Act! CRM vs. Aurea 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

I have prepared deeply detailed customised queries to prepare detailed customer reports including markets, segments, classifications and potentials to present to our company management which have been highly appreciated. So, it was well suited in that case. Since I'm traveling a lot for customer visit activities, I frequently need to use it as mobile but it's slightly nightmarish to use its unfriendly search function as well as very slow loading speeds. So, it's less appropriate in that case.

Incentivized

• Integrated Email Marketing: For a small business, you can have a strong method to handle email marketing in an integrated non-disparate solution.
• Tailoring: There are no limits on what data you can store in the system and the ease of making changes can be done by a nontechnical person.
• User Interface: The tool is easy to get around in both the desktop (fat client) and (webclient) which both are quite similar in functionality.
• Integration: The tool integrates with Word, Excel, and Outlook nicely. And, it integrates with Google Mail and Contacts. There is a nice selection of third party tools available for various needs like AddressGrabber which allows for easy input of contacts from various sources such as email signatures, webpages, etc.
• Templates: I have enjoyed being able to store tons of various templates for letters which we use over and over for various communications like sales proposals, quotes, and nudging clients along the funnel and sales process.
• Automation: SwiftPage ACT! has a small business automation engine which allows for reminders and workflow to be administered by the system. It's not as sophisticated as some enterprise workflow automation solutions but for the price it's an awesome addition.
• Maintenance: Very rarely have a problem which needs to be dealt with and costs to upgrade are minimal at best. We hosted the system internally for the web client and implemented it ourselves initially but had upgrades subsequently done by a local partner simply due to time/cost scenario. In other words, less to have someone else do it.

• customised and detailed query preparation
• offer creation
• creation of detailed activity reports

Incentivized

• Not intuitive to use. I will have to contact support for help if I haven't used some functions in a while.
• It's near impossible to delete duplicates as they have to be deleted individually. This is a problem if you have more than 5000 contacts.
• Reporting is difficult.

• slightly complex user interface and menu items
• very slow loading speeds particularly for mobile smartphone use
• missing information for current or next steps of the menu while typing or entering something

Incentivized

There are a lot of good SaaS options on the market but SwiftPage ACT still has a place in the mix today. It depends on your needs, goals, processes, and people

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!

Since it's providing useful features, I like to use Aurea CRM on my company PC at the office for my daily activities. However, we are in highly digital age via mobile devices particularly smart phones and we need to use softwares even in mobility which is highly weak feature of Aurea CRM and needs to be improved as soon as possible.

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.

I'm not getting in touch directly with Aurea CRM support team member because they have trained our company's IT team members that are in direct contact with Aurea CRM support channel. As far as I know, the overall support for Aurea CRM is quite good and highly prompt in a professional way.

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.

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 didn't select Aurea CRM myself. Since our company is global, our headquarter has selected Aurea CRM after certain years of old Oracle based Crm use. As far as I know the old one was having some weaknesses about reporting, analysing via queries, lack of marketing activies etc. That's why our top management has selected Aurea CRM for a better solution which I highly agree with it except terrible mobile use.

Incentivized

• It's been easy to keep track of progress of goals with the software. This provides the opportunity to know what is working and what is not.
• We have had to adjust a lot of things since the Virus issue took a foothold, but it is providing invaluable to make those adjustments.
• Our ROI has increased at least 30%.

Incentivized

• positive impact for efficiency of indoor sales activies
• positive impact for better report preparation
• negative impact for mobile use

Incentivized