Since 1997, I have been working with Customer Relationship Management software. In fact, I remember a time before the term Sales Force Automation, Customer Relationship Management, and even Salesforce.com! If you remember the Rolodex you likely recall the early days as well! We all needed a better way and thanks to many of the pioneers like Pat Sullivan, the founder of SwiftPage Act!, and Jon Ferrara, the founder of Goldmine, we all have a better way to handle our customers today! In this article, I wanted to take a stroll down memory lane and revisit an oldie but goodie, SwiftPage ACT! 
Yes, I recall with great clarity the day when Act! Software and Goldmine Software ruled the roost in the small business software space. Knowing this, I wanted to take some time to share some thoughts on one of the oldest contact managers in the market, SwiftPage Act! which has grown into a mature sales force automation tool for small business users today. Indeed, Act! is still considered one of the best-selling contact & customer Manager, trusted by individuals, small businesses, and sales teams to get organized and take the guesswork out of marketing to drive sales results. If you are not familiar with Act!, Act! by SwiftPage helps organize all your contacts, leads, prospects and customer details in one place. It helps market your products and services more effectively, driving sales results while creating customers for life. While it is not the right fit for everyone, I believe that SwiftPage Act! still excels in combining many features which are difficult to find in even some upperclassmen in this space.
Here the top 10 features which make SwiftPage Act! still relevant:
- Integrated email marketing solution
- Easy to use interface
- No limits on the type of data that can be stored
- Easy to use integrated word templates for communications
- Opportunity Management is capable
- Linking between accounts and contacts data
- Tailoring of the system is easy
- Integration with Word, Outlook, Gmail clients
- Business automation with Smart Tasks
- Your choice of deployment options (Web, Local, Hosted, Synchronization)
Certainly, there is always room for improvement! For example, it needs to incorporate more social selling signals and feeds like Nimble. I have written a review on Nimble and Nimble clearly shines in the area of social selling prowess. However, outside social selling area, it lacks the ability to handle account centric selling needs for the B to B selling environment. It does well with dealing with the “contact” centric nature of the design with the linking of fields but still isn’t the best “account” centric selling tool. These two items may or may not be applicable to you so you will need to decide. In this day of “Cloud Software“, I believe that Act! has still earned the right to be at the table if you are a small business embarking on a journey to find your first sales and marketing software tool. To be sure, SwiftPage Act! still delivers value in the age of the Cloud. If you would like to learn more, I am a contributing author on TrustRadius. And, you may find a full review by clicking My review of Swiftpage ACT! on TrustRadius here. I will be reviewing more soon! 