Likelihood to Recommend 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 If you are looking for a way to organize customer data and projects across regions, then WORK[etc] will get the job done. For our company, the country is divided into 3 regions and each region has a team of workers in charge of providing ongoing support services to that region. WORK[etc] has organized our company exponentially and given us a solid database to pull from to ensure we're meeting contractual requirements, providing timely deliverables and staying ahead of the game. Because I only work in a service industry, I don't know if WORK[etc] would be appropriate for product based companies, However, if you were offering anything [product or service] that required online support, the system will function well.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Connecting all the different methods of communicating with our clients into one place is the best part of the application to us. The Google Apps integration lets us update all of our WORK[etc] details directly from our email page which saves a huge amount of time. It lets us move back and forth freely between WORK[etc] tools and our Google Apps email, documents, calendar, etc. with ease. Breaking work according to what we are doing helps us group and ungroup things as needed. Since we do tech support and so much more having the ability to connect projects, support cases, to dos, documents, discussions, and more all together makes it easy to work with the relationships of all the different activity. We have found the discussion tool to be vital to moving things through quickly. There are many discussions that are just FYI while others really need a decision or answer form the team members. Discussions allows us to quickly note the people we need to answer us and what is there as an FYI. It keeps all that history so our decision process become documented easily and not lost in email chains. Read full review Cons 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 The one key issue that it doesn't solve is resource utilisation. You are able to add the number of hours that each "to do" will take but you can't allocate that to an employee and then aggregate all that up to show how much capacity you are using or have left. One if its great benefits is its flexibility but that is also a drawback because there are multiple ways to do the same thing. This means that to ensure consistency across all employees having your own business procedures on how to use WORKetc is vital. Some of the financial processes don't fully reflect UK practice currently. For instance it doesn't deal with VAT on expenditure well. However we have been assured that this is being resolved. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 We, as a company, have put a lot of time and energy into building the system to where it is for us today. With its constant improvements and our continually learning and developing, I couldn't imagine moving away from WORKetc to try a different system out. This really does give us everything that we've wanted/needed in a system without having to utilize 2-3 different products. The part that makes this so unique compared to other systems that we've used in the past is the fact that it has a project management piece built in, and that in itself is a huge driving point in why we will continue to use this.
Read full review Usability 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!
Read full review My staff hates it, our clients require transparency and you manual have to enter notes, billing is horrific, as it does not subtotal by type - so as a T&M shop there is no way to easily see how much was spent to each matter or service type.
Read full review Reliability and Availability It never let me down. The support team never let me down.
Read full review Performance WORKetc compares well in regards to speed and reliability to other cloud-based products we use such as Google for Work. Compared to our old in-house based CRM, it is a superstar; faster, more reliable and easily run on a variety of browsers and smart phones. The program loads fast as do data screens for contacts, projects, invoices and more
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review WORKetc offers maybe the best support in the business. Product documentation and training resources are outstanding. Support tickets or inquiries are answered quickly. If you do need to address an issue in person, it is easy to schedule a 15 or 30 minute live call with their fantastic support staff who are fast, friendly and skilled
Read full review Online Training They know their stuff. They listen to your use cases. They get back to you.
Read full review Implementation Rating Delay your upgrades! ACT appears to ship out new software with virtually no checking and no concern about bad installs do to their customers.
Read full review The implementation of the system was fairly easy. Because of our previous experience with a similar system, we were ready and working on the product as soon as we announced the switch. The system also allowed us to simplify our processes by integrating timesheets and project management directly into our CMS.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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 We needed a CRM that would work with US. We found WORK [etc] was exactly what we needed. being able to customize the CRM around our company and further change as we go has been the best thing about it. We haven't been locked into how it is set up and can change it very quickly.
Read full review Scalability Everything is related. You can scale up your team rapidly.
Read full review Return on Investment 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%. Read full review Setting up project templates is time-consuming - if you want to do it right. Nevertheless, it is well worth it! Routine complex projects that used to require at least six people and at least as many "silos of information" are now done with two or three people, and - at most - 2 or 3 silos of information. And that's only because I haven't fully integrated the program with our Accounting programs (and there is an API for Quickbooks). I'd say the initial investment of perhaps 80 hours on my part was saved five or ten times over during our first six months, with better accuracy, accountability, and documentation. Since then, the ROI is at least 20 or 30 times annually of my time...the one thing I can't buy more of. Read full review ScreenShots