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Product Description

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

Act! By Sage 2007 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. Renowned for its ease of use, ACT! can be tailored by each user and offers robust integration with the tools you use everyday, such as Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, accounting products, and handheld devices. With more than 2.5 million individual users and 30,000 corporate customers, ACT! is the #1 selling contact and customer manager worldwide.

Enter virtually unlimited date- and time-stamped Notes and History to track every relationship detail. View larger.

Organize all of your contact data in one place for quick and easy access. View larger.

Stay on top of your schedule and prioritize tasks so you are productive. View larger.

Forecast and track sales opportunities for an improved bottom line. View larger.

Access and report on information quickly and easily. View larger.

Organize Your Contacts
ACT! is a single, central repository for critical contact and customer information captured across your business. It enables you to access detailed contact and customer information, manage calendars and activities, capture all customer communications, track opportunities through the sales process, and report on overall effectiveness.

With ACT! you can track complete customer data, including all contact details, your personal notes and customer history, appointments and vital to-do items, documents, and more. Offering over 60 pre-defined fields for each contact, you can easily sort and track your customers by any number of characteristics. The software even lets you attach documents directly into your customer's account information. If you are in Microsoft Word and Excel, you can easily attach documents and spreadsheets to ACT! contacts so it's easy to quickly locate vital information such as presentations, proposals, and quotes. Advanced customization features let you design your own layouts, and you can move relevant field displays to suit the unique needs of your business.

Stay in Touch and Connected
ACT!'s Contact Record lets you track all of your critical contact and customer communications for quick and easy referencing. With the software's e-mail client integrated with Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook Express, or integrated directly with Outlook, you can send outbound e-mails to contacts and create contact history on the Contact Record. ACT!'s Mail Merge feature even allows you to correspond with multiple contacts, either via e-mail or paper correspondence, and automatically tracks a history on each Contact record.

A built-in word processor that supports tables, graphics, HTML and spell checking makes it easy to write letters directly from ACT! You can select a group of contacts and perform a mail merge to a letter or e-mail. Best of all, a history is automatically generated on each contact record every time you send correspondence. With ACT! you'll never lose track of your past correspondence again.

Prioritize Your Work
ACT! can help you stay on top of your deliverables by offering multiple calendar views, including daily and customizable work week views. Calls, meetings, and to-do items can be filtered by priority, date range, or user, and you can display totals for each type of activity. Built-in activity alarms will help you stay on top of all your time-sensitive deliverables, so you'll always be ahead of the game with your contacts. If you rely on communicating with colleagues who are not using ACT!, you can also synchronize your ACT! calendar with their Microsoft Outlook calendar to facilitate appointment scheduling and tasks.

Track Sales Opportunities
ACT! enables you to track sales opportunities from the initial inquiry through the closing to utilize the standard sales process, or you can create a customized process to suit your business. When working an opportunity, simply click follow-up and a new activity will be created automatically with details, thereby ensuring the prospect is managed as it moves through the process. The product list lets you easily enter repeated products or services, and can automatically fill in information such as name, item number, cost, and price. ACT! also gives you the options of choosing from over 20 pre-formatted Sales Reports, or exporting to Microsoft Excel with a single click for further analysis using built-in, customizable pivot tables.

Information on the Go
If you are on the road with your business, you can take your critical contact and customer information with you no matter where you go. With ACT!, you can link to a Palm OS or Pocket PC device to synchronize your ACT! Calendar, Contacts, To-Do information, Notes, and History items. Are you still using a paper organizer when you're out of the office? Don't fret! ACT! features over 20 printable templates designed for popular paper organizers so you always have your schedule with you.

Customer Reviews:

• Not a Good Program
  I have been a long-time ACT! user. My biggest complaint is recovery. If you have to move the email and database to another computer due to a failure you have to jump through hoops; that's just what one feels like doing when the pressure is on. I still can't bring my ACT! 2007 email over even though ACT! says it was restored successfully (empty folders!). They have a ridiculous technical support team unwilling to help unless you pay, pay and pay and their knowledge base must have been restored like my email: non-existent. The earlier versions were great. I agree with a previous reviewer that when they switched to SQL it all went downhill. I think I'll stick with anything else. It is really ashame. ACT! used to be fast, tight and clean; now it is clunky, lethargic and hangs for 20 seconds on all the time (for some stupid reason) running on an a 2.4 dual core AMD with 4GB memory. Even when Symantec had it they didn't screw it up, but now, you may be better-off sticking with the Palm Pilot contact management software--well, maybe not....more info
• Very bad version of ACT!
  ACT! is one of thos applications that's been "passed off" over the years. It used to be by Symantec, then Best Software, now Sage! Sage tends to make very user unfriendly software and is unintuitive. You are almost forced to purchase a service plan with them because of their complicated software & bugs. This new version of ACT is no different! I waisted about 3 hours trying to install and get this program to work properly before giving up and going back to ACT! 2005 by Best Software which installed and worked fine in a matter of about 10 minutes. So unless your planning on waisting lots of time with this version by Sage & spending hours on the phone with Tech Support, then I would recommend purchasing an older version that is NOT released by Sage!...more info
• SAGE has ruined a great program...
  1 Star is being generous. I've been an ACT user for almost 20 years. I think it's time to say good-bye.
  
  Reasons:
  
  1. 2007 version is agonizingly slow. Effects my whole system. I added 1 gb of RAM bringing my total to 2gb with no improvement. Seems like 5 secs to execute ANY command in the program. Doesn't seem like much bu count it...one one thousand, two one thousand... It adds up when you use the program all day, every day.
  
  2. Support is atrocious. You get 60 days after purchase and then can't even access their tech moderated forum unless you pay $300 a year.
  
  3. It ought to be broken down. I use it to manage client information and communication, I don't need all the Opportunity garbage and one can spend more time managing a process than actually doing the darn thing.
  
  4. Support sticks. In the last couple of years, I've never had a phone call answered in less than 30 minutes...and that includes when I was dumb enough to pay the then $200 a year.
  
  5. Support stinks even when you pay 300 a year.
  
  6. Support is a ripoff. One support plan. No by incident option. 300 bucks or nothing.
  
  7. Did I mention that support is the worst? They seem to do things on the website and then think about what they just did. Navigating their forums is a nightmare. I had to click around for 10 minutes this morning to figure out how to post in an unmoderated forum. (BTW, 4 messages total in the 2007 section in 6 months. I guess most pay their 300 bucks for the moderated forum.)
  
  8. An example of how time consuming it can be: It took me a week of phone calls with several reps to get the UPGRADE installation to function. And I mean it didn't function at all. It made such a mess that I had to reformat my hard drive to get it to install. A first in 20+ years of computer use.
  
  Sage seems to think this program is the only one a user installs on their computer. Bad attitude.
  
  SAGE and ACT! are poster children of everything bad about the software industry today.
  
  Do yourself a favor, if older versions are working for you...stay there. The enhancements in 2007 are not worth the trouble.
  
  If you're looking for a contact manager, look elsewhere.
  
  ...more info
• Act 2007 has lots of features, but is buggy, SLOW and has terrible support (beyond description)
  I'm a long time Act user. Things were okay until version 2005 when the moved to a SQL backend. Tons of essential features were missing. It was basically version 1.0 of a new product. Many things were supposed to be fixed in 2006 version, so we gave it a try. It should have been a free upgrade, with the 05 version being considered "beta" and us the poor unsuspecting beta testers. The company ignores customer feedback. They did add back in some features. We stuck with it through version 2007, but have finally had it and are looking at other packages. The reason I gave this two stars is that the program does do a lot, and there's a lot of industry support in terms of add-on products. That's one reason we keep sticking with it... it's difficult to find all the same add-ons we need with other products.
  
  Performance with this product is terrible. It's the worst I've seen from any product. We're a tech shop, so we had no problem upgrading our systems to be far beyond their minimum and recommended setup. We have Gigabit switched ethernet and all computers are at least 2.4 Ghz with 1 GB of RAM or more running XP. Our database has about 8,000 contacts. You can literally watch the fields re-draw and fill in information when looking up records. There are processes, like closing a lead, where you know the series of buttons you'll click to complete the task, but you're left waiting on dialog boxes to disappear or update before you can continue. Here's my favorite though: the calendar doesn't update when you change an appointment from some places. You often have to move to the next month, then back to the current one to see the change! Support tells me this is not a bug, but just the nature of a SQL back-end database because the calendar doesn't read live from the server!
  
  Bugs galore: many have been worked out through the last few versions. Others remain. Preference files regularly go corrupt and are lost. Settings like calendar filtering regularly just reset themselves. Reporting problems to Sage doesn't seem to help get them fixed in the new releases. Outlook integration is nice when it works, and was the only real reason to move from the 2006 to 2007 version. But, alas, it has stopped working on my PC and I've been back and forth with support for 3 weeks trying to get a resolution. And on two of our computers, the email trail that's supposed to get copied into the contact record in Act turns to chinese characters about 10% of the time, seemingly at random. Support said they have record of that, but no resolution yet. I spent no less than 9 hours of time on hold with support to find that out.
  
  I cannot recommend this product or this company to anyone....more info
• Terrible
  It is difficult to use words harsh enough to describe this product and this company.
  I have owned this software for about 80 days.
  1. In 80 days of use this product has completely locked up or not opened twice.
  2. I have called the 'support' line 4 times. The minimum time I was on hold was 40 minutes.
  3. My initial 'support' period is about to expire and I now will have to pay $200 to get more 'support'
  4. You have to buy additional software to get your data onto a palm device.
  
  In summary: The product has locked up about every 40 days and the average hold time is 40 minutes when you call them.
  
  Save yourself the grief - buy nothing or buy something else....more info
• DONT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  Let's start with Outlook interface. These are the exact words from their user manual:
  
  "ACT! 2007 E-mail will work through Microsoft Outlook versions 2000, 2002 (XP) or 2003."
  
  So those of us with newer versions of Outlook cannot synch the Outlook email or calendar with Act. What's the point? Then what are you supposed to synch with your Blackberry - Outlook so you can get your calendar and email information or Act so you can get your client database.
  The Act email is so basic and primitive looking, you can't put attractive auto signatures on it.
  
  Then they tell you that you can have one month of telephone support, but it's only available during work days, not on the weekends. Since I purchased the product on the weekend, I won't be able to speak with someone to ask for a full refund until Monday. I've used this product for 24 hours and I'm giving up. What a waste of time and money.
  
  How does this company survive with such a bad product?
  
  If anyone knows of a good CRM program for a small business, please share.
  
  
  
  ...more info
• I would give Act! 2007 a zero star rating if possible
  Hi,
  
  I have been using ACT! since it was a DOS program. I won't retierate what others have said here except to say in most aspects the program operates poorly and is unstable.
  
  Database - The program actually operated half way decently prior to going to the Microsoft SQL platform. Today I experience constant lockups, poor interaction with the email program. Feature wise, on paper the database is quite powerful with great flexibility and the ability to customize lookups and reports, however what good is it if you're constantly booting it down and up?
  
  EMAIl - The email program is abhorrent. I would say that I have to reboot approximately 5 - 10 times a day. And when I do all custom settings that I set into the program such as "signatures" are dropped and I have to redo. Usually I have to go through setting up the email system again through the wizard. Please note that if you are using Outlook 2007, Act! isn't able to interface with that yet, just Outlook Express and Internet email.
  
  Tech Support - If you are really going to get this program, and after you've had your head examined, sign up for the tech support option after you're free period is over. You're going to need it for approx $300. Expect to experience 30 - 40 min hold times before to talk to live body. Also expect to be speaking with someone in India and have an interpreter with you because invariably they speak very bad english. Also expect to be put on hold frequently because most of the technicians only have a rudimentary understanding of the program and potential fixes so if it isn't in the online fix notes they frequently put you on hold for several minutes while they consult some mystery person for their opinion on how to fix the problem. My average call is 1 - 2 hours.
  
  Conclusion - Do yourself a favor and do not buy this program under any circumstances. I've heard that Goldmine is better but their tech support is lousy also. Unfortunately I've got too much time invested with ACT to pull away yet but if a better program came along I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.
  
  I rate ACT!2007 a minus 0...more info
• ACT on a fast system
  * I purchased the top end Dell Dimension XPS (with the fast harddrive) but I still have to allow about 10 seconds for the initial program startup, then it seems to hang for 15 or 20 seconds after that.
  
  * I reboot my system each time I close ACT. The system just seems to run better without any "lingering" remnants of the program in memory.
  
  * Everytime I delete a contact the program locks up. It has done this through several versions. I simply reboot my computer, restart ACT and it works fine.
  
  * At some point ACT changed the date on many (hundreds) of my activities to 11/18/2004. Now I manually type the date into the call, to do, meeting and note fields to avoid this problem in the future.
  
  Supplemental 5/23/07: Act! now locks up when I try to add a meeting and edit the start time. Solution: I simply close the program down and avoid adding meetings.
  
  Supplemental 6/3/07: My task list will no longer display on the screen. Solution: I just print it on paper, manually cross off what I've done and then lookup each affected contact (one by one) and edit the specific task.
  
  Supplemental 9/25/07: Searching the Internet for "Act-To-Outlook" conversion programs turned up several options. Apparently there is quite a demand for software to get people out of ACT! I wonder why!...more info
• Death of a CRM
  One Star or less. I wish I had read the customer reviews before upgrading. I have been using ACT for about 13 years, so have been installing their new versions every couple of years without a hitch. This is the worst upgrade I have ever experienced. It's been totally re-vamped, rewritten, etc. I lost the ability to print address books in Daytimer format, I spent over 10 hours on various calls to Tech Support, uninstalled and reinstalled five times, really, five times. The outlook integration is buggy as heck. Just a horrible experience. I am using ACT 2003, and investigating other Customer Relationship Managers....more info
• This program is a train-wreck
  Good grief. Where do I begin? We upgraded two computers from 6.0 to ACT 2007. Prior to the install, we totally reformatted our hardrives and did a clean install of Windows XP. We performed an XP update, installed MS Office and basically had two smokin' clean machines - more or less brand new. Then we we installed ACT! 2007 expecting perfection. Our problems with the software have been:
  
  1) Miserable, buggy installation - barely worked.
  
  2) Inability to convert our old ACT 6.0 e-mail database into the new version of ACT 2007.
  
  3) Slow, slow, sloooowwww performance.
  
  4) e-mails will delete themselves for no apparant reason. This is the worst of all.
  
  5) Terrible syncing with the Palm. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't, overwrites data when it is not supposed to and vice-versa.
  
  5) Useless Sage tech support.
  
  Don't buy this product. In fact, I would never buy another product from Sage ever again. My colleague has already ditched ACT! and switched to using the Palm Desktop and Outlook Express. This was after losing all his e-mails. If I lose all my e-mails again - I will uninstall and ditch my copy altogether.
  
  I would love to reclaim the hours of my life lost to this poorly written loser of a program.
  ...more info
• Call the BBB
  I'm sorry, but when I buy a product, I expect it to work. ACT does not. The email button, when pressed, reads something to the effect of: "cannot open b/c database is in use of locked by user." After wasting hours of business time on their online "knowledge base," and re-installing the BRAND NEW software, I finally called tech support where Mr. Aldridge told me that I need to pay for tech support. I asked him why SAGE doesn't stand by the product they sell and deliver a working product, and he said that they do-I just need to pay them more money so the product works.
  I'll never buy another product from them ever again and my advice to you would be to look for some other software if you're thinking of buying ACT.
  I should bill them for my time....more info
• ACT! 2007 is the worst!!!
  I, like many others who posted here, wish I had read the reviews BEFORE buying and upgrading the software. After a long and hard time with NO HELP from Sage (approximately 12 hours total) I got our company's two users up and kind of working. I can't even get to the Knowledge Base that was so helpful with earlier versions. At least when you had problems with the earlier versions you could find a well written document with a useful work-around or solution. We had used ACT! since the two floppy disk version (our first laptop had no hard drive) and loved it through the upgrade to version 6. Were it not for the loss of data since the conversion I would go back right now to the older version, and we may have to do that anyway. ACT! 7 is SLOW, causes problems interacting with other programs, including our XP operating system, and is a major frustration we don't need. Don't buy this product!!!!!...more info
• ACT! has gone downhill fast
  Our firm has been using ACT! for over 12 years. It "was" a great product at one time, but it has been trash since they went to the new SQL platform. Slow, cumbersome, hangs, and crashes. The integration with MS OUTLOOK is awful. We have quit trying to use the email integartion with Outlook two years ago.
  
  The software has serious problems, but Sage has had no significant updates or patches to fix them. They want you to buy the newer version in hopes of something better. We tried that once, and it was still junk. We have sent several emails to Sage looking for help or direction, but never got a response from them.
  
  We will migrate to a new software product by the end of this month. Act! is not worth the aggravation.
  ...more info
• Happy Customer
  In my opionion, Act! is clearly still the best contact manager on the market. I am not talking about a complex CRM solution, but it is a fine contact manager. I am not using the Outlook and Palm interfaces and I don't have any complains other than it is slow if you are running many programs at the same time.
  
  The built in email features are okay, seach features are excellent. Just give it a 30 day trial and compare to Goldmine, Maximizer and others....more info
• ACT: WORKS FOR ME!
  I am a full time project manager for a business consulting firm.
  
  I manage and service upwards of 30 active simultaneously clients/projects at anyone time, (worth over 500k in business) in addition to another 20-30 that are sporadically active, while working and coordinating with a team of 22 people (consultants, vendors, support staff )on these projects and a minimum of 3 point people per project on the client side; there is no way I would be able to perform my work WITHOUT ACT! I have been using it for the last 2 years.
  
  I can attach histories, documents, conversations. I can attach all my correspondance to my point person's record, taking much of the guess work out for my team as to the status of any given project and or client. When I schedule activites, keep notes and details in those activities as it morphs and changes. I have gotten fairly strong in using this application and as a result am able to truly focus on the more important aspects of my role: communication, clarification and focusing on helping my team and client achieve the projects' true objectives, within time and budget parameters.
  
  Excel spreadsheets and outlook are a thing of the past. I live and breathe in ACT! It allows me to really be a great contributor to my company, team and clients.
  
  ...more info
• Be prepared to spend long hours on the NO help desk
  This is the worst product I have ever purchased. I should have listened to the other reveiws on here. Would have saved me hours of toture. I waited for hours to try to get this software to work. Upon picking up the phone they cut me off instead. This happened twice.
  They have no escalation process and had to call back and wait again and again. At the end of all of this they finally admitted there were serious issues with the sofware and the database loading. I'm Sending it back for a refund.
  I'm now looking for another contact managment tool but will never purchase anything from Sage. It is a lost, horribly run organization.
  
  Please don't put yourself through the frustration by buying this software and trying to get it to work.
  
  DH ...more info
• Some Tips (Just to be Positive!)
  I installed ACT! following PRECISELY the instructions provided. Problems started right from the beginning with my e-mail.
  
  I had Microsoft Office 2003 and Outlook with Business Contact Manager installed and I was using Microsoft Word as my e-mail editor. After 45 minutes waiting on the phone to have someone in India answer the phone and tell me that what I needed to do was to un-install and re-install both Outlook and ACT!, I realized that I was on my own to solve the problems I had.
  
  I would like to post some "tips" to those that want to install this software that may help that your installation experience not be as frustrating as mine.
  
  1) Check that you DO NOT have Business Contact Manager installed with your Outlook. If you do, then you need to un-install Outlook and re-install it again (this time without BCM). Make sure you back up all your e-mails first!
  2) Assuming you have Outlook installed without BCM, then go to Tools/Options/Mail Format Tab and make sure you unselect (do not check) "Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages"
  3) Turn off ALL your applications, including your anti-virus programs
  4) Follow the ACT! installation instructions.
  
  NOTE: Outlook MUST BE installed first!! Otherwise ACT! will not recognize it.
  
  Other Issues:
  
  1) The software should allow you to import or edit a quotation form that is more decent than the one it offers. This is possible, but not not easy to do.
  
  2) I imported (at the Product List level) over 100 product references. Unfortunately, you have to do a lot of work to convert the file into the format accepted by the program (csv file). Despite this, many products get rejected as "invalid".
  
  Hope this helps...more info
• Should have never upgraded from 2000
  Every upgrade has been disappointment. The best version was 2000. I have spent thousands in IT support to "try" to get ACT to function properly. I got it to work on my new server until I tried to create a remote database for one of our laptops. That corrupted the whole installation. After un-installing ACT, we where unable to re-install it. The only work around after hours of research is to re-format our server which means hours.....
  
  That's it! After 10 years of using ACT I will change to something else!!
  
  I have written may e-mails to communicate my many frustrations over the years. It is all in vein. All I have ever gotten was an automated response. They do not care about the users, only about how to promote the sales of newer inferior versions. So given that my suggestions is:
  
  DON'T BUY ACT OR ANY SAGE PRODUCTS!!!!!!!!!!
  
  ROY
  
  
  ...more info
• Carefully Read Product Specs
  It is disappointing that Act! By Sage 2007 will not work will MS Office 2007. It does not work and does not have a patch to make it partially work. It apparently works with VISTA using a patch, however since it won't work with Word 2007, I didn't bother trying the Vista patch.
  
  I had been a loyal Act user for a very long time. This incompatability forced me to learn another program. If Act wants to remain in this segment of the market they need to react faster to the changing software needs of their customers.
  
  Don't buy this software if you plan to use Office 2007....more info
• getting better every year
  I gave ACT 5 stars mainly because the built in features of scheduling, tracking history and building groups are pretty intuitive even to a non-technical person like me. Taking a one day class with an ACT consultant gave me a great kick-start and allowed me to discover some cool add-ons that I would not have found without their help. I did not like the version ACT 2005, but since then I have been very impressed. In fact I recently discovered how to easily integrate Outlook and ACT. That was the one imperfection that upset me in the past, and now I can honestly say that I am pretty pleased....more info
• the most unreputable comppany!!!!
  iF i COULD, i WOULD GIVE THIS NEGATIVE STARS.Caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware. I made the horrible and expensive mistake of buying this the beginning of Feb. 2007. I had to open the box to realize I needed to load it as administrator. That was beyond my limited knowledge. Since it was opened I stupidly believed in their money back guarantee and got a return authorization. It took forever and many calls. They kept on lying on when the refund was mailed. Yes, this went into April 2007!!!!! They insisted the mailing date was April 9th. On the 18th I thought I'd never get it. They stopped payment and maybe issued another. Well, I received the $199 (I am shafted on my state sales tax.) But because those idiots didn't put the name of my street, it apprently was returned and what I got was postmarked April 16th!!!!! And they refuse to rescind the stoppayment. Sooooo...I now need to pray I will ever receive the replacement. HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE. I can't beleive these people sell accounting and contact software....more info
• Act 2007 Was the WORST Software Product I Ever Bought
  What a mistake I made!!! Unlike past versions, ACT 2007 is an unmitigated disaster: Takes up too much memory, is extremely sluggish, crashes often, has trouble hot-synching with handheld devices, and may not recognize your passwords (meaning that you have to pay Sage Software's technical support for even more of your money to fix their own problems). After this fiasco I cannot in good conscience buy any more Sage products. Try using Amicus instead....more info
• Act! 2007
  I have used Act!2000 and liked it very much. It was when Act! was owned by Symantec. Since Sage now owns and sells Act!2007, I have noticed a reduced command response when using the database. It runs slower and the features aren't that much greater than MS Outlook (no junk mail folders to guard against spam - this is a big issue when using any business email). This really disappoints me - since I loved the original Act! database from Symantec. I'm not tempted to upgrade to Act!2009 either.
  Anyway, I used a gift card to purchase Act!2007 so I'm really not out any money myself.
  I would not recommend this product. I hope Sage sells this classic database back to Best and they sell it back to Symantec!
  Order #: 002-1863780-1473027 ...more info
• Great Software with a little help!
  I've been an act user for 12 years since version 2. While the new versions are a bit resource intensive (RAM), they really fly on large look ups or advanced queries....I love these new versions, especially dynamic groups. I'll admit that I hated the first release of the new SQL version in 2005, but 2006-2008 have been solid minus a few minor issues.... 2008 is office 2007 compatible but I'm still on office 2003.
  
  The product seems to have evolved into a much more robust product instead of the old "personal contact manager" that was at time hard to network. They say it can handle much more data and still run fast. The new version seems much more "network friendly" as well, but it is also not so easy to install / upgrade or customize.
  
  My friend hightly recommeded hiring a local ACT consultant because he first had a lot of trouble installing himself and was ready to throw it out the window! As a last ditch effort, he hired a qualified ACT consultant (nerapiddata.com) and wished he had done this 3 years ago. In one day, he installed ACT on a server and 2 workstations, plus 4 remote laptops and customizations for sales stuff, plus a clean conversion of the old database!
  
  I hired them for my small office and he was in and out in 4 hours. They were pricy but for me, well worth the help and 10 times better than the Sage support. We now use them for questions and folow up problems and they take care of us right away, and only charge now for 15 minute blocks.
  
  So if you want to enjoy what I still consider the best contact manager on the planet, make sure you have plenty of RAM and don't use a PC that's already slow/old or you will hate ACT as many have mentioned. And if you can afford a consultant, you will have a lot less head aches and maybe save some hair as well!...more info
• You get what you pay for, most of the time.
  I was looking for a version of Act that would be compatible with others in my office without paying a lot. What I got was not what I expected. I was unable to install it on my laptop as it was always giving me an error "Invalid drive F:". I will keep looking for a copy that will install without problems....more info
• Sage will not refund money.
  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....more info
• Great CRM
  First time ACT user, but I've been using it for about 11 months straight. I use ACT with a team of about 8 people and it's been great. I use the Calendar, I record histories from clients of calls, emails, meetings and our whole business really does revolve around it. We were able to customize it to our needs fairly quickly.
  
  There are some quirks to ACT, but on the whole, things are working fine. I use a couple third-party add-ons to integrate pretty easily with Outlook 2003 and my Treo 650....more info