Customer Reviews
Sage will not refund money. 
2008-06-13
I have written Sage 3 times in one year for a refund for ACT 2007, which is an awful product. This is warning they will ignore you.
Act 2007 doesn't work with Vista 
2008-06-11
I had Act 2003 working on 3 computers, then I had to upgrade to 2007 because Sage wouldn't support the older version any more. I had to get a new CPU for one system for the Act 2007 to work on it. Then another system crashed and I had to buy a new one. This one has to have Vista on it because that's what they all come with now. So I get Act installed on the new Vista operating system and find out it doesn't work on Vista, so now, after 1 year of use, I have to upgrade to 2008 for the new system which won't sync with the other computers anymore...I don't understand why they pushed so hard for everyone to buy a system that won't work on any new computer and why they just can't do a fix for 2007! What a rip off!
ACT 2007 SOFTWARE 
2008-06-09
PREFERRED CONTACT MANAGER FOR OUR OFFICE OF SALES REPS, 4TH UPGRADE. HANDLES MULTIPLE USERS WITH ONE DATABASE. WOULD LIKE TO SEE BETTER SUPPORT AND MORE COMPATIBILITY WITH HANDHELDS OF VARIOUS KINDS.
Too much time spent supporting ACT for my users 
2008-05-14
My experience with ACT comes from the support side, as I provide IT support at my company and provide help for all things ACT. ACT seems to do the job for my users, but it is a nightmare & time-hog from a support perspective. Any upgrade, update, database conversion, or data import I've ever done has resulted in erors and calls to technical support, and this after I've already researched or downloaded step-by-step articles describing how to do it! The Remote Sync takes much time to set up, and any update or change done to ACT requires you to completely reconfigure each user's ACT settings in order to sync. Very inefficient, doable as long as you document the 200 steps that need to be done. My experience with tech support has been good, they always resolve the issue, it just gets old having to call them so often, and is time-consuming.
The last straw came after upgrading to ACT 2006. It slowed laptops down to a crawl. Not just ACT, but everything, including Windows, ran slow on the laptops with ACT installed. Part of the reason (I found after several calls to tech support), is that ACT had introduced new "services" (Stayrunning & Preload) that continually run in the background. These services could be permanently turned off only by doing a reg hack. This sped things up a bit, but some users still complained of slowness and having to wait 30 seconds to open a Word file. So we have uninstalled ACT from most of our laptops, at the request of the laptop users.
Act 2007 works FAST and FINE with right system. 
2008-03-05
I ordered ACT 2007 (got a great price on 2007 vs 2008. Shop around). After buying, I read all the negative reviews and figured I was in the deep stuff. However, I found quite the opposite.
As a background - I converted 6500 contacts from Goldmine using conversion software. I left GM because it is not supported any longer and was getting a little paranoid about the consequences of major problems.
Of course there were some duplications and minor errors in the conversion but nothing major. There is also a learning curve for a new user and some quirks as with any program. However, the format is much, much more user friendly for a smaller company (4 users) than is GM.
The major concern to others seems to be speed. Not for us. We are on a peer to peer XP network. We keep one machine dedicated to data storage with no users on it. We did update to all new Dell Vostro and Optiplex machines with 2.0 GHZ or better and a minimum of 1 GB RAM, 80 GB drives. The response from the ACT program is instantaneous. I do not know if the speed problems everyone is complaining about is a function of old slow equipment, converting from prior versions, slow network, or what. Our ACT is fast.
Now I have to admit the manual is crap (aren't they all?). For the first time in 20 years I subscribed to a support contract. I suspected that it would be a lot cheaper with a new and fairly complicated program than beating my head against the wall trying to figure out those little quirks. I was right. I have already recouped the $200 cost with a couple of phone calls. The quality and courtesy surprised me. The contract covers 13 months for less than the price of one license at retail. And as a bonus, you get to talk to real live Americans who actually know something about the program. (Listen up HP. I don't want to talk to India). I also bough ACT for Dummies. Very useful book so far.
I wonder if anyone doing exactly the same as we did has the same concerns about speed as some of the other reviewers. I gave 5 it stars so people would see that the program is not the junk others are calling it. However because of the manual it really should be 4.5 stars.
Avoid a heart attack, just don't buy it. 2008-02-20
ACT! enables individuals and small business customers to instantly access key contact and customer information, manage and prioritize activities, and track all contact-related communications so you can grow productive business relationships. Centralize your customer information and develop top-notch communications. Access and report on information quickly for a complete view of customer interactions. Prioritize your work to stay on top of appointments and tasks, and forecast and track sales opportunities for an improved bottom line. You can even take critical information on the go, for even better productivity. Attach documents directly into Activities, History, or Documents tabs Write letters in ACT! using Microsoft Word or the ACT! built-in Word Processor which supports tables, graphics, HTML, and spell checking Schedule calls, meetings, and to-dos quickly and easily Filter calls, meetings, and to-do items by priority, date range, or user Calendar pop-ups make it easy to view activity details instantly by mousing over any activity for an at-a-glance view View all sales opportunities at once or filter by Users, Estimated Close Date, Status, Sales Stage, Amount, or Probability of Close Track customer correspondence for a history of all communications with a contact and its organization Use the Product List to easily enter repeated products or services and automatically fill in information such as name, item number, cost and price
This product is very good (2008 is much better) 2008-01-11
Our company has used ACT for years--ACT2005 was super slow...but ACT2007 really picked up the performance. I found the Outlook integration to be excellent. The company level record, the ease of templates and reporting, the phone dialer integration make for an all-around great product and great value. However, we love ACT2008 even better...so I'd advise to get that if you have the option.
Lots of money for what? 2007-12-21
I have been an ACT! user for years. Actually started with ACT! 5 several years ago.
I decided to buy this program so that it would sync with my Treo 700wx. Really the only reason I bought it. Did that only a year and a half ago. It worked great until...
I go to buy a new system with Windows Vista. Come to find out, this program will not allow sync with a PDA in Vista. So the biggest reason I bought it was now moot.
Now I am bombarded with e-mails asking me to upgrade for another $199 to ACT! 10 so that I can have the functionality I paid for in the first place. Most companies make a patch or something for Vista and offer it for free...NOT SAGE.
Instead of upgrading ACT!, I kept this version and bought Outlook 2007 for seamless sync with my PDA.
Sage has lost me as a customer probably forever. Great product IMO, just bad corporate policies.
Beware of poor product support by Sage 2007-11-20
I have been using ACT since the old days when the product was owned by Symantec. In those days, Symantec had excellent online support and they also continued to support their products to make them compatible with changes in Windows and Microsoft Office. Sage is another story. Their online knowledgebase is weak and the only way to get company moderated forum support is to pay a fairly hefty fee (In general I don't like to pay money to debug some elses software). Sage released ACT 2007 in the fall of 2006 but they never really updated ACT 2007 to be compatible. Instead they issued a hotfix which I haven't tried yet. Also, even though it was released in 2006. ACT 2007 is still not compatible with Microsoft Office 2007. Sage pushes their customers to buy their new version every year in order to become compatible with other programs. However, the upgrade price is only a slight discount off of the new price so you end up buying the program all over again each year to be compatible with other programs. For what this program costs you don't seem to get much support in return.
ACT 2007 - keeps me on pins and needles 2007-10-26
I work for a major corporation who had been using the ACT family of products for the last 10 years. We have approximately 21,000 contacts in our ACT db. Around a year ago we decided to upgrade our 2005 ACT software to ACT for Web 2007. This upgrade has been the bane of my existence at my company. As a programmer myself, I can tell when a piece of software has taken a downhill turn...and i think ACT for Web is a prime example of sloppy programming and what looks like a non quality tested release. Any time someone brings up the word "ACT" a shudder goes down my spine.
Our ACT 2005 worked reasonably well, but it was a beast. To combat our 20+ sales people all synching to our ACT db at the same time which made everything slow to a halt, we decided a centralized ACT for web 2007 server would be our answer. Our problems include:
* Reports dont run...not even any error messages...they just don't run from within the program.
* Bugs and error messages - Cryptic error messages like "ERROR: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." and "something went wrong in ValidateCustomFields.aspx.cs" abound. How can stuff like this pass any sort of quality control?
* The validation process on text inputs through the browser break easily. So you'll have someone putting all this time in entering contact information, then something triggers a javascript error and now they cant submit their contact info (after contacting support they admitted this to be a bug and i never heard back)
* Technical support - while every time i called i did get someone in the USA, and they did *try* to help, they just werent very good at the more technical questions.
* Management - Completely blown off by management a step higher than customer support. The manager was constantly at a meeting or on the run and would never-ever call me back no matter how many times i tried.
* Patches - The only patch that we installed completely corrupted our current ACT installation and we had to try again.
The only consistency i find with this program are headaches and error messages that are so ridiculous, I cant help but laugh when i see them now.
I dont know if ACT 2008 fixes a lot of problems, but don't tread here with 2007.
