Act! CRM vs. Bigin by Zoho 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

- Multiple pipelines let me organize processes like sales, marketing, customer support, and assets clearly. - The forms builder allows me to gather leads, sign-ups, and customer requests from my website directly into the Bigin by Zoho CRM. - Integrations with Zapier and Make connect website orders and data from other sources smoothly. - Email templates make it easy to send professional, branded communications. - Automations handle repetitive tasks like managing customers, orders, and team tasks, saving me time.

• 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.

• Manage big databases. We have a large database of contacts and partners (more than 5,000 contacts), which are updated day by day, as a result of our participation in conferences, webinars, etc. For this reason, we needed a platform that would allow us to always have our database up to date, and accessible and editable by any member of the company.
• Pipelines. Pipelines are very necessary in our daily lives, since we present many service proposals to different clients, and until now we control the status very manually. With Bigin by Zoho CRM, we can have all this information centralized in a single place, and know at all times the status of the service proposals we present (sent, pending decision, lost, won...).
• Product definition. The product definition block has allowed us to further structure our typologies of products and services. At least, it has allowed us to reflect on them and what is the best way to package the service offered.
• Control panel. The control panel has been very useful for us to be able to quickly see the main indicators (offers presented, next actions to be taken, etc.).

• The auto saving function is not great. It means a simple slip or mistype can change an entire record easily.
• The reports are clunky and if you've changed the field names, that doesn't get reflected in the reports.
• The interface is still clunky. It is hard to see all the information for a contact all in one place. It gets broken up too much.

Incentivized

• No multi-select bulk move in pipeline After a webinar we had 42 cold leads that qualified → wanted to drag them all to “Interested” in one go. You can’t; moved them one-by-one like playing Solitaire.
• Workflows hidden behind pay-wall We needed an auto-survey when deal = “Won”. Works in trial, the day licence dropped back to free the rule simply stopped – zero warning.
• Offline mobile = read-onlyMentor met founder in co-working basement (no Wi-Fi). Took paper notes, re-typed into Bigin back at office → duplicate risk.
• Pick-list values can’t be deactivated, only deletedWe miss-typed “Refferal” instead of “Referral”. To fix, must delete; history of 60 old records then shows empty source.

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

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Incentivized

ACT follows the basic rules you would expect for this type of software, but actually doing anything sophisticated with it is near impossible without assistance or training. Unless you use it regularly it is difficult to use. I wouldn't recommend it unless you have internal IT support and it will be used regularly.

Bigin has really helped us with selling our monitoring services to our customers, which is primarily farmers in the UK. We often need to talk to customers before, during and after a sale, and Bigin helps us keep our contacts and leads organised as we track all these interactions. We recommend it very strongly

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.

The support is all international and it takes a while to get support as you have to go through chats and set up times, not as easy to just call and get the support you need. They are very nice when you do finally connect with someone and they are knowledgeable, just challenging being international sometimes.

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

Simplicity Without Sacrificing Core Features
Unlike full-scale CRMs that often feel overwhelming, Bigin by Zoho CRM provides a focused set of features that are perfect for managing deals, contacts, and activities. It’s not bloated, and that was exactly what we needed for a lean, fast-moving team.

• 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

• I was able to migrate from Hubspot CRM easily saving me hours of time
• I have recieved 5 x replies to the email sequence i set up since i started using it
• I have improved lead conversion by 5% so far