While DocSend is a helpful tool for document sharing, it is a bit expensive and has its limitations when your business is growing rapidly. This blog offers unbiased answers to some frequently asked questions and helps you figure out if it's time for you to move on from DocSend.
What is DocSend?
DocSend is a secure document-sharing platform. It also allows you to set up data rooms, execute eSignatures, and track engagement analytics.
Why is DocSend popular?
DocSend gets the job done. You get actionable insights into every piece of content that you share. These insights will assist you in delivering the right information in your emails and follow-up meetings. You also don’t need help setting up DocSend – the product is intuitive and easy to use.
Why does DocSend get away with high pricing?
There are plenty of alternatives that offer similar if not more capabilities for a lower price, but DocSend remains the preferred choice. Users generally pick the Standard Plan which is the most popular option. While many reviewers complain about the high pricing on G2, users unanimously agree that there is no other tool that does just this and does it this well.
But an extra 20 dollars just for Salesforce integration? Come on.
When is DocSend right for you?
DocSend is right for you when you:
- Want zero commitment with monthly pricing
- Have no time to implement more full-fledged tools
- Are exploring many use cases simultaneously like investor relations and sales conversations
- Have a small sales team with no content created for them just yet
- Can share one account (like Netflix) with your team to manage the high pricing 🤫
When do you outgrow DocSend?
The problem isn’t that DocSend isn’t reliable. The problem is that many businesses continue to use DocSend even when they are too big and have many more needs.
Here’s what I learned from talking to DocSend customers and reading hundreds of G2 reviews about when to move on.
- When you have a CRM in place that needs to integrate with the content you share in emails
- When you need a bird’s eye view of how your teams are sharing content and how your audience is consuming it
- When you have any content at all that the sales teams can use in their conversations
If you meet any of the above three conditions, you have outgrown DocSend. This is good news because it means you’ve progressed and are ready to move forward. Integrating your sales enablement tool with your CRM alone will unlock a new level of insight. While DocSend offers basic Salesforce integration, it comes at an additional $20/user/month and records only a select few data points.
This matters even when you don’t have beautiful collateral curated by your marketing team. Content is more than just documents today — the FAQs your sales team has been answering, the list of your referenceable customers, the reviews on sites like G2 and TrustRadius, the talking points used for winning against competitors, and so much more. Every successful company has them.
Are you sure DocSend is capable of handling all this information that is relevant to sellers?
Russ says DocSend is not a sales enablement tool
Let’s get one thing out of the way. We adore DocSend – their product, marketing, positioning, everything. They have never claimed to be more than what they are.
Earlier this year, their CEO Russ Heddleston wrote a blog clarifying how DocSend is not a sales enablement tool. He claims DocSend is a high-impact deal negotiation tool instead. This is how he differentiates the two:
But, don’t you feel deal negotiation and sales enablement are married to each other? They cannot live in different tool silos. It’d be a sad world if there was no way to see a unified picture.
You want your sellers in charge of their deals but not lost in figuring out the right information to share with the prospect. Sales enablement is more than keeping sellers on brand or message. Reps need relevant content, social proof, competitive insights, and persona intel in the flow of their work. Everybody wins when they don’t have to search for it.
Looks like Russ hasn’t met GTM Buddy yet
GTM Buddy is a tool that does both deal negotiation and sales enablement (and at almost the same price as DocSend).
We agree with Russ that email opens don’t mean anything for prospect engagement. This is why GTM Buddy offers sellers engagement analytics to understand how their shared content has performed.
By understanding how individual buyers have engaged with the content, sellers can be better prepared for their next meeting. They can also create digital sales rooms and collaborate with buying teams.
The salesperson remains in the driving seat but uses AI-recommended content to make their life easier. GTM Buddy offers guidance to the sellers and doesn’t take away deal control.
Moreover, you get a bird’s eye view since all prospect interactions are linked to opportunity data in your CRM. You can tie content to real impact by viewing asset-wise buyer engagement to determine which assets have made an impression. Internal engagement helps you understand how content meant for just your sellers is performing.
For improved seller effectiveness, Entropik Tech replaced DocSend with GTM Buddy at a lower cost per user
At Entropik Tech, an Emotion AI startup, the sales team was using DocSend to share content in their buyer interactions. While 60% of their sales content was on DocSend, the rest was scattered. There was no clarity on content success. The sales and marketing teams had difficulty collaborating on content creation and responding to feedback.
As a rapidly growing startup, Entropik wanted things DocSend couldn’t offer:
- One source of truth for sales content
- Deep integration with Salesforce
- Insights into how the sales team was using the content
- Content management and organization capabilities
- Contextual recommendations in the flow of work
- Learning management system
Despite being a past user of the popular CMS Showpad, the marketing leader preferred GTM Buddy for its industry-first capabilities like auto-indexing and contextual recommendations. It was also a no-brainer because the cost per user was lower with GTM Buddy than with DocSend.
They migrated from DocSend to GTM Buddy within 2 weeks and have seen an impact on the bottom line. Here is what their enablement manager said in his G2 review.
“GTM Buddy as a tool is easy to use and gives the sales team a comprehensive view of the content available. The platform gives detailed insights into content usage and visibility into content consumption by the sales team. Integration with SFDC is a big highlight.”
-Salil Mishra, Sales Enablement Manager, Entropik Tech
Win more with GTM Buddy
Our founders have made it their mission to redefine the category sales enablement, which is currently dominated by legacy tools that are a decade behind on product innovation. GTM Buddy not only brings you all the capabilities of legacy platforms but also opens up new possibilities.
If you believe you’re ready to move on from DocSend, consider GTM Buddy – an all-in-one tool that uses AI as its foundation to remove busywork from enablement and support sellers in their flow of work. Book a consultation call with us.
