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Category: News
Written by Ken Quigley
April 01 2019

With the old protexis licensing system officially retired, and large price increases scheduled for May on many Act! products, April is the time for owners of obsolete versions of Act! to upgrade. 

Last fall when the news of the imminent demise of protexis (the embedded 3rd party licensing system used by Act! since 2005) was first announced many Act! users rushed to upgrade their Act! to avoid being locked out of their database on January 1st, 2019. Swiftpage offered huge 33% discounts to upgrade and we were gratified so many took advantage of the savings.

Well, April presents a similar opportunity for slightly different reasons.

Protexis is dead
The reality is those running obsolete versions of Act! are now on borrowed time. This is not in dispute. They can no longer reinstall or activate their software, and any changes to their working environment like a major Windows update, a network card or motherboard change that triggers their software to call home. When those calls go unanswered, and they will, the Act! licensing system will assume an activation failure took place, and shut down the software. 

So the question for these loyal legacy users is no longer "IF" they will upgrade their Act! software, but "WHEN". Given what's about to happen in May, we suggest that time is now. 

While there is no sale going on in April, this is the last month to purchase or subscribe to Act! under the existing pricing systems. On May 1st, Swiftpage will reveal a very exciting new "Growth Suite" pricing system that will dramatically increase the value of the Act! offering. It will include Act! Marketing Automation bundled with different tiers of support, and include the first license free of charge. 

It's an excellent value, but for those self-hosted customers that intend to purchase CRM software only, it will represent a significant increase in cost. As part of this Growth Suite initiative, Swiftpage intends to migrate to a "deployment agnostic" pricing system where the CRM software will cost the same, regardless of whether you host or self-host your Act! database. What this means for self-hosting customers is they'll soon see their price jump from $25/user/month to $35/user/month, which is a spike of 33%.

In other words, why would anyone wait for their obsolete version of Act! to die before buying upgrading, when they can subscribe this month to a new version and lock in at the current pricing for this year, and on subsequent renewals?

It will cost more in the short and long term to wait
To look at it differently, consider this. If these same users were somehow lucky enough to squeeze another 3-4 months from their obsolete software before it time bombed, forcing them to upgrade late in the summer, they'd still spend the same amount (if not more) on their Act! by this time next year compared to starting their subscription this month. Yes, you read that correctly. Eight to nine months of May pricing costs the same (or more) than twelve months of April pricing, except those late adopters would then pay an extra $120 more per seat every year after that.

In other words, the time to Act! is now! It's no longer practical to try to squeeze a bit more mileage out of your old software, when subscribing to Act! now means you get new features like dynamic pipelines, Insights reporting, improved security & compatibility, custom tables, marketing automation, completely rewritten Outlook integration, many WebAPI enabled features, and much more, while locking in today's pricing. 

That's not all, Act! Pro users will see their upgrade price jump 10%, as well, on May 1st, so even smaller teams should plan to Act! in April.

Make no mistake, we don't expect this news to be popular with those that hesitant to go to the trouble or expense of upgrading, but we nevertheless believe our customers deserve the information to make informed decisions for their business. If you'd like to discuss your upgrade options with one of our sales reps, please call 1-833-ACT-BOLD and ask for Matt, James, and Suzanne for English service, or Silvia for French.

You can also review our online purchase options HERE.


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