ACT! 6.0 for 2004

Rating:
Summary: Easy fixes that are never implemented....
Review: ACT is a great concept and has moved the CRM world. BUT it has changed little in the last 10 years and desperately requires a new release. The three most important updates required are a) better e-mail - integration with Outlook would be fine, b) much improved mass maintenance, lookups, and reporting and c) a more stable and robust data platform. Continued reliance on what are essentially DB 2 files (anyone out there remember them?) is silly and is the reason that file corruption and data loss is endemic with ACT. ACT is a goldmine for BEST and it's being milked, but one wonders how much money is being invested in improving the product. A little attention to fixing the product's many problems would give a significant boost to the software. I have to believe that a mass upgrade from version 6 would also be good for BEST's profits.

These problems have existed for a long, long time, and users have waited for the ACT people to resolve them. 6.0 was an exercise in half measures and disappointment. For that reason, we've come to believe that BEST Software has broken trust with us as their customers. They have broken trust with their certified consultants by being unresponsive to them. Many of us have concluded that they don't deserve our business anymore. We're looking for others that do. And when we find our solution, we'll buy through Amazon, a company that constantly tries to provide better service and a better platform for its customers.

Rating:
Summary: Website needs better product description
Review: ACT! 6.0 for 2004 includes ACT! For PalmOS for free. Why couldn't I have learned by reading the product description on Amazon.com BEFORE the product arrived at my house? I didn't appreciate paying for extra/unneeded copies of ACT! for PalmOS when it was included for free in the main product.

Rating:
Summary: Website needs better product description
Review: ACT! 6.0 for 2004 includes ACT! For PalmOS for free. Why couldn't I have learned by reading the product description on Amazon.com BEFORE the product arrived at my house? I didn't appreciate paying for extra/unneeded copies of ACT! for PalmOS when it was included for free in the main product.

Rating:
Summary: I really don't know what to think yet . . .
Review: As a 1st time buyer I bought ACT! after 2 months of intense research including downloading a trial, interviewing current users etc., however during a tech support call this afternoon related to separate issue I learned that the one feature that I'd have thought to be a given is missing from ACT! 6.

I use 20 different email accounts in conjunction with my various businesses on a daily basis, however was informed that I can ONLY email from the (1) Default email address listed in Outlook or Outlook Express (beware OE isn't really supported no matter what ACT!'s marketing says). I was told that even if I create a separate database for each business I'd still be limited to the (1) default address to mail from! YIKES!

What do small businesses do that use multiple accounts like sales@, info@, request@, service@, [e-mail] that are perhaps only a 1 or 2 person operation? Great a tech as he was, the only workaround he could offer was to log out of ACT!, switch the default address in Outlook/OE & then log back into ACT! each time I want to send email from a different address!

He also mentioned that many customers in the past several years had suggested the same feature upgrade!

I rated this a 2 (benefit of the doubt) because I can see a good deal of "potential" usefulness in ACT! In my opinion sophisticated and integrated email support is essential in this day and age, and without it what good is the contact manager? Perhaps the larger question is what good is a software company if they don't listen and respond to their customers' needs?

Rating:
Summary: What a piece of Junk !!!!
Review: As a professional on the go. I purchased Act! 6.0 because I had read so much about how great the software was. Using Outlook since 98; I figured there had to be a much better way to track, sale ,record, mass mail, and enter contact information. So I went out and looked at this piece of mess. Then while in the store I read it can work with your Pocket PC. Well yeap it will sync with your Pocket PC but you won't see any reminder on the Home Scream nor any appointments on the screen. To top it off not all of your appts will show up.

To top it off they told me through tech support that I will have to purchase their new software inorder to get it to work with my Pocket PC as though it was like Outlook. What kind of mess is that. I just spent 300 bucks on this mess and now I have to spend 200 dollars more to make it work the way it should with my PPC. Don't waste your money nor your time.

It is too bad I couldn't give them a zero. Stick with Microsoft products atleast they promise what you will receive.

Rating:
Summary: No Customer Support
Review: At first, it worked great. Then I upgraded to Windows XP. Now nothing works right. No integration with Outlook... their website says it's a known problem with suggested fixes that just don't work. Also, my Palm no longer syncs with Act! Go to the Act.com and read their discussion boards and you will see how users are feeling un-supported.

Rating:
Summary: Piece of Junk - Higly sold by effective marketing
Review: Buggy product; can "hook" Outlook into ACT by creating separate contact list; can't "hook" back into Outlook. I can't send email using my Outlook account. ACT's knowledge database has pages, page after page of "maybe this work", "try this", yada, yada. I've worked for several software companies (as technical support), and after reading the ACCs "we are the best company....give me a A" cheerleading speech, dumping on IT, and the idea of you must hire an ACC "specialist" at god-only-knows an hour to get the blankety-blankety $199 product to work instead of putting the fixes in the knowledge database, I only wanted to puke. Hope this helps.

Rating:
Summary: Piece of Junk - Higly sold by effective marketing
Review: Buggy product; can "hook" Outlook into ACT by creating separate contact list; can't "hook" back into Outlook. I can't send email using my Outlook account. ACT's knowledge database has pages, page after page of "maybe this work", "try this", yada, yada. I've worked for several software companies (as technical support), and after reading the ACCs "we are the best company....give me a A" cheerleading speech, dumping on IT, and the idea of you must hire an ACC "specialist" at god-only-knows an hour to get the blankety-blankety $199 product to work instead of putting the fixes in the knowledge database, I only wanted to puke. Hope this helps.

Rating:
Summary: Our corporate nightmare
Review: I am the Senior IT Tech at a large company and our top 2 executives and their secretary have been using Act for years and years. We started getting data corruption on a regular basis in one of the two dbs. So we decided to upgrade to Act v6 2004.

Let me just say that I think the interface is clunky and outdated. The 2004 software feels like something written in the early 90s. You can't use the mouse wheel to scroll through your contacts (we have over 400 employees in the db). The icon graphics are crap, the backgrounds and titles repeat themselves on large monitors. And the program is painfully slow. Clicking from calendar to contacts to task lists often takes 3-4 or more seconds (compared to outlook which is instant).

We first started having major problems with the Pocket PC Link. It's garbage...you cannot sync with the PDA unless you exit act (unlike Outlook). And if you delete contacts on the PDA, they will come back because a malfunction in programming prevents it from being deleted on the Desktop. Deleting calendar events replicates fine, but you cannot delete contacts on the PDA. This was all confirmed by Act tech support on several occasions as we ran into these problems.

Furthermore, even with the new ACT 2004 we again kept getting the databases corrupting. When they get corrupted, you better hope you have backups, cause all tech support will tell you is they have a data recovery team. We looked into it, expect to pay near $1,000 to recover your data. So we restored our General Managers data from tape backups, from local backups, or from his PDA, on a regular basis. After hours and hours on the phone with tech support, they finally told me that storing the database on the network can cause the db to get corrupted. This was not written in any documentation I could find anywhere that came with the software. The only way to share the calendar with a secretary is to have it accessible on a network. MAJOR DESIGN flaw. And to make things worse, when I asked for help to implement their "bandaid" workaround to "reduce the risk" of further data corruption, they asked for a credit card.

We're going back to Outlook 2003 using our Exchange server, never had any problems. I guess we fell for their marketing by thinking that a $200 product is actually worth something. This software is not worth anywhere near the price we paid.

Do yourself a favor and skip the hastle.

Rating:
Summary: ACT 5.0
Review: I can't rate 6.0 but I can tell you that the 5.0 version stinks! I use it at work and it absolutely drives me nuts! I am actually going to switch jobs because I refuse to get stressed out by a database. It moves sooooo slow. Contact card changes but notes and history doesn't. I liked it at first when it was quicker but no one seems to know why this is happening. Notes disappear, it has it's own mind!