Act! CRM vs. Vtiger

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

vTiger packs a ton of functionality and capability, but the challenge is getting there. In today's day where everyone is doing more with less, having a solution that meets a couple specific needs and does that well is essential. To me, at times I feel as though vTiger is trying to be a "jack of all trades" solution which ultimately ends up making it more confusing to use. However, on the flip side of that, if you take the time to learn everything about vTiger, I am sure it is an awesome tool but there is a learning curve associated with it. Finally, I would like to see more integrations with other vendors moving forward so if we cannot use vTiger for everything, at least it would have the ability to "talk" with other programs.

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.

• User-friendly interface.
• Reliable tracking system and alerts to maintain overall control of the proceses.
• Meets all the needs of the average company.

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

• Though you can create reports however you want, they may need to come out in multiple files. I wish this could be aggregated.
• It's still very simple. There is room for improvement with the setup of the admin panel.
• The dropdowns function funny when scrolled down. It's picky but it's frustrating.
• The search function could be improved.

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

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.

In the Last versions they have done a strong effort in creating a powerful data screen. Inside the screen you have access to signing, communications with multiple tools integration and connections with all modules related. With a single view you have all control over your data relations. It is similar to a control managing.

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.

It is as good as you could expect for a company that operates from another continent. Emails are quickly responded to and do not usually require additional questions or answers. It is quite rare for a company of their size to be as responsive as they are and that makes them a sound choice to deal with.

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.

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

VTiger had better overall cost and native capabilities that other solutions lacked. We used Nutshell CRM for over a year. It was a very efficient contact management system, but it seemed that if we needed to do anything but record contacts, we had to use an add-on. We spent a lot of time exporting and importing between different services. Quoting, invoicing, and payments all had to be manually transferred to our accounting system. It was very frustrating

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

• Integration Across the Organization - What started out as just a CRM tool for sales is now being used for ticket management and project management.
• Steep Learning Curve - It is not as intuitive out of the box and really requires a dedicated person to be a vTiger expert which can be challenging and time consuming.
• Reliability - Sometimes features that worked yesterday don't work today, thus causing more time to complete the same exact task that was done previously. The thing that comes to mind specifically is the main search box as 1/2 the time it works, 1/2 the time it doesn't work.

Incentivized