Act-On Software vs. Customer.io

If you have MS Dynamics CRM, this is the automation platform for you and your operations. Act-On Software easily syncs with dynamics, and we've never had a problem with this since we set ours up years ago. If you use a different CRM, I'd check to see if other options might make more sense. Having that ability for the systems to seamlessly talk is critical.

Incentivized

This tool is well-suited for companies looking to run email marketing campaigns or send out newsletters regularly to their users/customers. The workflow setup is especially useful for companies who want to send specific emails based on user behavior - i.e. they've not logged in recently, have bought a specific product, haven't opened any emails, etc. This could also be useful for freelancers like me since you can create different workspaces within Customer.io. I have configured it this way to handle email marketing for a few of my clients, and the software keeps everything organized and separate. This might not be the best tool for small businesses, considering the price. It may be better to start out with a cheaper email marketing tool, and then if/when necessary, scale-up with a tool like Customer.io.

• 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

• Ease of use, a good tool for non programmers, or not so tech savvy people.
• Great support, willing to help a lot, by chat, calls, or screen sharing.
• Fast updates, it's a newer tool, but they are coming with fixes and updates fast.

Incentivized

• Building email and landing page templates are difficult, the drag and drop builder is not straightforward, and requires coding knowledge
• The workflow tool is cumbersome and not as intuitive as I'd expect a best in class marketing software's to be
• Domain connections and domain management functionality made it difficult to manage multiple company domains and subdomains for pages

Incentivized

• I may be missing it in the UI, but a place to see the list of emails who qualify for a certain email.
• One easy to view chart of all our automated/lifecycle emails to see what a given user would see over their customer journey. (This is really just a feature request/idea - the product itself is really awesome.)

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 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.

Incentivized

It is really difficult to leverage all the neat features without a developer. I actually think the base software could be really great for a small business if the price is right, but there are so many things you *can* do but have to know how to do them or have access to your website and the ability to code.

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.

Sometimes the server loading speed is a little slow but most often runs fine and if it doesn't their tech support is quick to respond

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.

The system is very user friendly, I think we were up and running within a day or so of having the product. It took very few online training for me to learn a large chunk of the functionality of this system.

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

We chose Act-On for its ability to support our customers within a single account. The Marketing Network is a huge benefit to our business and the offerings we provide to our customers. In previously working with Hubpsot and Salesforce, we found the support to be lacking - often being referred to a forum or landing page rather than getting hands-on guided help from a knowledgeable person on their team. We LOVE Act-On and the team that they have servicing our account!

Incentivized

We used Autopilot in the past. It worked well but the integration wasn't very good, considering they only used cookies. We have a very complex system right now to be able to track every customer, and it was expensive but worth it. Autopilot worked very well when we were starting, but then it didn't track purchases, it wasn't easy to change a customer attribute, and so on (this was a few years ago, probably they have improved a lot). It was more visual and better to create huge workflows. . Mailchimp was the first program we used. It's very basic but good at what it does: sending a newsletter to your small database. It has integrated very well with other services and we haven't used in a lot of time, but certainly was grown a lot so it must be doing things fine. I also tried Active Campaign but it was almost the same as Autopilot.

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.

• Positive- quick setup for webinars between 3 different tools, made it easy to do in high volume
• Negative- lots of processes with the designer tools that made email/landing page design take longer than it should have, costing man hours
• Positive- email automation with different types of campaigns we could have flowing at once or could span across multiple audience segments made it so we could consistently create touch points and increase our engagement, thus our ROI over time

Incentivized

• Helped increase our new user engagement with our cloud-based software
• Helped our sales team identify clients who had dropped off and stopped interacting with our software
• Helped our sales and customer service team track which clients were completing their full registration process
• Helped our marketing, sales, and customer service team identify key features and messaging with A/B testing for different campaigns

Incentivized