ACT! 2000

by Interact Commerce Corp

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004U8LF
• Item model number: 07AR50USCL01
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 30, 2000
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,122 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #22 in Software > Business & Office > Schedule & Contact Management > Organizers & Address Books
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

If you are in a business where sales staff make sustained connections with prospects over any period of time, you need some way to track these profiles. Act! 2000 provides just such contact management.

Installing Act! 2000 is very easy. It requires around 50 MB of hard disk space, which can grow considerably depending on the number of contacts you enter. While we were examining the software, though, an odd printing problem occurred. Act! comes with a toll-call support line for installation and configuration--90 days free from first call--with an automated call attendant waiting on the other end. (Reaching a real person, however, did not take long.) Although this particular printing problem was not reproducible, the technical support person was friendly and helpful. Given the complex nature of Act! 2000, you may easily encounter a problem over a year of use. The online fax-back service, and pay-per-use technical support options, should meet the needs of most users.

This feature-rich (sales forecast, groups, sales reports, sales opportunity tracking) contact-management software has added elements in this version. There is tighter integration with Microsoft's Outlook, allowing you to import contact information, use Outlook Mail from within Act! 2000, and view your calendar activity in Outlook. Better group management, easier e-mail access, graphical reports, and an improved database lookup are just a few of the improvements. Act! 2000 remains a top choice for contact management software. --Rob Frankland

Amazon.com Product Description

See rebate details. ACT! 2000 is a tool for managing and growing your business relationships. It helps you to make contacts, build relationships, and get results. ACT! 2000 helps you track those details and tasks to better manage--and profit from--your relationships. Plus, ACT! 2000 lets you see every opportunity in your pipeline so you know whether to cultivate new business or close pending deals. You can then create easy-to-read reports that show you the bottom line. ACT! 2000 also includes expert sales assistance from Dale Carnegie Training, seamless integration with leading Microsoft products, and easy links between your desktop, laptop, and handheld PC that keep you productive--even on the road. You can even keep track of expenses so that all you have to do is print out your expense report when you return. Finally, ACT! 2000 helps you sell more with the edgiest Internet sales tools. Buy prospects that match your favorite customers and automatically fill in prospect and industry information--right from the Internet.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars They had the running start..., January 23, 2001

By 

"innocents" (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ACT! 2000 (CD-ROM)

Outlook is good and powerful and all that, but ACT 2000 can still do more. It has the ability to truly manage your business and help you identify trends among prospects and existing clients.

But don't judge it by how you feel about the program after the first three months only. If you want to use this software to its fullest, you need peace and quiet and uninterrupted time to set it up. The customizable fields make this yours, and that can slow you down on set-up.

The last company I worked for, we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get the form of the database perfected before we started data entry. In retrospect, that is NOT the way to use ACT 2000. With my own company, we started by entering basic information about all (then) 275 prospects. We've only started with the customization now that we have a better feel for who we are and what we need.

If the people who will be using this contact management database are computer novices, you will need to send them to an all-day course. A database with its mail merges and all is not a word processor. Those employees will need someone who can communicate succinctly what the purpose of the software is.

But a good intermediate computer person should be able to figure ACT 2000 out on their own. It's largely intuitive, especially once it's already set up.

My gripes? As one of the first good contact management softwares out there (I loved the old DOS version), they could be light years ahead of Outlook. Instead, they are just slightly better.

And their support is not helpful at all, online or in person.

And, perhaps ONE day I will learn to love their funnel...

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best contact-management software I've ever used, April 24, 2001

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ACT! 2000 (CD-ROM)

This software is by far the best contact-management software. I especially recommend it for independent sales people, such as real estate agents. Every letter you write, every phone call you make can be logged into a contact record. You can send your emails directly from your contact list (and boy does that save time.) You can interface your Palm V with ACT too, meaning you can have your customer contacts on the road, and update the information when back in your office. And it's not hard to use to set up and use ACT at all. Very user friendly.

While Microsoft Outlook is powerful and useful for doing in-office correspondence and task management, it is not as suitable as ACT for contact management. Contact management is a specific job, and ACT does it best.

127 of 139 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What they don't tell you!, December 3, 2000

By 

scott patrick (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ACT! 2000 (CD-ROM)

I have used Act since the DOS days and love it. It has always been an important part of our business. I normally don't write reviews (who has the time) but I felt passionate about this particular problem. We have a 4-person office and network ACT so that we all use the same database. This has never been a problem until Act 2000. InterAct Corp has decided to exercise their muscles and put an electronic serial number into each copy of Act 2000. Normally this would be no big deal but now each user MUST have an individual copy to use the database. And there is no break on the price until 10 users!! That means it will cost you [the price of an individual copy] x the number of people in your office. Get ready to write a big check (or I would seriously consider another aplication...Gold Mine, Access, there are a lot of great ones to choose from). I know that the need to have individual copies of this software is the law and we are always supposed to do this but you would think for the cost you could do a little more with it. Also it would have been good to know this before converting to Act 2000. But they would never do that. We all remember when Microsoft tried this but decided against it when they lost market share. You would think Interact would learn.... maybe in Act 2001 but that will cost [more money]!!

Good luck to all.

Scott