Act! CRM (formerly Swiftpage) aims to empower small businesses to build and manage client relationships and leads, so the user always has a pipeline of new, repeat, and referral business under control. Users can manage their businesses with Act! CRM every day, since it’s more than a CRM – it’s designed to present everything needed to stay on top of relationships, see what’s most important and actionable, and run sales and marketing in one place.
$22
per month
Highrise CRM (discontinued)
Score 4.0 out of 10
N/A
Highrise is a simple CRM, allowing the user to track leads and manage follow ups with zero learning curve. Highrise is only available and supported for existing customers. As of August 2018 Highrise is no longer available to new customers. Existing customers may still take advantage of Highrise.
$4
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Act! CRM
Highrise CRM (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Essentials
$22
per user, per month
Act! Premium - Basic
$37.50
per user, per month (billed annually)
Standard
$40
per user, per month
Expert
$55
per user, per month
Select - Extra Features
$79
per user, per month (billed annually)
Complete - Extra Features
$199
per user, per month (billed annually)
Advanced - Extra Features
$399
per user, per month (billed annually)
Highrise
$4.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Act! CRM
Highrise CRM (discontinued)
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
For SaaS version, discount available for annual subscription.
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.
We chose to work with the Basecamp product and along with it came Highrise. They're a great 37 signals package together. So we chose to work with Highrise because of Basecamp
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.
Easy batch upload of new contacts - if you gathered names and contact info for a bunch of people at an event or conference or what have you, put it in a spreadsheet and upload it for easy and efficient adding to the database.
Simple communication and outreach tracking - each user has an individualized dropbox email address; you can BCC:, CC:, or forward an email to or from a client or contact, and Highrise automatically associates and records that email with the contact in the database.
Task assignments - users can create and task assignments associated with specific contacts (ie - Send Suzy J. a gift box on Oct 1; Follow Marla K. and Billy Z. on Twitter & Facebook; Get an updated address from Nathan R.)
Tags - easily create lists of contacts who fit certain needs (I need a: food blogger, in TX, who has a Facebook page - we have "food blogger", "TX," and "Facebook" tags in our system) that is then exportable; also useful for knowing the important associations of a particular contact.
Im actually pretty happy with the system as it is. The best aspect of Highrise is that it is very easy to work with - no need to struggle with manuals and lengthy training.
Not really a problem I suppose but I pay for Highrise as part of a suite which includes other products - Basecamp, Backpack and Campfire. It would be nice to see more integration between these products.
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!
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.
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!.
Highrise is simple to use and is run by the same folks who build Basecamp and 37Signals. We wanted something that would do the essentials without the cumbersome bells and whistles. Salesforce is almost too complicated if you don't have a whole sales operation and analytics division. One day we will probably outgrow Highrise, but not yet.
