Act! CRM vs. GridBuddy Connect

Swiftpage ACT! would be well suited if you are using a desktop computing environment. ACT! is an old product and they were on the desktop for many years (and still are). Also, ACT! would also be well suited if you are not as concerned about implementing a CRM product that might require a little more training (e.g. if you had employees/salespeople that needed to be trained). Also, ACT! seems to be more generic than some of the industry focused products you see nowadays. For example, MethodCRM works well with non-profits that are on the cloud.

Incentivized

1. Making broad changes to data, like moving ownership of records from one user to another for a new Sales Rep or a moved Sales Rep. 2. Making broad changes to data for product changes, product introductions and such (product naming changes, product description changes, etc.). I recently had to make a change to the name of a Product Option. Product Options are a sub-object related to Product. This name change was in 22 places. Okay, 18 [is] not a lot, but to make this change individually 22 times is still very tedious and takes too much of my time. Instead, I set up my Grid with the Object and sub-Object and made all 22 changes at once with a mass change. Piece of cake. And I don't have to go back to several of the records to see if the change was made successfully (something you have to do with Dataloader). I could see the effective change all at once on my Grid screen.

Incentivized

• Integrated Email Marketing: For a small business, you can have a strong method to handle email marketing in an integrated non-disparate solution.
• Tailoring: There are no limits on what data you can store in the system and the ease of making changes can be done by a nontechnical person.
• User Interface: The tool is easy to get around in both the desktop (fat client) and (webclient) which both are quite similar in functionality.
• Integration: The tool integrates with Word, Excel, and Outlook nicely. And, it integrates with Google Mail and Contacts. There is a nice selection of third party tools available for various needs like AddressGrabber which allows for easy input of contacts from various sources such as email signatures, webpages, etc.
• Templates: I have enjoyed being able to store tons of various templates for letters which we use over and over for various communications like sales proposals, quotes, and nudging clients along the funnel and sales process.
• Automation: SwiftPage ACT! has a small business automation engine which allows for reminders and workflow to be administered by the system. It's not as sophisticated as some enterprise workflow automation solutions but for the price it's an awesome addition.
• Maintenance: Very rarely have a problem which needs to be dealt with and costs to upgrade are minimal at best. We hosted the system internally for the web client and implemented it ourselves initially but had upgrades subsequently done by a local partner simply due to time/cost scenario. In other words, less to have someone else do it.

• Reshapes the user Interface into an intuitive, clean, easy and thoughtful way, meaning Salesforce can be practically used for applications that (in my Opinion) salesforce was never designed for.
• Mass updates are a God send, Leaving quick and meaningful notes, setting up meetings with clients or upcoming calls to maintain contact, all from the same screen without information overload... a real achievement.

• The auto saving function is not great. It means a simple slip or mistype can change an entire record easily.
• The reports are clunky and if you've changed the field names, that doesn't get reflected in the reports.
• The interface is still clunky. It is hard to see all the information for a contact all in one place. It gets broken up too much.

Incentivized

• Does not allow users to create new Campaign Member records; we would like to be able to add multiple Campaign Member records to a Campaign in a Grid.
• Does not allow users to create new Task records; we would like to be able to add multiple Tasks records related to the same user but multiple Opportunities and Contacts.

Incentivized

Once our current subscription expires, we no longer plan to use ACT. We are moving to a more complete CRM system that allows us, as a project based service company, to track projects, contacts, time and employees all with one software program. ACT has very limited modules to integrate these functions and therefore is no longer a good fit for us.

Incentivized

- Easy of use - Visual nature of using the product (as compared to Dataloader) - Quickness of making changes/updates/edits to long lists of records, live and real-time

Incentivized

ACT follows the basic rules you would expect for this type of software, but actually doing anything sophisticated with it is near impossible without assistance or training. Unless you use it regularly it is difficult to use. I wouldn't recommend it unless you have internal IT support and it will be used regularly.

- Ease of use - Real-time and visible nature of making mass changes - Ease of setting up a Grid - Ease of filtering the Grid to see the records that I need to change

Incentivized

There has been an ongoing problem with Google synchronisation which no one seems to be bothered about fixing, even though it clearly states on the website that the software synchronises with Google. When the customer-facing support team are on the phone, they are brilliant, it's the back-end development support which is severely lacking.

Delay your upgrades! ACT appears to ship out new software with virtually no checking and no concern about bad installs do to their customers.

GridBuddy was very easy to implement

Incentivized

ACT! CRM is more cost effective than like a Salesforce, but that is for a reason, it lacks a lot of the functionality that a Salesforce has. Pipedrive is actually another cost effective platform I've been evaluating as a potential ACT! CRM replacement. I like it's modern day look and feel versus ACT!.

Incentivized

This is the 1st inline editing product we have tested. The only reason we would ever go with another product is the price.

Incentivized

• It's been easy to keep track of progress of goals with the software. This provides the opportunity to know what is working and what is not.
• We have had to adjust a lot of things since the Virus issue took a foothold, but it is providing invaluable to make those adjustments.
• Our ROI has increased at least 30%.

Incentivized

• Our sales executives save a lot of time reviewing all opportunities in a single editable view.
• Gridbuddy improves the functionality of our CRM by allowing us to edit multiple opportunities in one place.
• It is generally faster and easier to build a report in GridBuddy than it is in SAP C4C.

Incentivized