Act-On Software vs. Knak

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

If you have Marketo or Pardot and have emails that might be somewhat simple to slightly complex, without the budget for a developer, Knak is the right solution for you. If you have complex emails that require a lot of code or customization and have the in-house resources, Knak might not be the perfect solution

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

• Well designed templates
• Easy integration with Marketo
• New templates all the time and a big library to choose from
• Mobile-optimized templates

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

• Sometimes there are issues with buggy code
• Updates sometimes will break emails

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

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

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

Marketo has email templates and you can, of course, create your own - but Knak makes it so much easier to create templates that are nice looking and mobile-optimized.

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

• Great return on time investment
• Great return on our strategy to get new communications out the door

Incentivized