Act! Premium Cloud has become the top-selling new product in the Act! universe, thanks to its speed, ease of deployment, affordability, security, flexibility, and constant updates with the latest Act! technology. While it’s popular among new users, many existing users hesitate to fully transition from the on-premise Act! to the online version due to concerns about potential feature losses, despite the undeniable cost savings.

Act! Premium Cloud is competitively priced at $360/user/year, making it one of the best values in the CRM market. However, adding a desktop sync feature to an account incurs an additional $120 per user, a fee that applies to all team members, even if only one requires it. This additional cost of $600 annually for a five-person team often discourages many from transitioning to APC.

This is why we introduced the Keystroke Contact Manager (KCM). Built on the Handheld Contact API foundation, KCM is a lightweight Windows client designed for desktop use. It allows Act! Premium Cloud users to work offline at their convenience, with the Keystroke Account Manager syncing Contact, Calendar, Opportunity details, and Notes & Histories to and from their cloud database. Think of it like a mobile app for the desktop.

With Keystroke Contact Manager, users can:

• Quickly and easily look up one or more contacts by search field or keywords, and convert those lookups into a saved “list”.
• Customize columns in list view, and filter lookups by column headers. These list view column filters work with Contacts, Task List, Opportunities, and Groups.
• Read and add notes and history to any Contact or Opportunity.
• Segment Contacts into groups or lists.
• Schedule appointments for one or more contacts with ease, and clear completed activities.
• View and manage five different calendar types and a task list.
• Manage sales pipeline effectively, with filterable columns in list view.
• Email one or more contacts while recording History to the database.
• Batch edit contacts by scheduling them all for an activity, adding them to Favourites or to a Group, edit contact access, write an email, delete, or even add them to a “list”.
• And much more.

Contact List view with Filterable columns	Choose from five different calendar views	Task list with filterable column headers
Contact Details Screen	Activity Detail Screen	Sync Panel

Sounds great, but what does it cost?
KCM is a continually evolving product, and will be available free of charge to all our Orange Care customers using Act! Premium Cloud. As the world’s #1 Act! reseller, we are committed to our customer’s success with Act!.  We plan to continue investing in KCM beyond its January release, adding and improving features. Our internal testing has shown that updating KCM is a breeze, with the average process taking just one to two minutes.

Beyond continued investment, we plan to keep KCM free to our Orange Care customers indefinitely because we believe customers with a support plan in place have the best CRM experience. Customers without Orange Care will not have the option to purchase KCM, nor will it be available to non-Keystroke customers.

It’s important to note, though, that the Keystroke Contact Manager is not Act!, and those seeking the full power and features of this time-tested desktop product should invest accordingly. That said, we believe KCM fills a much-needed gap with APC users, and will meet the needs of many customers looking to save money with Act! online, while still retaining the flexibility of an on-premise product.

We expect to release the Keystroke Contact Manager in the first half of February 2024.

Stay tuned for more updates.