Act! CRM vs. Zendesk Sell

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

I think that for a company that creates any sales and needs to house their client information, the Base is perfect. The price of the program makes it completely worth the investment. And to be able to use customizations makes it possible for any business that does sales use Base for their orders. I would say for companies that use legal contracts or binding contracts for their business, Base may be too simple for their needs. We work in tandem with a company that always has contracts going back and forth, and the build out of the customizations here weren't really going to work for them.

Incentivized

• Data Analysis. ACT! does a good job of allowing us to create meaningful reports.
• Keeping track of communication. ACT! integrates with Outlook to record all client communication by e-mail.
• Custom dashboards. We have created custom data entry pages that simplify what we are trying to collect.

Incentivized

• Integrates well with FullContact, Slack via Zapier, and Gmail and google calendar.
• Excellent mobile app for iPhone lets salespeople have data at their fingertips and enter notes at conferences, in elevators, wherever.
• Does all the basic things a salesperson needs to be productive, contacts capture, deal capture, documents, smart linking of contacts to deals, and nice reminder features.

Incentivized

• Creating reports or creating searches for specific fields is not intuitive.
• Email marketing add-on service is far from user friendly and outdated in flexibility for creating useful emails.
• Installing updates creates issues, even though Swiftpage ACT! functioned properly before the update.
• Figuring out how best to organize contacts into specific, searchable groups requires expert assistance and is not intuitive.
• Support from Swiftpage ACT! is marginal at best; we rely on outside consultant instead, for an extra cost.

Incentivized

• There was no ability to add prospects from a company domain or email to auto-fill any data.
• You had to type in all of the data you gathered about that prospect.
• The default only gave you two phone numbers for the company, too few.

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

The integration with the other Zendesk products is key. Allows other people in the company, such as support, to be involved in the sales process.

Incentivized

Try printing reports with each record's notes section - really awful output that you are embarrassed to show anyone. Want to add a new record to a group, ACT will present another record for the group assignment. Want to work seamlessly with email? Forget it!

I received about two hours worth of training on Zendesk Sell (formerly Base CRM). I will say it's a clean look and the ability to change views is extremely helpful. I do wish there were other features that allowed the views to be more simplistic. Some views can be overwhelming to look at. Nevertheless with the minimum training, I am still able to navigate through Zendesk Sell (formerly Base CRM) successfully due to the ease of usability.

Incentivized

Always available and easy connection from Zendesk Support

Incentivized

Never any latency issues

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.

Due to the ease of the product, I have not had the chance to reach out to support yet. I’ve had no reason. The resources provided to clients are extremely helpful and detailed. So far my questions have been pretty basic and I generally just ask my colleague or teammate. They're able to assist with the answer.

Incentivized

This product has a great backing of users, but needs more options direct from Base CRM on all operations of the software. YouTube videos do a great job of helping implement, and the back end support is a great help as well. The CRM is a great free option, and should be treated as such.

Incentivized

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

Simple, and straight forward.

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

Zendesk Sell is not as robust as other leading CRM tools I have used in the past like Salesforce. Salesforce is the market leader and is always leading the way in innovation. Salesforce objects management is better simpler and allows the user to customize different screens and have different dashboards for reporting reasons. This is definitely a good alternative to Salesforce especially if you are currently using any other Zendesk products like Zendesk support.

Incentivized

Always on, always available.

Incentivized

• Very poor return on investment. It is now quite costly and the support service no longer offers assistance except if the program crashes.
• Swiftpage seems to have replaced their skilled UK based support team with a call centre?? The service I got was dreadful. This is a difficult program to use and support is vital.
• You will need some IT skills to properly use ACT! Don't rely on their support which is not good.

• Increased efficiency with a central hub for all of our customer data.
• Workflows are easy to set up and beneficial for us.
• Received minimum training, therefore it's easy to navigate.
• Reduced employee costs. Employees can spend more time completing other important tasks.

Incentivized