Introduction
Are you a business owner? Do you love managing and interacting with your client base effectively? Do you love providing a good wholesome experience for your clients? Want to build your personalized brand presence online? Then you are the right place.
If you are a small/medium-sized business owner, a marketing agency, a mid-sized freelancing company, a consulting agency, or just about any venture that has a database of a considerable number of customers to be managed, Sharpspring and Salesforce are the Marketing Automation tools for you.
SharpSpring Vs Salesforce Best Comparison With Pros & Cons 2020 (HANDPICKED)
Both Sharpspring and Salesforce are Customer Relationship Management Tools i.e. they are CRM's.
A CRM is software that acts as a repository or database of sorts for all your customer/client information needs. Be it their name, address, contact numbers, emails, etc; it is all stored in a CRM.
Businesses often have this question, why do I need a CRM like Sharpspring or Salesforce? Well here is why CRM's matter:
- CRM helps you get rid of the obsolete and tedious manual processes that lead to human errors most of the time.
- Your journey to finding more leads, managing customer databases, tracking activities, and growing your business will significantly get easier.
- One place to store all your client/customer information. This ensures personalization when closing deals, better relationship building, and updated databases.
- Actively track and manage customer emails, activities, and get instant insights and recommendations.
Whether you are a Marketing agency, an SMB, small business, or a large enterprise, doing without a CRM tool today is next to impossible.
The building, maintaining databases, and utilizing it effectively is the biggest roadblocks before the sales or lead generation for your company can begin in the market.
All you need is a good CRM solution that has a robust environment and bridges the gap between companies and customers by bringing them together.
Sharpspring and Salesforce are one integrated CRM platform that gives all your departments, i.e. marketing, sales, operations, service, and software a single, shared view of every customer/client.
Today we have an endless list of options when it comes to marketing software alternatives. Choosing the right product is more so often a task. Hence we bring to you a comparative analysis of the two leading players in the CRM software market.
Evaluate their features, pros and cons, working overviews, pricing, and more details concerning SharpSpring and Salesforce Marketing Automation tools to come to a decision.
Both Sharpspring and Salesforce are widely used in online CRM and Marketing Automation platforms. Be its seamless integrations, pricing plans, robust solutions, new features, etc you have a plethora of options on both the platforms.
You can always compare the features and functionalities of two competitors based on reviews, different parameters, and their smart score and user satisfaction. These score ratings give you an overview of things based on a lot of factors and are very comprehensive and exhaustive.
Moreover, make sure if the software you choose is resonating with your business requirements and integrates well with all the existing tools and apps in use in the market.
About SharpSpring
SharpSpring was founded in 2011 and is known to be cloud-based marketing automation providing a next-generation solution regarding solutions. Its competitors are the topmost platforms of the industry when it comes to features, performance and functions of the software.
SharpSpring is providing flexible platforms all over the world along with CRM integration, call tracking integrated facility, universal compatibility with all devices and much more.
SharpSpring moreover can be connected to a mobile device and can be given commands from any and everywhere. One can also compare data to get a complete picture. Its usage is super responsive as the development team is strong and is able to manage multiple clients singly.
The best part of SharpSpring is that the company is trustworthy as over the years it had the power to build better goodwill than others in a similar industry.
SharpSpring is undoubtedly the most flexible platform in the market. Be it offers of integrations with 3rd party or native tools, integrated call tracking's, offering native or 3rd party CRM integration, universally compatible CMS integrations, or a plethora of new and amazing features.
With the help of Sharpspring, you can rest assured about your lead generation funnel. Be it, customers who sign up via the phone, desktop, forms, etc, compare them all at one go and with ease.
This makes it easier to get a good overall market scenario and understand the demand-supply scenario prevalent.
CRM will help in getting a better return on investment when it comes to business revenue and earnings. SharpSpring offers seamless support and is featured by an extremely responsive development team and email response team.
About Salesforce
Founded in March 1999 by a former executive from Marc Benioff with Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez, Salesforce today is serving millions of happy clients worldwide. It is basically an application which is delivered via software as a service or one can even describe Salesforce as a cloud computing model.
The flagship product is a CRM (customer relationship management system) which is designed for every business is it a startup or established worldwide.
Salesforce was founded in March 1999 by Marc Benioff, who worked with oracle previously. The aim was to replace the desktop-based CRM tools with a more efficient and easily accessible cloud-based CRM system. Marc along with Parker, Dave, and Frank. Harris, Moellenhoff and Dominguez, were the three software developers previously working at Clarify, who wrote the initial automation software code for salesforce.
Few initial members and a few external investors saw the potential in the Salesforce team. Other early investors include Halsey Minor, Mark Iscaro, Geneva Venture Partners, and a few others.
Daily, an average of 150,000 companies is increasing employee productivity, customer loyalty, lead generation, team collaboration, and seamless operations using the world's most trusted CRM platform.
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM provider of enterprise software applications that are delivered in the form of Saas(Software-as-a-service) or cloud computing model.
The company's main and focused product is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool designed for businesses, enterprises, and companies of varied sizes. Salesforce also provides a Paas( Platform-as-a-service) called Force.com.
It handles the portfolio of third-party integrated applications called AppExchange. Salesforce markets its CRM and automation software solution in the market on a subscription basis, i.e. either via direct sales or through business partner channels.
It has also been providing PaaS (platform-as-a-service) solution which is names titled Force.com. Its basic plan is to manage a portfolio of integrated third party application which can be referred to as AppExchange.
It markets on a subscription basis to its clients through direct sales platform and also indirectly through a business partner channel.
In today's era, if we wish to serve our customers the best, we actually have to look out for brilliant CRM systems that help us throughout from getting new leads to turning them into sales and lastly better customer satisfaction is the topmost priority!
So, if this is what we wish in our business, we need to know better alternatives first that can simultaneously be used for better CRM facilities for our customers.
The two companies SharpSpring & Salesforce are both doing good when it comes to CRM systems, services, pricing, simplicity, functions and features. But both are different in many other aspects.
What is CRM?
CRM is a software that helps in the management of customer data i.e. names, contact info's, addresses and also does it keep the track of customer's activity like their emails, phone calls, visited websites and many more.
The objective behind understanding the difference between Sharp Spring & salesforce is to analyze and decide which one suits your business type and will fetch you a better CRM system. So, let's understand SharpSpring and Salesforce individually.
Benefits of CRM software can be listed as below:
- Better knowledge of customers
- Better segmentation
- Better customer retention
- Better anticipation of needs
- Better and speedier communication
- Better protection of data privacy
Why Should One Pick SharpSpring as CRM software?
SharpSpring has proved itself to be a set full of sufficiency. It is one complete platform for excellent CRM service. They have been exquisitely diligent when it comes to optimizing sales and marketing.
They build powerful automation due to which knowing the customer and sending them content as per their interest gets easy.
The major features that SharpSpring offers are as below:
- User-Behavior Based Emails
- Dynamic Forms
- Convert Leads to Sales
- Leads through Anonymous Visitor ID's
- Built-in CRM Integrations & Sales Automation
- Dynamic Landing Pages
- Blogs
- Lead scoring
- Lead segmentation
- Lead segmentation
- Web activity tracking
- Bi-directional CRM syncing
- Event management
- Split testing
- Bulk social media posting
- Sales reports
- Real-time sales alerts
- Mobile app
- Social CRM
- Customized Analytical Marketing Reports
- Automated Marketing Software Platforms
- Social Media Marketing Management Platforms
Why Should One Pick Salesforce as CRM software?
Salesforce is an easy & manageable cloud-based system which is specifically designed to make day to day activities manageable for customers. Its CRM system helps the businesses to engage themselves in better long-term customer relationships.
Salesforce has a unique CRM cloud-based system through which it actively tracks the customers and manages their information being a cloud-based system it connects each and every team member of your business through a single device.
The main features of Salesforce are as below:
- Cloud-Based Sales System
- Cloud-Based Service System
- Cloud-Based Marketing System
- Salesforce Chatter
- Cloud-Based Analytics
- Salesforce Mobile Application Service
- Lead scoring
- Lead segmentation
- Web activity tracking
- SMS marketing
- Personalize web content
- Predictive analytics
- Bi-directional CRM syncing
- Event management
- Create invoices
- Create quotes
- Split testing
- Create membership sites
- Bulk social media posting
- Sales reports
- Real-time sales alerts
- Mobile app
- Social CRM
Working Overview - Sharpspring
Sharpspring will help your company/business drive more leads, convert those leads into sales, and generate more traffic and indirectly revenue. Not only does Sharpspring save your time, but also offers you with lucrative and productive features on their platform.
Sharpspring is available with Marketing Automation, CRM Automation, CRM Pro, CRM Ultimate, and CRM Free. SharpSpring gives you the option to assign roles to everyone having access to SharpSpring.
Different user roles defined are:
- Administrators-They has access to control all the other user roles. All the features, settings, and application areas are accessible by them.
- Sales Manager - They have access to accounts, pipelines, contacts, reports, carts, however, they have very limited access to most of the features such as Automation and Content.
- Salesperson- They can edit and manage all the leads in the visitor Id, Contact Manager, Accounts, etc.
- Company Managers- They are given access to all the features except the advanced settings.
- Jr Salesperson- They can only see the Visitor ID, Sales Pipeline, and Contact Manager features. However, they can only view the leads assigned to them.
- Marketing Managers- Access to Account settings is restricted, however, they have access to the Analytics, Content, Social, Automation, and Contacts menus.
Additionally, Sharpspring Mail has access to adding an unlimited number of roles above these six. Any user who has not used i.e. logged into Sharpspring or opened emails for over 180 days, will have their system notifications and Id's suppressed.
The latest feature added to the working of Sharpspring is the Automated Workflows called Interactive opportunity nurturing workflows. The working process for this is as follows:
- An email will be sent to the customer, asking them to take certain actions.
- Depending on the customer's response, it will trigger different workflows built to give feature demos.
- The simple workflows send different content based on customer selection, whereas the more advanced workflows present the customers with engaging video content, pictures, and screenshots.
Working Overview- Salesforce
Salesforce brings together your marketing, sales, operations, commerce, service, and IT teams from anywhere in the world with the use of customer 360 which is a one integrated CRM platform that powers the entire suite of all the apps.
Customer 360 will help your company/business focus on your employees and what is important according to the market scenario. Be it restabilizing your business, reopening sales, getting back, or getting back to delivering exceptional customer experience.
Salesforce is mainly used for the following purposes:
- Engaging with customers all around in an empathetic and relevant manner utilizing digital marketing.
- Creating a smart sales funnel via which more leads can be generated and business revenue increases.
- Quick access to launching and selling E-commerce products and services built around your customer from anywhere in the world.
- Handling all kinds of data, analytics, and reports in one place and save time for team operations.
- Exclusive customer service that can be availed from anywhere.
Similarities: SharpSpring & Salesforce
1. About the Company
A complete set of powerful and affordable marketing automation CRM system which is hassle-free and helps optimize the marketing of various businesses.
A Cloud-Based CRM System intentionally framed from to make daily customer-related services simple and helps build long customer relationship.
4.Landing PagesSharpSpring has this new way of uploading Landing Pages which enables the business or agencies to choose the layout and the respective components.
Salesforce allows customizing the landing pages by choosing templates which can be used as a visual editor.
Differences: SharpSpring vs Salesforce
For whom is Sharpspring for?
- SharpSpring is very much perfect for marketing agencies and SMBs globally.
For whom is SalesForce for?
- Salesforce is very much perfect for small to mid-sized businesses along with large conglomerates.
Return of Investment on SharpSpring
SharpSpring helps to increase the return on investment as businesses are perfectly able to focus and target their core prospects which fit their business models. Along with the same, industries have been able to deliver end-to-end automated platforms which basically had low operational expense allowance.
It has also helped to streamline proposal process for start-ups as then they can hence manage to give out area-specific pre-built products which perfectly matched the scope of work.
This scope of work could be pre-determined in the vision and mission statement along with the memorandum of articles of a company.
Return of Investment on SalesForce
SalesForce has helped businesses to raise the expectations of customers as it has shown what a good service provider is and how they should treat their loyal clients.
Hence the return on investment has been much higher which keeps the engagements of customers on constant bases thus directly reducing the churn.
Salesforce allows the company to maintain every document and information in-house relating to every client in their own specific space and thus drastically reducing the want for various different products which lead to one end.
SharpSpring Integrates With:
Salesforce Integrates With:
- Google Analytics
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Zapier
- DocuSign
- Jira
- Quickbooks
- Hellosign
- Workfront
- SAP
- Outlook
- Zapier
- AppExchange- It is a collection of several apps, which integrate with Salesforce.
Comparative Analysis of Sharpspring Vs Salesforce
Audience catered
Sharpspring:
If you are technology-friendly and do not mind a bit of a learning curve while working around your CRM and Automation tool then Sharpspring is for you. The tool is ideal for marketing agencies and SMBs.
Salesforce:
It is best for people who are slightly more creative and not so technology-friendly. Marketers, small to mid-sized businesses, and large enterprises are the ideal audience when it comes to using Salesforce.
Pricing options
Sharpspring:
It is priced on a monthly billing basis. There are five plans to choose from, they are as follows: 1,500 contacts at $550/month, 10,000 contacts at $850/month, 20,000 contacts at $1,250, and two advanced pricing options for Agencies and Enterprises. The starting number of users allowed is only1.
Salesforce:
Customized plans catering to each client's company size, cost budget, industry, and business requirements. Get in touch with their support team or contact the required vendors to get quotations. Starting users allowed are 5.
Ease of Use
Sharpspring:
Most of the customers feel that Sharpspring is very user friendly and provides a seamless experience. Although people who are slightly more technologically comfortable tend to make full use of its features. It has good navigation in general on the phone and desktop.
Salesforce:
Most of the users have positive things to say about Salesforce. The great support team, multiple features, and great UI make the user experience very seamless. Salesforce is slightly better when it comes to user satisfaction.
Customer Support
Sharpspring:
The majority of the reviews reflect a good 24/7 customer support catering to the needs of their customers via email, phone, live support, training, and tickets.
Salesforce:
The backend and support team are always available and most of the customers are extremely happy with the support. However, there is no option of live chat support and the only thing customers can do is send emails. They can improve on the customer support aspects as compared to Sharpspring.
Features & Functionality
Sharpspring:
Be it the availability of behavioral-based email automation, dynamic forms, lead generation, lead scoring, or analytics, there are a lot of features available with Sharpspring. However, there are a lot of access restrictions depending on different user roles.
Salesforce:
When it comes to features, Salesforce has a plethora of options. Be it the availability of data Studio, artificial intelligence, mobile studio, multiple third-party integrations, email marketing provisions, customized quotes, or data management, Salesforce has it all covered for you.
Platforms and Training Supported
Sharpspring:
Live Support, training, ticket bookings, emails, or phones, all kind of support is provided. The platforms supported are Android, Windows, iPhone/Ipad, Mac, and Web-based platforms.
Salesforce:
Salesforce has services for training, ticketing, emails, and phone but no service for live support. The platforms supported are Android, Linux, Windows, iPhone/Ipad, Mac, and Web-based platforms.
Languages Supported:
Sharpspring:
When we talk about user languages supported, Sharpspring provides a few languages to access the platform. Some of them other than English are:
However, they do not still support so many globally used languages.
Salesforce:
As compared to Sharpspring there is more variety of languages. Here are a few languages that they support other than English:
Pros of SharpSpring
- SharpSpring has made the onboarding of clients very much like a cakewalk and they love this.
- The integration process has become smooth on client CRM which further helps one to rightly select the target areas leading to higher sales and this indirectly shoots up the retention rate of existing clients.
- SharpSpring has made the visual flowchart for planning a mission for reaching every target much easier to plan by boosting communication and implementation of the various previously done man-made task. The automation of many small sectors has hence lead to avoiding human error.
- Every click tracking pops up an email which engages and informs as to how the nurturing campaigns have shown to work along with what changes are further required.
- SharpSpring has an advance lead scoring system which keeps one focused only on the important things on the very right time in the funnel process leading to reducing the cost.
- The lead funnel builder with Webex has become a completely integrated system boosting in saving lots of time, energy and money to get a perfect model. This model funnel integrates with any site aptly without much of a hassle.
- In history, social activity has always provided something which gives real-time assessment as to the working of social media.
- SharpSpring is currently offering premium consultation along with integration services though the entry-level fee is applicable.
Pros of Salesforce
- The reporting suite offered by Salesforce is the best and the leading on in the market. Due to its robust technology, it makes a persons' job about 10 times easier and faster.
- The task and recurring meetings have been a blessing due to Salesforce as everyone can understand what is lined up exactly when in their calendar. This is indirectly keeping employees organized and prepared for the entire day.
- All the notes, plugins and email can be taken in the account/opportunity and simply could be tuned directly to the client. The work email on another platform can be easily attached to a said email into Salesforce account via one single click. This has made the job at work effective and people are not forced to repeatedly do the same things again and again.
- Salesforce currently is offering free trial along with no entry-level fee to be collected and hence providing a better relief overall.
Cons of SharpSpring
- Unfortunately, SharpSpring does not have any workflow which can use the custom filed directly connecting to the accounts system
- No one can access the entire database of their instance.
- There is a limitation on the usage of the information in custom field option which is even in today's times leading to arithmetic operation
- SharpSpring has a limitation in the configuration of one's roles and permissions.
- Visitor ID has a huge issue as the ISP does not get banned and hence often known to be considered as a useless option.
- SharpSpring customer service lacks enthusiasm.
Cons of Salesforce
- Salesforce lacks the quick access to report button which normally should be made available on the dashboard itself. Currently one needs to first visit the Reports Tab to find out the report temple and then run the same.
- During sales, one directly looks at repetitive reports on a daily basis for individual sales. The availability of one-click buttons to their accounts is very much lacking from the system. The accounts always get updated automatically to "today" which then needs to be selected on a daily basis whenever any report needs to be generated.
- Salesforce many a time has seen issues in reloading and thus users can get frustrated wanting to sometimes never use software.
- If a startup decides to go with Salesforce, a lot of planning needs to be done with the CRM as it's hard and backtracks. The problem is said to lie with the company and not with the software.
- The offers do not show much specific research as per the commands typed into the search tab.
Security with SharpSpring
All sensitive information encryption proves to be at rest. The company is providing HTTPS for every web-based page. Further, every security breach in the system leads to constant reporting till not fixed. It does not provide the users with multi factor authentication option.
Security with Salesforce
All sensitive information encryption proves to be at rest. The company is providing HTTPS for every web-based page. Further, every security breach in the system leads to constant reporting till not fixed. It has also provided the users with multi factor authentication option.
FAQs on SharpSpring & Salesforce Comparison 2020
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Conclusion: Comparison Between SharpSpring & Salesforce 2020 | Which Is The Best CRM?
When it comes to looking out for platforms and tools as a company, mid-sized business, small business, marketing agencies or enterprises, both Sharpspring and Salesforce are in demand tools.
Although most of the features provided by both of them are almost the same, they surely operate in slightly different ways.
Customer needs and market trends are kept in mind by both the tools. However, coming up with the implementation of Artificial Intelligence in the CRM tools is undoubtedly a revolutionary feature introduced by Salesforce. On the surface, the services offered are quite the same.
They both offer features like CRM, third party integrations, lead-generating funnels, analytics, and marketing automation, and great customer support, however, distinctions can be drawn on diving deep in the analysis above.
As far as the pricing and high security are concerned undoubtedly Salesforce leads the race there.
On the other hand, if you are someone looking out for monthly pricing tools, more agency, and enterprise-friendly tools, then Sharpspring is your cup of tea. Both offer a free demo, with no need of entering credit card details. However, once plans are purchased, no refund is given.
Ultimately it is all about understanding what suits your brand and business or agency and accordingly choosing the best online CRM and Automation tool in the market. Make an informed decision after reading various reviews, doing proper market research on all alternatives available, affordable pricing, and after weighing all the pros and cons.
