Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review It is difficult to beat the simplicity of use and design of Capsule CRM. Add to the fact that they offer the best free plan which is great to sign up our clients with so that they can see how valuable having a CRM is. Getting newbies to use CRM with ease helps us with our CRM projects and to sign up more clients seamlessly. Hence, it is perfect place to start with for a small business. Based on feedback from clients, who already have some premium apps to manage their sales and work orders, it can get tricky to integrate them with Capsule CRM and hence it's not that favourable in the complex IT solution use case for specific clients. Support is through messages only and it can get a bit frustating if one is in a hurry to get the setup done. It's preferred to take your time and raise support tickets as and when necessary.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Capsule is very easy to use. You can just jump in and learn as you go. There are advantages to really learning the ins and outs, but for those who aren't sold on a CRM to begin with it's good for just getting them started. It is what you make of it--you can use the most basic features or really dive in to the many functionalities. The UI is clean and intuitive. We don't get easily overwhelmed while using it. Capsule has a very robust contact management system. It allows for the generation of very specific lists within existing contacts, which is good if the user has to keep track of thousands of individuals and companies. There is a tagging feature that is great for further organizing contacts. I like that there is a simple workflow option. I encourage the sales guys to make use of this "Tracks" feature, and they often do (but if they don't, it's not the end of the world, which is nice). It provides custom sets of tasks that are created as soon as you start an opportunity or a case. Capsule has a LOT of integrations, which is great if you're looking to expand what you do with your CRM. We got Capsule just to keep track of the sales pipeline, but now that everyone's on board with the concept of a CRM (they weren't sold at first!) we can look into implementing more robust programs that can "talk to" Capsule. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Its integration with Mail chimp is not smooth. Also, it does not allow to list contacts alphabetically which is a great downside of this tool. It does not contain some essential marketing features. It needs to improve the user interface and make it more productive especially on the calendar view. The contact sorting is quite disappointing. It would be nice if it allows users to set screen filters. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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
Read full review Usability 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!
Read full review As a well-rounded business tool, Capsule CRM is an excellent choice. It fulfills our requirements and aids in the operation of our business. One of the most effective tools for managing our business solutions and supply chains is adding this tool to our system to see the fantastic results of effective management. Capsule CRM could try and see what they're offering to get the best results.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Capsule CRM is the best application in allocating the problems and reasons for any project drawback. Your solution will be there within seconds. It controls business empowerment with its authentic approach and we can use this application without any problem. Our employees are on a single platform and we can decide and implement things at once. There is no need to wait for any meeting, as everything is just a click away. Our promotions are technical and easy to understand for clients and they can communicate well to deliver their ideas.
Read full review Implementation Rating Delay your upgrades! ACT appears to ship out new software with virtually no checking and no concern about bad installs do to their customers.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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!.
Read full review We chose Capsule CRM over
Zoho CRM due to the various modules that it would take for
Zoho CRM to work for our firm. Additional Zoho modules would have been needed (
Zoho CRM and Projects) to make it work for us which in turn requires additional management. With Capsule CRM, there was only one app that needed to be integrated within our app ecosystem
Read full review Return on Investment 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%. Read full review It's enabled us to have a cloud-based live database, rather than living off spreadsheets or an antiquated Access database It's hard to really quantify ROI on a small startup, but it's been very helpful to have a small scale but powerful CRM as we grow the company. Since we don't use it entirely as it's intended, the terminology and shortcuts are a bit confusing. Read full review ScreenShots