Act! Reviews

Pros

It is easy to understand and use. You can add fields on any screen and it's user friendly.

Cons

Integration with exchange is unreliable. Support is spotty at best.

Pros

It's easy to set up and use. Support staff answer questions and show the user new things that varied from previous versions of the database.

Cons

Making changes to personalize the contact screens were a tad bit tricky at first. However, once I completed that process, everything else was a breeze.

Alternatives Considered

Keap

Reasons for Switching to Act!

I'm familiar with this program; Keap was out of my budget.

Pros

Act is a great program when it works. I have been using it for well over 25 years.

Cons

After purchasing ACT from Costco 25 or more years ago the software ownership has changed multiple times. Each time the customer service has gotten worse and the program updates have gotten more expensive. Subcontractor customer service people have been really poor and unable to solve problems when contacted and in some cases made the problems worse. For example having to restart the program 11 times in one eight hour period of time because it crashed.... among many other problems

Pros

We have been using ACT for 19+ years. To make the switch to the cloud version just seemed logical. It has the basics features that we need and was simple to transfer over to the client.

Cons

ACT does not have all the bells and whistles that we would like such as power dialers and automatic reporting.

Alternatives Considered

Salesmate, Pipedrive and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Act!

The software support was no longer available.

Switched From

ActiveCampaign

Reasons for Switching to Act!

The ease of moving from a CRM company that we have used for years.

Pros

I have been using ACT since 1995. It has been a central part of my business. Act allows one to keep the essential data on contacts and has easy many methods for looking up customers or information that might be elusive when one has several thousand contacts..

Cons

Over the years updates were often sketchy. Today those issues have been solved.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Outlook

Reasons for Switching to Act!

Outlook does not come near having the functionality that Act has.

Pros

I like that I can still use a PC-based product that I control and provide security necessary to product our client and internal information. I like that my customized version fits my basic needs to manage contacts and periodically send email messages and letters.

Cons

I need ACT support to fix problems with email merge too often. The time required to send routine communications annually has increased at least 10 fold due to time needed to fix problems. Most of the problems seem to be keeping up with Microsoft.

Pros

I like the different sorting options. The mail merge is also a good tool for us.

Cons

The synchronization feature does not work after 2:30 pm for us.

Alternatives Considered

Maximizer CRM

Reasons for Switching to Act!

It came as a recommendation from an insurance agent

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.

Pros

comfortable to use. dependable and accurate

Cons

unable to transfer history to another database

Pros

Has some good capabilities in CRM and email marketing

Cons

Its a little clunky the interface and could do with some redesign to make it more streamlined and user friendly

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.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Switched From

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Act!

Much better value for money, and lower overall overheads meant better for us as a asmall business

Pros

The Act! for Advisors software has been modified to meet the requirements of a financial advisor which includes being able to input information regarding insurance contracts. The new Marketing Automation is an great way to send out Newsletters, etc.

Cons

They have lots of online resources/video's to learn the Marketing Automation. You can also speak to customer service but they recently cut their remote access where you can have customer service work on your computer to help answer/show you how to do things with the marketing automation.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Reasons for Choosing Act!

Salesforce was cost prohibitive.

Switched From

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Act!

Cost while not sacrificing the overall features.

Pros

Main features are easy to use such as adding companies and contacts. Lots of training videos available.

Cons

Some features feel a bit clunky but this could be a system issue rather than the software itself.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Zoho CRM, HubSpot Sales Hub and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Act!

Price - Most of the alternative products out there have multiple subscription fees for different teams, Act was a universal CRM and for a small business this is just what we need. Act was also a more cost effective product.

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.

Pros

At this moment, I am struggling to think of anything positive to say about my Act! experience. Both my boss and I have had problems since we bought it. I have lost entire days' worth of sales time on the phone with their tech support trying to fix issue after issue. And to make matters worse, they keep telling me to give them more money if I want better, faster, more competent customer service. All I want is for the program to work correctly and do what they promised it would do!

Cons

This program is seriously glitchy, and the customer service experience has been bad. I have spent countless hours on the phone trying to get issues resolved. And to add insult to injury, they keep telling me that if I want better customer service and faster, more professional support I need to give them more money. If you believe in your product then, stand behind it and fix it. My boss and I have spent enough time (and money via lost sales revenue) dealing with Act's technical issues already, so I wish they would stop telling me we need to shell out more.
After two days on the phone with them, having been escalated to their Level 3 support guy, my Outlook started to have problems immediately after hanging up with him. I have never had a single problem with Outlook since I started using it. Over the last two days, three different tiers of tech support have remotely accessed my laptop, gone into my Outlook as administrators, and messed around with it. Though they managed to fix the mail merge issues I was initially having with Act!, they clearly messed up my Outlook along the way. Now they claim it is a complete coincidence that Outlook started sending me error messages the moment I hung up with their top tier tech guy. They keep telling me the problems are not related, it is solely the problem of Outlook, they are not experts in Outlook, and I should call Outlook's tech support for help.
Clearly, it is not a coincidence or unrelated. And clearly, they are confident enough in their Outlook expertise to go into my program and mess with it. And as tech support for a software program that works with Outlook, they should be trained and qualified to work with Outlook in the first place. I have asked repeatedly to have their top tier guy call me back. He knows what he did, so he should be able to track down his mistake and fix it. But they keep saying they can't do that without me shelling out more money.
As if all of that wasn't enough, during my last conversation with their support, I had to force the rep to stop trying to get me off the phone and to fix the new problem that had cropped up with Act! just today: the loss of my email history. It took her close to an hour, and she finally discovered that my email history was now gone from Act! because one of the three techs who has remotely accessed my computer over the last two days accidentally replaced my database with a demo database. And even in light of that, she still tried to say that the issue with Outlook had nothing to do with anything their tech staff did. She continued to insist it was all just a coincidence.
I told her I felt the time had come to talk to a supervisor, and I asked her to put one on the phone. After placing me on hold once again, she finally came back and said a supervisor was unavailable, and one would have to call me back in 10 minutes. It ended up taking close to an hour to hear from him. He did finally fix the Outlook problem, but when I asked him what I should do if the error messages come back in an hour or two, he said I had to start all over again from the bottom. The whole routine: wait on hold, start with a low-level tech, slowly work up the ladder, all of it. That or pay the fee.
The next day, the Outlook error message came back! And I had to lose that day as well trying to get them to fix it. I spoke to my boss, and he said the same thing happened to him a while back, where they tried to blame Outlook. So my boss said he started a conference call with the Act! tech guy and the Microsoft tech guy on the phone at the same time, and lo and behold, the problem turned out to be with ACT, not Microsoft.

Pros

I began using Act! 20+ years ago the draw for me was the ability to customize the product for my companies needs. I have run my company's database with this software from start up and I have made it work through the years. In the earlier days I was able to automate functionality to stay ahead of trends and have robust productivity far a head of my competitors. As the years have gone on and the product was sold and resold they have updated and brought general users more but have left lifelong users in the dust for profit.

Cons

Subscription services that cripple my ability to utilize the fully purchased/owned product. I feel that the company sold out for recurring subscriptions. I don't care that they want to go to subscription but I do care that I have my feet held to the fire because of it. Users like myself enabled their progress and continued success.

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.

Pros

I understand the interface because I have used ACT daily for over 30 years.

Cons

ACT does almost everything poorly. It does not sync with multi-user unless you call support. You cannot move your data out of ACT onto a competitive product. They keep raising the price of support. I have tried all three different mass email programs they have offered over the years, but none of the mass email systems worked. The email system required support from ACT to make them work, and still a major problem. I have used ACT for over 30 years, have 10K contacts, and I cannot leave ACT. If you have not bought ACT, do not. If you are going to work on this everyday, pay the money and go with SalesForce.

Pros

None that I can think of...over our old ACT versions.

Cons

We are a long time user of Act with 64000 contacts, and thought about an upgrade and tried the newest software. Connection to ACT did not work, called customer service which took DAYS to respond, and only with trivial solutions or told us out browsers were inadequate. We cannot use cloud based software, as many of our sales persons need to travel and out of internet on the road. We asked about purchasing a copy for local server use, and they STILL have not called back.

Uses alot of memory and crashed the test computer a couple of times.

I reviewed the posts, and many are favorable, but their usage is very different than ours. Most of the positives come from short time users who have no other experience. If you have alot of contacts, doubt if this will work for you.

Pros

Now it is on the cloud rather than desktop version we don't need to synchronise as this never worked properly anyway

Cons

they are removing useful features every year to the point it becomes a glorified database, it always has technical issues of some description. they fix one thing and break another.
It is very limited in what it can do, looks ok on the outside but when you come to use it you find that it is so limited it is difficult to make it work effectively.

Pros

ACT! is the best CRM available and has stood the test of decades. No other CRM comes close. It's report structure is unmatched as is the customizable features. ALSO - exporting and backup are relatively easy to use. It has a very nice user-intuitive interface.

Cons

ACT! is no longer available as a purchasable software but only as a subscription. Also the syncing of clients from email would be nice as well as better syncing between email client and ACT!

Pros

Consistent interface through the years, reliable functionality and easy to resolve simple issues. Even in a small business, hosting the database on a consumer grade PC and operating system still provides a functional and fast connection. The ability to create an offline database that can then be synced with the master database is very useful for laptop users.

Finally in ACT 2018/2019, the interface between Outlook 365 (aka Outlook 2016) and ACT! is finally more reliable.

Cons

The time it takes to create a large offline database seems way to slow. Some troubleshooting issues require support from ACT!. I strongly recommend a support plan with ACT!

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.

Pros

East of use. Have used it since it was just ACT and not a version. Kept all of my records for at least the last 25 years.

Cons

When an update or new version is implemented, it is rarely a smooth transition. Normally can take between a day or a month to get things straightened out correctly. Each time we need to have technical support help us out. If it is a good tech, the process is smooth. If not, normally we just need to call back. Forget chat, just wastes time.

Pros

Act is vert easy to use and customize to the users needs. Very little training is required for new users

Cons

None it is a very good CRM for marketing purposes