SharpSpring CRM Review 2024

SharpSpring is an all-in-one platform offering sales and email marketing automation, tracking and analytics, customer management tools, and integrations. SharpSpring’s CEO set out to develop software that could serve an agency's needs to track and manage scores of clients, so its strongest focus is on marketing capabilities. While it has some impressive features, we also identified one or two areas for improvement.

• Perfect for agencies or similar businesses 
• Strong customization capabilities
• Unlimited users and support on all plans

• May not meet advanced needs
• No free plan

SharpSpring offers a slightly different pricing structure than the typical CRM package by eliminating the annual subscription in favor of a month-to-month plan with a 30-day cancellation notice.

It also simplifies pricing by offering three standard paid plans — all with identical features, tiered only based on the maximum number of contacts allowed. Beyond that, larger organizations and users with vast contact needs can choose between two custom-priced plans at the Agency and Enterprise levels.

Notable Features:

• Unlimited users
• Unlimited support
• Full marketing, sales, and CRM automation
• Reporting and analytics
• Landing pages, sales dialer, and chatbots

Notable Features:

• Unlimited users
• Unlimited support
• Full marketing, sales, and CRM automation
• Reporting and analytics
• Landing pages, sales dialer, and chatbots

Notable Features:

• Unlimited users
• Unlimited support
• Full marketing, sales, and CRM automation
• Reporting and analytics
• Landing pages, sales dialer, and chatbots

Notable Features:

• Multi-client management
• Multi-account management
• Call recording and monitoring tools
• Full CRM, marketing, and sales features
• Advanced customer support

Notable Features:

• Support for millions of contacts
• Dedicated Account Manager
• Robust user roles and audit logs
• GDPR, CASL, CAN-SPAM compliant
• Priority customer support

Committing to CRM software is an investment of time and money, so you want to choose the best CRM software for your startup out of the gate. To help you better understand whether SharpSpring would be an effective tool for your business, we researched and gathered reviews from SharpSpring users themselves.

Here are some verified reviews from TrustRadius by people who used SharpSpring CRM:

“SharpSpring is best for clients who want to generate lots of leads and convert them to clients. If you look for a complete solution for marketing automation, social media, email marketing, Google Ads, and a CRM, this is the go-to solution. If you are only looking for email marketing without the rest then this is not the best fit.”

“SharpSpring from Constant Contact is well suited for most marketing needs and functions. It's relatively easy to create landing pages on our website and use them to push newsletters out to targeted segments. The online help desk is always prompt and takes care of questions. I find the social media tool a little awkward to use in comparison to other tools I've used in the past. That needs some work.”

“I personally think it is well suited for almost any industry. The sales team is incredibly helpful in our efforts to sell to our clients and the onboarding team is incredibly knowledgeable in helping get new clients set up. Overall, I am very happy with our decision to go with SharpSpring and would recommend it to anyone looking for a powerful CRM with marketing automation.”

SharpSpring has made a splash in the pool of popular CRMs, with satisfied users pointing to its ease of use and effective marketing automation. SharpSpring’s CEO set out to create software with a strong emphasis on lead capture, tracking, and conversion, and users generally report positive marks in these areas. However, very small businesses or early-stage startups without immediate plans to scale may feel like SharpSpring is more than they need or can afford.

It's no surprise that agencies, the very businesses SharpSpring was designed for, and similar professional services businesses find SharpSpring’s tools to be flexible and work for their needs. SharpSpring is a relatively newer platform, and it can sometimes be buggy. SharpSpring claims it is always seeking improvements and backs this up with regular integration rollouts and feature updates. It also receives positive marks for providing live, relatively accessible customer support.

There are plenty of competitors out there that offer CRM software for startups. One of the more popular is HubSpot. We find that SharpSpring compares to HubSpot in the following ways:

SharpSpring offers a unique pricing structure with monthly, no contract pricing, and its standard plans are tiered based on maximum contacts rather than features. No free plan is offered, but a 30-day trial is available with the entry-level plan, which starts at $449/month for 1,000 contacts and increases to $1,449/month for 20,000. SharpSpring specializes in agency-tailored plans and its custom Agency and Enterprise plans. All plans come with unlimited users, so startups with a larger contact base and more team members will be the most likely to benefit from SharpSpring’s pricing structure.

HubSpot offers a comprehensive free plan followed by three paid plans that increase in costs and features. But all Sales Hub paid plans include storage for up to 15 million contacts.  With an annual subscription, its Starter plan costs $45/month for two paid users. Next is the Professional plan at $45/month for five paid users, then the Enterprise at $1,200/month for 10 paid users. At the end of the day, customers looking for a free option or an affordable, comprehensive CRM will likely want to check out HubSpot and mind the add-ons.

All Sharpspring plans include email automation tools with personalization features. SharpSpring offers dynamic forms, web visitor IDs, and social integration. Users can capture new leads, create custom marketing automation, assign them to workflows, and monitor leads moving through the sales funnel. SharpSpring provides end-to-end ROI analytics, campaign tracking, and all of the standard marketing and customer data useful for making key decisions. SharpSpring’s open API platform enables you to connect your own app to the internal functionality of SharpSpring.

HubSpot offers sales, marketing, and email automation tools along with contact management, a deals pipeline, and email and call integration. Users can create custom properties and reports and generate quotes and detailed analytics. SharpSpring has built-in social integration, whereas HubSpot has live chat included. HubSpot also offers built-in blogging capabilities and more robust reporting and analytics. The bottom line is both are capable platforms, but HubSpot offers stronger all-around features.

SharpSpring boasts user-friendly software with a colorful, contemporary interface. Customers can opt to add onboarding support to any standard paid plan for a one-time fee ranging from $2,000 to $3,000. Some users note that creating automation can sometimes be confusing, but users generally find SharpSpring to be an easy-to-use option backed by solid customer support.

HubSpot also offers an upbeat, contemporary interface with customizable drag-and-drop dashboards. All content creation, like forms, emails, and landing pages, is also drag-and-drop. Despite offering some more complex processes than SharpSpring, HubSpot is surprisingly easy-to-use, even when working with its free version, which is backed by setup wizards, demos, and free online support tools. Both platforms are very user-friendly, with SharpSpring slightly more usable but with lighter capabilities.

SharpSpring's App Marketplace offers three native integrations: Litmus, Shutterstock, and Salesforce. It also has 13 API integrations with apps like Shopify, PipeDrive, and SimpleTexting. Through Zapier, users can access over 100 third-party apps and add-ons, including CloudCart, PandaDoc, and LiveChat. While SharpSpring’s integration selection is more than adequate, it does not come close to the capabilities other top CRM players offer.

HubSpot’s integration capabilities are significantly more far-reaching. HubSpot’s App Ecosystem offers over 150 native apps, including popular integrations like Google apps, Facebook, Zoom, and Outlook. HubSpot directly offers over 1,000 apps that integrate with its platform to create a highly customized and dynamic user experience that scales alongside your startup. Some of the most popular integrations are Google Contacts, MailChimp, WooCommerce, and ZenDesk.

SharpSpring emphasizes its customization capabilities, which allow users to create different types of custom fields so you can personalize your software to fit your startup. You can edit lead fields, opportunity fields, account fields, labels, and values. SharpSpring also offers a user-friendly building tool for creating custom email notifications, forms, landing pages, and personalized emails. For advanced users, there is even the option of editing SharpSpring’s email code.

With HubSpot, users can personalize email subjects, templates, or snippets. Adding personalized content to your website pages, landing pages, or emails is a relatively simple process. You can also create custom objects, name them, assign them properties and link them to other objects. There are also options for customizing pipelines and workflows to best fit your business, and drag-and-drop dashboards provide you with the quick business insights you most need. While both CRM software products have lots of customization options, HubSpot pulls in the lead with more sophisticated options.

SharpSpring offers users tools for monitoring website activity across multiple sites to track contacts even when they visit your site from multiple devices. Email marketing analytics give users key data points like click rates, opens, bounces, and completed deliveries. Users can also track conversion rates and gather data on end-to-end conversion costs and revenue. Custom reports can be created and added to create a variety of handy, comprehensive dashboards.

HubSpot comes with more advanced analytics dashboards and the ability to create custom reports filtered by properties for specific insights. For example, you can create behavioral events to track actions on your website that trigger workflow automation and analyze website pages by performance, traffic sources, and contact sessions. Users can also create detailed reports that break down data for landing pages, blog posts, social media accounts, calls-to-action, and more. Compared side-by-side, HubSpot wins with its broader, more sophisticated reporting and analytics features.

SharpSpring CRM software provides unlimited support with paid plans. From the Support Portal, users can create a ticket and monitor its progress. SharpSpring customers can also connect with a live representative by calling its toll-free customer support number on weekdays. Live chat is also available during standard business hours, and Enterprise customers can access advanced support. Overall, SharpSpring has a reputation for being responsive.

HubSpot’s free plan includes a full array of self-service options like demos, instructions, and community support. All paid plans come with support, but levels vary. HubSpot’s entry plan will give users access to in-app live chat and email support. You can even contact HubSpot via its Twitter support account. Move one step up to the Professional plan, and users can access live phone support. With its own reputation for excellent support, HubSpot's service scores ever so slightly ahead of SharpSpring’s.

SharpSpring is a capable CRM tool that was created to serve the complex lead management needs of agencies and similar businesses. Built with small and midsize businesses in mind, SharpSpring offers sales and marketing automation and contact management tools. However, SharpSpring falls behind others in advanced reporting and app integration capabilities. It can sometimes be buggy.

Agencies and small to midsize startups with a high number of maximum contacts or users generally find it to be a highly user-friendly, affordable option to meet marketing and general CRM and sales needs. On the other hand, growth-oriented startups, product-focused businesses, and small to midsize startups looking for an overall robust CRM will likely prefer HubSpot for its sophistication, usability, and vast integration capabilities.