17 years helping Irish businesses
choose better software
About Act!
Act! Premium empowers today's small and midsize businesses to market better, sell more, and create customers for life.
This definitely makes it easier for remote teams. Integrated email marketing helps drive necessary demand visibility.
Very difficult to integrate with email server. Complicated email attachment.
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Magical Act !
Comments: My experience with Act has been wonderful. This software is a real gift, a real treat. It's so fantastic how it allows me to automate my business. Very easy to use, I can easily retrieve information on customers; I also have a history of my mails, calls and letters.
Pros:
I like this software. Being able to improve my communication, increase my sales and ensure the loyalty of my customers is so magical! And the ease of remote tasks is just incredible. And to think it's so easy to use!
Cons:
Nothing to complain about! This software works like a charm and is easy to use.
Act! Response
12 months ago
Thank you, Ulrich! We love hearing from our customers and enjoy learning that Act! has improved your customer communications and customer loyalty! We'd love to learn more about your business. If you'd like to share your Act! Success Story. It's easy - just paste this link into your browser to get started. Thanks again for sharing and we wish continued success to you! https://www.act.com/success-stories/
Easy tool
Comments: Only had the change to use free trial, integrated with Sage 360 as it is owned by Sage. Created a few marketing automation and went live as well, got great results, it had potential. Used its app also to track progress and results.
Pros:
Mostly used Act's features of contact management and marketing automation in CRM, it has a feature that brings together all of the customer data into a centralized database. Using automation tool is so easy and helps you track every steps.
Cons:
Not so many features but the essential features are enough to get what is really needed. The support for the product has ended.
Act! Response
12 months ago
Thank you, Bo for your review. We value your feedback! It sounds like you might be using an older version of Act! and hope you'll check out this webpage for information about our exciting new features and enhancements. https://www.act.com/upgrade-center/
ACT is AWESOME!
Comments: I my overall experience with ACT has been very good over the last 30+ years.
Pros:
I have been using ACT since early 1990's and is still my "Go To" for contact management.
Cons:
I wish the iPhone app would interact with the native app and not have to use a 3rd party interface.
Act! Response
4 weeks ago
Thank you, Scott, for your review! We are thrilled to hear you're a long-time Act! user and that Act! is helping you manage your contacts. And, if you're using Act! Premium Cloud, we've recently launched a new fully integrated mobile app called Act! Premium Cloud Mobile. We hope you'll try it out!
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.
Alternatives Considered:
Act is Better than Other PIMs
Comments: With Act, I always believed I was a step ahead of my competition.
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.
Act! Response
3 months ago
Paul, we really appreciate you as a long-time customer and are excited to hear that Act! is still meeting your business's needs after 28 years! Thank you for letting us know.
Alternatives Considered:
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
Act! Response
2 years ago
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!
good CRM for the money
Comments: using it since v2.0. using it since v2.0
Pros:
the basic CRM function, the basic CRM function
Cons:
priced a little high, some minor bugs still in the product, differences between Web and local PC app
Act! Response
5 months ago
Thanks for taking the time to share your review, Daniel. We really appreciate hearing from our long-term and loyal customers!
Difficulties !!!
Comments: In the last two years I have accumulated a list of difficulties that I have experienced with ACT. Until two weeks ago there were 45 items on the list as well as screen grabs showing the error messages and bizarre things that have taken place. I finally discontinued using one ACT business services. I've had more than six sales people contact me in an effort to upgrade or whatever and each time i complained about problems. Only one person out of that group responded with a solution Warren Meredith. He instructed me to contact ACT Support. I very recently upgraded and contacted ACT Support and I am presently in the process of HOPEFULLY solving the problems. We'll see once I have finished.
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
Act! Response
2 months ago
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.
ACT is indespensible!
Comments: I could not do my business without it! Syncing to my phone is so critical
Pros:
I have been an ACT user for over 30 years. It has evovled with my business. I think I used to snyc it with my Palm Pilot! Today I continue to appreciate how it keeps the info on my precious clients. I am also very appreciative of the top-notch screen sharing technical support I get so quickly .
Cons:
I wish I had the time to learn to use more features.
Act! Response
last week
Thank you, Susan! We just love hearing from our customers and enjoy learning how Act! is helping their businesses around the world. And, we'd love to learn more about your business if you'd like to share your Act! Success Story. It's easy - just paste this link into your browser to get started. Thanks again for sharing and we wish continued success to you! https://www.act.com/success-stories/
A reliable product
Comments: Great product that is reliable, affordability and great customer support
Pros:
the easy way to synchronize with outlook
Cons:
Not able to create links between contact
Act! Response
3 weeks ago
Hi Peter! It means a lot to us that you'd take the time to leave this review, letting us know you appreciate the value Act! brings to your real estate business! We put our customers first and invest in our team to ensure they receive the support they need to be successful.
Feels like home
Comments: Loving it so far - feels like coming home.
Pros:
I used ACT! for nearly 20 years in my previous role and when I went freelance I really missed it but thought it was not affordable. I am now so busy I really needed to get organised and I was pleasantly surprised at how affordable it actually is. It only really needs to save me one hour a month to give me more than return on investment - and it did that on day 1!
Cons:
I made a silly error uploading and couldn't figure out how to undo so I shall be calling on the onboarding team for help.
Act! Response
6 months ago
We are so happy to have you back, Claire, and thrilled to hear that Act! is already saving you time and helping you organize your business. We wish you the very best with your freelance business! How exciting!
Customer relationship management in a neat little package!
Comments: Act has become a valuable database of information for our teams, storing all manner of customer and company information that we can utilise for various means. It is a valuable asset for us and will no doubt continue to be in the future.
Pros:
There are multiple benefits to using Act as reported by our users. The Act database allows for a large quantity of information to be stored, meaning we were able to decommission several other systems holding various bits of customer data by merging it into Act. We have found pricing to be competitive on a per-licence basis which suits us as a small team working within a non-profit organisation. Act makes it easy for users to update already stored customer/company information, so we always have up-to-date data for contacting, addresses, etc. Communications to customers/companies are tracked in Act so other members of the department can see who has communicated with who, and what the correspondence was – this is useful if a member of staff is off and another needs to pick up some workload. On the technical side, updates and hotfixes are provided regularly and it is relatively easy to install these during periods of downtime. The UI is easy to navigate, with clearly labelled menus and an in-built help area.
Cons:
We have found it somewhat difficult to integrate Act with our current systems and have resorted to manually exporting CSVs with information to import into our systems. This is a legacy process and may have been improved upon however, we haven’t looked into this. We have also had to purchase add-ins to enable certain features such as opportunities tracking, but Act plays well with these add-ons, so this is not too much of an issue for us. From an admin’s perspective, it has proven difficult to set up an automatic installation that works with our MDT deployments, but we roll out images with Act on rarely, so this isn’t too much of an issue. Perhaps in future, updates could be made to the UI to make it look a little less dated and bring it up to clean, modern, standards.
Long Time User
Comments: Because we have at least 3 people involved in one transaction, the relationship tab helps us tie them together to the transaction. We can toggle back and forth easily without having to search another name. It's quick and efficient. With our customized fields, we can easily see years of history for a client on one page. We have been frustrated over the years by the number of crashes and freezes.Occasionally an import will not import correctly and the data in put into the wrong fields. The support help and support page of the marketing automation is very poor and lacking in depth training on creating/sending eblasts. There are is no advanced level training for the eblasts and drip marketing.
Pros:
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.
Cons:
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.
ACT! Not only becoming more powerful, but even easier to use.
Comments: An excellent app, but with a steep learning curve. But surprisingly improved in the past year. Training would benefit from trainers listening to users.
Pros:
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.
Cons:
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.
Act! Response
8 months ago
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!
I used to love Act!, but now I'm looking for a better product that actually works for me
Pros:
I have been using Act! for decades via its various owners and takeovers. It served me well in sales and marketing, and now I use it to track my legal clients and court hearings, trials, etc.
Cons:
It does not work in Windows 11, which came with my new computer. Your Tech Support was no help, telling me simply that Microsoft knows about it and "someday" will have a fix. Meanwhile, with a local technician, I had to roll back to Windows 10 (hundreds of dollars paid), then I had to pay a remote Act! specialist (not your employee) to help to get it to "work" even in Windows 10. It barely works now, freezing up constantly and repeatedly throughout my workday. It is practically useless, but I bear with it until I can find another product that works for me.
Act! Response
2 years ago
Thank you, Manuel, for your feedback. We appreciate you taking the time to let us know how Act! is working for you. We see that you had Microsoft 11 compatibility issues last fall, and according to our records, moved to Windows 10 to restore your database and functionality. We are sorry to hear you are still experiencing issues and hope that you'll reach back out to our Support team for further assistance at https://www.act.com/resources/contact/ or call 866-873-2006. In addition, we are happy to share the following Knowledgebase article published by Microsoft with more details about the issue and resolution. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/database-engine/database-file-operations/troubleshoot-os-4kb-disk-sector-size
ACT is a great software product that allows you to integrate your database and track your clients
Comments: ACT is worth the price and worth the training to get educated on it. Unfortunately you need to spend some time figuring out the details, but once you do, it is off to the races and you will love the system every day. It really is a great product.
Pros:
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!
Cons:
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.
ACT! in action
Comments: So far food customer service and technical support
Pros:
Contact management across numerous platforms.
Cons:
Mobile app needs work. Too cumbersome to enter contact data and tracking.
Act! Response
4 months ago
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/
Long time user
Comments: I use ACT 10 hours a day, but it is clunky.
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.
Act! Response
2 years ago
Kris, Thank you for letting us know about your issues with marketing automation- this is not the experience we strive to provide our customers. We hope you'll give our Support team another try. Please reach out to https://www.act.com/resources/contact/ or call 866-873-2006 so we can get a few more details, and provide some possible solutions.
Long time Act user 20+ years
Comments: We put a local copy on each of their computers and sync to the master database. Since our equipment needed an upgrade I signed up for a trial of the newest cloud based system. It did not work, would not load on our trial computers and was totally unreliable. I called customer service who took DAYS to get back to me, and by then, we had pulled it off the test machines. We have 64000 contacts, and the Act Consultants tell us that is sketchy to transfer that many contacts to the newer systems. I am stuck with the older software, but that's ok, it works flawlessly.
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.
Avoid this software!!
Comments:
Support is brilliant, product is awful, the developers are changing features all the time, it has many incompatibility issues with outlook and web browsers, in all the time we have had it we have had to rely heavily on support to fix things every single year. I don't know why I have stuck with it for so long.
Now they have done an update, removed the option to individually record email history so you have to record nothing or record everything coming in and out of your emails which clearly is not desirable!
the task box is small and basic which is how we track work in progress, the pop up calendar only pops up some of the calendar so you have to manually expand it to see the whole month.
when you update tasks and click ok to save it doesn't always save your information so when you go back into your task everything you have just updated isn't there, intermittent issues like this all the time.
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.
Act!
Comments: ACT! is a near perfect solution. It's a pleasure to use.
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!
Act! Response
last year
Thank you, Karl, for taking the time to leave this review. We'd love to learn more about your business and highlight it on our Success Story webpage and social channels! If you'd like to share your Act! Success Story, it's easy - just paste this link into your browser to get started. We hope to hear from you! Thanks again for sharing and we wish continued success to you! https://www.act.com/success-stories/
ACT functionality in 2019
Comments: Functional software for contact and opportunity management that has been in use for over 20 years with a consistent interface. All contact management software requires a learning curve to effectively use the software. My consulting clients do not use the marketing component of ACT, so those features have not been evaluated as of yet. ACT has gone through a number of owners, and the current owners seem to be putting in the effort to keep pace with Microsoft Outlook. Quickbooks integration could still be better though, but cooridnating with third party vendors will always be a challenge.
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!
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.
Critical Act! program
Comments: With the exception of updates or new versions, it is the best program on the market.
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.
Act! Response
7 months ago
We appreciate your feedback, Derek, and value our longtime customers. Thank you for being a customer for over 25 years and for taking the time to leave this review!
A Powerful Means to Organize Une's Day and One's Work.
Comments: ACT! sat turned on on my desk at all times that I was in the office. It was the information source by which i lived.
Pros:
Act's is a powerful organization tool. For example, one can talk to an individual on the telephone, hang-up, record in ACT a brief of the discussion, than later (on a defined date) talk to that individual again.
Cons:
If your ACT goes down, you're now very likely in a quite difficult situation.
Act! Response
5 months ago
Thank you, Ed, for letting us know that Act! is helping you stay organized and has become your single source of information. We love it!