2018 Marketing Automation Software:
Comparison Guide

A Review of Features And Costs For:
SharpSpring, Infusionsoft, HubSpot,
Act-On, and Marketo

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The Marketing Automation Software Comparison Guide

The Social Web Tactics, "Marketing Automation Software: A Comparison Guide," is designed to compare the features and functionality of some of the top marketing automation providers in the marketplace.

Below are short summaries of the solution providers, followed by a feature and pricing chart, and then analysis of key features and screen shots.

Our goal is to match you to the best solution, so you and your business can be successful. If you have questions, please call us at: +1-703-362-1586.

SharpSpring

Website: https://sharpspring.com

The company launched in 2014 to deliver powerful and affordable marketing automation. SharpSpring is a flexible platform that integrates easily with other tools. Social Web Tactics provides SharpSpring with six (6) month and twelve (12) month contract options. It is an open system that is designed to grow with your business.


Infusionsoft

Website: https://www.infusionsoft.com

Infusionsoft is an all-in-one management platform for micro-businesses. Use of its built-in CRM is mandatory, since it’s a closed system and doesn’t allow 3rd-party CRM integration. Infusionsoft is ranked low on 3rd-party review sites. It has a low entry price point with add-on costs, along with a required annual contract.


HubSpot

Website: https://www.hubspot.com

Founded in 2006, HubSpot is credited with launching the inbound marketing concept. It is a powerful platform that provides a high volume of content. HubSpot’s pricing is on the high end of the spectrum, and annual payment up-front is required.


Act-On

Website: https://www.act-on.com

Act-On offers enterprise-level marketing automation, website management tools and a basic partner system for agencies, relying heavily upon integration with other CRM platforms and services. Marketing and sales teams at more than 3,000 companies use Act-On.


Marketo

Website: https://www.marketo.com

Marketo launched in 2006 and has been a market leader since 2012, providing an engagement marketing platform with bundled services including marketing automation, email marketing and more. Marketo’s price point is on the high end of the spectrum and an annual contract with quarterly payment is required.

If you are interested in talking about how Social Web Tactics can help your business, organization, or agency, please complete the form below. A member of our team with contact you as soon as possible.

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Terms

Six (6) Month or Twelve (12) Month

Flexible Payment Options

Annual Twelve (12) Month Contract

Payment Upfront

Annual Twelve (12) Month Contract

Payment Upfront

Annual Twelve (12) Month Contract

Payment Upfront

Annual Twelve (12) Month Contract

Paid Quarterly

Price / Cost

The pricing / cost for SharpSpring is determined by SWT.

$2,400 (6 Months) or $4,200 (12 Months)

First month deposit required.

$7,188 - $9,588 (Annual)

Paid Annually

$15,000 (Pro) and $28,800 (Enterprise)

Paid Annually

$2,300 (Per Month) $27,600 (Annual)

Contract Needs To Be Paid In Full At Start

$2400 (Per Month) $28,800 (Annual)

Paid Quarterly

Onboarding

One-Time

$1,200

$999 - $2,999

$3,000 (Pro) or $5,000 (Enterprise)

$1,000

$4,500

Added Marketing Support

Price is determined based on your company's needs.

TOTAL COST

$3,600 (6 Months) or $5,400 (12 Months)

$8,187 - $9,588

$18,000 (Pro) or $33,800 (Enterprise)

$28,600

$33,300

($6,900 is due at signing)

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Contacts or Leads

100,000 Leads

20,000 Leads

1,000 Leads (Pro) or 10,000 Leads (Enterprise)

Additional Contacts: $50 per 1K/mo (Pro) or $10 per 1K/mo (Enterprise)

20,000 Leads

20,000 Leads

E-mails

Per Month (Unless otherwise noted)

25,000 Emails (Per month)

As Agency Partner, we can waive overage costs for our clients.

100,000 E-mails

10,000 (Pro) or 100,000 (Enterprise)

Unlimited E-mails

Unlimited E-mails

User Licenses

Other providers charge fees for additional licenses. Not listed here.

Unlimited

10

Limited Number - Call To Determine

Extra fee for additional licenses

106

Marketing (6) and Sales (100)

50

Social Web Tactics

Marketing Services & Implementation Support

CRM: Managing and Engaging Contacts

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

The CRM and contact management portion of most marketing automation platforms has typcially been evaluated by analysts as the weakest part of the solution. Most analysts will note that if you want an enterprise-level CRM, you would want a separate CRM provider.

However, within the top-tier providers, there are a few solutions that have powerful CRMs and contact management tools that give businesses much of what they need to be successful without the need for a third-party CRM solution.

Though we have not included them in this guide, LeadSquared and bpm'online are excellent CRMs mixed with automation solutions.

Among the list of providers here, SharpSpring is perhaps the most powerful of the native CRM solutions. The least effective and most cumbersome would be Infusionsoft, which has a heavy reliance on adding tags to records and then building searches around those tags.

In the case of SharpSpring, you have the ability to use their native CRM, or connect with a more robust solution - such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics - via an API. The native CRM in SharpSpring provides detailed views of contacts, as well as a wealth of information and functionality within the contact records.

Contact management within all the solutions reviewed is fairly standard. You have the ability to see insights and notes within individual records, as well as view a timeline of interactions (email opens, form completions, website visits, etc).

Screenshots of some of the contact dashboards are shared below.

SharpSpring

CRM - Contact Management - SharpSpring - Marketing Automation

HubSpot

Contact Management In HubSpot - Marketing Automation

Infusionsoft

Contacts Display in Infusionsoft - Marketing Automation

Act-On

Sales / Lead and Opportunity Management Features

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

For many companies interested in the CRM and sales / lead and opportunity management features within these solutions, we believe that SharpSpring has the perfect blend of power, ease-of-use, and customizable fields.

In all systems, you have the ability to view sales pipeline data, including revenu forecasts. In SharpSpring, the dashboards are really easy to use. You can customize sales processes by rep, change revenue figures as situations change, automate or manually change lead / account owners, and gain access to a wealth of reports and contact data.

All solutions have some form of lead scoring that users can define. And though not commonly used by companies and organizations, customer / buy personas also are available.

View the screenshots of SharpSpring below.

SharpSpring

Sales Pipeline - SharpSpring - Marketing Automation

SharpSpring

Sales Pipeline - SharpSpring - Marketing Automation

E-mail Features

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

E-mail remains one of the most important business communication tools. For all organizations, having a tool that easily allows you to design responsive e-mail templates, and manage campaigns is essential.

The top tier market automation providers all have solid e-mail management tools. In many of the more simple solutions, e-mail is the sole function of the automation system. It is important to decide the level of functionality your business needs.

Generally speaking, when evaluating the e-mail capabilities of a marketing automation solution, you are looking to see if they have a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface, as well as drag-and-drop designing to make building e-mails easier and faster. A good template library also is important, as well as the ability to view your e-mail in different devices.

Another needed component to ensure you are personalizing your communication and maximizing marketing automation is the ability to include dynamic content.

Lastly, you will want the ability to manage your campaigns, get accurate data on their performance, use after-the-click tracking for your workflows / automations, send youself test messages, and conduct A/B tests during campaigns (so the best performing emails reach the most people). Some believe that rss email syndication is important, but we have not met any clients or prospects with this need.

Overall, the solutions evaluated in this guide all the roughly the same capaibilities. The SharpSpring template library was very good, but all solutions provide templates that you can edit. They also have the ability to import your existing templates. SharpSpring has direct coding / HTML editors that are easy to use - if you are a more experienced user.

Act-On

E-mail Marketing - Act On - Marketing Automation

SharpSpring

Marketing Automation Features

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

Setting-up workflows is a critical function of a marketing automation solution. Workflows are what set the rules for the automated marketing processes.

When evaluating these solutions, it is important to get a visual sense of how each system allows you to build workflows or automations. This feature is often called a "Visual Workflow Builder."

When considering an automation platform, it is essential to get a look at this feature. Ask a vendor if they provide "unlimited workflows" and the ability to create and assign tasks to team members. Another important feature is to have "triggers," which means you have the ability to engage with a person when they perform a specific kind of action - such as visiting a web page, or reaching a milestone of some sort. "Time-based" workflows are another element to look for and discuss, because you may want to reach people who did something or have NOT done something for a long time. Behavior is another way you want to be able to automate messaging. For example, did a person click on a link, respond to a form a certain way, or visit a series of web pages that all relate to a specific product category or service? Having the ability to respond to user behaviors with an automation / workflow can be a real benefit to your business.

All of the solutions we have reviewed here have this capability. Perhaps the two most robust - and easiest to use - workflow managers are HubSpot and SharpSpring. The others are adequate as well. Infusionsoft has a heavy reliance on using data tags, which can start to make workflows more confusing as you add more tags.

HubSpot

Workflows - Visual Workflow Builder - HubSpot - Marketing Automation

SharpSpring

Form Features

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

Forms are common within all the top marketing automation solutions. Each allows you to build, customize and reorder fields within forms, save forms, assign them to categories, and to view results.

Drag and drop editors are common in each, with the easiest and most robust form creators located within HubSpot and SharpSpring.

A key feature to look for are dynamic forms that allow "auto-complete" based on stored information or that allow you to offer different questions to repeat visitors. For example, if someone has visited your website before, and you already know their first name, last name, company, e-mail, and phone number - why would you ask for that information again? Or make a person resubmit it? By using dynamic forms, you can ask repeat visitors different questions and gather more information for your marketing and sales efforts.

Another important feature to consider is whether or not you can integrate your own website CSS into the form design, and whether or not you can use forms native to your website or a third-party's form. Some of the automation solutions referenced here, SharpSpring is one, have built-in integrations with form builders such as: FormStack, Gravity Forms, Wufoo, Sugar and Salesforce.

Lastly, you may want to ask if your automation solution can integrate its forms with Webinar providers, such as GoToWebinar. In some cases, but not all, these integrations are built-in, but you need to ask to confirm.

SharpSpring

Dynamic Forms - SharpSpring - Marketing Automation

HubSpot

Create A Form in HubSpot - Marketing Automation

Landing Page Designer

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

With your landing pages, you want to be able to use dynamic content. A key to getting landing pages built quickly is having a drag-and-drop capability, robust collection of ready-to-use templates (that are responsive to different devices), and a WYSIWYG interface. All the solutions we reviewed here have those capabilities. The most powerful solutions for landing pages were: Marketo, HubSpot and SharpSpring.

Marketo

SharpSpring

Blog Builder

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

All of the marketing automation solutions we reviewed allow you to launch a blog with similar ease as building a landing page. SharpSpring and HubSpot were the easiest and most comprehensive.

SharpSpring

SharpSpring Blog Builder

HubSpot

Social Media Features

Providers

SharpSpring

Infusionsoft

HubSpot

Act-On

Marketo

Summary of Features

Social media is not available in Infusionsoft, and is somewhat missing from other automation providers. However, SharpSpring and HubSpot have social media tools that allow you to publish and monitor. SharpSpring allows you to leverage social interactions with automation and lead scoring.

SharpSpring

SharpSpring Social Media

HubSpot

Social Web Tactics Customer Support

Our Support and Marketing Services

At Social Web Tactics, we know the full capabilities of the leading CRM and marketing automation solutions, and are ready to handle all aspects of your account set-up, initial management, and training.

Once the CRM and marketing automation solution has been purchased, and we have completed set-up, you can better target content and offerings, prioritize people who are closer to taking action, and then dedicate your resources to generating sales for your business.

In addition to getting your account set-up, we also have comprehensive marketing automation services, which can include:

  • Content development for your outbound and inbound marketing campaigns (email content, blog post content, infographics, and white papers, as well as landing page and “thank you” page content).
  • Creation of call-to-action items for landing pages.
  • Building out forms for lead capture.
  • Website integration.
  • Assistance with call-tracking and integrating with customer support.
  • A/B testing for landing pages and emails (to determine what works best).
  • Creating preliminary workflows in your automation solution.
  • Integration with CRM systems such as Salesforce (if necessary).
  • Building out analytics and campaign reports.
  • Dedicated customer support.
  • One on one training, and access to both a resource library.
  • And more.

To learn more about how we can help your business or organization, please complete the form below. Or call us at: 703-362-1586

Review Your Options and Build A CRM and Marketing Automation Plan

Complete the form, so we can schedule a time for you to speak with one of our experts. We can help identify the best solution for your business or organization, get it up and running, and have your team fully trained.

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