Act-On Software vs. KickFire

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Act-On
Score 8.3 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)
KickFire
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
KickFire’sB2B solutions provide account-level information such as industry, revenue, employee count, and more based on an IP address. KickFire’s proprietary TWIN Caching® technology and robust firmographic database deliver business intelligence for first-party intent, content personalization, account-based marketing, predictive/intent, data enrichment, and much more. KickFire offers IP address intelligence and B2B firmographic data through its LIVE Leads platform, API, and integrations…N/A
Pricing
Act-On SoftwareKickFire
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-OnKickFire
Free Trial
NoYes
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
Features
Act-On SoftwareKickFire
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
KickFire
-
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
KickFire
-
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
KickFire
-
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
KickFire
-
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
KickFire
-
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
KickFire
-
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
KickFire
8.5
2 Ratings
11% above category average
Identification of new leads00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
List quality00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
List upload/download00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Load time/data access00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Sales Intelligence Data Standards
Comparison of Sales Intelligence Data Standards features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
-
Ratings
KickFire
7.3
2 Ratings
3% below category average
Contact information00 Ratings6.02 Ratings
Company information00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Industry information00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification
Comparison of Data Augmentation & Lead Qualification features of Product A and Product B
Act-On Software
-
Ratings
KickFire
8.0
2 Ratings
8% above category average
Salesforce integration00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Company/business profiles00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Automatic data refresh00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Filters and segmentation00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Act-On SoftwareKickFire
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.4 out of 10
Lead411
Lead411
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Lead411
Lead411
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
D&B Hoovers
D&B Hoovers
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Act-On SoftwareKickFire
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(219 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(112 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(32 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(14 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(13 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(39 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.3
(16 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(22 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.4
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Act-On SoftwareKickFire
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.
Read full review
KickFire
For small businesses that don't have big budgets for marketing automation, VisiStat is an ideal first step. For companies that have sophisticated systems in place, VisiStat will augment your analytics and provide a deeper dive into your website activity. Since the implementation involves adding javascript to your site, the user should be familiar with how to do this
Read full review
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.
Read full review
KickFire
  • De-anonymizes website activity at the account (company) level.
  • Identifies net new target accounts.
  • Displays click path, time on page, time per session, and engagement level of each de-anonymized website visit.
  • Gives great daily insight on watchlists you've set up.
  • Delivers every possible de-anonymized visit with little filtering for accuracy.
  • More on the watchlists. I really love that you can receive immediate alerts on website visits from accounts you've listed on your watchlists. This way, you never miss the window of opportunity to reach out to your key targets while they are currently on your site.
  • Salesforce integration is good. KickFire pushes most recent website visits, pages visited, website click path, activity percent change, and more to the given account in Salesforce. You can then create reports and run them regularly to see which accounts are surging in website activity. This is also great for account prospecting, and for planning your sales outreach plan of attack. You can see which bits of your website content are most interesting to the company, and which products they are most interested in.
Read full review
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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KickFire
  • Some outdated information and your credits will be used
  • Credit package sizes are not very customizable
  • A tad pricy comapred to simillar prospecting tools I've seen
Read full review
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
Read full review
KickFire
We've been happy customers of VisiStat for many years. I've used the service at multiple companies and you can't beat it.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
KickFire
It was designed for people who are business users, not tech users.
Read full review
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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KickFire
We've never had any outages in the 7+ years using the system.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
KickFire
The system is very responsive, and when there are times in which data is loading, the VisiStat system provides humorous loading messages.
Read full review
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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KickFire
They are very good at solving cases that I bring to them. I'd like to see more proactive support to make sure we are getting the full value out of the solution.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
KickFire
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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KickFire
The tutorials are very good and they explain how to get started using the system. The online webinars are very good for advancing your knowledge of the product.
Read full review
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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KickFire
Don't hesitate to contact VisiStat support. They are extremely helpful.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
KickFire
I covered this pretty extensively in the cons. The key differentiator here is that KickFire serves up almost all the data (or so it seems) to the end client. The client then has to do their own work on interpreting it. This is good because it means we don't miss out on any website activities, but it's bad because we get a lot of false positives. 6sense uses the confidence score approach I mentioned in the Cons section, which means the match rates of the data we get are much higher. Our experience with Clearbit comes from other tools that are built on it (Bombora, Drift, etc.), and it has not been great. We've seen many more inaccuracies with Clearbit.
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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.
Read full review
KickFire
We've gone from a few thousand unique visitors per month to nearly 200,000 unique visitors. VisiStat doesn't miss a beat.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
KickFire
  • Faster lead conversion
  • Less time on LinkedIn trying to figure out DM (decision maker)
  • Increased employee efficiency
Read full review
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

KickFire Screenshots

Screenshot of KickFire features a RESTful API builder and JSON schema that makes it simple to query by IP, domain, or company.