Act! CRM vs. LeadSquared

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

1. Very suitable for an omnichannel business, as it can capture both online and offline lead sources and allows for follow ups. 2. Very suitable for call centers as lead and call tracking can be done very easily using LeadSquared. 3. Not very suitable for on field sales. Even though the mobile app does facilitate portability, the overall experience does not come close to the desktop version which is not feasible for an on field sales representative to use.

• 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.

• Call history is recorded like dialed calls, connected calls, total talktime in a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and on a custom basis.
• The activity history of both customers, and employees are shown clearly, which help us a lot in understanding the interest of the customer, and their communication history with the organization.
• Daily attendance history and man-days management can be done.
• Sales performance and their values are mapped clearly.

• 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

• LeadSquared is a little bit expensive compared to other slimmer products, so they need to think about it.
• Sometimes LeadSquared gets stuck when I use it to run a large campaign, I would like them to improve this.
• LeadSquared creates a problem in slow internet connections, so I guess this is also an improvement area for them.

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

It is an excellent value for money solution and is fulfilling all our needs quite efficiently. They keep working on the product and each month sees an update allowing for a bug free experience and faster incorporation of newer tools. I see no reason why I would not like to renew the subscription for this fabulous product.

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.

Having talked about all other things in detail in my previous responses, this question I feel is redundant but then I will highlight the points again - Easy to Use - Flexible - Robust System - Ever-evolving - Support & Service - Integrations with third party tools & technologies - LMS - Data Management & Reports - Landing Page Options

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.

Great to work with and also Easy to work with Do not just listen to the problem but provide upfront solutions Always available and are ready to support on holidays Considerate of user's knowledge and always ready to explain the smallest / dumbest doubt a user can ask Always available to help with the internal tasks as well like creating automations, drip creations etc

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 looked closely at Infusionsoft. While the nurturing/decision tree tool of Infusionsoft was far more sophisticated, the many negative reviews of Infusionsoft lead me to look elsewhere. Leadsquared had very positive reviews and aggressive pricing. It has less features, but the features they have were the ones I wanted to focus on.

• 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

• Leads Management has become very easy.
• Automated Lead Nurturing helps reduce a lot of manual work.
• A lot of our time goes into creating custom reports. Making the reporting feature more flexible and robust will help in saving a lot of time and energy.