Yesterday Swiftpage announced to the reseller community their plans to implement a small price increase o accounts that renew after May 1st, 2018, and all Act! Pro purchases made after the same date. To be clear, the price is NOT increasing for new Act! Subscriptions or Act! Premium Cloud accounts, just renewing accounts that were started before this year.
While no one likes a price increase, it's important to remember Act! Premium subscription remains an excellent overall value at $13-$25/month. Moreover, SaaS and service-based companies commonly implement small increases to keep up with increasing costs and to invest back in their services. Swiftpage has certainly been reinvesting to improve the customer experience, as these facts will indicate:
- Investments in Customer Support and product quality has reduced support hold times from 20 minutes to less than 2 minutes on average.
- Act! is delivering new features such as Act! Insight, Act! Companion, and Custom Tables, and is investing substantially in improvements such as next-generation Outlook Integration scheduled to be released with Act! v20.1
- Act! Premium subscribers receive 2-3 releases per year, comprised of new features, compatibility updates, quality enhancements, and new Connections and services.
- Customers on bronze and loyalty migration pricing have enjoyed sub-market rates for 3 years and counting, some starting initially as low as $10/month (Bronze customers continue to enjoy an almost 50% discount to New customers and Loyalty customers are still enjoying a 25% discount to New customers for the exact same service).
| Product | Price to April 30th | Price after May 1st | New $/month |
| Act! Pro (new) | $269.99 | $299.99 | n/a |
| Act! Pro (upgrade) | $199.99 | $229.99 | n/a |
| Act! Subscription (new) | $300/yr | no change | $25 |
| Act! Subscription (Bronze) | $144/yr | $158/yr | $13.16 |
| Act! Subscription (Bronze) - additional | $204/yr | $218/yr | $18.16 |
| Act! Subscription (Silver Loyalty) | $209/yr | $224/yr | $18.66 |
| Act! Subscription (Loyalty) | $264/yr | $276/yr | $23 |
| Act! Premium Plus (available 3/20/18) | $420/yr | no change | $35 |
| Act! Premium Cloud | $420/yr | no change | $35 |
Perpetual License Purchases
It is also important to note that changes to the fees for perpetual licensing will also be ushered in on May 1st, but admittedly this effects only a small percentage of our customers. Previously, perpetual licensing could be purchased at renewal by paying what amounted to another year of subscription. For instance, if you had one license and your subscription renewal was $300, you could pay an extra $300 ($600 in total) to get perpetual added to your 1-year subscription renewal.
This purchase would still entitle you to one-year of subscription benefits, including updates, upgrades, support, and connectivity services like Act! Insight, Act! Companion, and Act! Connect, but after one year you could redeem your perpetual license to receive a permanent license key of the latest version of Act! available at that time.
The benefits will all remain the same for your perpetual purchase, except after May 1st the multiplier will increase from 1x subscription to 1.25x subscription. In practical terms, this would mean a perpetual fee that cost you $300 on April 30th, would cost $375 on May 1st.
Option for Savings
Keystroke is hoping to offer our customers renewing in the next 6-months to allow them to renew for the next 2-years, save 10% by doing so, AND get today's pricing on their renewal. In other words, they'd save 10% for a 2-year renewal, and save even more by avoiding the price increase and locking in for 2-years.
We're still awaiting authorization from Swiftpage on this campaign, but everyone renewing between now and the end of April can certainly take advantage of this savings opportunity.
