Act! vs Salesforce (2023): Which CRM software is best for your business?

Compare Act! vs. Salesforce in terms of pricing, features and more to find out which CRM is best for the needs of your business.

Business success today is highly dependent on the quality and effectiveness of customer relationships. Act! and Salesforce Customer 360 are two products that offer their customers the power to manage their customer relationships with data. But, which one is right for your organization?

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What is Act!?

Act! is customer relationship management software that enables businesses to develop lasting relationships with their customers through powerful sales and marketing capabilities that enhance business growth. It offers its users flexible deployment options and the freedom to customize their experiences to fit their needs.

What is Salesforce Customer 360?

Salesforce offers Salesforce Customer 360 to connect sales, marketing, commerce, service and IT teams with customers to boost collaboration, productivity and efficiency while lowering costs. Combined with Salesforce Genie, Salesforce CRM enjoys intelligence, automation and real-time data to deliver success to its customers.

Act! vs. Salesforce Customer 360: Comparison table

Act! vs. Salesforce Customer 360 pricing

Act! pricing

• Act! Premium Desktop: This on-premises plan offers CRM and marketing automation at $37.50 per user per month while billed annually.
• Act! Premium Cloud: This cloud-based solution offers CRM and marketing automation at $30 per user per month, billed annually. This can rise to $40 per user per month with desktop sync.

Salesforce Customer 360 pricing

Customer 360 is priced based on either editions or add-ons. Selecting an edition gets you a bundle of some of the most popular Salesforce features in one package. Add-ons enable users to customize their CRM solutions to achieve their desired product.

Explore Salesforce’s pricing page to explore the costs of individual products or consult their representatives to determine the best solution for your business needs and budget and discuss tailored pricing.

Act! key features

Customer management

One of Act!’s key features is customer management. It handles the aspect of relationship history to leverage rich customer profiles to improve the personalization of every interaction.

It also enables users to find needed customer information instantly using its powerful search feature. Users can centralize customer data such as emails, calls, documents, activities and more. They can even stay informed all through the sales process thanks to offline and mobile access.

Sales pipeline management

Act!’s sales pipeline management provides opportunity tracking to users for instant access to details of sales opportunities. It approaches sales process management by enabling its customers to progress deals using stages of out-of-the-box or custom sales processes.

Act!’s pipeline management enables users to assess their sales pipelines based on territory, product, sales stage and more. It also offers interactive visual dashboards to deliver actionable insights.

Marketing automation

Act! delivers marketing automation tools that enable customers to streamline their entire marketing processes by automating repetitive tasks. With Act!’s marketing automation, clients’ marketing departments can benefit from increased marketing return on investment while enjoying greater freedom to focus on more impactful tasks.

Act!’s marketing automation focuses on personalization and targeted email marketing, identifying strong leads and segmentation of customer bases to yield stronger lead generation, better sales cycle timing and optimal decision-making at every marketing funnel stage.

Activity management

Tracking all previous and current customer activities is a part of Act!’s activity management. Its calendar and email integration ascertain that users keep their communications and appointments in sync always. Act! also offers prioritized task lists and notifications and alerts.

Salesforce key features

Marketing Cloud

Marketing Cloud by Salesforce improves marketing efficiency and reach by automating engagement across all available channels, using intelligent insights to optimize marketing performance and creating personalized moments using real-time data. This tool offers several useful products like the customer data platform, personalization and engagement, account engagement, intelligence, and loyalty management.

Sales Cloud

Salesforce offers Sales Cloud to lower costs and raise productivity to generate success for its users through better data, automation and intelligence. Sales Cloud uses process automation in the form of Visual Workflow to speedily design and automate business processes with drag-and-drop ease.

In addition, Sales Cloud converts its users’ mobile phones into portable sales offices. And it delivers greater visibility into customer relationships at every stage to yield much stronger relationships as well as leverages real-time intelligence to support smarter decision-making.

Commerce Cloud

With Commerce Cloud by Salesforce, users are promised the capability to derive value fast on a trusted platform. It equips users with the tools they require to move quickly and save time and money. Commerce Cloud even helps users grow their revenue through the use of intelligent recommendations with the help of AI.

Service Cloud

Salesforce provides Service Cloud to lower costs while improving the efficiency of the user’s interactions. It leverages automation to scale every process and the ability to personalize every engagement using AI. The tools offered by Service Cloud include automation, case management, self-service, field service and digital engagement.

Act! pros and cons

Pros

• Fully customizable sales pipelines.
• Offline sync to ensure continued productivity whether online or offline.
• Easy to access, set up and launch.
• Highly effective features and processes for small and midsize businesses.
• Optimized sales and marketing processes.

Cons

• Users have complained of an unintuitive user interface.
• Frequent crashes have been reported by a few users.

Salesforce pros and cons

Pros

• Customer-centric automation.
• Has an ecosystem that goes beyond the CRM system.
• AppExchange marketplace has thousands of applications for installation and integration.
• Versatility allows it to be tailored to numerous business needs.
• Self-service and self-education portals to reduce reliance on customer support.

Cons

• Reliance on internet connection.
• Over-customization can lead to a clunky and ineffective implementation of Salesforce.

How to choose between Act! and Salesforce

Act! is an effective choice if your business falls under the small and midsize category. Its capabilities will suit businesses that are looking to improve their marketing processes, lead management, sales opportunities and customer activities.

On the other hand, Salesforce proves to be a great choice for companies of all sizes looking to take advantage of vast integration options as well as an ecosystem that goes beyond CRM. If automation and AI products and capabilities matter to your organization’s CRM then Salesforce is worth considering.