Unclaimed: Are you working at Act!?
Act! Reviews: 3.9/5 — Good for the Price
Act! is one of the pioneer brands in its space that evolved into a customer relationship management platform, and cloud-app with a browser-based front end. It offers an integrated email marketing platform that is ideal for small to mid-sized companies. The software also has an easy-to-use dashboard designer with a good marketing automation workflow builder.
| Capabilities |
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Desktop Windows, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone, On-Premise Linux |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Act! sells three cloud tiers at $30, $45, and $60 per user, and what actually separates them is how many marketing emails you can send. Standard allows 2,500 a month, Professional 25,000, and Ultimate 50,000. The CRM underneath is broadly the same product throughout. Understand that and the pricing page stops looking like a capability ladder and starts looking like what it is — an email volume plan with a CRM attached.
- What it is: A long-established CRM for small and mid-sized businesses, bundling contact management with email marketing and, unusually, still offering an on-premise option.
- Best for: Small businesses that want CRM and email marketing from one vendor, and organizations with a genuine need to host data themselves.
- Pricing: Cloud Standard $30, Professional $45, Ultimate $60 per user monthly, billed annually. Premium Desktop $39. Verified July 2026.
- The honest catch: Premium Desktop costs $39 — more than the $30 entry cloud plan — so choosing on-premise is a premium, not a saving.
What Is Act!?
Act! is one of the oldest names in contact management, dating to the late 1980s and passing through several owners since. That history explains both its strengths and its reputation: it is deeply featured and genuinely mature, and it carries an interface lineage that reviewers routinely describe as dated next to newer competitors.
What distinguishes it in 2026 is scope. Most CRMs at this price handle contacts, deals, and activities and expect you to buy email marketing separately. Act! bundles both, and at the higher tiers adds marketing automation, lead scoring, quotes and payments, appointment scheduling, forms and surveys, website chat, event management, project management, and accounting integration. For a small business that would otherwise assemble four subscriptions, that consolidation is the real argument.
It is also one of very few CRMs still selling a genuine on-premise product. Act! Premium Desktop runs on your own infrastructure with networked access, which matters to businesses with data residency requirements or a firm preference for not putting their customer list in someone else’s cloud.
How Act! Works
- Cloud or desktop. Act! Advantage is the hosted line; Act! Premium Desktop is installed and managed by you.
- Email sends as the metering dimension. 2,500, 25,000, or 50,000 per month by tier — the clearest differentiator between plans.
- Contact and pipeline management. The core CRM, full-featured on every tier including the cheapest.
- Bundled marketing. Campaigns and nurture sequences from Professional, full marketing automation with lead scoring on Ultimate.
- Quotes, scheduling, forms, and chat. Standard versions from the entry plan, advanced versions from Professional.
- Cloud storage by tier. 15 GB, 25 GB, and 35 GB respectively.
Act! Pricing
Captured from Act!’s pricing page in July 2026, in US dollars. All plans bill annually.
| Plan | Price/user/mo | Email sends/mo | Storage | Key additions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Standard | $30 | 2,500 | 15 GB | Full CRM, mobile app, Office 365 and Gmail, standard quotes, forms, chat |
| Premium Desktop | $39 | — | On your servers | On-premise deployment with networked access |
| Cloud Professional | $45 | 25,000 | 25 GB | AI writing assistant, nurture marketing, accounting integration, project management |
| Cloud Ultimate | $60 | 50,000 | 35 GB | Marketing automation, lead scoring, customer portal, custom industry tables |
What this means for your decision:
- The upgrade trigger is email volume, not CRM capability. Standard is described as a “full-featured CRM,” and it is. If you send 2,000 marketing emails a month, Professional’s extra $15 per user buys you send headroom and some marketing tooling, not a better CRM. Work out your send volume first — it is the number that picks your tier.
- 2,500 sends is genuinely tight. A list of 1,000 contacts emailed twice a month exhausts it. Any business doing real email marketing lands on Professional, making $45 the practical entry price.
- Desktop costs more than entry cloud. $39 against $30. On-premise is often assumed to be the cheaper, no-frills option; here it is a deliberate premium for control. Choose it because you need to hold the data, not to save money.
- Everything is billed annually. There is no monthly option advertised, so the free trial is the only low-commitment evaluation.
- Per-user pricing compounds normally. Five users on Professional is $225 a month, ten on Ultimate is $600.
- Consolidation is the value case. At $45 per user you are getting CRM, email marketing, quotes, scheduling, forms, surveys, chat, and project management. Assembled separately from best-in-class tools, that stack costs considerably more.
Who Should Use Act!
- Small businesses wanting one vendor. The clearest case. CRM plus email marketing plus quoting from a single subscription genuinely simplifies both billing and integration.
- Organizations needing on-premise. Act! Premium Desktop is a rare option in a category that has almost entirely moved to cloud.
- Established businesses with existing Act! data. Decades of contact history is a real reason to stay, and migration is genuinely painful.
- Teams doing moderate email marketing. Professional’s 25,000 sends covers most small-business campaigning without a separate platform.
It fits poorly for teams that prize interface quality, where Pipedrive and monday CRM are markedly more pleasant; for businesses wanting a free tier, which HubSpot CRM and Zoho CRM provide; and for sales-led organizations needing deep pipeline analytics, where dedicated sales CRMs go further.
Honest Pros and Cons
Strengths
- Genuine breadth. CRM, email marketing, quotes, scheduling, forms, chat, and project management in one subscription.
- Full CRM on the entry plan. The cheapest tier is not a crippled version of the product.
- On-premise option. Rare, and decisive for organizations with data residency requirements.
- Mature and stable. Decades of development show in feature depth.
- Bundled marketing automation. Lead scoring and progressive profiling at Ultimate, without a separate platform.
- Dedicated onboarding specialist included from the entry tier.
Limitations
- The interface shows its age. The most consistent criticism, particularly against newer competitors.
- Tight email allowance at entry. 2,500 sends pushes most marketing-active businesses to $45.
- Desktop costs more than entry cloud. $39 versus $30, which surprises buyers expecting on-premise to be cheaper.
- Annual billing only. No monthly option for a low-commitment start.
- No free tier. Where several major competitors offer one.
- Bundled tools are adequate, not best-in-class. The forms, chat, and project management are convenient rather than excellent.
Act! Alternatives and How It Compares
- Zoho CRM is substantially cheaper with a free tier, and far stronger if you use other Zoho applications.
- HubSpot CRM has a genuinely free CRM tier and a more modern interface, with costs rising sharply as you add marketing.
- Pipedrive is the better sales-focused pipeline tool, with a cleaner interface and less bundled marketing.
- Keap is the closest philosophical competitor — CRM plus marketing automation for small business — at a higher price.
- Insightly combines CRM with project delivery, which suits services businesses.
- Freshsales and monday CRM are the modern-interface options at comparable cost.
For a broader survey, browse our CRM directory.
The Verdict
Act! is a consolidation play, and judged on those terms it holds up. For $45 per user a small business gets a full CRM, 25,000 monthly marketing emails, quotes and payments, appointment scheduling, forms and surveys, website chat, event management, project management, and accounting integration. Buying those capabilities separately from category leaders would cost noticeably more and require the integrations to be your problem. If you want one vendor, one invoice, and one support number, that is a legitimate and underrated reason to choose it.
The way to price it correctly is to start from email volume rather than user count. Standard at $30 includes the full CRM, so the $15 step to Professional is buying send headroom — from 2,500 to 25,000 a month — plus marketing tooling. A business emailing a list of a thousand contacts twice a month has already exhausted Standard, which makes $45 the realistic entry point for anyone doing marketing at all. Conversely, if you genuinely only need contact and pipeline management, Standard is a complete CRM and there is no reason to move up.
Two honest caveats. The interface is the most consistent criticism in reviews, and if your team has used Pipedrive or monday, Act! will feel dated — that is a real cost in daily use, even if the functionality is there. And note that Premium Desktop at $39 costs more than entry cloud at $30; on-premise here is a deliberate premium for holding your own data, not a budget option. Choose it for control, and if control is not your requirement, the cloud plans are both cheaper and less work.
FAQ
How much does Act! cost?
Act! Advantage cloud plans are $30 per user per month for Standard, $45 for Professional, and $60 for Ultimate, all billed annually. Act! Premium Desktop, the on-premise option, is $39 per user per month. Prices were captured from Act!’s pricing page in July 2026 in US dollars. A free trial is available; there is no free tier.
What is the difference between Act! plans?
Primarily email send volume and bundled marketing. Standard includes the full CRM with 2,500 monthly sends and 15 GB storage. Professional raises that to 25,000 sends and adds an AI writing assistant, nurture marketing, accounting integration, and project management. Ultimate provides 50,000 sends plus marketing automation, lead scoring, a customer portal, and custom industry tables. The core CRM is full-featured on every tier.
Is Act! Desktop cheaper than Act! Cloud?
No — it costs more. Act! Premium Desktop is $39 per user per month against $30 for the entry cloud plan. On-premise deployment here is a premium option for organizations that need to host their own data, rather than a budget alternative. It also means you take on hosting, backups, and updates yourself, which the cloud plans include.
Is Act! still a good CRM in 2026?
It remains functional and unusually broad, bundling CRM with email marketing, quoting, scheduling, and project management in a way few competitors match at the price. Its weakness is the interface, which reviewers consistently describe as dated relative to newer tools. It suits businesses valuing breadth and vendor consolidation over daily polish, and existing Act! customers with substantial contact history.
What is Act! best for?
Small and mid-sized businesses that want CRM and email marketing from one vendor rather than assembling a stack, and organizations with a genuine requirement to host customer data on their own infrastructure. It is a weaker fit for teams prioritising interface quality, for anyone wanting a free tier, and for sales-led organizations needing deep pipeline analytics.
Compare Act! with other popular tools in the same category.
It functions as a repository of customer information. It is faster in the cloud than some others we have tried.
email integration with outlook does not seem to work well at all, and this causes extra work if we want client communication stored.
Helps keep us on top of prospects who need attention over time. Helps keep sales reps more focused, when they use it.
The ease of layout of the software and the basic language used
The font is too small and too many colours are used
I’ve solved staff issues and international market relationship
I like that it is very user-friendly to find helpful information. I also love how you can create groups of contacts with easy-to-find and read labels.
That it is not web-based, so constant Syncing is a necessity, and it seems to be a CRM from the '80s.
We are solely using Act for database management, prospect tracking, contact history, and sales data. I have realized that it is helpful in all of those areas.
I thought that the system was pretty simle to use. I used it at a company I used to work for to manage our CRM database.
When I used it, I do not think there were very many modern CRM features.
I used it at a company I used to work for to manage our CRM database.
I like ACT's format and how it looks and reads on the screen. It is easy to get my key information and input notes
I am new to the web-based product and it seems to be slow
My biggest benefit is the ability to quickly review my notes when a client calls back to always be up to date.
Act is a mandatory program for my area of work. The issue I have with act is just a few years ago I bought the program on a cd rom for everyone in my company. Just four years later the cd rom version no longer works and they now require a monthly charge for the program. The cd rom version no longer works and to me thats a scam. But I have to use act so I now pay over priced for a program I already own.
That you no longer support CD rom versions of the program.
Act is a must have for the number of contacts we need to keep track of with our business. It would not be possible with out act.
Act has a simple easy to understand interface, and offers a one time purchase option, good for small businesses and startups.
The platform isn't overly stable. We lose connections to Outlook for email campaigns. Have also seen issues where contact edits don't stick. Last, the platform doesn't offer email receipts or campaign reporting.
Organizing and maintaining large contact lists. It's easier than excel spreadsheets, and is inexpensive/cost effective.
I enjoy having contact information and templates in once spot. Its helpful for sure, but I've worked with other software that does more. I would recommend Procore over ACT!
It seems to crash a lot, and I don't find it a critical software.
It's nice having all the client information in one spot! I can just click on the client and write a proposal/submittal from there.
Act is simple to use. It has some features, like bulk updating of contacts for almost any field, that I took for granted.
Act is great for individual salesmen or small sales teams. It is not the greatest for large organizations, as the reporting data and automation is lackluster, and permissions are not as robust as in other solutions.
Act was adopted first by one salesmen in our company, but it quickly became property of the marketing department to implement an e-mail marketing strategy.
Act is a great Customer Relationship Management Tool where you can add all your active and prospect database. And you can look up easily any client profile you wish with all contact information and details you need. You can add some notes to each customer and then add some reminders or notes, very useful.
With Act software, you can't see payment details about each account and resolve past due invoices. It is hard to do customer orders resolutions with that. Also Act could be slow and you can just navigate from 1 to 1 account and can't treat multiple accounts at the same time.
Act is very useful to add details information for each account, you can see the main contact, his job profile , email address and phone number. You can do an easy email marketing campaigns with Act and do some follow ups. For each account, you can add date about last order, last visit and create any useful units you wish to organize properly your database. You can do different look up and select some specific clients.
Great tool to keep all your contacts in one place while easily keeping them up to date.
We regularly run into different problems. Act fails to sync with Outlook Act fails to load preference files
This CRM is excellent at keeping all your contacts in one place. Having the ability to view everything from the mobile app is a great feature that allows us to lookup contacts from any location.
Simple to track contacts, activities and companies. Bare bones...and that's what I like. Databases are small and easy to manage. Integration with outlook is fairly simple.
Microsoft updates wreck havoc on it. Business support hours are only on the weekdays. Support is largely overseas so sometimes translation is poor.
Keeping track of contacts, pipeline, etc. Helps me keep track of about 11000 contacts generated over the past 10 years. I've used this software exclusively for 10 years and it has helped me build a successful business.
Option to utilize as a cloud-based service, mobile-compatible.
I really dislike that I am not able to link Act! to outlook on my iMac.
It facilitates that ease of communication with clients/prospects. No balls are being dropped anymore.
There should be an easier more user friendly way to enter data. Many steps are repeatative
Entering data has repetitive steps Entering a new person takes too many steps
I like having the data stored. Good for reports
The layout of the cloud version and desktop version...Especially ver 19 and 20. I can't wait until I can incorporate Alexa into it.
Hard to strategize how to incorporate it in my business, what forms, reports and best practices for my businesses. I have two businesses. Real Estate and Advertising and I currently have to use two CRMs. I'd love to just use ACT!.
Active and proactive communication and connections. Convergence opportunity of CRM and accounting. I have used the product for almost a year and have started to build an affinity for it. I think it would be able to do a lot of what I want it to do but I just don't know how to get it there.
I liked that there is a software and a remote version to work on, so you can get your work done where ever you are.
Act! crashed on us once and we had to completely start over with importing our information. This took a LONG time and we had issues after the crash as well. It finally got to the point where we just had to switch databases.
We were keep track on clients, accounts, projects, etc in Act!
Nothing much as of now, it is too complicated and having much trouble.
Everything for now, customer support, technical support
It suppose to help me, but its creating a problem for me instead. I spend too much time on the phone with people who don't know the root of the problem and are just trying generic solution and they are not working for me. I'm considering another CRM
Ease of use in regards to CRM is a plus. Having it cloud based is also a plus.
After almost a year to trying, we still haven't been able to get the program to Sync with Outlook. Because of that, we have resorted to using the program strictly as a client database. Not what we had anticipated when we decided to use ACT Premium.
Not at the moment. If we could get the syncing to work, it would be a great benefit to the sales staff for keeping meetings and correspondence organized.
The service works really well from the moment you get it. No real need to fidget with templates or customizations. While you still have the ability to make those changes as you wish. Very easy to use since it utilizes the Excel format. Very good for inputting basic information.
The price point is a little less than desired. Unfortunately the cloud version is much more expensive than the regular version which lives on the servers. Not too many integrations across all systems.
Issues with integration between our software and the CRM solution. We are looking for something that works good across all of our systems seamlessly without too much hassle.
We like that it works with our email marketing service. We also like the groups and importing/exporting solution.
There is a lot to these databases as they are very customizable. I wish we had a free training session with our purchase so we could learn how to use it. There are not many resources (YouTube, ectt.) online. Also, we have used ACT for several years and it is not always ready when OS update or make changes. We often have problems when Windows changes their version or one of us gets a newer computer. To remedy this,
We use this as a contact management system. We actually have a training scheduled for our next sales meeting
Calendar and multiple user access; client cards
no easily accessible email marketing solutions; scheduling activities is cumbersome
crm
The ability to customize the records and the historical record keeping.
Not a very intuitive program to use out of the box. A lot of time training because it is very complex.
We tried to keep track of our sales leads, training leads and converted sales.
I like the layout customization, document sharing and ease of use
I don't like the zero outlook integration or transferability from and to our other products
general crm database. Letters and addresses really.
ACT has always been a very good CRM tool. Its later versions offer more and more features to allow automated email generation etc. Lower prices that some CRM tools. A great starter tool for a small business who do not want to go down the route of SAAS salesforce.com
No easy migration to bigger tools however fits purpose for small CRM
Not provided
It was helpful that it was customizable and could house a lot of different data.
It felt outdated. We ran into several issues and struggled that it wasn't an online cloud-based CRM. We outgrew its capabilities.
Can't really say. They weren't trying to make it online when we were using it.
I love that it can sync to email in outlook and keep track of all tasks. It's easy to use for reminders and to keep projects on track as well as a record of each client's information and communication.
It's touchy and doesn't always sync. It would be great if it was reliable.
It's nice to be able to go back and view emails sent to each client even when we have to delete the originals from Outlook.
At one time, I would have said that despite its flaws, it was an affordable option. In the past, tech support was included in a subscription, but that is no more.
The every increasing yearly subscription model is a big change for legacy Act! users. The yearly subscription costs more than Microsoft 365, and is leading me to explore other options.
I originally purchased Act! as an affordable database management tool for my freelance business. It worked then, even with some flaws, including the difficulty of finding duplicates, since it was a a contact management system aligned with cost structure that made sense for a freelance business model. A disciplined approach to list management could reduce the occurrence of duplicates. Unfortunately, switching to a yearly subscription model has resulted in a significant increase in pricing and is more so than I even pay for the MS Office Suite.
The ability to create multiple separate data bases.
Having to pay over $400 every year for a product I used to be able to purchase a hard disc copy and use for many years to come. There is no upgrade or benefits to having to pay every year, and there is no customer service per se.
Keeping my contacts organized.
Act was a simple system that was easy to navigate
It is too simple and doesn't provide enough features to help a business continue to grow
It wasn't solving much, as mentioned it was very basic so you could only do so much with the system