Act! CRM vs. HubSpot CRM

Swiftpage ACT! would be well suited if you are using a desktop computing environment. ACT! is an old product and they were on the desktop for many years (and still are). Also, ACT! would also be well suited if you are not as concerned about implementing a CRM product that might require a little more training (e.g. if you had employees/salespeople that needed to be trained). Also, ACT! seems to be more generic than some of the industry focused products you see nowadays. For example, MethodCRM works well with non-profits that are on the cloud.

Incentivized

Most of our clients are either government institutions or Education sector clients, such as universities, colleges, Coaching Institutes, and Competitive boards. We store their data in a single place. That means we can keep our one client's data in one place without any confusion. Our data is always clear and understandable while it is in HubSpot CRM.

Incentivized

• Data Analysis. ACT! does a good job of allowing us to create meaningful reports.
• Keeping track of communication. ACT! integrates with Outlook to record all client communication by e-mail.
• Custom dashboards. We have created custom data entry pages that simplify what we are trying to collect.

Incentivized

• The ability to create marketing campaigns and have control over when to stop and when to send the next according to your cadence design is excellent. However the ability to see the performance and the history for each prospect is so simple and so accessible - I kicked myself for not getting it sooner.
• Having one place to create companies and contacts as well as score leads and track all contract products means we don't have to miss any renewals.
• The Deal tracker gives us the ability to track multiple pipelines as well as team and individual metrics like average sale, percentage of goal, contribution to team effort which when mixed with an activity tracker means the team stays lean and mean to crush all goals.
• The real time chat feature means prospects can navigate to our landing page for info about us, levels of product availability, pricing and begin a quick chat with members of the sales and support team.
• Intel features along with lead scoring, SEO integration, podcasts and white papers all combine to be the most comprehensive CRM you could need.

Incentivized

• Creating reports or creating searches for specific fields is not intuitive.
• Email marketing add-on service is far from user friendly and outdated in flexibility for creating useful emails.
• Installing updates creates issues, even though Swiftpage ACT! functioned properly before the update.
• Figuring out how best to organize contacts into specific, searchable groups requires expert assistance and is not intuitive.
• Support from Swiftpage ACT! is marginal at best; we rely on outside consultant instead, for an extra cost.

Incentivized

• At times, it feels like there are too many options, which can be overwhelming when trying to grasp all that it has to offer fully.
• The reporting features are lacking. It can be challenging to pull and export reports to share with users who are not on Hubspot.
• It appears to have more issues with Windows; it consistently logs out and requires re-login to the CRM and the HubSpot Outlook add-on.

Incentivized

Once our current subscription expires, we no longer plan to use ACT. We are moving to a more complete CRM system that allows us, as a project based service company, to track projects, contacts, time and employees all with one software program. ACT has very limited modules to integrate these functions and therefore is no longer a good fit for us.

Incentivized

To be honest there are some barriers due to which we are unable to use Hubspot at it's full potentials. The region that we work in has some restrictions that don't allow us to make calls or text which leaves us to just Email to the client.

Incentivized

Try printing reports with each record's notes section - really awful output that you are embarrassed to show anyone. Want to add a new record to a group, ACT will present another record for the group assignment. Want to work seamlessly with email? Forget it!

Once you are set up with HubSpot CRM, it becomes difficult to use any other tool, as it integrates you into the workflow and makes it a habit to log in to HubSpot to identify tasks for the day. The overall ease of use is also a brilliant factor in using HubSpot. They push you towards deal closure and revenue generation.

Incentivized

There has been an ongoing problem with Google synchronisation which no one seems to be bothered about fixing, even though it clearly states on the website that the software synchronises with Google. When the customer-facing support team are on the phone, they are brilliant, it's the back-end development support which is severely lacking.

Because when I needed help HubSpot responded immediately and provided me with the information I needed which enabled me to realize that HubSpot was even more customizable and easier to use than I thought! And I already thought HubSpot was very user friendly and easy to use, and then Support showed me how to manipulate the settings, columns and the appearance of the tool.

Incentivized

Delay your upgrades! ACT appears to ship out new software with virtually no checking and no concern about bad installs do to their customers.

If you've had any prior experience with cloud based marketing automation or group communication tools, you can do the implementation without paid outside support. Though getting to a SLA (service level agreement) would be best achieved with the help of a third party who can facilitate

Incentivized

ACT! CRM is more cost effective than like a Salesforce, but that is for a reason, it lacks a lot of the functionality that a Salesforce has. Pipedrive is actually another cost effective platform I've been evaluating as a potential ACT! CRM replacement. I like it's modern day look and feel versus ACT!.

Incentivized

Our team and senior managers deemed these products worth reviewing and requested that every team assess them, enabling our company to make an informed decision about the software to purchase. Everybody checked, and a survey was conducted among all those employees. We received the most votes for HubSpot CRM, as most employees preferred it.

Incentivized

• Very poor return on investment. It is now quite costly and the support service no longer offers assistance except if the program crashes.
• Swiftpage seems to have replaced their skilled UK based support team with a call centre?? The service I got was dreadful. This is a difficult program to use and support is vital.
• You will need some IT skills to properly use ACT! Don't rely on their support which is not good.

• Gave a ton of visibility into user and sales funnel.
• Able to get back to new signups or inbound leads much faster, sometimes within minutes. We have a Slack integration that's super helpful.
• Saved hours each week that were earlier spent digging through emails or spreadsheets for context; meetings are a lot shorter because it is super easy to go through the created reports.

Incentivized