Comparison CRM: Sage ACT! vs Salesforce.com

ACT! is the most popular sales contact manager for small business, with over 6 million users. Salesforce.com is the most popular online CRM or web based customer relationship management system with 1.5 million users. Both ACT! and Salesforce.com were the first of their kind.

As the Internet revolutionizes the way we do business, more and more new businesses and current users of ACT! are considering Salesforce.com. This is due to Salesforce’s reputation as a customer management software, sharing client information among a far flung sales force, automating sales and marketing processes, and management analytics.

The trade off may appear to be simple – online, web based contact management and CRM versus a locally installed “client-server” contact management, sales automation software. Either you want to be on the web or you want to run things yourself. Most of the benefits of each approach are obvious and important. Here are a few:

Cost Differences between Salesforce and Sage ACT

When comparing to ACT! to Salesforce.com, one realizes Salesforce requires a much higher cost: 

• -Salesforce may look attracting in the beginning, but over time, the punitive charges for additional subscription, access, and basic service starts to add up.
• -Salesforce doesn’t give you any software to install and maintain.
• -Salesforce offers only one access method to your customer data-on-demand over the internet.
• -ACT costs a one time software expense.
• -ACT is available to you even when you are not connected to Internet.
• -ACT Gives you full access to your data.

SUPPORT PLANS OFFERED by ACT and SALESFORCE.com

SalesForce Support Plans

• Basic Support – included in all their editions except Contact Manager; unlimited phone support, but, essentially one leaves a message and Salesforce  promises to respond to you in 2 business days.
• Premier Support – 2 hour response time for $120 per user per year.

Sage ACT Support Plans

• Getting Started Support – for the first 30 days, you get phone, email and chat support. When you call, you can expect to wait on hold for a while. Chat’s nice for simple issues. Emails say they will “receive a 4 business hour turnaround”.
• Beyond 30 days – you’re limited to their “Self Service Resources” – knowledge base and user forums, etc. ACT! Advantage – essentially the same level of service as “Getting Started” but, at a cost of $299 per person per year.

Salesforce to ACT

• -Importing your existing data-importing database like ACT or Goldmines etc. can’t be done without the Purchase of additional software  with Salesforce.
• -Contractual – its an annual subscription and you can’t get your money back if you want out before the end of the year. In fact, even if you just want to reduce the number of users because you lost an employee, you can’t get that money back. In addition, if you’re looking at their less expensive “editions”, its likely that you’re going to find you don’t have the capabilities you really need to run a sales and marketing organization and will need to upgrade

While with ACT! You can Import your existing data without purchasing any other additional software.

ACT! Charges one-time Cost and there are no hidden charges like Salesforce.

ACT! Provides great service compared to Salesforce.com. With ACT customers benefit from a low total cost of  ownership. The latest version of ACT! compares  pretty well from a feature point of view with Salesforce.com Professional Edition.

Video Comparison of Sage ACT and Salesforce

Free Sage ACT! Feature Evaluation

Click here to download the Free Sage ACT! Feature Evaluation.

With this download, you will be empowered to identify the major enhancements within Sage ACT!.

Items addressed:

1. User Screen enhancements
2. Social Media integration
3. Drip Campaign options
4. Mail-Merge into MS Word
5. Performing Online Surveys
6. Sales Opportunity redesign
7. Advanced Reporting options
8. ACT Dashboard improvements
9. OLEDB interface redesign for reporting into Spreadsheets
10. Improved Outlook Integration
11. Microsoft Outlook Invitations
12. Flexible Outlook Sync for Calendar
13. Google Contact Options
14. Simplified Importing design
15. Smart Tasks features
16. Workflow options
17. Improved Lead Management
18. Administrative improvements

ON-DEMAND WEBINAR: Salesforce vs Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Join us for our On Demand Webinar as we explore the points outlined below. We hope to provide you with valuable insight regarding this highly rated CRM system. We truly hope that this comparison with Salesforce.com will help you with your CRM evaluation.

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