After nearly 30 years as a ‘perpetual licence’ product, Act CRM is moving to a subscription payment model. Act Subscription customers will benefit from the latest functionality for a monthly premium, without any capital investment.
Subscription based services continue to increase in popularity making expensive products and services more accessible to a wider audience. For businesses in particular, they are ideal as they help improve cash flow with manageable monthly payments in place of a large upfront capital investment.
Swiftpage made the decision to move Act! to a subscription model to ensure the world’s best-selling contact management solution was more accessible, affordable and flexible. As H. John Oechsle, president and CEO of Swiftpage explains, “The way the world and our customers are doing business is continually changing, so in order to stay agile and relevant in an evolving landscape, we need to adapt as well,” He goes on to say, “By subscribing, [customers] are embarking on a journey with us as we work to integrate our current desktop and cloud based solutions to increase efficiency amongst teams. Customers will also benefit as Swiftpage continues to form key partnerships and integrations with other web-based tools to drive small business growth.”
Marcell Varga, Act CRM consultant at Xperience Group comments, “Swiftpage are following the subscription trend, as Microsoft have with Office 365. A subscription model is ideal for many businesses as upgrades and new features are rolled into the monthly price, ensuring they never have compatibility or obsolescence issues again. Ongoing support is also bundled into the price, meaning Act! support can be paid monthly rather than a one-off lump sum payment, which is a huge investment for some small business users.”
The new subscription model does not mean you cannot buy the software outright. For users that prefer to own the software you can opt in at the beginning of the annual contract to own the software at the end.