As the inventor of CRM, it should come as no surprise that Act! has a rich & mature addon market, with hundreds of plugins to help their users "Act! better". Over the years, Act! has tried to support this market with the sale of custom tables and Handheld Contact, but this commitment has been tepid. That is until now.

In the coming weeks and months, Act! users will start to see increased marketing around addon products, beginning with our own Qsales, which they started promoting in late August and are planning to host a training webinar in early November. Recently they added a new link to their website under the "Resources" dropdown called "Act! CRM Plugins" to promote three addon developers - Keystroke.ca, Tendenz, and Act! Today.

What's this all about? Well, Act! is about to get into addons in a big way.

As announced at the Act! Addon Conference last week, Act! will soon take over the Act! Marketplace (www.actaddons.net) from Keystroke later this year. An exact date has not been set because of the amount that has to be done, but an agreement in principle is in place. For context, Keystroke has managed the Act! Marketplace, as well as the Act! Development Program for the past five years. While having a white-labeled resource for our resellers has been great, we genuinely believe it's time for Act! to take it over.

To that end, Keystroke will be donating the Act! Marketplace to Act!.

Why are we doing this?  It's simple, we've taken it as far as we can, and now it's time for the publisher to take it the rest of the way. Act! can promote addons to all subscribers & past users through emarketing and the www.act.com website, as well as surface them within the product itself. By early 2023, we expect the Act! Premium family of products to feature a new Navbar item called Act! Marketplace that will link to a new page promoting custom tables, AMA upgrades like domains, and yes, third-party addons. This means addons will be available for purchase within the Act! product.

We also expect more developers to participate in the marketplace now that it's not being managed by one of their competitors. 

Act! users can also expect to see regular addon webinars heading into 2023, as the publisher leans towards educating their install base on addons, rather than simply promoting their purchase. As discussed during last week's Act! Addon Conference, addons range from industry verticals to time-saving utilities, and from SDK plugins to API addons. The range of applications is as diverse as the market itself, and there is a lot for users to learn.

We're excited about the change of management of this important Act! resource, and we think it will help all users learn how save time and money through Act! addons.

Stay tuned.