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
Redtail CRM
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Redtail CRM is a cloud-based CRM soluton specifically for financial advisors. Redtail is offered as a subscription service and, unlike most of the other CRM providers available, is priced per database, rather than per user, allowing up to 15 database users for one monthly subscription cost.
$20
per month
Pricing
Act! CRM
Redtail CRM
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)
Starter
$20
per month
Basic
$30
per month
Pro
$50
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Act! CRM
Redtail CRM
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.
It is extremely well suited to client management in the insurance and financial services industries. I think it would not be nearly as useful in a retail setting as many of the features would be irrelevant.
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.
Redtail CRM gives the capability to have a place to store all client-related documents in a readily accessible, yet secure, location.
Redtail CRM has a feature to input notes and comments on particular clients in order to keep track of communications with and steps taken for those clients. Those notes can be easily accessed across the firm.
Redtail CRM allows all email communications to be stored in a safe and secure manner as well as making those communications accessible on demand.
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
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.
Was good and still is good. Seems like when a company acquires another they try to squeeze out more profit and forget what made them successful in the first place. Reducing staff and support seems inevitable, even though the number of users has increased significantly over the past 10 years
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!.
Quite honestly, I have visibility into a number of CRM systems and Redtail stands alone as the strongest contender. It has the most thorough and customizable interface of any I have encountered. There are few other tools that offer the unmatched flexibility and the depth that any business could stand to profit from.
Redtail makes it easy to log customer interactions for compliance related fields.
With Redtail, you don't have to worry about losing information. Just pull up the customer's profile and make some notes on what is going on. You can never be too detailed in the advisor industry.
The integration ability at Redtail really saves us heaps of time. You can feed information over from the custodian straight over to another 3rd party. API is game changing!
