Schedule - So you only get one calendar schedule for sales, so for example if you have multiple links for scheduling time on your calendar you cannot customize more than 1. Very frustrating.
6. Support Videos - Aren't updated so if you are watching a "how to" video it's likely that a new version of the software came out and the video is not relevant. You'll spend a lot of time trying to figure that out.
7. Landing Pages - No functionality, there's was a lot of backend configuration that said I needed to list my website on the domain and it was already on there.
8. Email - So you cannot track opens directly into your email

"This product still has not evolved much from my efforts with it two years ago. I'm opening a help desk ticket item daily. That said I'm working on building a landing page and form. I went back and watched the training videos the big issue there is that the UI and new platform don't match where the buttons previously were located. So it's not an apples to apples when you watch the videos.

The biggest plus is its affordability - all the features you need at a price that is accessible. It has all the core functions one needs in a marketing automation platform, with a powerful sales pipeline and lead management component that provides an exceptional, integrated experience. Added bonuses are chatbox and book-time features included in the price, and the ability to sync Outlook emails to a contact's record. Lead scoring

The email editor can be a bit clunky and formatting copy and layouts can be finicky. The email previewer can be cumbersome. Visual workflows can be arduous to make

When choosing a marketing automation platform for my agency, I knew I wanted something robust and customizable. I'm very hands on, and I don't like being constrained by the limitations of drag-and-drop editors or controlled interfaces. I want to be able to tailor my tools exactly to each client I work with, without compromising on functionality or efficiency. That's why SharpSpring has been a perfect fit for me! Not only is it affordable for a small agency like mine, who works with small businesses, but it's extremely powerful, and capable of executing any strategy my team or my clients require. The most complete and functional marketing automation platform out there!

Because of the large range of features, it can be a little intimidating to learn for some. But the onboarding team does a great job of walking you through implementation and getting you set up for success! Our agency focuses a lot on providing social media and content marketing services to our clients, and the SharpSpring content calendar is definitely not as robust or streamlined as some other platforms I've used. However, it's definitely not the focus of the platform, and there are workarounds for most of the issues I've run into with it. The SharpSpring team is also super responsive to feedback, and are constantly improving their product. I've already seen some great changes in the time I've been using the platform, and I'm confident the content calendar and scheduling tools will only continue to improve!