Act! CRM vs. Less Annoying 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

Less Annoying CRM is an excellent system for us as we log everything we do with a customer and has easy access to the imfromation later. May sound "of course" but this is by far the easiest CRM I've ever worked with during my 30 years in sales. Follow-up and scheduling is easy managable as well as designing forms and fields our selves. Less Annoying CRM has a good list of plug'ins to other software for integrational puposes. Most important to us is support when needed. Less Annoying CRM excels in its support. Don't hesitate, it doesn't do everything, but get started and get surprised

• 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.

• Simple, intuitive usage
• Daily agenda emails
• Ease of moving calendar / action items around, closing out
• Customer service is extremely responsive, they don't hide behind a "contact us" form on their website as so many companies seem to do. You can readily reach them by phone!

• 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

• The one thing I was looking for is a place to manage multiple businesses with one project. Like if I am selling a "summer camp guide," I would like to have info for sales in one place with multiple contacts and businesses. LACRM customer service provided a workaround for me by suggesting I set up a specific pipeline for each project and them put each business in there. It is working great and, actually, a much better way to manage the project than I have originally intended.
• I really don't have anything else to add. LACRM is perfect for us.

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

Excellent product which meets my needs of a complex industry

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.

The biggest reason I came to Less Annoying CRM was how simple it was to use and how powerful it is. The learning curve is very small, and I was able to start using it in a productive way right from the beginning. When I had questions or asked for suggestions the CRM Coaches at the company responded immediately and made sure my questions were answered.

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 can't stress enough, how Less Annoying CRM's Customer Service is the absolute best thing. You're never going to be waiting weeks for a response. You're always going to know someone will call you back. They don't forget you or lose your ticket. And If you don't THINK something can be done with Less Annoying CRM, write or call Customer Service, and they are sure to have a wealth of information and ideas to offer you. They really are about helping you find simple solutions that work! They are SMART about workflows and productivity!

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.

After explaining that I was moving from Salesforce and the problems I was encountering, they took over and implemented the data in such a quick and efficient way, I was looking for the other shoe to drop but they did an amazing job so very impressed

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

HubSpot has a huge selection of tools, reports, integrations and supports that Less Annoying does not have. It is not comparable in price or functionality - but I am comparing it because it was the last CRM I used before I used Less Annoying, and it made me realize that if you don't need all the bells and whistles, but you just need to track your Customers and manage your leads and you don't want to spend a lot of money, Less Annoying CRM is the way to go.

• 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

• Not just storage of information, but utilizing that information to build stronger relationships with clients
• Because it's web-based, we can be at our desk or on the road and still have the full functionality of the CRM at our fingertips, which helps us keep focusing on sales!