Act-On Software vs. D&B Hoovers

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)
D&B Hoovers
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
D&B Hoovers delivers sales intelligence data for millions of companies globally.N/A
Pricing
Act-On SoftwareD&B Hoovers
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-OnD&B Hoovers
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
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 SoftwareD&B Hoovers
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
Act-On SoftwareD&B Hoovers
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
D&B Hoovers
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.1112 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content8.192 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.292 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages8.1108 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing8.195 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization7.2103 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.1112 Ratings00 Ratings
List management8.1111 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences7.187 Ratings00 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
D&B Hoovers
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation8.1104 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.1104 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management8.1102 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks8.195 Ratings00 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
D&B Hoovers
-
Ratings
Calendaring6.88 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing8.176 Ratings00 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
D&B Hoovers
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns8.169 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration8.163 Ratings00 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
D&B Hoovers
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.1109 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.1112 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports8.184 Ratings00 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
D&B Hoovers
-
Ratings
API8.167 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals8.171 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability8.189 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.165 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM8.136 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM7.129 Ratings00 Ratings
Prospecting
Comparison of Prospecting features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
-
Ratings
D&B Hoovers
8.1
87 Ratings
7% above category average
Advanced search00 Ratings8.183 Ratings
Identification of new leads00 Ratings7.878 Ratings
List quality00 Ratings8.084 Ratings
List upload/download00 Ratings8.577 Ratings
Ideal customer targeting00 Ratings7.875 Ratings
Load time/data access00 Ratings8.383 Ratings
Sales Intelligence Data Standards
Comparison of Sales Intelligence Data Standards features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
-
Ratings
D&B Hoovers
8.0
86 Ratings
6% above category average
Contact information00 Ratings6.978 Ratings
Company information00 Ratings8.785 Ratings
Industry information00 Ratings8.384 Ratings
Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification
Comparison of Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
-
Ratings
D&B Hoovers
8.0
83 Ratings
8% above category average
Lead qualification process00 Ratings7.455 Ratings
Smart lists and recommendations00 Ratings7.564 Ratings
Salesforce integration00 Ratings8.243 Ratings
Company/business profiles00 Ratings8.677 Ratings
Alerts and reminders00 Ratings7.957 Ratings
Data hygiene00 Ratings7.867 Ratings
Automatic data refresh00 Ratings7.658 Ratings
Tags00 Ratings8.448 Ratings
Filters and segmentation00 Ratings8.565 Ratings
Sales Intelligence Email Features
Comparison of Sales Intelligence Email Features features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
-
Ratings
D&B Hoovers
9.2
36 Ratings
20% above category average
Sales email templates00 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Append emails to records00 Ratings8.436 Ratings
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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PFL Direct Mail Platform
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Score 9.3 out of 10
Lead411
Lead411
Score 9.1 out of 10
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PFL Direct Mail Platform
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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Score 8.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
Act-On SoftwareD&B Hoovers
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(219 ratings)
8.9
(92 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(112 ratings)
9.1
(8 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(32 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(14 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(13 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(39 ratings)
8.2
(6 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.3
(16 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(22 ratings)
7.7
(3 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.4
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 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 SoftwareD&B Hoovers
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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Dun & Bradstreet
I recently was asked by my boss to try to drum up some business with a certain 500 million annual revenue company. When I searched for Contacts, a list of over 800 employees popped up. I was able to filter by department, and this pared the list down To a much more manageable 15 names with associated contact information. I was then able to sort further and select the names of all the employees that had an email or phone number listed.
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
  • allows you to search within broad industry categories or very detailed subcategories using a variety of methods (NAICS, SIC, D&B's internal coding system, keywords, etc.)
  • Has a variety of personnel that you can view and sort by level, name, or email availability.
  • Oftentimes emails for C-level personnel cannot be located on the company website or easily found elsewhere online.
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
  • We should be able to "exclude" words from titles or company names
  • Able to access titles and email addresses more easily - not look at list first, select find matching contacts button, then go back to sort to add titles contain and email addresses, etc. This is a two-step process to get what I need.
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
We have been D&B Hoovers customers for a long time. We know the good and bad, and we have learned to utilize D&B Hoovers for the good and unfortunately we have to look at other data sources to compensate for the areas where they are bad. If D&B Hoovers can get better in these other areas as mentioned in other places in the review, they could get a larger dollar spend from my company
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
Because it's easy to use
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
Always available on desktop or mobile.
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
Meets our needs
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
They are terrific at giving instruction/webinars. I am able to call, directly, to an individual and talk to that person. I'm not talking to a robot. They give personal service which is really special.
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
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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Dun & Bradstreet
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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Dun & Bradstreet
for our use case, the implementation was minimal and we did not need a lot of help. The D&B Hoovers platform is pretty intuitive and our account manager was ready for any questions that came up when we use the D&B Hoovers platform
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
The company information provided by D & B hoovers is extremely in-depth and in detail, the accuracy of the information provided gives a very good idea about the prospective company and helps in making cohorts and evaluation fit. As compared to other companies D & B hoovers is not as efficient in detecting buyer intent which other tools like Slintel are very good at. D & B Hoovers gives amazing company info however it can improve on sharing information about buyer intent. Sales Navigator by far provides extremely accurate information with is almost 100% accurate. However, Navigator does not provide buyer intent information.
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
We're a small company with few users, so scalability has not been an issue.
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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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Dun & Bradstreet
  • Honestly cannot say we really drove any new sales using D&B Hoovers to prospect new companies and leads. We obtained higher data quality with other tools like ZoomInfo and Skrapp.
  • A year long contract that isn't honored on their side due to lack of customer service and poor data quality definitely does not equal ROI.
  • Spent significant time sanitizing and cleansing inaccurate data provided by their service. Since time is money in business, that was a loss in that aspect.
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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

D&B Hoovers Screenshots

Screenshot of D&B Hoovers dashboardScreenshot of D&B Hoovers company profileScreenshot of D&B Hoovers contact resultsScreenshot of D&B Hoovers Visitor Intelligence