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Platform profile
Act! CRM
Long-established desktop-heritage CRM for small teams
Market
Coverage
♥
♠
★
Price band
£££
AI maturity
Basic
Skill level reqd
MODERATE
ESTABLISHED
01
At a glance
02
Who it's really for
Best fit
- Small businesses that want contact and pipeline management with email marketing included
- Existing Act! users with years of history in the system
- Teams that value a desktop or on-premise option
Poor fit
- Businesses wanting a modern cloud-first experience
- Teams needing service ticketing or deep integrations
- Anyone expecting meaningful AI capability
03
Core functional coverage
04
Commercial model
Verified as at 1 August 2026Prices are indicative list positions in GBP, converted where the vendor publishes in another currency, and exclude VAT. Treat them as directional.
Licensing structure
Per-user, per-month subscription for cloud, with a self-hosted option still available.
Entry price
From roughly £25 per user per month.
What an SME realistically pays
£30 - £70 per user per month depending on tier and whether marketing automation is included. Email send volumes are metered separately.
Minimum seats
One
Contract terms
Annual subscription; desktop licences renew annually
Common hidden costs
- Self-hosted licences priced separately from cloud subscriptions
- Partner configuration and training
- Add-on tools for marketing automation
- Version upgrade costs on perpetual licences
05
Ecosystem and integrations
Marketplace
Long-standing add-on ecosystem, though much of it is dated
Key native integrations
Outlook (deep integration)Microsoft 365QuickBooks and SageZapierVarious UK add-on developers
UK implementation partners
Established. A small but genuinely UK-based partner community, unusual at this price.
06
Customisation and extensibility
Configurable without developers
- Custom fields and layouts
- Groups and dynamic lookups
- Opportunity stages and processes
- Report templates
Where the ceiling sits
Moderate. Deep for a product of its age, but the tooling shows its desktop origins.
07
Implementation reality
Typical time to value
4 - 10 weeks
Is self-implementation realistic?
Yes for cloud; self-hosted deployment benefits from a partner.
Migration considerations
Very mature import tooling, and migrating between Act! versions is well trodden ground.
08
Support and success
Included as standard
Email and phone support on subscription plans, with UK hours
Costs extra
Partner support contracts and training
Documentation and community
Extensive documentation accumulated over decades, though navigating it is a chore.
09
Scalability and lock-in
Behaviour as you grow
Comfortable to around 50 users. It was never built for large sales organisations.
How hard it is to leave
Low to moderate. Self-hosted deployment means you hold your own database.
10
Strengths and watch-outs
Strengths
- Nearly four decades of continuity - it is not going anywhere
- Email marketing bundled rather than sold separately
- Self-hosted deployment still offered, which few competitors match
- Genuine UK presence and support hours
Watch-outs
- Interface and experience feel dated against modern cloud CRMs
- Development pace is slow and the roadmap is conservative
- Small ecosystem and limited integration options
- Effectively no AI capability
- Ownership has changed hands several times - check roadmap commitments
11
Bottom line for an SME
A dependable, unfashionable option for small businesses that want contact management and email marketing in one place, particularly where self-hosting matters. Newer tools at similar money will feel considerably more modern.
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