Regardless of which industry you’re in, 2020 has been a challenging year. The same can certainly be said for us at Handheld Contact, which saw us invest heavily in new syncing technology only to see the world suddenly become less mobile in March.

Now that we’re seven months into this new world order, we’ve learned to adapt and to slowly improve the new and old products. Feature gaps between Classic and API are being reduced each month, with new builds scheduled for release in November.

Recently, though, we’ve had occasion to review the mobile landscape from a different perspective. Seeing so many of our customers struggle to stay in business has moved us to think how we could give back to the community that has made us the #1 mobile solution for Act! since 2003, and we think Act! users will like what we’ve come up with.

The new Handheld Contact Lite
In the first half of November, Handheld Contact will be releasing a new Lite version of our flagship API product, and it will be free to all Act! subscribers. That’s right, free. No trialware, no time-bombed features, it’s simply free and indefinitely. And we're aiming to release the IOS and Android versions at approximately the same time (availablility will be based on how quickly their respective online stores approve them, but traditionally GooglePlay takes 3-4 days, and AppStore 5-8 days after the initial submission).

We realize many business owners are cutting corners to save costs, so the new HHC Lite will download their customer list to their device, and allow them to use that address book to call, email, and SMS their customers. Think of HHC Lite as a rolodex of all your critical contacts, that you’ll now have at your fingertips free of charge.

What Handheld Contact Lite is
The new HHC Lite will include the full address book functionality featuring all the traditional Handheld Contact default fields, including the standard contact fields (contact, company, title, department), two email fields (primary and personal), five phone fields (phone, mobile, fax, home, and pager), two address blocks (primary and home), along with spouse, birthdate, website, ID/Status, referred by, and messenger ID. We think this offers a fairly robust rolodex for Act! users, and we’re pleased to offer it free to all subscribers. With the feature focus being on the address book, the default dashboard landing page of Handheld Contact will be replaced with the contact list in HHC Lite.

What Handheld Contact Lite isn't
What HHC Lite won’t include are many paid Handheld Contact features our subscribers are accustomed to, namely calendar, task lists, opportunity, notes & histories. And while HHC Lite users will be able to launch calls, emails, and texts from their device, the histories of those actions will not sync back to Act! like the full Handheld Contact because HHC Lite is download only. Like a rolodex, the address book data should be treated as “read only” because any changes you make on your device will be overwritten with the next download (maximum one full download per week).

Handheld Contact Lite uses the Act! WebAPI technology to securely access your contacts directly from your database, and download them at lightning speed (download speeds will range from 2000-3000 contacts per minute). This means updating your database weekly will only take a few minutes for 10K records.

We understand that loyal Handheld Contact subscribers will find HHC Lite a poor substitute for the real thing, but we believe thousands of Act! subscribers will love having an offline rolodex of their Act! contacts at their fingertips, to help them quickly find and connect with those they do business with.

Stay tuned for more details in the coming days and weeks on Handheld Contact Lite – the free mobile rolodex for your business.