Act! CRM vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Act! CRM
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
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
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered, cloud-based digital marketing platform within the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.
$1,250
per month per installation
Pricing
Act! CRMSalesforce Marketing Cloud
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)
Account Engagement
$1,250
per month
Engagement
$1,250
per month
Intelligence
$3,000
per month
Loyalty Management
$20,000
per month
Personalization
$100,000
per year
Data Cloud for Marketing
$108,000
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Act! CRMSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsFor SaaS version, discount available for annual subscription.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Act! CRMSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Act! CRMSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
6.5
3 Ratings
17% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Customer data management / contact management9.83 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow management7.42 Ratings00 Ratings
Territory management8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Opportunity management9.63 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)1.63 Ratings00 Ratings
Quote & order management4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Interaction tracking9.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management1.32 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
6.0
2 Ratings
22% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Case management1.82 Ratings00 Ratings
Call center management8.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Help desk management8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
2.0
3 Ratings
116% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Lead management2.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Email marketing2.03 Ratings00 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
4.0
2 Ratings
62% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Task management8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management1.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting3.02 Ratings00 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
4.8
3 Ratings
45% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Forecasting4.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Pipeline visualization4.83 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable reports5.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
3.2
3 Ratings
81% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Custom fields7.83 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom objects2.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Scripting environment2.01 Ratings00 Ratings
API for custom integration1.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
8.0
2 Ratings
4% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Single sign-on capability7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based user permissions9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
1.7
3 Ratings
123% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Marketing automation1.73 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
2.0
3 Ratings
116% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Mobile access2.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
159 Ratings
2% above category average
WYSIWYG email editor00 Ratings8.0111 Ratings
Dynamic content00 Ratings8.0141 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content00 Ratings7.8101 Ratings
Landing pages00 Ratings7.6109 Ratings
A/B testing00 Ratings8.4140 Ratings
Mobile optimization00 Ratings7.599 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting00 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
List management00 Ratings7.6117 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences00 Ratings8.285 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.7
113 Ratings
0% below category average
Lead nurturing automation00 Ratings7.8101 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading00 Ratings7.4101 Ratings
Data quality management00 Ratings7.7105 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks00 Ratings7.893 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
104 Ratings
4% above category average
Calendaring00 Ratings7.994 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing00 Ratings7.988 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.9
81 Ratings
9% below category average
Social sharing and campaigns00 Ratings7.477 Ratings
Social profile integration00 Ratings6.432 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.7
113 Ratings
3% above category average
Dashboards00 Ratings7.7108 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings7.9112 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings7.589 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Act! CRM
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.6
113 Ratings
0% above category average
API00 Ratings7.682 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals00 Ratings8.279 Ratings
Customizability00 Ratings7.2100 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com00 Ratings8.6102 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM00 Ratings7.89 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM00 Ratings6.77 Ratings
Third-party software integrations00 Ratings7.315 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Act! CRMSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Small Businesses
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 9.8 out of 10
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.2 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.2 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Act! CRMSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
2.2
(18 ratings)
7.9
(317 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
1.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(113 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(7 ratings)
5.9
(35 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
1.8
(14 ratings)
5.9
(36 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
1.0
(2 ratings)
3.0
(17 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(25 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Act! CRMSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
ACT! LLC
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.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud does an excellent job at collecting and storing leads. Once the leads are qualified by workflows and automations established against your qualifiers, you can begin to segment, target, send communication, and track the efficacy of your campaigns. Being that Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an extension of Salesforce CRM, there is little work that needs to be done to ensure that your SQL are migrated to your CRM once they are ready to do so. The seamlessness between the two systems is paramount to the success of our organization.
Read full review
Pros
ACT! LLC
  • 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.
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Salesforce
  • Filter relevant content so you can priorize those that are more relevant and resolve it first
  • Measure the traffic in the different social networks, as well as the response rate, average response time and other relevant metrics
  • Configure automation rules to order the work of those who must interact with the customer
Read full review
Cons
ACT! LLC
  • Not intuitive to use. I will have to contact support for help if I haven't used some functions in a while.
  • It's near impossible to delete duplicates as they have to be deleted individually. This is a problem if you have more than 5000 contacts.
  • Reporting is difficult.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • The email builder does not offer any way to catch/check bugs across different email service providers
  • Creating SQL is not as easy as drag-and-drop; a lot of technical knowledge is required
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud is sold as a marketing tool, but to be honest, you need a LOT of technical IT support to run the tool
  • Einstein metrics are across the board; if you have multiple audiences in one instance of Salesforce Marketing Cloud you can't segment the data.
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Likelihood to Renew
ACT! LLC
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
Read full review
Salesforce
As of right now we have not seen any other program that integrates as seamlessly into our Salesforce platform. We have barely scratched the surface of all the features and use cases. It would be irresponsible to make a move to another platform in the near future. We have not come up against any limitations that would prompt a need to switch
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Usability
ACT! LLC
Try printing reports with each record's notes section - really awful output that you are embarrassed to show anyone. Want to add a new record to a group, ACT will present another record for the group assignment. Want to work seamlessly with email? Forget it!
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Salesforce
You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.
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Reliability and Availability
ACT! LLC
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.
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Performance
ACT! LLC
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.
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Support Rating
ACT! LLC
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.
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Salesforce
They're fast and knowledgeable. You will always know what's the status of your request and they usually follow up with phone calls to ask you questions or provide updates. Sometimes it takes them a couple of days to investigate, especially if you have custom "situations" like my company usually does but at least they are very good at managing time expectations.
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In-Person Training
ACT! LLC
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
The trainers at the Pardot user conference (Elevate and Connections) were very knowledgeable and presented the material well. Again, the content was targeted to more of a new user audience, and was not really relevant for folks who had been using the product for 2+ years.
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Online Training
ACT! LLC
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.
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Implementation Rating
ACT! LLC
Delay your upgrades! ACT appears to ship out new software with virtually no checking and no concern about bad installs do to their customers.
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Salesforce
From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.
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Alternatives Considered
ACT! LLC
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!.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud stands out for its comprehensive features, scalability, and seamless integration capabilities. Compared to other platforms, its unified suite of tools for email, social media, mobile, and advertising enables streamlined cross-channel campaign management and personalized marketing at scale. We chose Marketing Cloud for its industry leadership, robust ecosystem, and tight integration with Salesforce CRM, allowing us to deliver exceptional marketing solutions and drive measurable results for our clients efficiently.
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Scalability
ACT! LLC
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps create profiles for each subscriber. The Contact Builder feature stores information about every subscriber, including whether they're an active customer, their purchase history from the last year, and their email engagement metrics. It also identifies the likelihood of a subscriber churning, aiding in creating personalized campaigns to boost company revenue.
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Return on Investment
ACT! LLC
  • 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%.
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Salesforce
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to more efficiently reach out to a higher number of prospects.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to nimbly communicate important messages in a timely fashion to facilitate conversion.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to track who is opening our messages so that we can stop sending to those not interested and focus on the most engaged audiences.
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ScreenShots

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Pardot Analytics - Pardot's reporting and analytics can be used to perform true revenue impact analysis and closed-loop reporting.Screenshot of Pardot Email Analytics - The reach and impact of  email marketing efforts are displayed in real-time with advanced reporting and analytics by device, and email client.Screenshot of Pardot Forms and Landing Pages - Pardot's form and landing page builders are used to turn online traffic to leads with targeted offers and content marketing.Screenshot of Pardot Email Marketing - Lead nurturing flows are defined via an interface that enables definition of the simplest or most complex segmented and targeted campaigns.