Act! CRM vs. Salesmate

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

Salesmate gives us everything we need as a small business, with a clear interface, and can adapt to any business. If I was being ultra picky, I would perhaps suggest the ability to remove or hide certain modules not applicable to our niche, e.g., we are a B2C business, so the company module is not really useable for us, but this is not a negative by any means.

• 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

• For each client, it tracks emails, text messages, activities, files, calendar events, phone calls, to-do items.
• Customization is quite good -- you add fields you need. Like was discovery received, full payment, partial payment, etc. You can later run reports.
• Integration with other apps is good; I use QuickBooks and DocuSign.
• Customer service is very good.

• 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• Email marketing add-on service is far from user friendly and outdated in flexibility for creating useful emails.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

• The search feature can be buggy and does not allow for highlighted text to be typed on. You must clear the box or hit backspace before typing. The only app in my life that does this.
• The dashboard button is pointless if it still makes you choose between legacy or classic.

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

Very happy with the customer service and the overall functionality of the program. With new features always being launched and discussed I'm looking fwd to growing with them

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!

The platform is incredibly robust while maintaining a clean appearance. This allows you to see exactly what you need at any given time without being overwhelmed. The ability to customize your dashboard easily allows you to see the information that is most relevant to your operations and needs.

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.

Fantastic - always reply in a reasonable amount of time, usually with a simple fix. The support website is very handy, but often you will likely have 'niche' questions - to which the team are all to happy to help with. For larger issues, we have had to lodge tickets with tech, but to date, every issue we have had has been resolved. Very happy with the support and service.

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

No - All very straightforward and simple.

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

I was using the free version of Hubspot, which was extremely limiting. If I wanted to go ahead and unlock a simple feature, which every other CRM offered, my price would shoot up to hundreds of dollars a month for no reason, as they force you to unlock “all the features” not just the ones you need. Salesmate is much better, as you can choose which features you want, and don’t want.

• 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.

• It saved me so much time following up with leads. I move them to the next stage, and Salesmate does the rest.
• It does a whole load of outreach for me. It's seamless.
• I get a lot more responses from people in my pipeline - especially using SMS to follow up.