Act-On Software vs. Adobe Campaign

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Act-On
Score 8.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Act-On is an adaptive marketing platform designed to drive personal and purposeful multi-channel marketing. Its foci are inbound and outbound marketing, for enabling a tighter alignment with sales and turning data into actionable insights.
$900
per month (starts at 2,500 active contacts)
Adobe Campaign
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Adobe acquired Neolane in July 2013 and later re-named the product Adobe Campaign. Adobe Campaign provides both marketing automation and marketing resource management functionality such as spend & financial management, workflow, and asset management.N/A
Pricing
Act-On SoftwareAdobe Campaign
Editions & Modules
Professional
$900
per month (starts at 2,500 active contacts)
Enterprise
$2,000
per month ( starts at 2,500 active contacts)
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Act-OnAdobe Campaign
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe Professional package starts at 2,500 active contacts, 3 marketing users, 50 sales users and 30,000 API calls per day. The Enterprise package starts at 2,500 active contacts, 6 marketing users, 100 sales users and 30,000 API calls per day. Annual contract required.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Act-On SoftwareAdobe Campaign
Considered Both Products
Act-On
Chose Act-On Software
To improve the system, Act-On is developing custom reports and workflows. It is incredibly flexible as well as functionally sound and reliable. The other features that our team enjoys the most are the features such as all contacts. Creating landing pages and web forms is a snap …
Adobe Campaign

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Act-On SoftwareAdobe Campaign
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
7.8
113 Ratings
0% above category average
Adobe Campaign
8.8
92 Ratings
12% above category average
WYSIWYG email editor8.1112 Ratings9.586 Ratings
Dynamic content8.192 Ratings9.692 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.292 Ratings9.687 Ratings
Landing pages8.1108 Ratings8.084 Ratings
A/B testing8.195 Ratings8.888 Ratings
Mobile optimization7.2103 Ratings9.586 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.1112 Ratings8.090 Ratings
List management8.1111 Ratings6.392 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences7.187 Ratings9.781 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
8.1
113 Ratings
5% above category average
Adobe Campaign
6.7
6 Ratings
14% below category average
Lead nurturing automation8.1104 Ratings7.16 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.1104 Ratings7.35 Ratings
Data quality management8.1102 Ratings6.36 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks8.195 Ratings6.05 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
7.5
77 Ratings
2% below category average
Adobe Campaign
8.5
86 Ratings
11% above category average
Calendaring6.88 Ratings9.686 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing8.176 Ratings7.46 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
8.1
71 Ratings
8% above category average
Adobe Campaign
7.9
4 Ratings
5% above category average
Social sharing and campaigns8.169 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Social profile integration8.163 Ratings7.74 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
8.1
114 Ratings
8% above category average
Adobe Campaign
8.5
92 Ratings
13% above category average
Dashboards8.1109 Ratings8.091 Ratings
Standard reports8.1112 Ratings8.891 Ratings
Custom reports8.184 Ratings8.787 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
7.9
107 Ratings
4% above category average
Adobe Campaign
8.3
88 Ratings
9% above category average
API8.167 Ratings8.879 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals8.171 Ratings9.682 Ratings
Customizability8.189 Ratings9.585 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.165 Ratings7.563 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM8.136 Ratings7.750 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM7.129 Ratings6.56 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Act-On SoftwareAdobe Campaign
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.5 out of 10
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Act-On SoftwareAdobe Campaign
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(219 ratings)
8.8
(97 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(112 ratings)
8.4
(5 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(32 ratings)
8.8
(41 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(14 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(13 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(39 ratings)
7.7
(40 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.7
(4 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.3
(16 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(22 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.4
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Act-On SoftwareAdobe Campaign
Likelihood to Recommend
Act-On
Act-On simplifies the creation of landing pages, web forms, email campaigns, and other types of marketing automation. Designing a customer journey using the workflow builder (a nurturing flow) is possible. It is used in various ways and in a variety of contexts. Tactical's knowledgeable support team helped us unlock Act-On's potential for complex integrations and marketing campaigns. In some areas, it would be beneficial to improve functionality.
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Adobe
Multi-Channel Campaign Management: I have found Adobe Campaign to be excellent for managing campaigns across multiple channels, including email, mobile, social media, and web. Its centralized platform allows me to plan, execute, and track campaigns effectively, making it ideal for organizations with diverse marketing channels. For example, when I was running a campaign to promote a new product launch across email, SMS, and social media channels, Adobe Campaign provided me with the tools to orchestrate and track the campaign seamlessly. I could ensure consistent messaging and a cohesive customer experience across different channels.
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Pros
Act-On
  • Establishes a simple but very decisive way of how to perform specialized marketing work.
  • It includes the monitoring of advertising networks or account management on digital platforms and social networks.
  • The support is solid; it takes all the suggestions and doubts I have regarding the software.
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Adobe
  • It allows me to capture leads through various sources, such as website forms or landing pages.
  • It offers a centralized repository where I can securely store and manage customer data, encompassing contact information, preferences, transaction records, and additional relevant data.
  • It provides robust analytics and reporting capabilities.
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Cons
Act-On
  • The designer tools, especially for emails, were often difficult to use. The formatting of the text would be all over the place and change / refuse to change at random. Moving boxes around was shifty and sometimes nearly impossible. It just wasn't customizeable enough. No "undo" functionality either.
  • The only way to collect information expansively over time (there's a term Act-On uses for it, I can't recall) where it adds questions to the form each time a user fills it out, is if the person were to fill out the same form multiple times. I know this does happen for some websites/resources, but as a company that wanted to collect new information each time someone filled out any form, regardless of the resource or the URL, that was simply not an option, and that doesn't really make a lot of sense. I know it's not really possible to track someone but if they filled out the first part of the form and then it added new questions to answer, and then they submitted and got through the gating, that would actually be helpful.
  • There was no "trash can" of sorts in case you deleted something by mistake. This could be so stress-inducing if it was a major project. My coworker did this once, contacted Act-On, they couldn't even recover it.
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Adobe
  • Adobe Campaign does not have a high enough sales intelligence to let us know which landing page format would be the most optimal for the proper development of our mass marketing operations, which in the long run would also help with customer collection.
  • Does not directly track the number of people who enter our website, beyond sending them automated messages depending on whether they entered a certain section of the site. This problem is important, because it does not allow us to get complete tracking results in that area.
  • The platform does not do social media marketing extensively enough to let us create dynamic evaluations on the results of interactions that are obtained within social networks, which creates a huge margin of error in our analytical results messages, and so we have stopped applying social marketing.
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Likelihood to Renew
Act-On
It's my single biggest asset in my current role. With limited resources, its enabled Anachron to punch well above our weight marketing wise and although we're still at the beginning of our journey I know the system can scale with us
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Adobe
Once you go for Neolane you are a bit stuck with it, so we will most likely stay with Neolane. Cost of investment and training are the main factors at work here. We havesimply have invested too much in the product to stop using it after 2 years. That said, my score of 8 does not imply that the product is worthy of getting an 8 but reflects our willingness to renew. Given that upgrading to a new version will cost again a substantial sum, we most likely will keep using the current version we are on which is 6X.
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Usability
Act-On
It's good, but not quite brilliant. Some parts of the interface are still a bit outdated. The product has been evolving very fast, though, and I believe in a few months it will be up there with the best of them, interface wise as well.
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Adobe
Thanks to this tool we are taking more internal control of the creation and deployment of campaigns with less dependency on an ESP. We can pre-program marketing publications, being able to concentrate on the target audience. It helps me manage email campaigns with real-time tracking.
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Reliability and Availability
Act-On
I have always found them quick to respond to my query by web inquiry. In those instances when I call, I have always reached help quickly. They are conscientious and skilled in discussing my concern and finding a solution to my problem. Other tech organizations should use Act-On as a model for top-notch customer service.
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Adobe
Aside from frequent error prompts, the program is quite dependable
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Performance
Act-On
Great for the most part. Sometimes there are little lags, but that's likely because I'm requesting to see a lot of data at one time.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Act-On
Since we start using Act-on for ourselves and our clients, we have been supported very well. Often we need to integrate with legacy systems and we find the support team on our side during the whole endeavor. Always asking if they can help us further, always willing to do a better job. The support of Act-On is one of the main differentiators
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Adobe
Although there is a lot of material available on the internet to answer questions, I still feel a lack of commitment and delay in the responses of the support, but as a whole, it leaves nothing to be desired. I believe that, in the great majority, companies sin in the desired support, but we cannot generalize. But this one, in particular, has a wide range of specialists and well-qualified management, but I believe that it is not so bad.
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In-Person Training
Act-On
Dan D. was great. He took the time to understand how I needed the program to run, and was very flexible to our special CRM setup.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Act-On
Act-On had a lot of resources, and their staff was great at answering any questions I had to make sure we got started on the right foot. Looking back, I would have preferred some additional training sessions since we didn't have any previous experience with Marketing Automation and best practices.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Act-On
What impressed me most is that Act-On showed full committment in making our implementation successful, even when it required additional support from their team. This gave me a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings. Most other software software vendors are not anywhere close to being this responsive and effective
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Act-On
Act-On is easier to use than Marketo, but not as visually appealing and user-friendly as HubSpot. It's much better than Pardot, as Pardot feel clunky every step of the way. SharpSpring is comparable because of its price point but surpasses Act-On in its tools and intuitive interface. We selected Act-On because of the pricing model and thought all things would be close to parity with other options. It depends on the team you have. If you have developers and a marketing team that knows some html/css, you can get by with Act-On.
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Adobe
As we tried to centralise the marketing automation platform within the enterprise, Adobe Campaign can plug into several instances of Salesforce.com for lead management queues. All other marketing automation platforms can only plug into one instance of Salesforce.com. Adobe Campaign was also able to handle the complexity and challenges of our enterprise data which are a result of years of legacy, mergers and acquisitions and data aggregation.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Act-On
No answers on this topic
Adobe
Not everything was great at all times. It was handled accordingly, pricing was reasonable for what was purchased. It was the best value on the market at the time of purchase.
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Scalability
Act-On
Before I feel like I need more features, the Act-On customer service reps are contacting me telling about new features as part of my account.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Act-On
  • With the Automated Series, we were able to put in place campaigns that generated revenue that took no time to continue running once set up. This was a positive feature allowing employees to work on another project while the campaign ran on their own.
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Adobe
  • Talking about profits can be subjective if you don't take into account the periodic variations between net and gross profit margins, but fortunately with Adobe Campaign, it is easy to notice these differences quickly.
  • Results have always seemed relative to us, as they vary greatly depending on how much is invested.
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ScreenShots

Act-On Screenshots

Screenshot of List Segmentation - Segmentation using behavioral, demographic and/or firmographic dataScreenshot of the Quickstart PageScreenshot of Landing Page Composer - landing pages are designed with a drag and drop function