QuickBooks: Customer Manager - New Version Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have used ACT! and Qbooks for years. I needed an upgrade to ACT! but received very poor reviews for ACT! 6.0. Intuit always gives a quality product so I bought This Customer Manager.
The advertising makes it sound so powerful but I cannot find much to do with it. It is like Intuit sold a shell they were developing to recapture development costs.
Its kind of funny in a sick sort of way .. but I can't find much functionality in this product at all. It really doesn't do anything except list your customers and... nothing!

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Prophet 3.0 - 3 Pack Review

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(More customer reviews)I have purchased the Prophet Pro 4.0 version for $199.95 from the vendor and straight out of the gate the installation was fraught with bugs and problems. I had to first tweak the registry with a patch to get the software to even begin the install, I then had to download a file from Micrososft "Windows Installer Distributable 3.1" to get the software to install on the machine. After the installation according to the users guide when I start Outlook I was to be asked questions regarding the configuration and what files to use and where to install which never happened. After this it was no suprise to find that no component of the application was present at all within Outlook. I uninstalled the software and went through the process again and finally got it to run only to find that some of the toolbars did not work when pressed and that when I wanted to backup my DB to my network drive it would not do it because you have to backup locally and manually copy it to the server for safekeeping. To make this even worse, if that was possible, Avidian does not provide patches, updates or fixes on their website like most NORMAL developers do, you have to pay a seperate fee for that bit of heaven. When asked why this was not included in the purchase price I was told that their oversees customers dont require patches or fixes, which makes you wonder what the heck those people are doing over there. In short the only good thing about this product is the money back guarantee which I am going to fully avail myself of. If you are looking for a good CRM product look at Maximizer, I think that will be the route I am going to pursue.
PS... Avidian people dont seem to give a hang whether or not you are happy with their product or service, maybe they will start if more of us who buy the product and return it spread the word a bit.
PSS... Too bad I cant choose a number of stars lower than 1, 1 seems to good for them.

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ACT By Sage Premium 2008 10.0 Multi-Pack Review

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(More customer reviews)I know a lot of people who love ACT but maybe they're just not posting here. Just having the ability to print labels, send mass letters and emails justifies its cost. I use all the ACT functions and I wouldn't be able to work everyday without it. I do have to say that I have a really fast computer (dual processor) and I think you would need at least 1 GB of RAM to have a good experience with ACT.

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ACT BY SAGE PREM EX EDITION 2008 MULTI PK

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GoldMine Standard 6.7 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have used Goldmine for five years and find it to be invaluable for managing contacts and projects for my consulting business.
Best Features:
#1) Organization Charts can be created that can include other organizations as a subset. This is the feature that I utilize the most and don't know of any other product that has this capability. To manage projects, I include vendors that I have contacted under the client organization chart that they support, yet can tie them to other clients as well and maintain their own independent org charts.
#2) All phone calls are logged under my contacts as are emails. You can file relevant documents such as Word and Excel documents under a contact also but this is not a feature that I make use of.
#3) There is sales forecasting feature that I've worked with that is another important capabiity but I'm not taking full advantage of that yet.
Other Comments:
Another reveiwer found the syncronization and learning curve to be a problem. I was syncing Goldmine with my Palm Pilot and it was a two step process - first syncing to Outlook and then another step to sync to the Palm. I have stopped using this feature as I'm generally in the field and didn't have the cradle available for the Palm. I'm looking at using a smartphone as my PDA that has a USB connection, so I expect to go back to syncing. The two-step process is inconvenient but like other workarounds with technology, I've gotten use to it. Goldmine definitely has a learning curve but there are a lot of features and is a very powerful program, so I expect that.
Tip:
I recently started to keep four quadrants open in the program at all times: 1) Contact Records, 2) Calendar, 3) Contact Search Center, and 4) E-mail Center. I read about this technique and it greatly speeds up my use of the application.
Things Goldmine Could Do Better:
#1) I would like to see a To Do List similar to Franklin Planner method whereby you could assign priorities along with the suspense date that you want them to show up on instead showing future items before they are needed.
#2) Have a more flexible method of showing more phone numbers under a contact - I have contacts with multiple work numbers (as they work at multiple locations), two cell phones (work and personal), home phone, fax numbers (work and home)and the list goes on. As I recall, ACT does a better job at handling this issue but I find Goldmine's other features to offset this.
I totally depend on this program to manage my contacts and feel that it is an ideal program for small businesses. While it isn't perfect, I can recommend that you seriously consider it. I give it four stars as while it is quite robust - it can benefit from further improvement.

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ACT By Sage Premium 2008 10.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)Check the date of the reviews before taking them serious. 6 of the 8 reviews were written on Sept. 28, and the other two reviews are doubtful. Just an observation and in conflict with the reviews of the non premium version ACT! 2008 10.0 .

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ACT BY SAGE PREM EX EDITION 2008

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ACT By Sage Premium 2008 10.0 Upgrade Review

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(More customer reviews)ACT! By Sage Premium 2008 10.0 Multi-Pack
I use ACT in a multi-user network environment. I've have used ACT since ACT 4.0. I noticed some reviews from others discussing the installation/performance was slower. Our installation was done on a Windows Server 2003, Service Pack 2 and was able to set up ACT 2008 Premium for Wkgps within 45 minutes. All went smoothly!
I am running my db on a laptop and sync every hour (running as a service), which I love. Make sure your pc has good RAM (1 GB or better).

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GoldMine 5.7 Business Contact Manager Review

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(More customer reviews)I have well documented our nightmares with GoldMine 5.5 in my review for that product. After I was promised great things by Frontrange customer support, I received a full-featured demo CD of GoldMine 5.7 to try. Regretfully, none of the functionality and stability issues have been addressed in the new version. I have mentioned the following points in my review of GoldMine 5.5 and I repeat them here because the problems STILL remain!!!
1. It does not want to start up because it cannot find the "license.dbf" file! You have to hit browse and point it to the directory where GoldMine is installed. I made numerous calls to their tech support and they admitted they didn't have any clue as to what could be causing this! They suggested some changes including reinstalling and even installing GoldMine twice which really messed up my registry keys. And this happens with ALL our users!
2. It DOES NOT work with MS Office 2000 or XP/2002!! It is the most bogus claim. Allow me to elaborate: The link with MS Word is shaky at best. And that is when it gets past Norton Antivirus. For some reason, the macro that their GMLINK.DOT file uses is detected as a virus by almost any antivirus software. Even when I get it working by including it in the exception list, it crashes MS Office. I have even had to clean out GoldMine and uninstall and reinstall Office because of this wonderful link! Now about Outlook - It only works with Outlook if you are careful about what settings you choose. Otherwise it will crash GoldMine! And if you receive a message with an attachment, it does not transfer the attachment to GoldMine as promised. For example, if you received a file from a client, you have to find alternate ways to tag the file with that record.
3. This would beg the question - Why not dump Outlook and use GoldMine for all email purposes? Well, there's the issue of a VERY bad interface. The email interface in Netscape 1.0 was better than the one they have in GoldMine! Since version 5.5, some of the promised features actually work but its still prehistoric in its look. Even bad email clients like Eudora Pro have a better interface.
4. There is a whole slew of annoyances that makes you tear you hair out like you cannot have personal contacts like you can in Outlook. Calendar items when marked "finished" by you disappear. So if you went back to yesterday's tasks and checked to see what you did, its blank! If you have a Home Address for someone good luck entering that! Of course, you can configure GoldMine for that but why do I have to go to such lengths for obvious functionalities?
After our harrowing experience, despite high ratings from ZDnet labs, we have switched back to Outlook 2002 and are considering using Oracle Small Busines Suite instead. I am seriously begining to doubt the testing process of ZDNet since they seems to have gone with what the product promised rather than check the veracity of their claims.
Hope this helps someone avoid the frustations we had to face. After more than a year of experimenting with available CRM solutions out there I think low-end users should go with Symantec's Act. People who want the kind of powerful features GoldMine *promises* should try the Oracle Small Business Suite instead.

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GoldMine Business Contact Manager is a software solution for team-based contact management. It can be implemented out-of-the-box, offering the same automation benefits previously available only to larger corporations, and at a fraction of the cost and time. Effectively track and improve your customer interactions through collaborative contact management and increased visibility into your sales and forecasts. Make sure the right information is available to everyone on your team, from anywhere, at any time.
Business Contact Manager lets you see the combined status of all your pending sales. See a graphical representation of the stages, close dates, and potential revenue. Link the right people and documents to the overall process. Get instant access to a complete customer view and gain visibility into all your organization's interactions with a customer.
Business Contact Manager helps you take advantage of Internet resources. The Web Data Capture feature allows you to collect leads and information requests from your Web site and link with automated processes, delivering leads to your sales team. The E-mail Center lets you send and receive messages from within GoldMine and automatically links them to a contact's record. Enhanced Outlook e-mail integration gives you the ability to manage e-mail messages from your Outlook inbox and synchronizes not only e-mail messages, but also contacts, tasks, and calendar entries. Included in Business Contact Manager are many more features to help you better manage customer relationships.

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ACT(TM) For Palm(TM) OS Review

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(More customer reviews)I love this software.. so much even after losing my CD I bought a new copy.
It's an incredible database, it's easy to use and very simple.
The newer versions of ACT are great but they are too complex for our needs.

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ACT 6.0 - 5 User Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been a faithful user of ACT since 1998. I've always found it intutive and an absolute must for my sales activities. I've been such a big proponent of ACT that I often recommend it during my company's sales consulting practice. I've attended several one day training courses from ACT approved training centers to improve my operating of the software.
I've always upgraded shortly after ACT has brought a new version to market. The changes have always been minimal, but you could always see the improvements from one version to the other and they always made sense. The improvements have made ACT easier to use and much easier to use with Outlook.
I decided to do the trial version of the newest ACT to see how I would like it......and I didn't.
What a disaster. The only positive point was that I kept my ACT 2004 as a seperate program and am I glad I did.
The new version of Act was slow, clunky, very unintutitive and hard to operate. I lost all ability to synch with Outlook. It is a disaster. I hope ACT will improve the system before jaming a new one down our throats. I bet I get an email once a week urging me to upgrade and how the price will go up if I don't. After the trial session I wouldn't upgrade if they gave it to me.
Stick with your older version of ACT until they get the major problems with the new version repaired.
Shame on you ACT for bringing a product to market that is vastly inferior to your older versions.

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ACT! 6.0 organizes all your customer information in one place to give you instant access to every detail of every customer relationship. You'll be able to find anyone or any detail in seconds, including names, phone numbers, addresses, notes from previous conversations, upcoming appointment details, call histories, a list of follow-up activities, and much more.
ACT! even manages your sales pipeline with forecasting tools and built-in reports, and allows you to safely share complete customer information with your workgroup. It works with Outlook, handhelds, and paper planners to propel your business to a whole new level.

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Customer Appointment Manager 4.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)OK... so I have used a paper scheduling book for the past 20-years. One reason I never moved to a computer program is because I don't like computers and they don't like me. A friend of mine recommended Customer Appointment Manager, so I tried it out. IT IS SOOOO EASY TO USE. And if I can use it, anybody can. I am much more organized now and quickly check past appointments, schedule future appointments, or create recurring appointments. GREAT PRODUCT!

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Maximizer 6.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)If Max 6.0 worked as well as previous versions the upgrade would be worth $100's more.... but....
Simple things such as e-mailing multiple contacts at one time are now seemingly impossible, though easily accomplished in earlier versions. Bugs galore and by the way, these are new bugs overwriting tried and true software. But then again, I guess that helps support the $45 charge per tech support call. Note - you cannot e-mail tech support from the Multisoft website... hmmmmm.
I removed 6.0 and reloaded 5.0 so that I can get some work done... still waiting to get my money back.
BTW - I still have my copies of 1.0, 1.2, 3.0, 97is & 5.0

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ACT 3.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)This product will greatly fulfill your need for a tracking database.
Efficient and affordable.

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Act By Sage Premium for Real Estate 2006 Review

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(More customer reviews)I love this program with a few exceptions. It would be so much better if the report templates were easier to change/create, you could attach files to email templates for mail merge docs being sent to lookups/groups and didn't slow your system down so much. Otherwise, I use it everyday and can't imagine my business without it.

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Whether you're a single-agent or part of a broker business or a large workgroup, ACT! Premium for Real Estate can help you to become more productive and effective in managing prospects and customers. With more than 2.5 million individual users and 32,000 corporate customers, ACT! Premium for Real Estate continues to be the award-winning market leader in contact and customer management among real estate professionals. Centralize Buyer, Seller and Vendor InformationACT! Premium for Real Estate is a single, central repository for critical prospect and customer information captured across your business -- whether you are a one-person business or a large workgroup. ACT! Premium for Real Estate enables you to keep detailed prospect and customer information, group relevant contacts, capture all customer communications on the contact record, track opportunities through the sales process, and report on overall effectiveness.ACT! Premium for Real Estate can help you can track complete buyer, seller and vendor information including contact details, notes and history, appointments and to-dos, documents and sales opportunities. The Groups feature lets you easily communicate and schedule with related contacts can create up to 15 hierarchies of subgroups for managing information. Groups can even be utilized to track properties and contacts associated with those properties, and you can attach critical documents such as inspection reports, house photos, MLS listings, and more to the contact record.Instant Information Access for High Levels of Customer Service ACT! Premium for Real Estate allows you to search information in on any field, or search by key words to access contact and information immediately. Did you receive a call from a prospect but only caught the first four digits of their phone number? No problem. Simply perform a lookup on the phone number field and quickly find who you are looking for. You can also perform numeric lookups by ranges such as greater than or less than queries and save these queries for reusable searches.For quick and easy referencing, ACT! Premium for Real Estate allows you to track all of your critical contact and customer communications on the contact record. The software offers 30 letter templates customized for real estate in the areas of Letters to Buyers, FSBOs, Lead Follow-up, Open House Follow-up, Referral Letters, Letters to Sellers, and PR Campaigns for the Holidays. These custom letter templates were sourced from a respected real estate communications expert to improve your communications. ACT! Mail Merge allows you to correspond with multiple contacts (either via e-mail or paper correspondence) and automatically track a history on each contact record. Prioritize Your Work and Manage Your Leads Stay on top of appointments and tasks by scheduling activities using one of more than 20 activity types. Or, set up an Activities Series using one of the nine custom Activity Series specific to real estate including active listing, new listing, listing prospect, active buyer, new buyer, buyer prospect, and more. In addition, ACT! Premium for Real Estate offers multiple Calendar Views including daily/weekly/monthly/today views, as well as activity alarms, so you never miss an important appointment or deliverable.You can also import leads from a variety of sources so you can start turning those prospects into customers immediately. You can segment leads into relevant groups, schedule an activity series for all leads that you imported so you have a set marketing strategy with reminders of upcoming tasks, and send your first personalized communication using mail merge. The software also enables real estate agents to track sales opportunities through close utilizing the standard sales process or a process customized to suit your business.In addition to the more than 40 standard reports in ACT! Premium for Real Estate -- including phone lists, activity reports, and sales summaries -- you'll also have nine custom report templates for real estate at your disposal. These include: buyer completed activities, seller completed activities, activities by type and activities by contact so you can actively update your buyer or seller, see which marketing activities converted to sales, and determine the most effective communication vehicles. And best of all, you can synchronize your ACT! Calendar, Contact and To-Do Information to your Palm OS or Pocket PC device, so you always have access to your critical contact information while you're on the road.

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Act By Sage 2007 Review

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(More customer reviews)Dear Lord! I've been an ACT! user for over 11 years, coming up through Windows 3.X and even administering a 7-user (13,000+ contact)ACT! network. Those of us who are old hands at ACT! know that the program can be a wonderful slave and a terrible master. Such is the case with lots of crucial technology.
My last upgrade was to 2005. That one went off without a hitch. Since I decided to register that time, I've been getting 'Upgrade to 2007' emails from Sage for about 9 months. I normally will ignore these solicitations, but the 'integration with Outlook' feature caught my eye. I went ahead and downloaded the program (giant 250+mb file)last Monday.
After backing up my ACT! data to 3 separate locations, I proceeded with my install. Virus software 'off', closed all non-essential programs, etc. This thing was a mess from the get-go. After failing to start the install process several times, I called support, and after about 55 minutes of hold time, was handed off to a nice woman named Muralidharan who spent the next THREE HOURS on the line with me deleting individual items from the registry, downloading patches from Microsoft, etc. At the end of that ordeal, we had a successful install, meaning the program would run.
Next up was converting my database. That actually went smoothly, just humming along and proclaimimg success at the end. When I opened said database, I was pleased to see my contacts intact and even displayed in the template I had customized. Excited, I went to check my calendar, since that's the main screen I use. No calendar items. Check to see if the filters are out of whack-nope. Items show on the task list, and future to-dos, calls, and meetings show under each individual contact's 'activities' tab, but there was no way in Hades I could get it to show up on the Calendar. Regarding the Outlook functionality-it's not there if you use Word as your Outlook email editor. If you don't use Word, it's still a clunky, lame interface that requires a special ACT! address book in Outlook, etc.
Back to tech support. a 45 minute wait connected me to a very nice person who listened to my woes and promptly disconnected me. The next person I spoke with, after a nearly 1 hour hold (nice New-Age hold muzak, btw), was equally as friendly but apparently suffered fronm the same phone problems as the prior tech, since he disconnected while putting me on hold.
Fast forward to today. I fired up the evil box for a day in the office, hit the ACT! launch button, and watched it load significantly faster than I had remembered. Heartened, I waited for the activities to roll over. I can tell you now-I think I'd still be waiting for that rollover if I hadn't killed the process. I watched an hourglass for about ten minutes before doing a cold boot and retrying. Same result. Last straw.
I called ACT! and requested a refund. After a (surprise!)30 minute wait, I was connected with a gentleman who credited me back for my full purchase price. For the record, everyone I've dealt with at Sage has been helpful and friendly. One person I spoke with (likely NOT on a recorded line!) even lamented that the product may have been brought to market 'prematurely'.
Bottom line: There's no compelling reason to 'upgrade', and many, many reasons not to.

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ACT! by Sage 2007 (9.0) is the #1 selling contact and customer manager that helps you make contact, build relationships, and get results. ACT! enables you 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. Renowned for its ease of use, ACT! offers robust integration with the tools you use everyday, such as Microsoft Office*, Lotus Notes*, accounting products, and handheld devices. Use mail merge and e-mail to deliver marketing campaigns, forecast and track customer opportunities, and generate reports for a complete view of customer interactions. *(See www.act.com/2007systreq for details.)

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ACT By Sage 2008 10.0 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I have been in IT for 20 years and am currently an IT manager for a Fortune 500 company. Act 2006 and then the "upgrade" to Act 2008 have been the worst software experiences I have ever seen, bar none.With a ~12 seat install of Act premium, we got Act 2006 up and running with the help of a Certified Act consultant. It was ugly and the entire user base complained of not only Act being very slow, but the computers slowed to a crawl when performing all other functions as well. See the reviews of Act 2006 and you will see my experience is the norm.
An upgrade to 2008 was ordered. Cold feelings of dread went up and down my spine. The same consultant returned and we started.
Every single machine had a minimum of 6 errors related to the upgrade. Some had many more. A listing of actual and paraphrased errors follows. The consultant struggled until late in the evening to get the first four or five working. SQL was removed and installed, registries were hacked and edited. Finally she got those working.
The next day I personally attempted to do the rest.
Eventually after about 5 person-days I got the machines installed, and now the users are telling us that this version is even slower than the dog called Act 2006.
This should not reflect badly on the consultant. She was quite good. This is all about the product put out by Rage Software.Run, don't walk away from this evil thing called Act.
----------------------------------
Small sample of the errors I jotted down as we went down this bloody path:
All users had errors when adding an Outlook address book, Licensing error-User count. Which eventually went away after 6-8 tries or 10 minutes, not sure which fixed it. We had the proper volume licenses.
When updating the local DB all laptops gave an error pop up "Error in the Application" with "ok" being the only choice. It seemed to complete ok after this however.
Over half had SQL errors upon upgrading from 2006 to 2008. Gave up and removed 2006 and 5 related pieces instead of upgrading.
None could register online due to Act not speaking SSL through a Windows configured proxy. (A fairly standard configuration in a corporation) We did work around this by connecting/activating with another method.
Half of the laptops caused Outlook 2003 errors when launching. "Error in registry for extension: (Exchange Extensions) Syntax or format of the registry entry is incorrect." This dialog appeared about a dozen times in a row and then Outlook would eventually launch.
25% had errors when upgrading related to SQL. The upgrade from 2006-2008 did not handle the SQL portion well at all. Once we manually uninstalled Act 2006, 4-5 SQL pieces and the XML 6 Parser, and then installed 2008 and then manually installed SQL Server it went somewhat better. There were still a couple that had major errors though relating to SQL even after doing this elaborate process.
Errors with SQL failing to start - SQLWriter-SQLDumper library failed initialization. Installation Corrupt/tampered with.
SQL Server could not find specified named instance (ACT7) please specify the name of an existing instance at the invocation of sqlserver.exe
And on and on and on.....

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Make contacts. Buildrelationships. Get results.ACT! by Sage 2008 (10.0) is a feature rich, robust contact andcustomer managerideal for individuals and small business customers of up to 10 networked users1in a variety of industries looking to organize contact information, manage dailyresponsibilities, and communicate more effectively to improveyour productivity.ACT! by Sage 2008 (10.0) is for individuals and small business customers in avariety of industries looking to organize contact information, manage dailyresponsibilities, and communicate more effectively to improve yourproductivity.

ACT! is the #1 selling contact and customer manager that helps you organizecontact information, manage daily responsibilities, and communicate moreeffectively to improve your productivity. With over 2.7 million users and 41,000corporate customers, ACT! has maintained its position as #1 for 20 years becauseit's renowned for being easy to learn and use, and is an effective solutionfor anyone who regularly works with contacts.Why Should You Choose ACT!?

Keep important contact details in one place with ACT! so you have quickaccess to the information you need.
Be up and running quickly because ACT! is easy to learn and use.
Manage your daily responsibilities soimportant calls, meetings, andto-dos don't slip through the cracks - and ultimately improve yourproductivity!
Integrate ACT! with everyday applications, including Office, so you canwork the way you're accustomed.
Use ACT! out-of-the box or highly customized to fit the needs of yourbusiness..

ACT! can be used out-of-the-box or customized to suit your needs, and alsointegrates with everyday tools like Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel.WithACT! you'll have critical contact

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Act 6.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)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.

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ACT! 6.0 organizes all your customer information in one place to give you instant access to every detail of every customer relationship. You'll be able to find anyone or any detail in seconds, including names, phone numbers, addresses, notes from previous conversations, upcoming appointment details, call histories, a list of follow-up activities, and much more.
ACT! even manages your sales pipeline with forecasting tools and built-in reports, and allows you to safely share complete customer information with your workgroup. It even works with Outlook, handhelds, and paper planners to propel your business to a whole new level.

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Best Software ACT 6 for 2004 Review

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(More customer reviews)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.

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