I have consulted in ACT! for over 20 years. More often than not, especially in the current Covid environment, companies require “remote access” to all of their data. I have Act clients and I have Zoho clients. So which CRM is better in a remote environment: Act or ZOHO? Zoho, hands-down. I used to explain that the process was fairly simple in ACT!:
- Install ACT! on the Server
- Install the Sync Services on the server
- Install ACT! for every user
- Setup remote databases on the server and distribute them to the remote users
- Setup the ACT! Scheduler on each remote machine
- Monitor that the syncs continue to work, especially after Windows updates
- Purchase Companion Link with setup support for mobile phone access
Easy, peasy. Or so I thought. I’ve followed this process for years – until I discovered ZOHO.
About 5 years I started seeing the writing on the wall. More and more of my customers were plagued by ACT! issues including Outlook integration and installation nightmares. And support seemed to be declining, and in fact was decreased as of October, 2020. I started looking for another product to offer my clients. After researching literally dozens of CRM solutions I decided on ZOHO for a number of reasons:
- Growth: ZOHO currently has over 50 million users and 8,000 employees; those numbers keep increasing every time I look.
- Feature set: ZOHO has a variety of products ranging from a free, basic offering to ZOHO One that contains literally all the software that could be ever needed by a company.
- Integration: ZOHO has apps that cover all aspects of a business including accounting, ticket tracking and process management.
- Support: Phone, chat and remote access Support is included for trials and all paid subscriptions.
Yesterday I setup two new users for one of my ZOHO customers. At most it took us fifteen minutes to get the users setup and logged into ZOHO, and maybe another half hour to show them around. This would have taken hours – if not days – to do in ACT!. And, they also have the ability to access all of their data from their mobile devices and tablets.
Don’t get me wrong – I still love ACT!. But if you are thinking of moving please let me know. We can get all of your existing ACT! data moved over to ZOHO.
