Act! CRM vs. Salesflare

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

If a client or friend of mine was in search of a quality tool that is a robust CRM and has a great team behind it, I would highly recommend SalesFlare. The team has consistently updated the application; it is a robust and useful tool, and most importantly, the team behind SalesFlare is easy to work with when needed.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Organization of our clients as well lead and opportunity tracking and management.
• Pipeline management and a significant amount of depth when it comes to monitoring sales and other opportunities.
• It provides an overview of the sales process and custom fields for individual accounts (such as branding).

• 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

• Salesflare automatically captures and organises data about leads so it can effectively surface the ones that require your attention. It also provides you with the tools to do just that. What it doesn't cover as much right now is feeding top of the funnel: I would for example happily pay extra to have a website visitor identification functionality into the mix.

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

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 pipeline, which is the core of the platform, is very clear and full of features. On top of that Salesflare added automations, integrations, plugins and emails. You can easily get your leads there from any platform and nurture your leads until you get the deal done. I think any business can benefit from using this sales CRM.

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.

Hit them on Chat support, and you are gonna get a response within a few minutes (if not in a few hours, during weekends) But they are gonna keep following with you till they make sure that your query has been resolved. Keep it up!

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

Pipedrive was another option but I chose Salesflare for the seamless integration into my regular everyday workflow as well as its ability to integrate with just about any app you can think of. It plays nice with all of my other apps and makes using a CRM actually fun. I love the fact it works inside my Gsuite account and automatically pulls data from Gsuite into Salesflare.

Incentivized

• 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

• As a start up, Salesflare was perfect for me. It was easy to get up and running; easy for me to import my contacts, and easy to earn the features.
• I like the price point - lots of features for a reasonable price.