HoneyBook

Pros

I love how easy it is to use, and how amenable the HB team is to updating the software if you have a feature request or complaint. It provides very visual, easy user prompts that allow me to easily accomplish what I need in a fraction of the time of other software apps I've tried.

Cons

It's annoying that I can't delete the default emails that came with my account to replace them with my own workflow, so myself or a team member doesn't get confused with their suggested emails vs. the ones I actually want to use.

Pros

Honeybook is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. Luckily, I started using it when I began my business, so I didn't need to transfer any existing CRM or sales data over. When I was onboarding, HoneyBook's support staff loaded in a bunch of pre-designed templates specific to my industry. They also took images I sent them of my products and prices and turned them into usable sales proposals. That alone has saved me WEEKS of time that I would have had to spend learning how to use HoneyBook and manually inputting my content.

Cons

The time tracker does not function to the extent that I need it to. I currently use Time Doctor to track my time, but it would be nice if I could keep everything in HoneyBook.

Also, I oftentimes don't see my reminders for following up with "tasks" for clients in my projects pipeline. If there's a way to have those notifications automatically sync with my personal google calendar and send me an email reminder, that would be helpful. Pipedrive's CRM and sales pipeline does a really great job of showing urgent prospects to follow up with. I think it color-codes them too.

Also, the email feature within HoneyBook can be a bit confusing. Sometimes, I can't tell if an email sent or not. The notes are also not displayed in a way that's very easy to read. It would be nice to add bullets, bold text, underline, etc. Pipedrive does a really great job of showing all of the email threads and notes between clients and multiple team members in their CRM.

Also, the first time I sent an invoice, HoneyBook automatically included a place for gratuity/tip. I've now figured out how to turn that setting off, but I couldn't see that it was automatically included in my invoice ahead of time. With my business (and I think most), they will never need gratuity, so I think that's kind of an odd setting. Maybe instead of having to click and review the settings in the left side bar of invoices, there could be an extra prompt to review those settings before the user sends the proposal to their client.

Pros

Ability to quickly and easily create and send invoices as well as easy payments!

Cons

When I first started I was so overwhelmed with all they have to offer, but after signing up for their free webinar/tour it answered so many of my questions.
So I guess put simply, the learning curve?

Pros

Keeps contracts in one place, able to accept credit cards. You can network with other vendors, and they seem to really concentrate more on this than actually developing software that works well.

Cons

I am a "founding" Honeybook user and bought the lifetime membership. At first, HB was very convenient. The learning curve was very frustrating as the online software had many MANY bugs. It still does. The entire premise behind the software was to free up your time, have all your projects in one place, sign contract, get paid, etc. Yes, great idea! However, the software has so many glitches! You're not able to even edit a person in your contacts. Their customer support team used to be great you could actually message a real person - now you have to wait a day or two to get an email answer and most of the time they just send you a link to deal with your problem. Once you email your client the contract, everything goes down the Honeybook "rabbit hole". My clients are tech savvy and they can't even figure out Honeybook - the emails that I've received from frustrated clients is numerous. Save your time and money and get another online software that will actually do the job - like Sprout Studio or Dubsado. Wish I would have done that from the beginning. Regretting my purchase since my lifetime "membership" isn't transferrable and Honeybook continues to make money off of me by accepting credit card payments. I looked at 17hats, which also didn't have great reviews before I purchased Honeybook. Moving on, however, I'm assuming that the process will not be easy transferring existing contracts and other office files.

Pros

I love how organized I feel using this product - I can see at a glance where I am in the process with all of my clients and it is amazing to pull up all the correspondence with each client in one place. It has made a world of difference and I am beyond happy with it!

Cons

The thing I like least is the limitation when building templates for contracts, proposals, questionnaires, etc. - I am in the business of photography and delivering beautiful images is what sets my soul on fire! I wish I could add some of my images into some of my documents and have full control over the size and their location in the document. The way it is set up right now is a square crop on any image which can only be left, center, and right page. Dubsado has the leg up on Honeybook in that regard but otherwise I am totally happy with Honeybook.