Act! Reviews

Love the ease of use for both entering data and retrieving info

Comments: I use it to track my clients and prospects and I can tell anyone the last time I made contact, what that was - letter, Email, Phone Call, etc. and it allows me to connect important info to any of my clients, prospects, friends and family.

Pros:

The fact that I was able to use the product immediately with no instruction was a great pro. Entering data and retrieving info about a client is easy, and building history of calls, Email messages, letters in a record is great.

Cons:

I am not happy with support as all they do is provide a fix when there is a problem, but not direction in how to build reports or use other functionality. I have had to fix the same problem with direction from their service group several times. If I ask for help with reports they tell me I need to find a consultant for that.

Basic CRM that does the job

Pros:

ACT is easy to use and does what a CRM is supposed to do: manage contacts and contact information. It is easy to create contacts, companies, links and search for them. It can be used offline which makes it extremely convenient when there is no internet access (eg: business trips). The DB will synchronize when you are back online. Another thing is that it is an off the shelf product: it does not require any development to configure.

Cons:

The software lacks customizable reports and dashboard. It is extremely complicated to setup a good dashboard with the reports that you need. There is not much options or flexibility, and the display does not always end up being right (missing items). So it is not the best for sales/opportunities management.

ACT CRM, Great Starter CRM.

Comments: For many years that I did use act I really enjoyed it was a great tool getting used to working with it was very easy for me. we did a lot of customization to the dashboard added some imagery additional fields it was really awesome. We didn't get to the point to using their marketing campaign products but the email templates were really awesome really awesome

Pros:

I really liked the contact management history management email integration and tracking grouping of contacts opportunity groups add opportunity ratings.

Cons:

Act is a really great entry level CRM it has some functionality's third party capabilities other products you can purchase from the store but it just doesn't have what it takes to get you over the hill when you get a little bit larger

My life in ACT

Comments: Just so good at accessing information and organising future events.

Pros:

It is so comprehensive and keeps awesome records in an easy to access manner.

Cons:

Nothing. it does everything i need to eun my life and my business.

A GOOD STABLE BASE FOR CRM ... JUST WISH ENHANCING WAS A LITTLE EASIER

Comments: We need ACT, and it is the core of what we do. We would like to see ways that we can add depth and richness to a good platfrom

Pros:

I like the fact that a team of 5 can share effectively in real time, I like the ease of changing layouts and adding fields, and with Seamless the ablity to easily prdcue high quality documenation. It's link to outlook and ODBC is good and it is a stable, which being at the core of our business is a good thing

Cons:

There are many things I think we could do to be more productive but can't, and we do see fields being changed or lost "by themselves". The web version was a poor version of the Pro, and we haven't been able to make it available when offline, which is a frustration.

Act and your need for a CRM

Comments: Without the introduction of a CRM, i doubt we would have had the client retention we have been lucky to have, we had trialed other CRM's, from free online to high cost ones like Goldmine - they all do much the same but our need to a specific way of accessing and manipulating our data left us with Act as the only real option. One option was to have a bespoke system but costs in the region of £100,000 and constant support didnt make much business sense at the time and after seeing similar projects fail at rival companies we think the route we took has been justified

Pros:

Having the ability to scale requirements has helped the business grow without huge outlay. Has the capability to use high end hardware and now has a Cloud based solution so removing the need for costly onsite equipment if required

Cons:

As usual costs, the license model has change from perpetual to the per user per year, the Cloud based variant is expensive but comparable to others. The need for a 3rd party module to fully use the software for our needs has increased usability but at a cost, would of been nice to include in subscription

Small Business Owner & ACT! User since V2

Comments: I'm a small business owner, mostly focused on selling services and ACT! has enabled me to manage all aspects of selling, marketing, client communications and far more. Great customer support over the past almost 30 years as an ACT! user.

Pros:

Ability to customize the product for my preferred activities - follow-ups, invoicing, managing client relations, sales pipeline tracking and more.

Cons:

Nothing to complain about as they've gotten the product to work efficiently with the past 6 or 7 versions. Upgrading used to be inconvenient but they've made the upgrade process seemless

Good As A Contact Manager, Not As A 2020 CRM

Comments: ACT! was very helpful in moving our business forward at a time where we mainly needed to focus on contact management. Now that I need a true CRM, there are better alternatives for us.

Pros:

I used ACT daily for years. It works well as a contact manager and can help track email conversions through an Outlook plugin.

Cons:

The program lacks the advanced functionality you would expect with a modern day customer relationship management software. The design is also extremely dated.

Small Business' should use ACT! for organizational needs.

Comments: As long as you are not trying to overload the system creating multiple profiles for many companies, this product works great for smaller companies trying to get their foot in the door for a cross connection software with sales, help desk for technical team, and financial support all in one.

Pros:

You can input any information and update it and the information can be seen by anyone in the organization. Makes communication between teams very simple and quick.

Cons:

I am not a fan of the way they use multiple contacts past two for a business. If there are a list of people to communicate with each profile has up to two contacts, with more than two a new profile for the company has to be created, creating multiple profiles for each company which can cause confusion for other sections of the company, including processing payments and sending to the wrong contact at the other end or returning a product to the wrong section of said business.

It is a useful application if you are a solo individual not needing integration.

Pros:

There seems to be a lot of functionality and ability to work in-depth with contacts and the information provided with the contacts.

Cons:

It is not easy to have more than one person work off of the same database and keep everything integrated. We sync with Gmail and at this time it only allows for one account to sync email messages. We can sync the contacts to multiple accounts with the help of a third party software but only one for the Gmail messages.

Awful experience with Act!

Pros:

There is absolutely nothing I like about this software.

Cons:

Zero functionality. It can't pull any reports that are meaningful. When I think I can pull a report that is meaningful, I realize the data isn't even correct. It has almost no dynamic features; for instance, it can't update data by pulling it from another source; it has to be manually changed, which leads to errors. Also, Act! web premium only works if you have a really high quality internet connection. For example, we have 100MBPS internet; however, the speed is very inconsistent, which causes the Premium web version of Act! to constantly crash every time the internet slows down, while any normal web app would continue to load, or try to load, or just slow down. But Act! doesn't have that functionality; it just crashes, becomes unresponsive, and doesn't save any of the data you just input. When you restart your browser, it makes you sign in again. Also, almost no functionality is available on the web app; you can't delete contacts on the web version; you cannot import anything into the web version, and you can't manipulate any data. You can only input completely new data. It's literally awful. Contacts don't link well with groups or 'companies.' If you have seven people working for the same company and that company moves offices. If you change the address to that company, you have to individually change those seven people who work there. But the worst feature is the importing tool. You can't import in any 'advanced' way at all unless you pay for an importer tool, which you can't be sure will work for you. When talking with our third party Act! customer service person, I asked if I could try the import tool to make sure it did what I want before I bought it, or if I could have him try it for me to make sure it worked, and he said "No. There is no way to provide that service." When asking a simple question like, "So your input tool didn't find the duplicate contacts and just imported 700 duplicates. Is there a way to delete the duplicates all at once? Because all I see is an option to delete the duplicates one by one?" they told me there was no way to do it but that they would charge me to have them delete them for me. And I was quoted at an over 50 hour project quote, for something that took me one minute to do. So I just restored my backup file and started over. Also, I purchased a duplicate removal tool that was developed by a third party software company, and I thought it would work great, but it turns out that half of the contacts in the system had been uploaded with their full name as one fiedl and the other half with their first middle and last name as different fields. There is now way to differentiate this in ACT because it displays them the same way, so it merged all of the John's into one John contact. So again, I had to restore to a backed up database. The Swiftpage integration is awful. The only way I am able to use Swiftpage to any success is to export every single email, name, and address in Act! into an Excel spreadsheet, remove any duplicates, sort by region or the way I want to set up groups to email blast in Swiftpage, go to the actual swiftpage6.com website and upload the spreadsheets into Swiftpage manually. The Swiftpage email marketing HTML editor is also pretty bad. You can write beautiful HTML to display a great email, but Swiftpage mutilates the code in ways no one could ever understand. I am a professional coder - javascript, html, css - and it takes me hours, sometimes days, to design a marketing email that displays correctly in any sort of email client. In fact, it doesn't even ever look great when it's done, even after all the hard work. I would highly recommend any other email marketing company other than Swiftpage. I was on hold with a Swiftpage rep once for over three hours to find out why my email blast which was supposed to be sent by 10AM was still in the queue by 7pm. It actually didn't go out till almost midnight, and we had a 3% open rate, when we normally have a 15% open rate with other email marketing software. Please, please please do not buy this. With a database as important and large as mine, it's going to be extremely hard to switch to another software without major delays in service. The company has used it since 2002, and there is a lot of important data that needs to be imported into to a new system. It's going to cost a lot of money to do, and we will do it, but I just pray and beg that no one else ever has to be in the same situation that I am in if they don't have to be.

Value of using Act

Comments: See What I liked most.

Pros:

Started using Act about 25 years ago. Have added contacts since and used most of the features. Over time the use of certain features such as mass mailings to customer lists have faded, and now occasionally by e-mail. Over time I have come to value how I can locate someone that was a customer years ago, and have a complete record of a transaction, conversation or specific subject we were involved in. You have to learn to use for nearly every phone conversation or piece of correspondence. If you do, you will always be able to revert back to a contact, and who said what when. What correspondence was involved etc. To say nothing about scheduling appointments, and being reminded of birthdays and other important events. Act is the backbone of my business and personal contact information. Invaluable and used every day. I have used over may revisions and Company changes. Sometimes the customer service is better than others. Presently the Customer Service is Excellent. If you are a first time user or considering starting to use it I would recommend you take a course on using it as many of the features are not apparent unless someone shows them to you. A great tool to keep track of what everyone on your team is doing and as they move on a record of what they did and who was involved. A great tool that I rely on daily. Happy to spread the word.

Cons:

Many features that I never use, but see how others would. Don't like having to use MS Outlook for e-mail. Would like to access completely by phone, but my database is too big.

Act! is a flexible tool to track data the way you want to see it.

Comments: Act allows us to manage a vast database of over 85,000 contacts and 15,000 companies, as well as over 100,000 Table records between the two, with ease. Any information we need to find or update with these records is as easy as it gets, and makes our customer service team's jobs a relative breeze. There are hiccups here and there, especially with newer features to the program, but there's never been any issues that interrupt work or cause data loss, and the tech support available is very handy at resolving any issues we might have.

Pros:

Everything in a Contact or Company record's layout can be customized, moved around, hidden on a per-user basis, and otherwise manipulated however your organization needs it to be. My company makes heavy use of this feature, having multiple team-based layouts that present the most important data to those teams prominently. We also greatly enjoy the software's ability to perform advanced queries on the data that can be saved and re-run with a single click to provide accurate reports and drill down to specific needs in moments.

Cons:

There are quite a few features that feel incomplete or at least not fully integrated. For example, the software comes with the ability to create and Mail Merge templated emails that imports information like a contact's name, and the Smart Tasks feature allows you to automatically perform certain tasks including sending an email to a contact, yet for some reason you can't do both - that is, you can't set a Smart Task to perform a Mail Merge to a templated email and send the result, meaning that the automated emails cannot contain information personal to the contact such as their name.

My Most Important Sales Tool

Comments: I utilize ACT's calendar to organize my day and I keep notes in the NOTES section for all communications with the contact. I also use Marketing Automation but just started using it last year.

Pros:

The CRM is easy to use and one can learn how to use it very quickly. Act keeps up with the changing times and provides the tools that a sales person needs to optimize his/her performance. Introduction of Marketing Automation was an added bonus that provides a sales person with more power to find leads

Cons:

The pricing has risen over the years to the point that I feel it is now on the high end of the spectrum. I probably utilize only 20 - 25% of all the ACT features; but I'm paying for a software program that can accomplish more than what I need. I started with the original ACT when it first came out (forgot how many years ago) and it had a very attractive price at that time.

e-marketing, marketing automation

Comments: I would pay twice if I will be able to go to previous abilities that ACT has

Pros:

Act itself is as a good database software. Compering to previous version synchronized with Swift Page it has a better platform to create a template. There are other things you improve but for our small company we do not use them (like several times of sending same e-mail to one customer)

Cons:

In Marketing Automation: - you can not add and SAVE our data base fields in the template - you can not send an e-mail from the template to one person (only to the group) - you can not sent an e-mail to lookup (every time you must create the group from lookup) - may e-mails is getting lost (in our 2 campaigns about 20% e-mails were not delivered) In e-marketing - you can not add and SAVE our data base fields in the template ****** In your previous version of ACT I was able to add fields from my database SAVE them in the template and send them to lookup without a need to create the group. ****** And your customer service ??? I believe you can do better work. For example - I wrote an e-mail to you about month ago - with totally no answers from you.

Cheap product for a cheap price - plan on no tech support

Comments: Tech support sucks. [SENSITIVE CONTENT] , all the tech and customer support people hide. You will only get a phone call back. if you dont respond, your support ticket gets closed out. Its the year 2021, but you won't get a tech support person's employee id, email address, phone number, etc because ACT!'s policy is to hide them amidst all the versions ACT keeps implementing. Ask what level technichian a support person is and watch them get upset, say they dont like they way you are treating them and they will hang up.

Pros:

it was inexpensive. but you get what you pay for.

Cons:

No tech support. ACT is always putting out a new version. each new version trips off problems and requires new integrations and updates that they do not tell you about and cause integration issues with all of your other software expecially microsof.

Super Disappointed

Pros:

I liked this software to run my credit repair business. Keep track of letter management and clients. It was easy at first.

Cons:

After you purchase your license, in a year or 2 they discontinue the version and you have to pay for the license all over again. I had purchase 3 licenses and wanted to purchase a 4th one and they said I couldn't that I would have to upgrade to the monthly fee version where you pay monthly per license including for the licenses I already had. Now this year they discontinued the licenses I already purchased, they want me to upgrade and pay 550 per license all over again because they have a new version and will not give support nor fixes to the older versions. This is insane. I pay them for a license so they discontinue the product and expect me to purchase all licenses again. ON top of that, it is glitchy, it continue disconnects from Outlook. You call customer support and someone in India answers and they are clue less. Every time Outlook does an update or act updates it completely looses all integration. OH, and they give you 0 customer service, you have to pay for that separately.

Solid and Reliable CRM Product

Comments: I've used ACT! in one form or another for over 15 years now, between several different companies, starting from when they were owned by Sage. ACT! has always been a solid, well-designed and well-performing product that puts managing customer's contact information, records and sales first and foremost. While some platforms have broadened their reach, ACT! has always stayed true to what they do well, which is manage clients and sales opportunities, which is what really makes sales.

Pros:

ACT has been around for a long time, as has Swiftpage who aquired them. The software itself has continued to evolve and improve, but hasn't lost the overall feel it has always had. What I like the most is that they have cloud AND desktop platforms for those that might not need cloud services. They also have a large number of plans available, are affordable, and there are a good number of independent technicians out there that can help you with your data, and design third party add-ons too.

Cons:

The recent change that does not let owners of much older versions of the software activate what they already own has me concerned.

Worst customer support on the market

Pros:

we inherited this software and while it has some good basic functions, apart from knowing how to use it I have nothing positive to say about it

Cons:

Customer service is the WORST. I'm currently waiting for my rep to get back to me about an unresolved issue (it's been over 4 weeks since we were able to access our task lists). In the 4 weeks i have left numerouse messages and followed up with emails. As a total I received 1 email correspondence. We have 3 new staff members that started within the last month and although trying to reach out numerous times regarding setting up profiles for these staff, we haven't been able to get a response. ACT for web speed we have a database of about 28000 contacts and are unable to use ACT for web as it is that slow that it has become unusable. INTEGRATION Everytime there is a server update all integrations stop working. We have tried to set up email syncing since early this year. All that "support" has to say that it has to be our PC set ups. Yet they can't tell us which settings need to be changed.

Best featured and Best value CRM for Small business

Comments: Firstly, I'm an Act! Certified Consultant and I sell and provide services around Act! and have done so since 2001. Although I'm not a client, I have continually had to make an assessment about whether Act! is the right product for our prospective and existing clients. My personal experience is that there is no single software product that is suitable for every business. If you are a big enterprise, Act! isn't the product you are going to invest in. For small business though it should be at the top of your list to review. Act! has a greater depth and depth of functionality for the price of any CRM software in the market for the small business users. If there was something that were better I'd be inclined to be offering it to our clients. Act! has been around for nearly 30 years and the many things that you are likely to want to be able to do, Act! just does. Many of the small, simple, day to day tasks will be made easier by your use of Act!. Act! is a product that you will hear many loyal and satisfied clients say that they Love and that they can't do without. Act! is easy to use and it's highly configurable. It excels in a MS Windows environment, so if you are running a server with some desktops and laptops it's an ideal solution. It will run faster than any cloud based solution. Act! comes with both a Windows and Web based access. You could have some using it on their desktop in the office, and others using it via the web browser. The Web version doesn't completely match the windows version for functionality, but the gap is closing. With Act! you can deploy it on your own server so you own and control your data. You can still have the advantage of a web based login but know that your database is in an environment you control. Act! has a range of excellent third party add-ons that en-rich it's functionality and with a new API in the latest 18.1 version there will be many more integrations between Act! and other web based applications. If I were to simplfy where I see Act! in the market it would be to say it sits in the middle of the basic cloud offerings like Pipedrive, Insightly, Highrise etc. and the full blown CRM's from Saleforce, SugarCRM and Microsoft. If you are an established business that is looking for a best in class CRM to work on your MS Windows platform and still provide good mobile and web browser based access then Act! is ideal.

Software continues to break

Comments: Every time I call Act! Support I feel like the techs are just trying to get off the phone after they realize they are in over their heads. Each time I call they try to blame it on Microsoft Office and we have to do a repair, next they default to uninstalling Act! and reinstalling it. It is not really tech support if we keep putting a bandaid on the issue rather than addressing the root cause of the issue. This software is on a Terminal server meaning that each time this breaks for 1 user it impacts every user at this company, because each user has to logout and stop working. These issues not being addressed may cause this customer to stop doing business with our company and your company is certainty going to loose them as a customer as well.

Pros:

It is in bad taste that you will not allow this box to be left blank and are trying to force users to say something nice about your software. Every time I come in contact with your software it is because it is broken.(N/A)

Cons:

The Act! / Microsoft Office integration needs some work. It keeps breaking and we have to troubleshoot this issue with our customer on a weekly bases.

Product Great but Tech Support Stinks

Comments: I've been using Act! since the early 1990s, in three different industries. For the first industry, it increased my close ratio of willing qualified buyers from around 80% to over 95%. In the second and third industries that metric was not easily measurable because of long relationship lead times, but it dramatically assisted efficiency.

Pros:

Ease of use, flexibility of design, reports, ability to track relationships across multiple contacts, and mass mailing abilities

Cons:

Seems a little unstable at times for some features, and tech support is a game of Russian Roulette with perhaps one person in 10 who can troubleshoot a problem and fix it. The rest seem to be untrained, seem to have no analytical skills or trouble shooting abilities, seem to be reading off knowledge base scripts, and often make or recommend changes that end up making matters even worse. The product is WONDERFUL when it works properly, which is most of the time. But lookout for 2-7 days of downtime if you hit that problem that is too much for the low level tech support people.

Good for small business needs

Comments: Been using it for 15 years. Good overall,

Pros:

Highly customizable fields. At each upgrade, all my changes are carried forward without me needing to do anything. Solid follow-up system.

Cons:

My only complaint is the size of the application on the screen. The settings that I use on the screen work for all my other programs. This displays just a bit smaller than I would like. Haven't found a way to correct.

Poor Customer Service

Pros:

The only reason I use this software is that I have used it for 25+ years, too embedded to change

Cons:

The Company, the Pricing and mostly the Customer Service. How crazy is I have to pay extra to speak to someone in the US that speaks English. Appalling. The response time is poor. I requested a password change via email as it is set up to do because it would not take mine; never got the reset password email. I called the sales number thinking they would at least ANSWER the phone. He told me there was an issue with the reset email and customer service (which I pay an extra $480.00 a year for) can help... on hold too long, left a message for a call back.... waiting..... Years ago ACT was amazing, since the transitions it has become progressively worse. The Product itself is good, the sales people are nice. That is it. I do wish I had the time to research options and change, perhaps in 2021.

Act Review

Comments: Sometimes the amount of data is confusing because there are so many programs to monitor. I would find it easier if there was a program attached the file explaining usage without having to call tech support.

Pros:

I can track my customers and their email addresses.

Cons:

The confusion with accessing customers.