Act! Reviews: 3.9/5 — Good for the Price

Straightforward CRM that allows you to do standard issue things like track contacts, companies, activity history (phone calls and emails). Can generate customer orders from it. Manage sales opportunities.

The reporting isn't very intuitive and there are no dashboard views.

Customer and account management. The benefit for us is a single source of record.

I like that while the design is simplistic and a bit basic, the actual product itself works well and does the job it set out to do.

The interface looks like a 1980's computer program. I feel like a coder

It feels a bit dated and doesnt give us everything we need in terms of analytics

I really like the amount of data that you can put into the database. You can put in a lot of fields. That is great when you are trying to capture a lot of custom fields.

There is no easy way to export the data. I wish the menus were more self-explaining on what does what.

I have been using it to organize exhibitors and groups for consumer shows. For someone who has multiple types of accounts, I appreciate the flexibility and custom options with this platform.

Act! allows us to manage all of our customer data and is a useful tool for reviewing historic notes relating to our customers. With several departments within our business, all can access predetermined areas with specific read and write privileges.

Act! is quite difficult to manage and perform administrative tasks. With new employees regularly requiring access to the system, learning how to use it can be a slow task and I don't believe we are taking full advantage of its features.

Act! allows us to communicate internally and review feedback left for each of our customers.

The software definitely has a lot of uses when it comes to organizing a client base. Everything from grouping, to attaching documents to your contacts, to setting appointments. It can even be integrated with a few other software platforms such as Mitel.

ACT!'s interface is fairly outdated. It's reminiscent of 90's era databases. Not unusable, and once you get a hang of it you can start zooming around it pretty easily. But the interface can become confusing and isn't very intuitive at times. There is, without a doubt, a learning curve.

Organizing a large amount of contacts, documents, and files into an easily searchable database with multiple methods of querying information. We've managed to take what would have been a records room worth of files and placed it into a database we can easily search through.

The dashboard metrics are really powerful and we can drill out the data we are looking for.

For instance when you send a mass e-mail bigger than a certain file size the process sends 6 emails and stops. No error message or warning is given. Calling tech support only recommended that I move to one of their paid mass mailing products.

ACT is an invaluable part of our data collection and contact management.

I liked how customize-able Act! is and that it's fairly easy to do. It's not so advanced that you need loads of training to figure it out. It's easy to add to client information and make changes when necessary

I found it troublesome to search for contacts; they just never seemed to populate. Also, creating templates with our letterhead was a pain. If I was doing a mass mailing the template images would move down a little with each contact. There may have been ways around these issues but I just didn't have the time to research it. Also, because it was a software on our desktop, it seemed to slow things down with it's large file size.

It was our sole CRM. It was an quick and easy solution at the time.

Their service is reliable, the program is easy to use and very self explanatory. The fields and options are very customize-able. The page organization looks nice and neat and is presented well.

It doesn't seem like they are as popular as Salesforce now. I'm not sure why. Maybe Act offers less options, or perhaps it's the price, but their competitors must offer something better in some regard.

Organizing our database of client info, sending emails to them, creating lists, tracking processes, running reports, etc.

Simple to use yet robust organization, search, and scheduling capabilities.

The biggest shortcoming is no Google integration. Difficult to sync calendar and records with phone and other outside apps. Primitive word processing integration and clunky email integration.

Maintaining communication with clients and developing new client relationships.

Keyword search, ability to create lookup and then filter by territory/company or any of the other columns

No app or cloud based access. Really need to use it on my phone sometimes when on the road or in classified meetings where laptop is checked

Customer history, notes on past and working designs, reminders

Ease of customization and access to database. Addionally, Act! Is a great option for a low end budget

database frequently has error messages and does not work

client management

I like the ease of adding customers, some of the reports available . I don't like the fact that you can have duplicate accounts without notice.

The service is terrible, it times out , act.com is FREQUENTLY not responding ...I mean EVERYDAY of WORK, it is costing me customers and efficiency and I will be looking elsewhere for a cloud data base or go back to the Desktop version. period they have no customer service if you don't upgrade and pay more ...I pay $38.33 a month that is enough ....so may be moving on soon.

I was trying to solve having used ZOHO that had limited records before you had to pay much more, and with Act! Cloud I can add as many customer accounts as I need. That's it.

You can customize the platform for your needs.

It needs to be simplified amd more user friendly for the basic or starting user.

Able to track work done, customer contacts, and create quotes.

We liked how easy it was to integrate when our company started using a CRM system.

It became very dated, very fast It also became difficult to make sure all data was up to date, and to go in and update information. We found that a lot of records became duplicated, and there was no notice of it.

We used this to build our initial CRM system. We were able to compile all customers and non customers in one place, where everyone within the company was able to access them.

The feasibility of keeping your contacts all in one place

It lacks in user-friendliness compared to Salesforce or other CRM software

Slow to load, customer service

The one-time fee, responsive support team, customizable CRM. Keeps a record of all communication with clients if linked to Outlook.

UI is not the best. Most of the functions are not intuitive. It does not work on OSX. I end up carrying two laptops around all the time, one for Act and my mac for everything else. I would not recommend this CRM to anyone just on the basis of the UI/UX.

Right now we're using Act to save contacts, generate documents like quotations, sending out marketing emails, and also for tracking communication history with clients. We also store the physical equipment bought by our contacts. For tracking leads/opportunities - not useful, we use excel sheets instead.

easy look up. You can search by a variety of ways to find the record you are looking for

screen appearance. The layout seems a little outdated and could use a facelift

we manage our contacts, export them to our email marketing software and manage our sales funnel. We are able to track future opportunities in ACT! and forecast more accurately.

I'm able to track all emails and contacts history.

Very slow system. Mobile app is not very good.

It's great for mail merges and sending groups of mails out.

Act! is a great database for keeping track of prospects. Each time I speak with a prospect, I enter all of their information along with a quick note to recap our conversation. This comes in handy when they call a year down the road and I can easily refresh my memory.

The software that we have is rather outdated. There is also no lead generation. All of the information that is in the database comes from our company inputting it.

I believe by using Act! it shows our prospects and customers that we care about them. It's nice for them to call in and not have to repeat their issues again.

I most like the ability to create fields which are easily searched.

I most dislike that it easily crashes which causes me to loose my look-up unless I have saved it as a group or query.

The problem I am solving is searching through contacts which have not been recently contacted by our company. The benefit of using ACT! is that I can save and sort through my searches.

My former business partner was already using ACT! and she felt it was effective enough and didn't want to make a change. So, I dove in head first. It does the basics, you can manage your contacts, notes, and communication. I did find it intuitive and easy to learn. Some more advanced features was relatively easy to figure out.

I love my mobile device and at the time, you couldn't do anything while mobile. I kind of remember a lot of upgrades too, that got irritating. It didn't work well with Outlook, well, it kind of worked. The bottom line, it had the basics but you had to buy additional modules to for everything and it just didn't feel like a solid and cohesive product. There are a ton of better options.

It was my CRM, it held all the data on my business contacts, notes, leads, customers, etc.

ACT! is a good solution for managing your contacts. I have only worked with it on a small business scale, and it met our needs perfectly, but I am not sure if it would be the best solution for larger corporations.

Because it is geared toward small businesses or individuals, you will eventually outgrow its capabilities.

Managing contacts to give us a 360 degree view of our interactions with our clients. It is a great CRM for small businesses.

It is a basic CRM and does the job and can be cost effective if you are on a budget

If you have been using an older version getting support can prove to be difficult (I no longer use this product but used an older version and in order to get support we were told that we would have to upgrade which was not very cost effective).

Not provided

ACT is a useful tool for the commercial real estate industry because it allows our team to track prospects and current clients easily. This is a tool we utlize on a daily basis and is easy to update and manipulate data. We are able to store an good amount of data without making any significant updates to the software.

The fact I cannot access this program outside of the office. Makes it difficult to contact to potential clients direct informaiton without being able to access remotely. Trying to connect all of our contacts to a email blast but having difficulty figuring out the proper steps in order to make that happen.

Not provided

The thing I like most about Act! by Sage is its user interface and its ease of use. I started using Act! at the first company I worked for. The majority of the sales team used Microsoft Access but since my job was business development I wanted something seperate for my own use so that I could monitor myself. After I started usaing it for a little bit I was asked to set up the software for the whole sales team.

At the time I started using ACT! there was no way to transfer content form Acess into the Sage databases. I beleive there is an easy way to do this now which would have saved me countless hours of work.

Not provided

It is a feature rich product with a long history of successful implementations across many industries. I do think that it is better suited to the SME, and has a low cost of entry too.

It is a bit clunky and the user interface perhaps doesn't look as fresh as many of the cloud solutions these days do.

Not provided

I suport a friends' business on ACT and it's not a bad tool for a 2 man shop. Extremely basic CRM capabilities. Good for contact management.

Not SaaS based and my friend would like to have a mobile option now. Also have issues with system backups and restore but I think it's a user issue.

Not provided

Like the account detail. Can keep track of many details.

Can't really get act to works universally on Laptop/Desk/top/ Phone. There is always something not working.

Keep all the cleint date in one spot.

It's rather easy to customize most things. I like that I can add categories on the fly.

The customer service and tech support is not easy to work with at all - to put it mildly. Running reports is not intuitive. The program needs to be more user friendly.

Keeps a list of my clients with room to include detailed notes. I would have liked to have the option to customize some of the headings. We also use it to create a to-do list.

I like link between database and calendar and the way that they work together.

There is a big language barrier - would like U.S. based customer support. Would also be nice to have ACT in Mac version.

Keeping an efficient client database as well as day to day calendar.