Act! Features

Familiar from days gone past.

The marketing is limited for larger-scale campaigns. To their credit, they did reach out and offer very well-crafted training.

There is absolutely nothing I like about this software.

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....

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Contact management across numerous platforms.

Mobile app needs work. Too cumbersome to enter contact data and tracking.

Thank you for letting us know, Jerry, that you're using Act! to manage your contacts across multiple platforms. We see you have experienced some issues with Companion, our older mobile app, and we hope you'll try Act! Premium Cloud Mobile, our new mobile app for all our Act! Premium Cloud users. Built to the latest accessibility and useability standards, Act! Premium Cloud Mobile provides seamless contact management, activity & calendar coordination, and sales pipeline management, from your preferred mobile device. Learn more at https://www.act.com/products/act-mobile-apps/

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

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

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.

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.

I have been using ACT for over 25 years and have seen lots of versions. I like its flexibility and that I can put users into multiple groups, It would be impossible to design a program that did everything everybody wanted it to but ACT comes close. I use it for sales, marketing, personal groups I coordinate, keeping track of some of my customers' customers. It can interact with Outlook and Google's...

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I wish it had more options for the ID/Status cells. The group function sort of does that but not like I need it to. Having 3, 4, 5 or more ID/Status cells would be very useful. Most of my clients fall into more than one category.

Without ACT I could not compete as well as I do in the sales world for it is changing every day. I need ACT to help track my customers my orders my RFQ's and so many other things without it I wouldn't have a job today. I see so many salespeople who won't invest in ACT who sales numbers could be so much better I tell them about ACT but they don't seem to want to invest in their future and their future sales that could be so much better.

I cannot find one thing wrong with ACT I have been using it approximately 20 years and never had a problem I cannot say this about other database programs I have had to use when I worked for other companies. Some of them were super complicated took hours of work just to get your data in whereas using ACT it was a breeze putting data in and saving data of all kinds.

ACT! is working hard to make itself my highly valued CRM/Partner. Frequent functionality upgrades and increased reliability. Excellent technical assistance. Expanded training videos and knowledge database. Act CRM is well integrated with Marketing Automation. It is not an add-on, but is central to and easy to use.

I have used ACT! for a long time. For much of the time, I was intimidated by its complications. Weak training did not help. A steep learning curve also required that I learn by trial and error. Much time was wasted learning to use ACT!'s power. ACT! 's muscle was hidden by requiring that I learn on my own instead of having good training. ACT! would benefit from seeking out suggestions from users as to improvements in training. Some of these stunning features took forever to learn on my own.

Hi Wayne, We are thrilled to hear that you are leveraging and benefiting from Act!'s feature-rich functionality and finding it easier to use. We have devoted lots of resources to a robust digital training center, and onboarding support and have a sharp focus on continually prioritizing ease of use for our customers. Your feedback means a lot to us - thank you for taking the time to share it!

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.

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.

Perfect fit for mid-sized businesses. Great price point. Only truly hybrid solution that allows you to use Act both on your desktop and in a hosted environment.

No cons were added to this review

The way it’s supposed to work is ok. Not great. But getting it to work is a very heavy lift. And with inadequate support, it’s totally up to the user to figure it out.

Where do I start? Bottom line is that setup for marketing automation is nearly impossible. I’ve used successfully ACT! for more than 20 years. But marketing automation is a disaster. The documentation is unhelpful, and in some places, downright incorrect. It has lots of broken links. And their support staff, all offshore, knows nothing about how to help with the marketing automation feature. I had to hire someone who finally figured it out, by trial and error, after several weeks of work.

Richard, first let us say we're sorry that you're experiencing this problem, we're sure it's frustrating. We want to help and hope you'll reach out to us at actcustomerservice@act.com. and provide your contact information so we can contact you directly.

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)

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.

Andrew, Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. I am sorry to hear that you are having trouble with the new Act! Marketing Automation. Please email me at mbowers@swiftpage.com and I will escalate your issue. Thanks again.

I like that they created a cloud version for people on the go.

The over design or look of the desktop version is old and kind of dated. It can be updated if I choose to. But that will take time. A larger selection of templates would be excellent.

Thank you for your feedback, Jake. We are excited about our upcoming releases and updates with new UX/UI improvements we know you'll love. We really appreciate you taking the time to let us know how Act! is working for you.

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

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.

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

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...

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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.

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

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)

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.

There to explain and assist, wherever I have needed them to be.

My only comment is about a design change in 2022, but as indicated, with the help of this organization it was resolved.

We are happy to hear that your technical issues were identified and resolved and we appreciate you taking the time to share your support experience with us. We really appreciate the feedback, it made our day, Lance!

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

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

James, we appreciate you taking the time to leave this review and are sorry to hear that you had issues with your older version of Act!. We are here to help and are standing by to provide assistance, should you need it, with your upgrade. Please don't hesitate to contact us at 866-873-2006 if you experience any issues so we can ensure you're up and running smoothly.

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.

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.

We value our long-time users and love hearing from you! We are happy to hear that you like the benefits of Act! Premium Desktop, but are sorry to learn that you are experiencing issues with the email merge. We want to help as best we can. Please visit https://www.act.com/resources/contact/ or give us a call at 866-873-2006 to see how we can provide some assistance.

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.

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

Thanks for letting us know, Tracy, that Act! Premium Cloud is meeting your CRM and marketing needs. We appreciate you taking the time to let us know.

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.

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.

We love hearing from our customers Sally, and appreciate you taking the time to let us know how Act! is helping your business. We understand that you found some limitations around reporting and wanted to be sure you had access to these digital resources to help with your customization needs. https://www.act.com/resources/ If there are additional features you'd like to see in Act!, we'd love to know and invite you to please submit a feature request by visiting this URL. https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/5833907456404e3d99cb5c440433f6a0 Thank you again for your feedback.

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

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

Hi David, thank you for taking the time to share how your business is using Act! -especially the cloud-based solution. We love hearing from our customers, so thanks again for sharing!

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.

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.