Customer Reviews

Act 6.0

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Our company had been using ACT since version 2.1, and we still have the big red box with those floppies in it. And after three months of working with ACT 6.0 and the two patches released since launch, we've started to wonder if dusting off those old 80286 machines which once ran ACT 2.1 might be a safer idea. To summarize our experience: It almost killed us.

Late last year, I came to this company as a consultant in information technology and saw a complete disaster built around ACT 5.0 on a peer to peer network. One workstation fed data to three others, and a fourth operated through email synchronizations out in the field. After putting a dedicated and capable server (Dual P3-600, 1G RAM, 18G RAID array) together as a host for the ACT data files and synchronization software, we thought we had it licked. Unfortunately, we should have stopped there. E-mail based synchronization was flaky due to a slightly unreliable ISP.

We then identified an interest in managing QuickBooks Pro and ACT together, which was offered by ACT 6.0. So, when a phonecall came from Interact offering us full version licenses at the upgrade price, we jumped on it, hoping for improvements in the synchronization process and the ability to extend ACT's functionality to other software and devices, such as a considered deployment of Palm OS devices to our sales force. Once we got ACT 6.0 at the office, we were updated and running with it within a week.

Then the trouble started. Synchronization fell even further into a pit, with lost contacts, appointments that refused to reschedule across synchronization, and a complete breakdown of the email software built into ACT. They had seperated the Internet e-mail tool from the main program in a way that seemed to make no sense, spawning a new window while still interrupting the main thread of the ACT database. If your email client hung for some reason, the entire application would stall and require a process kill. And if your email program has a problem finding the hostname to one of your mail servers, forget it. It'll hang.

Accessing the database across our LAN became intolerably slow under ACT 6. Our database, with 4500 contacts, would take a half second to a second or more simply to page through the contacts. Under ACT 5, this is practically instantaneous. Loading the calendar view with only 5 users scheduled, and filtered to only display two, took between 15 and 30 seconds. Under ACT 5, one to two seconds, tops.

We have one of the ACT Advantage support memberships, and even had an ACT certified professional who seemed very knowledgeable look at our setup. He went over every inch of our network and ACT configuration, and saw nothing wrong with anything I had done. The ACT Advantage people told me to install Outlook on the server on the off chance that might work. Why should I need to use a third-party application to make ACT work? If the built-in Internet E-mail option for synchronization is unreliable, why include it for something as important as this?

The "Library" tab was an absolute joke. We could not resize images displayed in it that had been scanned using our sheetfed desktop scanners, and viewing a contact with this tab took up to a minute. It simply boggled the mind how much this "feature" wasn't.

Our largest initial annoyance was the fact our scanners could no longer scan directly into the ACT application. Under ACT 5.0, the scanner functioned simply. View the contact you wanted to attach a document to, feed the document through the scanner, and done. Attached as a note to the contact. Under ACT 6 this broke, and ACT claimed it was a third-party application that they did not support. We had only a very basic program, PaperPort, that managed this interface. It seems to simply use the drag-and-drop functionality inherent to Windows to perform this task. Under ACT 6, this was broken, but of course can be worked around by spending two hundred dollars on an "Add-In"...

In general, ACT 6 felt like a very shoddy product. It felt for all intents and purposes like someone had taken the ACT 5 codebase and decided to split it up into smaller components in order to facilitate the selling of even more Interact and third-party applications and "Add-ins" to increase revenue.

We returned it. It really is not worth the risk.

I'm a big ACT! fan as I've been using it for almost 10 years. I haven't come across anything that is as powerful for the price. I was initially excited to see some of the advertized features in version 6.0 because they speed up my work flow. But unfortunately, when I use the look-up and sorting features ACT crashes at least every other try. I'm using Windows NT and there are 4 other users sharing the database (and 1K contacts) but this is considered an acceptable operating environment for this program (and it's the same configuration as I had using 5.0). The feature allowing attachment of documents to a record is also useful but it has bugs, often locking up my computer or pausing for 1-2 minutes to open a simple Word document. If you're not in a rush, wait until version 6.1 or later is released in hopes that the bugs get worked out.

I have been a Goldmine user for the last four years, but after downloading the free trial version of ACT! 6.0 from their web site, I decided to switch. ACT! 6.0 has a much nicer graphical interface and more enriched features than previous releases. ACT! 6.0 integrated nicely with my outlook XP so that I am able to compose and read messages that are sent with Outlook from within the ACT! console. This is a nice feature because email retrieved by ACT! this way can be scanned by my anti-virus software. The library tab is a nice added feature and it allows you to associate several media type files with your contact.

Data conversion for me was quick. I found it fairly easy to set up custom field and reports within ACT. I would recomend this product strongly to anyone who is in the market for contact software. If you are already an Outlook user, this product is particular nice because of its integration with that program.

Act 6.0 incorporates a number of changes to make it more like Outlook, but nothing for users interested in real customer relationship functionality. There is no way to track competitors, no way to modify the screen for opportunities, no ability to track accounts (group is a klutzy workaround). In short those users who hoped that a little of the Saleslogix capability wwould trickle down into this new version of Act will be sorely disappointed. I learned from a dealer that Microsoft's new product will offer all these features, but it isn't due out until later this year. I'm eager to make a switch then!

I've used act for over 10 years, and am so disappointed that I am looking for another contact manager...probably goldmine. The upgrade really didn't offer many additional benefits but caused many problems with report templates. Tech support only wants to charge you for a problem created by them to begin with. It is a shame to see what was a good program being fumbled by a company such as Interact. This upgrade seems to be about them generating fees for tech support calls. Save your money on the upgrade!

I work in public relations, and have been using ACT 2000 very successfully for a while to send out mail merge press releases. The new mail merge features in ACT 6.0 only allow graphical email documents to be sent out using a merge. A very large file (the last one page press release with nothing but text I sent was 6.37 MB) is attached to the document. Many newspapers I send information to are not even allowed to open mail that has attachments, and many will not accept mail that large. So the new version is useless to me. If there is a way around it, I can't find it, and of course ACT's support is legendarily non-existent. There is no free technical support at all, and their so-called knowledge base fails me most of the time.

I am a 10 year user of ACT and waited 3 years for the latest version. The Outlook integration is poor at best. If you want a simple company logo in your signature forget it. I messed around for 2 days even writing my own HTML code to do it but it doesn't work. It doesn't even support different font styles when integrated with Outlook. SAVE YOUR MONEY. When looking up email addresses it takes forever and I am running the latest laptop. The sales forecasting has no improvements and not very customizable. What have they been doing for 3 years the new features are of a point release caliber? Also you can't use MS Word anymore for your email editor.

1 step forward and 3 steps backwards.

If you're just looking for a flat file address book, you'll love Act. But if you really looking for contact management functionality, try Goldmine for about the same price. Goldmine has a steeper learning curve, but has amazing reporting, tracking, and automation features. It can pull leads off the Web and assign contact to "tracks" so you never forget anyone.

Been using ACT! since 1991; this is an effective and incremental upgrade. A good deal of the development effort apparently went into the e-mail functionality, which allows you to create and send graphical (HTML) e-mail. I've already used a template to create a newsletter for my business and mail it out to about a hundred clients, personalized with their name, etc.

Another new feature is the library tab, which allows you to display a graphics file (or MS Word, Excel, or Adobe Acrobat file) alongside a contact record. The Outlook integration allows you to attach an e-mail received in Outlook against an ACT! record, to provide an inbound and outbound record of communications with contacts.

Several new reports, a few new lookup features, including one that lets you search for contacts that you haven't done anything with in a while. For me, having a more robust e-mail client inside ACT! made the purchase worthwhile.

It's always been the favorite of most salespeople who've used it because it's well-designed, easy to learn, and for the price, a phenomenal deal. There's nothing else out there like it.

A longtime ACT fan, I upgraded to 6.0 for the email integration and library tab. They don't work unless I turn off scripting protection in Norton AntiVirus - tedious at best and I'm unwilling to leave it turned off. The ACT for Palm feature, the other item that sold me, is very limited - for example shows me only the primary contact for a given company.

The real problem is the bugs. It causes unrelenting problems on my XP system. I have 1 GB of RAM and a 2.8 processor! Yet somehow it manages to cause memory shortages and locks up regularly. I've almost stopped using it because it's as much an annoyance as help. I've never had a software program that I evaluate before launching: do I have time for a lock up? NONE of my other software programs cause these kinds of problems, and I run some heavy-duty graphics programs.

I'm at the point of looking for another contact manager, which is too bad because I was a solid ACT user for so many years.