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Marketo Engage vs Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring): Which is a better fit?

Updated on February 2nd, 2025
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Summary
Key features rated by users
Features selected based on 4,658 reviews from Marketing Automation users.
% Fit
Missing features
Not enough reviews
Feature ratings
Email Marketing
4.6
Marketing Automation
4.6
API
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Lead Capture
4.4
CRM
NA
% Fit
Not enough reviews
Feature ratings
Email Marketing
4.7
Marketing Automation
4.7
API
4.0
Lead Capture
4.9
CRM
4.8
User satisfaction
4.3
User reviews712
Ease of use
3.8
Functionality
4.3
Value for money
3.8
Customer support
3.9
4.6
User reviews765
Ease of use
4.3
Functionality
4.4
Value for money
4.6
Customer support
4.6
Price starts from
--
Not provided by vendor
Free version
Free trial
Monthly subscription
Free version
Free trial
Best for

For B2B or B2C companies that care about customer nurturing, customized and scalable segmentation, personalization and deep customer engagement.

Constant Contact's Lead Gen & CRM platform helps small B2B businesses get more leads, close faster and focus on what drives results with a unified marketing and sales platform.

User reviews
pros & cons
1 / 4
View Reviews
1 / 4
View Reviews
Video reviews
video-c3bd899f-dcb0-4079-5553-08db3244105e
John R
Senior Software Engineer
3.0

John: Hi, I'm John. I'm a senior application developer, and my role was actually taking on the migratory effort from all of our database objects and users from Oracle Eloqua to Marketo. And a lot of the effort was involved in basically sitting down with team members and both training them on how to use the new objects, but also coordinating with members from the Marketo team and making sure that we didn't lose any of our data when we migrated it. Also, I was involved in creation of landing pages and creation of users for tracking the behaviors inside of Marketo, as well as designing templates to be reused by our team members while sending out campaigns. As far as my star rating, I'd give it a three out of five stars. The business problems are very common among the types of businesses that employ digital marketing. You need to have some sort of solution for sending out an email when users are interested or don't know that they're interested in buying something. So it's imperative that you have something. In our case, we did not have a lot of resources to continue on the existing platform we were on, so we sought out, we found Marketo as an alternative that was very cost available to us. I like Marketo Engage because it's a one size fits all solution for most business owners. These would be small to medium size business owners. It's easy to use. There are a lot of functionality and features built into the platform, from creating email campaigns to tracking information about your users, your unique visitors versus your return visitors, and building your business better. It's a nice one size fits all way to do it. As far as shortcomings for Marketo Engage, the things that I like the least about it are that it's not really enterprise ready. At the time we were using it, there were a lot of event-based technologies that didn't work the way that we anticipated they would work. There was a lot of on-prem strategies for marketing that today, it might actually be looked at as a little bit antiquated. Things like events and expos and things like that. We've transitioned into a more digital version of those with things like webcasts and live streams and things like that. So there's a lot of things that the enterprise businesses might be lacking in Marketo Engage. Yeah, they have a ways to go to build that.

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video-6295fecf-7134-45bd-5862-08d910eb139a
Josh A
CMO
5.0

Josh A.: My name is Josh. I'm the founder and CMO, and I give SharpSpring a five out of five. If you want more reviews like this, you can click below. Prior to using SharpSpring. I was using a few different tools. I was using Pardot, Pipedrive, ActiveCampaign and MailChimp. The reason that I was looking to change solutions is because those solutions... Well, it depends on the solution. For Pardot, it wasn't really easy to use. It required more of a professional kind of Pardot expert, and we didn't always have one around. For Pipedrive, it was more of a CRM, so it wasn't really a fully functional marketing or sales automation software. It really just kind of kept track of your leads. With ActiveCampaign, I felt like their tool's on a good track, but not nearly as refined as what I later found with SharpSpring. Soon as I saw SharpSpring, I realized there was a lot more functionality and capability and that it was more refined than ActiveCampaign. And the last one that I would explain would be MailChimp, and MailChimp really worked well as a good email marketing tool, but it wasn't a holistic kind of complete marketing and sales automation tool. So those are the reasons, those are the tools that I use prior to SharpSpring. The reason I chose to use SharpSpring and [inaudible 00:01:21] SharpSpring is because it's so robust. I feel like the team at SharpSpring does a good job of continually adding new features, and plus, they have a very solid base, a good foundation of features already in place. It allows us to do both marketing and sales automation, all in one software, which is a huge convenience. I don't have to worry about connecting different pieces of software. For the most part, it all works together in one tool. And it's very affordable, knowing that you get all those different tools in one place as well. If there's a capability that it doesn't have, then it works really well with APR so you can, you can kind of make up a gap for anything that you don't find built-in to SharpSpring by default, which makes it just a very robust and powerful tool. Yeah. SharpSpring, as far as integration goes, was very easy to integrate and stand up. That part was really quick. I would say there's a little bit of a challenge in just being able to customize the software. And it's probably a challenge to customize and integrate software in general, when you're dealing with any sales and marketing automation tool; every company has very specific needs. I know quite a few companies that actually use SharpSpring, so I've been able to see this firsthand. But everyone has different needs and different capabilities, so getting it just right takes a lot of work and a lot of refinements. I think it's important for companies to know that from the start. What I will say is the SharpSpring does a really good job of giving you options and flexibility in their solution set so that you can make sure that everything gets set up to the way that you like. It just may take a little while to get there as you're figuring out exactly how to harness their tools and harness their setup options, to get it set up exactly how your organization wants. When someone is considering to look to integrate SharpSpring or to choose a similar like sales and marketing automation tool, there's a few things that I'd recommend. Foremost is, I would recommend creating a very clear set of use cases. For me, a use case is just how you're going to use the software, so if you can come up with all of the core reasons that you're going to be able to use the software and want to use a software, define those at the very beginning before you even start your search. So that makes your search a lot easier; if you're asking questions, you'll know what to ask. You'll know what are must haves, what are not. And then as you are getting sold on the software or going through the sales process, you can ask to make sure that all those things can be accomplished with the software and what type of time and cost to expect with a software. Now with SharpSpring, for the most part, everything is built into the same price. There's no major ad-ons, so that's a huge advantage, but in general, it's just nice to know what exactly it is that you really need in your software and for your solution before you get into the sales process.

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User interface
75130 video thumbnail}
1 Video
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Do these products fit your needs?

Prioritize real-user-identified key features according to your needs to find your best fit.

Logo Img
--%
Logo Img
--%
A/B Testing
207
Important
Activity Dashboard
388
Important

Marketo Engage

Top Features
40/42
  • CRM
  • Sales Analytics
  • A/B Testing
  • Activity Dashboard
  • API
  • Campaign Analytics
  • Campaign Management
  • Conversion Tracking
  • Customizable Branding
  • Customizable CTAs
  • Customizable Forms
  • Data Import/Export
  • Drag & Drop
  • Drip Campaigns
  • Dynamic Content
  • Email Marketing
  • Email Tracking
  • Engagement Tracking
  • Event Triggered Actions
  • Landing Pages/Web Forms
  • Lead Capture
  • Lead Generation
  • Lead Management
  • Lead Qualification
  • Marketing Automation
  • Marketing Calendar
  • Mobile Access
  • Multi-Campaign
  • Multi-Channel Communication
  • Multi-Channel Marketing
  • Multivariate Testing
  • Real-Time Data
  • ROI Tracking
  • Search Marketing
  • Segmentation
  • SMS Marketing
  • Social Marketing
  • Template Management
  • Third-Party Integrations
  • Visual Analytics
  • Website Visitor Tracking
  • Workflow Management
See All features
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Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

37/42
Show Marketing Automation Software Features +

Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)

Marketo Engage
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)
Deployment
  • Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
  • Desktop - Mac
  • Desktop - Windows
  • Desktop - Linux
  • Desktop - Chromebook
  • On-Premise - Windows
  • On-Premise - Linux
  • Mobile - Android
  • Mobile - iPhone
  • Mobile - iPad
Support
  • Email/Help Desk
  • FAQs/Forum
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • 24/7 (Live rep)
  • Chat
Training
  • In Person
  • Live Online
  • Webinars
  • Documentation
  • Videos
Marketo Engage
  • By Adobe
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 1982
Lead Gen & CRM (formerly SharpSpring)
  • By Constant Contact
  • Located in United States
  • Founded in 1998
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