Act! Reviews

I'm able to integrate with MS Outlook, and sync within my Ipad and Google phone. Your costumer support is awesome with it's followup and addressing and any issues I may have. Deserves more than 5 stars!

Software pricing is becoming an issue as less expensive models are out there that competes with Act. Need to consider reduction pricing for those loyal customers like myself since 2006. Needs to come up with a better less tedious way of merging contact duplicates.

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.

The customer tracking and connectivity to quick books was awesome. A bit dated look, but just worked.

My only issues with it was that it was a bit slow. Beyond that it was all positive.

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. 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.

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

None it is a very good CRM for marketing purposes

Decent contact management. Can customize.

Act/Outlook synchronization keeps breaking.

When the software works it is good but the support from ACT is the worst we have ever experienced.

Act Marketing Automation does not work. We have battled with trying to get this working for over two years with appalling customer support and still no resolution.

I loved ACT when I used to use it. It was by far the best CRM at the time.

Last time I used ACT and granted it was many years ago, it wasn't cloud based. At one point my computer crashed and I lost my entire ACT database that hadn't been backed up in the last few weeks. I was devastated and decided I had to switch to something that was in the cloud.

I enjoy having the ability to adjust my searches based on the category of the database. It's simple to create groups.

It's true that Act! can be slow, especially when working with large amounts of data. This can be frustrating for users who need to quickly access information or perform tasks just like me. However, It's important to note that slow performance with large data sets is a common issue with many software solutions.

It has the capability to personalize the database, fields, and reports. Additionally, it records all interactions such as phone calls, emails, and documents.

There is nothing in particular to mention. The product satisfies or surpasses all my anticipations.

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.

I have pioneered the purchase of ACT! in my company. Back then, It offers a perpetual license per user which is great as you don't subject yourself to a monthly or annual subscription. I love the fact that ACT! marketing can be customised and very rare that it falls under the promotions tab of the email recipient.

ACT! can only be linked to a certain version of Outlook which i find not helpful. Not all the licenses we purchased were maximise as they find ACT! a work duplicate particularly on the finance side since only selected accounting software can be integrated in the ACT! system.

This is a robust software program. We have added many custom fields that allows us to track a lot of data really dig into for trends and statistics. We love how history is captured a for all the activity we do for and with a client. We rely on the relationship tab heavily as multiple people are involved in a transaction. We are really enjoying the new Marketing Automation. It has a lot of robust features that we are just beginning to tap into. We also like the groups feature. We have hundreds of groups that we can run reports and create statistics from. We can see how many groups a contact is part of which helpful as well. I like the statistics ACT generates from drip marketing. Knowing what emails bounced back or who opted out helps us improve our data.

When searching for a person, it doesn't give you the option of having similar names - the spelling must be exact. It crashes when we are in the social updates tab. Customer Service: Often the techs are hard to understand. The time we spend on the phone with customer service on average lasts about 1/2 to an hour depending on the issue. That is a big interruption to our workflow in the office.

One thing I wish ACT would do is send to 2 emails at once. When sending out an eblast, it pulls from the email field. If there is more than one email address followed by a semicolon, it won't send to both. It bounces back.

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.

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.

This product allows you to integrate the basic and most complicated processes within your business. I love the email link feature, any time I send an email to a client (who has their email in their account profile), the system automatically saves that email in the client profile. You don't have to search for it in your inbox, or click an extra button to push the details over to the profile, it all happens automatically. The icing on the cake, is now that it is in the client profile, other members of my team can see what emails I have communicated to client, and when they were sent. It helps to keep my team all on the same page. This is by far the best Client Database system I have ever used. AMAZING!

The biggest downside to ACT is there is not a built in funnel email system. You have to select the group or type of clients that you want to email, export that to another database and then send the communications from there. The system will still tag your emails as long as they are sent from your domain, but having to export the list an use an additional software or service to send the mass email notifications is a little frustrating. If they can fix this option, it would make my life a lot easier.

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

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.

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.

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!

Familiar as I have been using ACT since 1991, starting with v2.0 and now have v22.1.

ACT worked 'great' up to and including v21. Since the release of v22, I get ACT "NOT RESPONDING" messages 6-8x per day and need to completely reboot my laptop. Also with v22, I have randomly and periodically had (2x) my template for Contacts changed/rearranged. This combined with the elimination of service contracts, makes using ACT and potentially upgrading to the next version of ACT "unattractive".

Act has a lot of the features more expensive CRM’s offer without sacrificing usability or features. It is feature rich and simple to use.

Act hasn’t had many changes in the last two years. I would like to see more growth for this product.

When we first bought ACT! around 17 years ago we loved it. We were all happy with what it could do to automate the office and with client/lead management.

Email marketing and email functionality - or lack of - with Outlook.
Only being able to attach one document file to a history note has also caused much frustration.

Easy to use

Some of the features I will never use and some of the features take some time to learn how to use.

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

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.

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

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.

I can track my customers and their email addresses.

The confusion with accessing customers.

Nothing - this program and all it's components is sold from the sales level as the answer to all of your business needs... but you have to run your business very specifically in order to make sure it works the way they want it to. No macs, you must have dedicated workers to spend their entire days creating ad campaigns and updating the information - because if my sales team tried to do it - we would never get any sales work done.

Lag time is HORRIBLE. Customer service is lacking. Updates - haven't seen any improvement in the 8 years i've been using it. the 'solution" for not being Mac compatible (which is laughable in 2018) - is to use the Cloud version on their server - it's seriously the most horrible thing and biggest waste of time. I would much rather create my own manual spreadsheets in google docs to organize my client database.