Act! CRM vs. Nutshell 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

This can be used for different industries, healthcare, IT, retail or any company with a customer service line, big or small. if i had to ask, i would say "Do you have any type of filing system that you use?" "anything where you are keeping track of personal/ business information." Do you need access to information on a day to day basis? If they do , then this can be used , especially if you need to keep track of the numbers; we like how we can see if are things going up or down.

• 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.

• Customization - we are able to make Nutshell make the most sense for our company and processes
• Scheduling - the ability to set tasks allows us to never forget a follow-up call or email
• Tags - allow us to prioritize leads and segment our customers and potential customers
• Communication - the ability to tag colleagues in notes for callbacks or updates to accounts is very helpful to keep everyone on the same page
• Email History - being able to blind copy all our email communication to Nutshell, allows us to have email threads and notes all in one place

Incentivized

• 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

• integration with email doesn't work as advertised
• would like integration with quickbooks
• If there is a misspelling in any one email address, you can not send a mass email. You must go back and correct each error before it can send.

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

This is perfect for a small business / Home based business with SaaS. Nutshell constantly adds new features and the price is much better than more robust software like Salesforce.

Incentivized

I am giving this rating because it has great features and it is most liked by the employee due to its best GUI. Recent survey within the organisation put this in the last best crm tools. And it also has other features as explained earlier . The call summary or interaction summary is a plus. There are scope for improvement .

Incentivized

Extremely easy to use and they help you throughout the process. I find it not challenging, an effective utility to help us prioritize and engage efficiently at a reasonable price point. We enjoy working with the team there and they're easy to access. I've already recommended it to two colleagues

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.

Nutshell's support team has always been great and they tend to go above and beyond. They are polite, friendly, personable and great listeners. They are also great about sending follow up emails too.

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.

Implementation is difficult everytime but this was relatively simple due to the small amount of data we moved

Incentivized

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

When I first started with BCI, they were using ACT!. It was hard to navigate and there were a lot of spots for duplicate information that made it hard to know if you were in the right spot or not. Then if you had trouble, you would spend 3 hours on the phone with customer service and often they would not even be able to find a solution. I would not recommend ACT! to anyone. Since getting nutshell, I have learned a bit about Cosential and I know that it is more catered to the construction industry and can help with proposal creation, so I think that may be something we consider in the not-too-near future.

Incentivized

• Very poor return on investment. It is now quite costly and the support service no longer offers assistance except if the program crashes.
• Swiftpage seems to have replaced their skilled UK based support team with a call centre?? The service I got was dreadful. This is a difficult program to use and support is vital.
• You will need some IT skills to properly use ACT! Don't rely on their support which is not good.

• Nutshell CRM has had a major impact on ROI. The last program we used cost more and had fewer features and accessibility.
• One negative impact is its email functions. As stated before in this review I need to be able to send large attachments and pics through email and Nutshell is very limited when it comes to that.

Incentivized