Act-On Software vs. BuzzStream vs. Ninja Outreach

We often have quick turnaround time requests, and Act-On's new composer is great because it is easy to make an email look great in desktop or mobile views. This has been a huge time-saver for us! We have benefited from using Act-On for many years and are accustomed to where everything is and how to use it. For the new accounts we train, we will sometimes hear that the organization of where things are could be improved.

Incentivized

BuzzStream works for anyone that is working in the SEO field! It has literally saved me hours of time and is my go-to tool for all link building needs. The speed that I'm able to research a site, save the key information and launch a pre-crafted email is head spinning (In a good way)! This is one of the SEO tools that I can't live without--it makes link building and link tracking a whole lot easier. BuzzStream likely wouldn't be a good fit for anyone that isn't particularly working in the SEO field. I can't imagine this would replace a dedicated email tracking system or be used to send email drips.

Incentivized

If your organization is well-developed and you really cannot do everything manually, Ninja Outreach comes to save the day and gives you high-quality records you can use for your campaigns. I would say it is a must-have for blogger outreach on a bigger scale. It also helps with link building and roundup posting.

Incentivized

• The templates are easy to use and set up campaigns.
• It's simple to use, and the email editor features a drag-and-drop interface.
• It's easy to set up a drip campaign or a series of scheduled emails.
• It has the flexibility of having a variety of scheduling options and the use of user experience automation.

Incentivized

• Communication Organization: It provides a simple communication format for even the most novice of users to understand. All messages are kept in nice order, even placed in folders if needed, to alleviate the pain of losing messages in normal email.
• Locating Contact Information: I love that BuzzStream aids in finding additional contact information for people. From social accounts to other emails, we can make sure we reach out to people via the correct channels.
• Building a Consistent Voice: BuzzStream allows you to save templates that have worked or failed when conducting outreach. These templates can have autofill parameters added to them and are accessible to all users.

Incentivized

• It easily finds relevant sites and contact information, helping cut down on the time you spend looking for that information.
• You can segment the contacts into lists very easily, this allows you to stay organized.
• You can easily export the information via CSV, which is great, so your information doesn't stay siloed.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• The search function needs to be more accurate in returning results when searching for existing prospects the platform only display exact match results - www.websitename.com vs websitename.com. In reality, the two websites are the same prospects.
• Customer service assistance needs to be more instantaneous when seeking out help a response can take up to 24 hours.
• Importing large CSV files of websites takes time as well.

Incentivized

• Onboarding -- mainly because there are so many features that you can feel overwhelmed.

Incentivized

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

It's a great tool for our business, and we get a fantastic ROI on it every year based on wins for customer service and automation responses. It's save projects, repaired salesperson/customer relationships and generated new sales and interest yearly. We really wouldn't hesitate to recommend this platform at all.

Incentivized

Buzzstream is great to help identify sites to get links from, and it makes this process so efficient, easy and personal to all, the ones who are using it and the ones that are receiving. Flawless navigation, good outlook, 10/10!

Incentivized

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.

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.

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

Support is one of the best aspects of BuzzStream. I know their support team is small and somehow they are able to get back to us right away in a super helpful, friendly fashion. I've had many questions - sometimes they release a new feature, sometimes a feature isn't working correctly and they are quick to answer but also help explain it in a way that makes sense.

Incentivized

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.

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.

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

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.

Incentivized

BuzzStream stacks up quite well compared to its competitors. In particular, Hootsuite and HubSpot. BuzzStream has many of the same capabilities that its competitors do, at a fraction of the cost. We selected BuzzStream because it had a fairly flexible contract, and it was sufficient for our needs. It was a good intermediate-level tool.

Incentivized

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.

• 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.

Incentivized

• It's had a positive impact in keeping our entire agency organized. Especially when employees leave, all of their communication is in one place, so it's pretty easy to have someone take over the process.
• You can test different messaging for prospects and then determine the most successful.

Incentivized

• There's been no negative ROI. The major positive ROI is the time I've gotten back not having to spend a lot of time searching for the right prospects.

Incentivized