At least that’s how we chose to take it when we heard from dozens of our agency partners that HubSpot asked them to fill out a survey specifically about SharpSpring’s product and agency program so that HubSpot could improve its own.  As you can imagine, we felt honored when we read this email:
It’s gotta be love, right? HubSpot loves us!
Guess what? The feeling is mutual. Â We love HubSpot too!
The simple fact of the matter is that we would not be in business if not for companies like HubSpot, Marketo and Eloqua. These companies were the pioneers of the marketing automation space, and collectively they spend hundreds of millions of dollars educating marketers about the benefits of marketing automation. To this day, HubSpot runs circles around us (and everyone else) when it comes to content creation.
We owe at least part of our success to HubSpot, and we are genuinely grateful.  That’s why it’s so unbelievably humbling that HubSpot thinks so much of us too.
Even more than HubSpot’s attention, we are humbled and grateful that over 500 agencies have joined SharpSpring since we launched just 18 short months ago – many switching from these great companies that we compete with.
So, in the spirit of openness, here are the top 10 reasons we think we’ve been so successful so quickly:
- SharpSpring doesn’t compete with marketing agencies. Instead, we built our entire company around them.
- Marketing agencies are our customers, and we believe a marketing agency’s customers are theirs – not ours. We don’t insert ourselves into the agency-client relationship.
- We don’t believe agencies can thrive if half of their clients’ money goes to a marketing automation provider.
- SharpSpring agencies typically pay less than 1/10th  the cost of a typical HubSpot license (or Marketo, Act-On, Pardot, etc.) for full marketing automation with zero sacrifices. That’s right –  1/10th the cost.
- Month-to-Month.  SharpSpring doesn’t trap agencies in long-term annual contracts – if an agency is not happy, they can leave.
- We provide agencies with a rebrandable, white-labeled platform that reinforces the agency’s brand (not our own) with their clients.
- SharpSpring agencies get a single sign-on platform with client management features designed to make things easy and hassle free.
- We work our asses off to support our agency partners. Â That support is unlimited and 100% free.
- We work hard to be innovative. We launched our integrated, free CRM more than a year ahead of HubSpot.
- We run an open company and listen to our partners carefully. Â All of our agency partners have my cell phone number and know they can call me with a good idea or just to let me know we screwed up. Â We try to incorporate the former, and fix the latter.
We are grateful for the success we’ve achieved so far and flattered to even be on the radar of a company as great as HubSpot.  We look forward to continuing the stiff, but friendly, competition….
Rick Carlson
SharpSpring Founder & President
PS : If you aren’t currently a SharpSpring partner and want to see for yourself why we’ve caught the attention of HubSpot and over 500 agency partners, I strongly encourage you to join us for a live, one-on-one or group demo.
