Act! is one of the pioneer brands in its space that evolved into a customer relationship management platform, and cloud-app with a browser-based front end. It offers an integrated email marketing platform that is ideal for small to mid-sized companies. The software also has an easy-to-use dashboard designer with a good marketing automation workflow builder.
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Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Desktop Windows, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone, On-Premise Linux |
Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
Training | Documentation |
Languages | English |
My former business partner was already using ACT! and she felt it was effective enough and didn't want to make a change. So, I dove in head first. It does the basics, you can manage your contacts, notes, and communication. I did find it intuitive and easy to learn. Some more advanced features was relatively easy to figure out.
I love my mobile device and at the time, you couldn't do anything while mobile. I kind of remember a lot of upgrades too, that got irritating. It didn't work well with Outlook, well, it kind of worked. The bottom line, it had the basics but you had to buy additional modules to for everything and it just didn't feel like a solid and cohesive product. There are a ton of better options.
It was my CRM, it held all the data on my business contacts, notes, leads, customers, etc.
The thing I like most about Act! by Sage is its user interface and its ease of use. I started using Act! at the first company I worked for. The majority of the sales team used Microsoft Access but since my job was business development I wanted something seperate for my own use so that I could monitor myself. After I started usaing it for a little bit I was asked to set up the software for the whole sales team.
At the time I started using ACT! there was no way to transfer content form Acess into the Sage databases. I beleive there is an easy way to do this now which would have saved me countless hours of work.
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It's rather easy to customize most things. I like that I can add categories on the fly.
The customer service and tech support is not easy to work with at all - to put it mildly. Running reports is not intuitive. The program needs to be more user friendly.
Keeps a list of my clients with room to include detailed notes. I would have liked to have the option to customize some of the headings. We also use it to create a to-do list.
It functions as a repository of customer information. It is faster in the cloud than some others we have tried.
email integration with outlook does not seem to work well at all, and this causes extra work if we want client communication stored.
Helps keep us on top of prospects who need attention over time. Helps keep sales reps more focused, when they use it.
I thought that the system was pretty simle to use. I used it at a company I used to work for to manage our CRM database.
When I used it, I do not think there were very many modern CRM features.
I used it at a company I used to work for to manage our CRM database.
Act is a mandatory program for my area of work. The issue I have with act is just a few years ago I bought the program on a cd rom for everyone in my company. Just four years later the cd rom version no longer works and they now require a monthly charge for the program. The cd rom version no longer works and to me thats a scam. But I have to use act so I now pay over priced for a program I already own.
That you no longer support CD rom versions of the program.
Act is a must have for the number of contacts we need to keep track of with our business. It would not be possible with out act.
Act has a simple easy to understand interface, and offers a one time purchase option, good for small businesses and startups.
The platform isn't overly stable. We lose connections to Outlook for email campaigns. Have also seen issues where contact edits don't stick. Last, the platform doesn't offer email receipts or campaign reporting.
Organizing and maintaining large contact lists. It's easier than excel spreadsheets, and is inexpensive/cost effective.
I enjoy having contact information and templates in once spot. Its helpful for sure, but I've worked with other software that does more. I would recommend Procore over ACT!
It seems to crash a lot, and I don't find it a critical software.
It's nice having all the client information in one spot! I can just click on the client and write a proposal/submittal from there.
Great tool to keep all your contacts in one place while easily keeping them up to date.
We regularly run into different problems. Act fails to sync with Outlook Act fails to load preference files
This CRM is excellent at keeping all your contacts in one place. Having the ability to view everything from the mobile app is a great feature that allows us to lookup contacts from any location.
Simple to track contacts, activities and companies. Bare bones...and that's what I like. Databases are small and easy to manage. Integration with outlook is fairly simple.
Microsoft updates wreck havoc on it. Business support hours are only on the weekdays. Support is largely overseas so sometimes translation is poor.
Keeping track of contacts, pipeline, etc. Helps me keep track of about 11000 contacts generated over the past 10 years. I've used this software exclusively for 10 years and it has helped me build a successful business.
There should be an easier more user friendly way to enter data. Many steps are repeatative
Entering data has repetitive steps Entering a new person takes too many steps
I like having the data stored. Good for reports
I liked that there is a software and a remote version to work on, so you can get your work done where ever you are.
Act! crashed on us once and we had to completely start over with importing our information. This took a LONG time and we had issues after the crash as well. It finally got to the point where we just had to switch databases.
We were keep track on clients, accounts, projects, etc in Act!
Ease of use in regards to CRM is a plus. Having it cloud based is also a plus.
After almost a year to trying, we still haven't been able to get the program to Sync with Outlook. Because of that, we have resorted to using the program strictly as a client database. Not what we had anticipated when we decided to use ACT Premium.
Not at the moment. If we could get the syncing to work, it would be a great benefit to the sales staff for keeping meetings and correspondence organized.
The service works really well from the moment you get it. No real need to fidget with templates or customizations. While you still have the ability to make those changes as you wish. Very easy to use since it utilizes the Excel format. Very good for inputting basic information.
The price point is a little less than desired. Unfortunately the cloud version is much more expensive than the regular version which lives on the servers. Not too many integrations across all systems.
Issues with integration between our software and the CRM solution. We are looking for something that works good across all of our systems seamlessly without too much hassle.
Act was a simple system that was easy to navigate
It is too simple and doesn't provide enough features to help a business continue to grow
It wasn't solving much, as mentioned it was very basic so you could only do so much with the system
At this point... not much...I seem to be spending too much time during my day trying to fix the problem. Customer support at Keystroke CA are either out of their league with my issues are just don't care...either way, I am fed up enough that I am putting this review together.
The software was ok when I had one office. We had many syncing issues with the mobile version of it HandHeld by J2X Technologies which meant any information we got lacked credibility. We eventually cancelled that subscription and tried to use the one with access to the web server but we've had too many issues to use it so we have stopped using that. Once we opened a 2nd office we purchased 2 brand new pc's and set the network up but have had nothing but syncing issues sincce day one. It has been 3 months so far and it seems that everyday we have a syncing issue. Again, any info that we get lacks credibility because we don't know how current it is. The support staff has tried to address our concerns but, to date, has been unable to fix the issue(s) and now I am told that if they are to continue providning support that we will need to buy a support contract, which I wouldn't have a problem with except that the software syncing has never worked properly. Is it wrong to expect the software to work properly without having the company require that I pay more to make that happen. To be fair to Act, we are using a reseller....Keystroke CA. I cannot imagine a scenario that we would continue to use this reseller...or Act.
Keeping track of contacts history. Unfortunately, this is difficult to do with multiple locations due to many syncing issues
Allows you to keep track of customer interactions
Frequently crashes/very buggy can go down at times
Reaching out to the same customers. Helps you manage interactions.
I like that it is familiar and easy to use the basics.
Definitely not intuitive. It is hard to find help for advanced tasks.
Keeping a my database organized and tasks on track. ACT has definitely kept me organized.
I like that this is web-based. It allows my team to use the product without the burden of a long testing and review by our IT department.
It's not intuitive. I'm constantly finding that I'm in the equivalent of a screen-within-a-screen while I'm working. I'd like to be able to find a customer and then go back to the entire customer list without having to use the drop-down menu. I like to think of myself as tech savvy so maybe I missed that in training? I don't know. We've also had issues with the marketing features. After multiple attempts at contacting the Act support team, we resigned to the fact that we can't customize the functionality of the marketing lead generation forms. We had to create a separate form outside of Act and we are now uploading data periodically instead of having the leads load automatically into the database.
I'm in a new division of my company, and we wanted a pseudo-AMS that could operate outside of the one the company uses. This fit the bill, and the price was right at the time. Now that we've used it for a while, it's just not working. We will probably switch to SalesForce for next year.
We have the ability to store and pull the data we need and were able to customize some of the fields.
Functionality: we had a glitch in the system that caused us to need to import all of our contacts into a later version of the CRM manually. Also, we've had trouble when we've pulled groups in order to segment our email campaigns via SwiftPage because people who should not qualify to be in the group are pulled in anyway and there is no way to see this ahead of time. It has created confusion and increased our opt-out rate. Anesthetics: the system looks very out-dated.
We are keeping track of contacts and their submitted contracts.