HubSpot vs Act! CRM: a full comparison and which to choose

HubSpot or Act!? If your team manages contacts and sales follow-ups and wants to keep things simple, Act! does the job. If you want to grow with marketing, sales and service on the same database, with AI, complete reporting and a broad integration ecosystem, HubSpot is the better choice for most companies.

At Vexco we are a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner, so we have a side. Even so, Act! has real strengths and a very loyal user base, and you will see that reflected here. We compare them criterion by criterion, without price figures (they change often) and drawing on our experience migrating SME CRMs to HubSpot.

What are Act! and HubSpot?

Act! was born in 1987 as one of the first contact managers for salespeople. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, it has been through several owners, including Sage and later Swiftpage, before operating under its own brand again. Today it offers Act! Advantage, its cloud CRM in several editions, and Act! Premium Desktop for those who prefer to keep the database on their own machines. On top of that come Act! Marketing Automation, AI features and, depending on the country, integrated payments.

Its typical customer is a small business or professional who lives on relationships: insurance agents, financial advisers, professional firms and small sales teams, many of them long-standing Act! users.

HubSpot is a customer platform built on a single CRM, Smart CRM, with products you switch on as you need them: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Content Hub, Data Hub and Revenue Hub, with Breeze as the AI layer. Its typical customer is a company that wants to grow, from a handful of users to several hundred, without changing tools along the way.

HubSpotAct!

ApproachComplete platform on one CRMContact management and follow-up

DeploymentCloud with EU optionCloud or desktop

MarketingNative Marketing HubMarketing Automation in top edition

Customer serviceNative Service HubFocus on sales and marketing

AIBreeze, assistant and agentsAI summaries and writing

IntegrationsVery broad marketplaceSmaller catalogue

InterfaceModern and consistentImproved, still with a classic legacy

CRM and data model

Act! revolves around the contact: each record brings together details, notes, activity history, opportunities and documents. You can group contacts, create custom fields and, in some editions, add extra tables for industry-specific information such as policies or licences. For a salesperson managing a book of clients, it is a clear and familiar model.

HubSpot works with objects that are associated with each other: contacts, companies, deals, tickets, products and quotes, plus custom objects on Enterprise. That structure lets you see the person, their company, all open deals and support issues at once. When you sell to companies with several stakeholders, a model of associated objects avoids duplicated information and makes reporting easier.

Which is better for the sales team?

Act! offers opportunities with stages, a calendar, tasks, reminders, quotes and an Outlook integration that its users value highly. For a salesperson who organises the day around calls and follow-ups, it works.

Sales Hub adds layers that make a difference as teams grow: multiple pipelines, automated follow-up sequences, meeting links, templates and snippets, calling, sales forecasting, playbooks and a prospecting workspace. The Gmail and Outlook extension logs emails and meetings without manual work, and the mobile app lets reps update deals on the road. Some features depend on the edition, so check them before you decide.

Marketing: is Act! Marketing Automation enough?

Act! Marketing Automation lets you send email campaigns, build flows that react to what contacts do, score leads, use templates and landing pages and run surveys. It is included in the top edition of Act! Advantage and can be added to the others. For a small business sending newsletters and campaigns to its customer base, it is enough.

Marketing Hub covers much more ground: forms and landing pages connected to the CRM, email, automation on any object, ads, social media, SEO, chat, lead scoring and revenue attribution by channel, plus website and blog with Content Hub. The difference is not just features: the contact who arrives through an ad is the same record that sales sees and support helps. That is how you know which campaigns bring in business, not just opens.

Customer service

Act!’s proposition focuses on contacts, sales and marketing. If you need a complete help desk, with tickets, SLAs, a knowledge base and a customer portal, the usual route is another tool or integrations, so confirm with Act! what the edition you are considering covers.

Service Hub includes tickets, a shared inbox with email, chat, WhatsApp and forms, SLAs, a knowledge base, a customer portal, satisfaction surveys and customer success tools. All on the same CRM, so sales can see open issues before a renewal.

Automation and AI

Act! lets you automate repetitive tasks based on record changes and, with Marketing Automation, build response-driven email flows. Its AI features are practical: an automatic summary of a contact’s history before you call, a writing assistant for emails and landing pages, and an assistant for finding help inside the product.

HubSpot goes further on both fronts. Workflows act on contacts, companies, deals, tickets and custom objects, with branches, delays, webhooks and, on higher editions, custom code. Breeze Assistant writes, summarises and researches inside any record, and Breeze agents handle support conversations, analyse accounts or prepare prospecting. Because everything lives in the same CRM, the AI works with the full customer context.

Reporting and analytics

Act! includes dashboards and reports on contacts, activities and opportunities, enough to track sales activity. Some user reviews point out that analytics fall short when you want to combine data from different areas.

In HubSpot, reports combine marketing, sales and service on the same database: from the first form fill to the closed deal and the renewal. Higher editions add custom reports, multi-touch attribution and forecasting. For leadership, seeing the full funnel in one dashboard changes the conversation.

Integrations and API

Act! integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365, accounting tools and automation connectors, and it has an API. Even so, several reviews mention that its integration catalogue is more limited than that of the most widely used CRMs.

HubSpot’s marketplace is one of the broadest on the market, with connectors for invoicing, e-commerce, telephony, video calls, e-signature or WhatsApp, and a well-documented REST API with webhooks and private apps. Where a connector is missing, Vexco builds custom integrations with consultants and developers in the same team.

Which is easier to use and adopt?

For long-time Act! users, the interface is familiar. Act! has modernised the experience in recent versions, but reviews still mention a somewhat dated look in parts of the product and a learning curve for newcomers. Its strong point is the desktop version, which lets you work offline.

HubSpot has a reputation for being easy to use, and real implementations bear it out: reps log activity from the first week and admins change properties, pipelines or workflows without developers. The free HubSpot Academy speeds up training.

Implementation and total cost of ownership

Act! is licensed per user, with cloud editions that add features as you go up and a desktop version. Marketing automation is included in the top edition or available as an add-on. HubSpot offers free tools and hubs in Starter, Professional and Enterprise editions, with per-seat licences and, for marketing, pricing based on the number of contacts. See Act! pricing and HubSpot pricing on their official pages.

To compare properly, add what is not on the price list: hardware and backups if you use the desktop version, the support, chat or form tools you would need to add, and the time spent maintaining those connections. With our method, a Sales or Marketing Hub project is usually up and running in 4 to 8 weeks.

Before

• Database on a local machine
• Email marketing in another tool
• Support by email with no tickets
• Reports in spreadsheets

After

• One cloud CRM for the whole team
• Marketing on the same contact
• Tickets and SLAs in Service Hub
• Full-funnel dashboards

Support, community and partners

Act! has its own support, a network of certified consultants and a user community with many years of experience. Its presence is concentrated mainly in English-speaking markets, so check support and partner availability if you work in other languages. HubSpot has a huge community, HubSpot Academy, multilingual support on paid editions and a very wide partner network across Europe.

Security, GDPR and data hosting

With Act! Premium Desktop, data stays on your own machines or servers, and security, backups and updates are up to you. For the Act! cloud, confirm the hosting region and contractual safeguards with the vendor if you handle data on people in the EU.

HubSpot lets you host your account data in its EU data centre in Germany, and includes a data processing agreement, consent and lawful-basis management, SSO, team permissions and, depending on the edition, audit logs.

HubSpot vs Act! comparison table

When could Act! make sense?

• You are a professional or a very small business that lives on personal relationships with its clients and does not need advanced digital marketing or ticket-based support.
• You need to work offline or keep the database on your own machines.
• Your team has used Act! for years, is comfortable with it and the cost of switching does not yet outweigh what you would gain.
• You rely on Act! add-ons or industry tables that you have already paid off.

If that is you, Act! can remain a reasonable choice for a while. Once marketing, the number of salespeople or after-sales service start to grow, the limits become noticeable. If you are also looking at other simple CRMs, see our HubSpot vs Pipedrive and HubSpot vs Zoho CRM comparisons.

Verdict: why HubSpot wins

1. The whole customer lifecycle in one CRM. Marketing, sales, service and content on the same record, with no tools to sync.
2. Built to grow. From a handful of users to hundreds, with teams, permissions, multiple pipelines and custom objects, without changing platform.
3. AI with full context. Breeze works with each customer’s emails, meetings, tickets and deals, not just their note history.
4. Ecosystem. More integrations, more partners and more trained professionals, which reduces dependence on a single provider.
5. No infrastructure to maintain. No servers, backups or manual updates.
6. Fast adoption. A modern, consistent interface the team learns in days with a well-planned HubSpot implementation.

How to migrate from Act! to HubSpot

An Act! database built up over years is a valuable asset: it holds relationships, notes and history the team does not want to lose. The key is to move it across in good order.

1. 01Export contacts, history and opportunities
2. 02Clean up and deduplicate
3. 03Create companies and associations
4. 04Test load and review
5. 05Cutover and training

1. Contacts and companies. In Act!, the company is often a field on the contact. In HubSpot it is worth creating real company records and associating each contact, normalising names and domains.
2. Groups and fields. Groups become lists or properties; custom fields are reviewed one by one and only the ones in use are created.
3. Opportunities. They become deals, with stages mapped to a redesigned HubSpot pipeline rather than a copy.
4. History, notes and attachments. They are loaded as associated notes, calls, meetings or emails, with their original dates.
5. Industry tables. If you use extra tables, for example for policies, consider a custom object.
6. Integrations and cutover. List everything connected to Act!, decide on its replacement and plan the data freeze and final load.

Common pitfalls: migrating duplicates accumulated over years, losing the link between history and contact, and not training the team on the new company and deal model. At Vexco we have migrated to HubSpot from SME CRMs such as Clientify and from platforms such as Odoo and Salesforce; if you want to do it methodically, take a look at our HubSpot migration service.

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