HubSpot vs Act-On

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Our analysts compared HubSpot vs Act-On based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Marketing Automation Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Act-On Software Tool

Product Basics

HubSpot provides a cloud-based platform built around inbound methodology and designed to help businesses be more customer-centric. It offers a free CRM package along with marketing, sales, service and CMS hubs, which can be deployed individually or together for full flexibility and scalability.

Timeline segmentation provides users with an overview of their prospect’s journey from the attraction stage to closing. Additional capabilities include funnel automation, lead targeting, analytics and reporting, email templates and more. It caters to small businesses but has paid versions robust enough to support the needs of larger organizations.
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Established in 2008, Act-On is a comprehensive platform that offers marketing professionals all the standard features in an automation tool, alongside several other unique features.

Sophisticated email automation, landing page construction, analytics, automated campaigns, useful templates, and social channels are just some of the features that are available to users. This product is ideal for medium to large enterprises, especially those that have dedicated marketing departments.

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$800 Monthly
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$1,000 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Insights

  • Built Around Inbound: Designed to attract leads and nurture them with helpful information and inbound best practices, all at the push of a button. 
  • All-in-One Software: Managing every aspect of customer relationships is seamless with an integrated suite that helps engage with leads and customers at any stage. Offers a cohesive experience, process alignment and holistic data. 
  • Free CRM: Small businesses can leverage capabilities to enhance and grow without spending a dime. Includes sales, marketing and service tools in addition to foundational CRM features. Supports unlimited users and can store up to a million contact records. 
  • User-Friendly: An intuitive UI and no-code tools make it easy to leverage regardless of technical ability. 
  • Better Organization: Keep teams and data more organized via an all-in-one, centralized structure and tools that simplify tracking and updating information. Managers can use hierarchies and partitioning to focus each team member in the right area and ensure they have the most appropriate content. 
  • Full Scalability: Support business growth at any stage by deploying the free toolsets and adding premium features along the way, all within a single ecosystem. 
  • Salesforce Integration: Achieve a seamless marketing and sales strategy by setting up two-way sync between HubSpot and Salesforce databases. Deliver insights to Salesforce for sales activities and pull relevant information back into HubSpot to enhance marketing efforts. The integration doesn’t require technical setup and is supported by a team of HubSpot engineers. 
  • Free Website Insights: Optimize a website using a free website grader, which determines strengths and weaknesses and offers free improvement tips. 
  • Generators: Receive creative or strategic direction through tools that generate blog topics, build buyer personas, craft email signatures and suggest invoice templates. Go through a step-by-step process that produces a marketing plan based on company needs. 
  • Prospect Journeys: Track prospects from the attraction phase of the buyer’s journey to the closing stage for a high-level overview of where leads are coming from and where they’re going afterward. 
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  • Make Sense of Digital Breadcrumbs: Better track and score campaigns with this piece of software. This tool helps marketers attain a high-level overview of their campaigns and enterprises.
  • Inbound Marketing: Act-On provides support for inbound marketing techniques, enabling users to organically and dynamically pull in leads from across channels.
  • Outbound Marketing: Automated campaigns, lead scoring and list management are built into the software to support outbound marketing techniques and conversion tracking.
  • Sales Effectiveness: The software helps to unify sales and marketing teams effectively by providing a sales-funnel overview and campaign attribution, assisting users in scoring their leads.
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  • Pipeline Management:
    •  Reduces data entry through auto-populated data and grants control over pipelines to match how users work. 
    •  User-friendly edit tools alongside a drag-and-drop interface simplify the entire management process. 
    •  Quick access to key metrics is available with a sales dashboard. 
  • Lead Management: Perform CRM activities without the hassle of reconciling different data sets and gain full visibility into contacts by accessing data-rich profiles in one location. Capabilities include lead segmentation, contact activity history and tasks. 
  • Messaging: Facilitates better internal and external communication, promotes strong customer experiences, supports lead generation and enables more timely follow up. Offers Facebook Messenger, a customizable live chat widget, shared email and a chatbot builder. 
  • Conversations Inbox:
    •  Provides context, alignment and transparency for marketing, sales and service teams through a team-wide inbox. 
    •  Aids cross-functional collaboration via a central hub for communicating with prospects, leads and customers. Routing rules deliver emails to the most relevant team or member. 
    •  Offers a seamless experience to customers no matter what stage they’re in. 
  • Contact Activity: Gain deeper insights by leveraging analytics that show website interactions. Track form submissions, page visits and more. 
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  • CRM Integration: Act-On can integrate with SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Infor and Simpleview. Using any of these integrated CRMs, marketers can engage segmented contacts through targeted account activity.
  • Account-Based Marketing Automation: Account profiles provide an overview of accounts and buyer behaviors, giving users a clear picture of aggregate customer behavior.
  • Progressive Profiling: Collect information without making customers fill out a large number of forms. Adaptive forms, which present and collect information incrementally over time, help users gain valuable insights without being intrusive.
  • Targeted Email Automation: With easy-to-use templates, code-free interfaces and a diverse template catalog, users have access to a variety of content to push out through automated email campaigns. Act-On also integrates its analytics platform into its email outreach, letting users track open rates and measure success.
  • Report Sharing: The solution’s analytics platform can generate robust and interactive reports for users to easily share with decisionmakers.
  • Data Studio: This program comes equipped with an analytical engine called Data Studio, which can pull data from a variety of sources such as CSV, Excel, Amazon, Google and Microsoft Azure.
  • Social Media Engagement: Build brand awareness with automated social posting and metrics aggregation. Act-On’s content curation engine provides insights into content that can generate higher levels of engagement for a user’s business.
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Product Ranking

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#50

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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AI-Based Capabilities Campaign Management Compliance And Data Security Dashboard And Reporting Email Campaign Management Lead Generation Lead Management Lead Nurturing Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Social Media Campaign Management Text Campaign Management 79 100 100 100 97 93 95 98 62 95 100 57 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 10050 reviews
Great User Sentiment 656 reviews
87%
of users recommend this product

HubSpot has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 10050 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

84%
of users recommend this product

Act-On has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 656 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

4.8 (19)
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4.3 (5644)
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4.26 (250)
4.5 (2623)
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4.3 (142)
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4.3 (1622)
4.15 (406)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated HubSpot and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall Marketing Automation Software available today and earns best-in-class honors for Campaign Management, Compliance and Data Security, Dashboard and Reporting and Social Media Campaign Management.

Analysts' Pick Award
Campaign Management Award
Compliance and Data Security Award
Dashboard and Reporting Award
Social Media Campaign Management Award

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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Ease of Use: Every user referencing navigation reports the platform is user-friendly.
Customer Support: The support team is reliable and offers quick responses to any need, according to 91% of reviewers referencing this aspect.
Automation: Automating email campaigns, lead scoring and workflows, managing sales funnel and social engagement, and creating email templates is easy, according to 95% of reviewers who talk about automation.
Feature-Rich: The range of features offered, such as creating landing pages, forms and email campaigns, is a benefit to 85% of users mentioning functionalities.
Marketing: Every user who refers to marketing feels it’s easy to market products.
Interface: A slick interface makes it easy to navigate, in the experience of 80% of reviewers referencing the UI.
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Intuitive Interface: Act-On's user-friendly interface streamlines campaign creation and management, reducing the learning curve for users.
Robust Reporting: Advanced reporting capabilities provide detailed insights into campaign performance, allowing users to track results and optimize future efforts.
Email Marketing Automation: Automated email sequences nurture leads, deliver targeted content, and improve campaign efficiency.
Social Media Integration: Act-On seamlessly integrates with social media platforms, enabling users to manage campaigns and track engagement across multiple channels.
Excellent Customer Support: Act-On provides responsive and knowledgeable customer support, ensuring users receive assistance when needed.
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Price: Premium products are expensive for the amount of functionality, especially for small and mid-sized companies, according to 86% of reviewers mentioning cost.
Training: In 85% of reviews referencing training, users say it’s difficult for average users to perform complicated tasks such as tracking leads and making different mailing lists, causing a learning curve.
Email Functionality: All reviews about this issue note that customizing the mobile version of an email affects the desktop version, inserting custom HTML such as a for promo timer isn’t possible and more.
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Unintuitive Interface: Act-On's user interface is often criticized for being complex and difficult to navigate, leading to a steep learning curve for new users.
Limited Integrations: Act-On lacks integrations with popular third-party applications, making it challenging to connect with other systems used in the marketing ecosystem.
Costly: Act-On's pricing can be prohibitive for small businesses and startups, with limited flexibility in pricing options.
Lack of Reporting Capabilities: Users have reported that Act-On's reporting features are limited, making it difficult to gain insights into campaign performance.
Poor Customer Support: Some users have experienced delays and unsatisfactory responses from Act-On's customer support team.
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With basic CRM alongside marketing, sales, service and content management, Hubspot offers a lot of functionalities, which users cite as a primary benefit. Its slick interface ensures an intuitive experience and extensive automation simplifies tasks, although some complicated functions make it time-consuming to learn. Users also appreciate how prompt customer support is, and that there’s a free version that’s ideal for small and mid-sized businesses. However, certain email elements present issues and the paid versions are expensive for what they offer. Overall, businesses that are in need of a robust and scalable product suite, especially those with a focus on inbound marketing, might find this to be a good fit.

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Act-On consistently receives high praise for its intuitive user interface, which allows marketers to quickly create and automate campaigns without extensive training. It is also lauded for its robust reporting capabilities, which provide detailed insights into campaign performance. However, some users have reported occasional bugs and glitches, and its customer support has been criticized for being slow to respond at times. Compared to competitors like HubSpot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Act-On is often seen as a more affordable and user-friendly option, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses. Its focus on ease of use and affordability sets it apart from more complex and expensive solutions. Act-On's intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to create automated workflows, and its pre-built templates help users get started quickly. Overall, Act-On is a solid choice for businesses looking for an affordable and easy-to-use marketing automation solution. Its strengths lie in its user-friendly interface, robust reporting capabilities, and affordability. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of more expensive solutions, it offers a comprehensive suite of features that can meet the needs of most businesses.

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