9 SharpSpring Alternatives For SMBs [With Pricing, Features]

SharpSpring is a great sales and marketing automation software, but the $399 price tag for 1,000 contacts does not bode well for small businesses. If you have more than 10,000 thousand contacts, you’ll be paying more than a thousand dollars a month!

That’s out of reach for most small businesses.

So, why use SharpSpring when you have alternatives with similar features at a much lower cost?

In this blog post, we’ll compare the features and pricing of nine of the best SharpSpring alternatives. You can choose the one that fits your needs perfectly:

EngageBay
HubSpot
Keap
ActiveCampaign
Drip
Sendinblue (Brevo)
Zoho
Ontraport
Mailchimp

Happy hunting!

What is SharpSpring?

SharpSpring is an all-in-one marketing automation software that offers automation, marketing, CRM, email, and sales tools.

It was founded in 1998 and has a positive reputation in the sales and marketing automation software market.

SharpSpring Features

These are the key features offered in SharpSpring paid plans:

Social media management: Maximize your social media potential with SharpSpring Social. You can create automated workflows, curate leads, and even track your ROI from social marketing campaigns.
Marketing reports: The customized reports allow you to focus on the most relevant metrics.
Blog: You can write and publish your posts through SharpSpring.
Landing pages creation: Your marketing campaign needs landing pages as well, and the landing page builder lets you do exactly that.
VisitorID: This is among SharpSpring’s best features. It helps you track website visitors and lets you understand them better.
Marketing automation: Automate more of your everyday marketing processes with customizable workflows.
Integrations: SharpSpring integrates with plenty of other tools such as SugarCRM, Salesforce, Formstack, Weebly, Zoho, WordPress, Wufoo, and more.

SharpSpring Pricing

SharpSpring bases its costs on whether you’re a small-to-medium business (SMB), an enterprise, or an agency.

SharpSpring’s basic plan starts at $399 a month for 1,000 contacts. This plan includes unlimited support and as many users as your company requires, but it still seems steep.

When your company reaches 10,000 contacts, you’re looking at a monthly bill of $899. For 20,000 contacts, SharpSpring costs at least $1,299 a month!

That’s too much for a small business.

Also, note that all these prices are for annual bills. Monthly plans will cost more.

There are custom plans for enterprises and agencies, but you have to contact them for the prices.

The Best Alternatives to SharpSpring, for Startups and SMBs

Let’s get to the heart of the matter now 😅

#1. EngageBay

Sharpspring alternatives -- EngageBay — *Email marketing automation in EngageBay*

You’re usually supposed to save the best for last, but we couldn’t help starting this list with EngageBay.

This all-in-one sales, marketing, customer service, and CRM software was founded in 2017.

It was pricey marketing automation software like HubSpot and SharpSpring that inspired the launch of EngageBay.

The idea behind EngageBay is to help small businesses grow and scale, and not drain their marketing budget in the process.

EngageBay Features

EngageBay has four products, but we’ll focus on the All-in-One Suite for comparison with SharpSpring.

With more than 230,000 customers and counting, EngageBay is loved for its rich feature set.

Let’s explore what’s offered in the All-in-One Suite.

Knowledge Base: Help your customers with a comprehensive knowledge base. This feature can help them search for the information they need from your brand, which can save them the need to contact you.
Helpdesk: If your customer has a concern that can’t be addressed through the knowledge base, your help desk is here to step in.
Live Chat: Few companies are staffed 24/7. When your customers need you but you’re closed, a live chatbot fills in the gaps, keeping your customers happy.
Invoice management: Real-time updates and notifications for perfect invoice management.
Proposals: As your sales and marketing proposals go live, you can record and manage each of them.
Email tracking: Track all key performance metrics of your email campaigns.
Automation: All EngageBay automation is programmable, from simple email follow-ups to complex workflows and everything in between.
Deal management: For busy salespeople who want to save time and close more deals.
360-degree customer view: Learn more about your audience than ever before.
Lead scoring: Predictive lead scoring help target audiences better, based on their behavior and win probability score.
Multichannel engagement: To streamline your customer support and marketing automation efforts across avenues.
Forms and pop-ups: Customizable templates and easy builder.
Landing page builder: Plenty of templates and a drag-and-drop tool to build beautiful landing pages.

EngageBay Pricing

EngageBay’s All-in-One Suite has four different pricing plans designed to suit your startup’s budget, whether you’re a brand-new business or a more established one.

Here is more information on each plan and the pricing options.

Sharpspring alternatives -- EngageBay pricing — *EngageBay pricing*

All-in-One Suite Free Pricing

EngageBay’s Free plan is never a bait-and-switch. Rather, it’s actually free forever.

For $0 a month, you can use these great sales automation and CRM features:

Detailed logging of data on companies and contacts
Predictive lead scoring
360-degree contact view
Deals pipeline management
Appointment scheduling
Email tracking with 2-way sync
Integration with Gmail, Outlook, and Office 365
Social suite
Tag management
Workflow automation
Employee productivity and task management
Sales and revenue tracking by project or product
Live Chat

You can also make the most out of these marketing automation features:

500 contacts
1,000 branded emails per month
1 GB of file storage
Contacts lists
Web pop-ups
Email templates and template builder
Custom fields
Lead management
Video marketing
Desktop notifications
Landing pages builder
Newsletters
Email sequences
Contacts segmentation
Embedded forms
Autoresponders
Facebook Ads

The Basic plan starts at $14.99 per month and adds many key features to help businesses grow, such as:

1,000 contacts
3,000 branded emails
Canned responses
Desktop notifications
Customer service ticket management
Ticket macros
SSL-enabled landing pages.

The Growth plan offers:

10,000 branded emails
25,000 contacts
Sales automation
Marketing automation workflows
Custom automation and workflow nodes
Sales proposals
Call reports and scripts
Leaderboards and gamification
Custom deal tracks
Timezone-based email delivery

The Pro plan offers a suite of powerful and advanced tools for businesses that need more pizzaz.

The best part? It costs just under $100!

This plan offers:

Unlimited contacts
50,000 branded emails
Web analytics
A dedicated account manager
Custom reporting
Proposal analytics
SSO
Call recordings
Account-based marketing
Phone support

#2. HubSpot

HubSpot is the go-to marketing platform for many companies — several global brands use HubSpot to automate their marketing, sales, and customer support tasks. As such, HubSpot is one of the top alternatives to SharpSpring.

HubSpot also offers a free CRM to help you get started.

HubSpot Features

These are HubSpot’s key features for marketers and sales teams:

Automation: HubSpot offers multilevel automation through its powerful visual workflow builder.
Editing: With its drag-and-drop page editing and design tool, you can launch visually stunning landing pages and email campaigns. For more control, HubSpot also offers the option to add code.
All-in-one: HubSpot’s all-in-one software eliminates the need for multiple standalone platforms, as it gives a 360-degree view of all your customers.
Segmentation: HubSpot lets you list contacts based on various factors. This helps you build personalized and customized campaigns for your leads.

HubSpot Pricing

HubSpot CRM offers three plans: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

The Starter plan costs $50/month for 1,000 contacts and includes:

Email marketing platform
Ad management
Landing pages
Team email
Email reply tracking
Custom user permissions
User management

The Professional plan starts at $1,600/month and offers:

Product library
Standard SSL certificate
A/B testing
Up to 10 teams
Website traffic analytics

The Enterprise plan costs $5,000/month for 10,000 contacts and adds:

Shared inboxes
Sandboxes
Quote-based workflows
Conversation intelligence
Admin notifications
Recurring revenue tracking

#3. Keap

Keap is an excellent Sharpspring alternative for entrepreneurs looking to “grow sales and save time with automation.”

The platform offers a drag-and-drop interface, making it easy for you to scale business operations.

Keap Features

These are the best Keap features:

Easy-to-use: Keap’s marketing and sales automation tools are intuitive and easy to use.
Contact management: Keap lets you import contacts from spreadsheets, business cards, and custom forms on web pages. It also offers powerful segmentation, custom views, filters, and tags.
Lead generation: This includes tools such as lead scoring, intelligent search, lead capture forms, and contact forms.
Engagement: Keap offers a suite of engagement features to help you nurture leads using sales funnels, automated drip campaign management, and A/B testing.
Advanced reporting: You get a plethora of reporting tools, ranging from email reports, dashboards, and KPIs.

Keap Pricing

Keap offers three plans: Lite, Pro, and Max.

The Lite plan starts at $59/month for 500 contacts and offers:

Contact management
Contact segmentation
Filters
Saved searches
Capture forms
Custom fields

The Pro plan starts at $129/month for 500 contacts and offers:

B2B management
Landing pages
Sales pipeline
A/B testing

The Max plan starts at $199/month for 500 contacts and includes:

Customizable dashboards
Analytics
Pipeline automation
One-click upsell and cross-sell
Sales funnels
Lead scoring

#4. ActiveCampaign

The marketing automation platform ActiveCampaign is an obvious mention on our list of the top SharpSpring alternatives.

Founded in 2003, ActiveCampaign has a little bit of everything your small business needs in the areas of sales, marketing, and service.

ActiveCampaign Features

ActiveCampaign has these features that make it a better alternative to SharpSpring.

Contact management: Organize, sort, filter, and segment your contacts no matter where they come from.
Task assignment: ActiveCampaign’s task management service lets you send tasks and assignments to your sales team based on the member’s expertise and the task’s relevancy.
Team notifications: You can notify your team members of new tasks, deals, and changes through notifications and emails.
Integrations: With more than 800 integrations and counting, ActiveCampaign connects with most sales and marketing automation tools your startup may already use.
Engagement tagging: On the marketing automation side, improve the conversion chances of a potential lead with engagement tagging.
Multichannel marketing: Reach out to your audience in novel new ways, including social media, email, customized landing pages, and text messages.
Custom pages and forms: ActiveCampaign lets you customize your landing pages and forms from the ground up so they appeal to your audience segments.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign has four plans to select from, including Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

With no free plans, ActiveCampaign’s Lite plan is the least expensive.

The Lite plan starts at $9 a month for 500 contacts and comes packed with these features:

More than 850 integrations
Over 500 automation recipes
3 users
Customer analytics
Newsletters
Sales reporting
Email autoresponders
Segmented outreach
Lead capture forms
Sales emails
Automation and campaign reporting
Event and site tracking
Segmentation
Subscription forms
Email marketing
Marketing automation

At 1,000 contacts, the plan costs $29 a month, and at 10,000, the plan costs $139 a month.

The Plus plan starts at $49/month for 500 contacts and adds:

Customer user permissions
Advanced reporting
25 users
Customer health scoring
Account management
SMS follow-ups

The Professional plan costs $149/month for 500 contacts and comes with:

Three one-on-one training sessions per month
50 users
In-app messaging
Conversion reporting
Personalized product experiences
Site messages
Predictive content

The Enterprise plan costs $259/month for 500 contacts and offers:

Custom branding
Custom URL
Phone support
Your own account rep
Unlimited users
Contact enrichment
Custom reporting
Unlimited email tests

#5. Drip

One of the best alternatives to SharpSpring is Drip, which is an eCommerce marketing automation platform for both large and small businesses.

Drip Features

Drip offers decent features.

Optimization: With workflow split-testing, automatic revenue attribution, and an insights dashboard, optimizing your successes will come easy.
Multichannel marketing: Appeal to all your audience segments with multichannel marketing options like SMS, Instagram, and email.
Personalization: Make your communications feel tailor-made for your audience with behavior-based automation, personalized content, and deep lead segmentation.
Customer data: Leave no stone unturned when it comes to your customers. Drip includes customer data features like customer behavior tracking and engagement tagging.

Drip Pricing

Drip doesn’t have pricing plans.

Instead, as your contact list grows, your monthly costs go up:

Up to 500 contacts: $19 a month
Up to 2,000 contacts: $29 a month
Up to 5,000 contacts: $89 a month
Up to 10,000 contacts: $154 a month
Up to 20,000 contacts: $289 a month
Up to 50,000 contacts: $699 a month

For a quick comparison, note that EngageBay’s all-in-one suite costs $99.99 per user per month for unlimited contacts.

#6. Sendinblue (Brevo)

Another amazing email marketing tool is Sendinblue (Brevo). It is based in France and was founded in 2007.

A software-as-a-service or SaaS business with a focus on digital marketing automation tools, Sendinblue (Brevo) is also renowned for its automation features and is loved by many marketers. It makes for one of the top SharpSpring alternatives.

Sendinblue (Brevo) Features

Here’s what you can do with your sales and marketing on the Sendinblue (Brevo) software.

Transactional emails: Customize your transactional emails and track their performance.
Marketing automation: Including both beginner and advanced level automation of workflows. You also get SMS and email marketing, signup forms, and more.
Retargeting: Get a second chance at those seemingly lost customers with retargeting display ads.
Facebook Ads: Sendinblue (Brevo) deploys and tracks your ads for metrics that matter.
Landing page: Sendinblue (Brevo) offers a builder and customizable templates to help you create visually appealing landing pages.

Sendinblue (Brevo) Pricing

Want to know how much it costs per month to use Sendinblue (Brevo)?

Here’s what you need to know about the software.

Sharpspring alternatives -- Sendinblue pricing — *Sendinblue (Brevo) pricing*

Sendinblue (Brevo) Free Plan

Yes, Sendinblue (Brevo) has a free plan just like EngageBay does, and offers these features:

Email campaigns
Mobile-friendly email designer
Email template library
SMS marketing
SMS and email personalization
Chat
Unlimited deals and contacts
Advanced lead segmentation
Custom sign-up forms
Sales CRM system
1 shared inbox
Transactional emails
Core API
Advanced templating language
Workflow editor
Page tracking
Marketing automation workflows for 2,000 contacts
Real-time reporting

Sendinblue (Brevo) Lite Pricing

You’ll probably need a paid Sendinblue (Brevo) plan at some point, perhaps the Lite plan.

It has all the Free features above and adds these:

Optional A/B testing
No daily sending limit
Basic integrations

The Lite plan starts at $25 a month for 20,000 emails.

Sendinblue (Brevo) Premium Pricing

Of the four plans, Premium is Sendinblue’s most popular.

Why? Well, it has these features:

A/B testing
Social media Ads
Retargeting ads
3 shared inboxes
Unlimited marketing automation workflows
3 users

The Premium plan starts at $65 a month for 20,000 contacts. This affordable pricing is what makes Sendinblue (Brevo) one of the most-affordable Sharpsring competitors.

The Enterprise plan has everything mentioned above and adds:

Unlimited landing pages
Unlimited shared inboxes
Dedicated IP
Real-time reporting
Geography & device reporting
Heat map reporting
Advanced email stats
SLA.

For Enterprise pricing, you’ll need to contact Sendinblue (Brevo).

7. Zoho

Zoho is the creator of a business cloud software suite. A sales, marketing, IT, and HR solution, Zoho’s products include CRM Plus, Finance Plus, People Plus, Workplace, IT Management, and Marketing Plus.

Zoho One is its business operating system, while the apps feature all sorts of solutions for small businesses looking for alternatives to SharpSpring.

Zoho Features

Focusing on Zoho’s sales and marketing apps, here are the software’s top features.

CRM: Zoho’s CRM includes advanced analytics, customizations, integrations with more than 800 apps, and a flexible contract and pricing.
Social: Harness the power of social media with Zoho. Their social app can build custom reports based on your social data, monitor ongoing social media campaign success, and schedule as many posts as you need – the number is unlimited!
Campaigns: Elevate your marketing campaigns with comprehensive email marketing through Zoho’s platform. Broaden your customer reach with targeted, personalized email content. Customize email messages and automate when they go out and to who to save you valuable time.
PageSense: PageSense is Zoho’s personalization and conversion optimization platform. Use PageSense to create custom user experiences on your website for audience segments, personalize content to drive more engagement, and boost conversions.
Backstage: Do you have an event on the horizon? Zoho’s Backstage tool helps you create hybrid, virtual, or in-person events with ease. Besides creating and deploying the event, Backstage also features analytics for gauging success.
SalesIQ: For support, sales, and marketing teams, SalesIQ is part live chat software, part analytics platform. The marketing features include personalized content and customer engagement.
LandingPage: Zoho’s landing page software, appropriately called LandingPage, doesn’t require code to build seamless, appealing landing pages. Optimize your landing pages, track analytics, and personalize content for landing pages that convert.
Integrations: The marketplace of apps, tools, and software that integrate with Zoho is vast, as there are more than 1,500 options. Some of the biggest names include Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Twitter, Salesforce, Facebook, Google Drive, Dropbox, WooCommerce, Asana, and Stripe.

Zoho Pricing

Zoho offers four pricing plans to select from.

The first is the free plan, which costs $0 a month for one user and 20 subscriptions. You’ll have access to these features:

24-hour, five-day-a-week email support
Subscription metrics
Client self-service portals
Offline payments
Stripe integrations
Multi-currency support
Hosted payment pages

The Basic plan costs $49 a month per organization when billed annually. The plan includes three users, three automated workflows, and 500 customers.

In addition to everything above, here’s what else you get with the Basic plan:

24-hour, five-day-a-week phone support
Subscription metrics
Webhooks and REST API
Dunning for automatic payments
Several payment gateways
Hosted payment pages

The most popular of the four plans is the Standard plan, which costs $99 a month per organization when billed annually. The plan includes five users, 10 automated workflows, and 2,000 customers.

You can add these great features to your list with the Standard plan:

Custom buttons
Domain branding
Customer portal single sign-on
Web tabs
Subscription metrics

The fourth plan is the Professional plan for $249 a month per organization when billed annually. This plan includes 10 users, 10 automated workflows, and 5,000 customers.

In addition to every feature above, the Professional plan also includes these exclusives:

24-hour, five-day-a-week live chat support
Integration with Twilio
Custom schedulers

8. Ontraport

Next, we’ve got the business automation software Ontraport. Catered toward small businesses, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs, Ontraport offers a variety of solutions for marketers, support teams, and salespeople, making for one of the best alternatives to SharpSpring.

Some of those solutions include pages and forms, streamlined payment options, and no-code web apps.

Ontraport Features

Let’s look at some other Ontraport features of note.

Mobile CRM app: Ontraport’s mobile CRM app allows you to track and modify workflows from your phone. You can also review performance data, leads, conversions, and more. Automate within the CRM app using custom objects.
Task automation: Your time is precious, and Ontraport knows that. That’s why you can automate tasks within the software, whether that’s sending out initial correspondence to a lead or customer, filing paperwork, or reviewing testimonials.
Campaign automation: You can also automate your email campaigns using Ontraport’s drag-and-drop campaign editor. Whether you want deep funnel conversion reports, split testing, or cross-channel experiences, this feature can do it all.
Ontraport Systems: Use Ontraport Systems to help you get started with your marketing endeavors. This tool features a catalog of follow-systems, campaigns, and funnels with a trusty track record you can feel good about.
SMS and email messaging: Reach out to your audience more efficiently using two-way text messaging and three email editors, including the HTML Editor, OntraMail Editor when sending graphics-heavy newsletters, and the Simple Mail Editor for more basic email correspondence.
Facebook Custom Audience: If you already use Facebook Custom Audience, Ontraport seamlessly integrates with it. You can create campaigns to onboard new clients, turn around cart abandonment, and more. Even better? It’s all automated.

Not happy with HubSpot? Take a look at our blog post introducing the top HubSpot competitors.

Ontraport Pricing

Ontraport has four pricing plans to select from.

The first is the Basic plan starting at $24 a month. It comes packed with the following features:

File hosting and download links
Custom mailserver domain
Two-way SMS messaging
Drag-and-drop marketing automation
Unlimited email sending
Mobile app
Custom CRM

To beef up your marketing further, try the Plus plan starting at $83 a month. It has everything in the Basic plan, plus:

No Ontraport branding
Fulfillment lists
Tracked trigger links
Automation webhooks
Video hosting
Default permissions and roles
Google Calendar syncing
Lead routing
Task automation
Pipeline tracking card view
Advanced CRM, including Companies and Deals

Ontraport’s most popular plan is the Pro plan, which starts at $124 a month. Offering more customization, you get these features plus everything above:

One-on-one email deliverability consulting
Transactional emails
Deep funnel conversion tracking
Facebook Custom Audience Integration
Split automations
Conversion and lead source reporting
Affiliate partner programs
Lead scoring
Custom permissions and roles

The fourth plan is the Enterprise plan, which starts at $249 a month. This plan offers the most features of all, including everything above and:

Private infrastructure
Private Ips
Custom email and contact lists
Unlimited custom fields
Custom navigation by role
Field-level permissions

9. Mailchimp

As another alternative to SharpSpring, we also recommend Intuit Mailchimp. You mostly know Mailchimp for its email services, but did you know the company also doubles as an automation brand?

Mailchimp can also help you upload and store images, and its insights are top-notch.

Mailchimp Features

Let’s dive into the handy features Mailchimp offers its user base.

Dynamic Content: Mailchimp’s Dynamic Content includes individualized blocks in an email to help you personalize your content and drive more engagement.
Subject Line Helper: The Subject Line Helper issues you feedback in real-time on the quality of your subject lines so you can learn to improve this difficult part of writing an email.
Marketing automation: Mailchimp’s suite of marketing automation tools includes retargeting ads, transactional emails, and the Customer Journey Builder to understand better how your audience proceeds through the funnel.
A/B testing: Which version of your email is best? Rather than guess, Mailchimp can tell you with its split testing.
Integrations: Mailchimp integrates with all your favorite marketing and sales tools, apps, and software, such as Stripe, Yelp for Business, Shopify, QuickBooks Online, WordPress, Facebook, LinkedIn, Canva, and Adobe Photoshop.

Mailchimp Pricing

If you can see Mailchimp as one of the best SharpSpring alternatives, check out these pricing plans.

The Free plan costs $0 a month. You can send 1,000 emails a month and open access to one user and one audience. The other features of the plan include the following:

30 days of email support
Limited pre-built email templates
Basic analytics and reporting
Landing pages and forms
Creative Assistant

The Essentials plan costs $13 a month and includes 5,000 monthly emails, three users, and three audiences. In addition to the above features, you also gain access to these:

Pre-built email templates
Assisted onboarding
Two roles in role-based access
No Mailchimp branding
Split testing
Automated customer journeys
24/7 chat and email support

Mailchimp recommends the Standard plan, which costs $20 a month and includes 6,000 monthly emails, five users, and five audiences. You get every feature above plus:

Four roles in role-based access
Custom-coded templates
Campaign manager
Send time optimization
Content optimizer
Dynamic content
Pre-built journeys
Predictive segmentation

The last plan from Mailchimp is the Premium plan, which makes a much bigger cost jump at $350 a month. This plan offers you 150,000 monthly emails and unlimited users and audiences.

Besides gaining access to every feature we’ve discussed, you can also use these:

Comparative reporting
Advanced segmentation
Multivariate testing
Five roles in role-based access
Dedicated onboarding

Wrap Up

SharpSpring is a good marketing automation software, but it’s not the only one, and it’s certainly not priced for small businesses.

Drip, HubSpot, Keap, Sendinblue (Brevo), and ActiveCampaign are all great SharpSpring alternatives. But for small businesses, it doesn’t get better than EngageBay. See why:

SharpSpring charges you $399 a month for 1,000 contacts. Once your company grows and you have about 20,000 contacts, you’ll need to dish out a whopping $1,299 a month!

In contrast, for $99 a month, EngageBay offers unlimited contacts and all the goodness of the most advanced marketing automation and customizable CRM features.

You can also book a 30-minute demo with our experts at a time of your convenience.

9 Affordable SharpSpring Alternatives For SMBs [With Pricing, Features]