"I supported ACT! versions 2-6 at my company for 10 years. We had much success with it and had about 35 internal users, 20 synchronizing remote laptops and a database of about 75,000 contacts.

"There came a time when the company wanted to switch to an SQL-based contact management program in order to closely integrate with in-house-developed SQL applications. ACT had not yet developed their SQL version, so the company switched to Goldmine. To get Goldmine going, my company spent about $15,000 for the software and licenses plus about $5,000 for consulting services and about $3,000 for annual Goldmine maintenance fees. The installation and database conversion took about 6 months to complete and was filled with constant frustration and confusion on the part of users and managers.

"We found that Goldmine could not even correctly parse contact names. For example, if one entered "James Smith Jr" as the contact name, Goldmine interpreted the last name as "Jr". Therefore, we could not enter last name suffixes or titles such as Jr, Sr, CPA, etc. There was no other provision for them. Also, there was no provision to Lookup by First Name. We needed that capability, so we hired a Goldmine consultant to implement that feature. Of course, that meant that they would have to re-create those changes every time a version upgrade of Goldmine was implemented.

"We found that Goldmine was not at all easy to use, like ACT! was, and did not meet our basic needs. For example, we used ACT's Contact List often throughout the day. Goldmine did not have one. We frequently used ACT's Lookups and would then drill down or add to them or sort them. Goldmine's lookup had only a binary query feature that was complicated and confusing. There was no Lookup By Example. Duplicate contact checking didn't quite work. Importing and Exporting of contacts was complicated and time consuming. Synchronization was difficult to set up and maintain. Database customization was limited. Display and report layouts could be changed only with difficulty. Most changes that we did ourselves in ACT! required the help of expensive consultants in Goldmine.

"Because ACT! is more popular, people that we hired often had experience with ACT! but not Goldmine, so the learning curve was more time consuming for new people. As time went by, most of our time was spent just struggling with Goldmine and trying to learn its quirks rather than getting good productivity from it. Users could not be creative with Goldmine and expand its use in their jobs. Every time they tried, Goldmine would create errors and block their progress resulting in frustration, limited usage and corrupted data. We found our investment in Goldmine not paying off.

"Goldmine allows only one database to exist at a time. This totally destroyed our nightly backup policy that we developed in ACT!. Previously, for example, if we accidentally deleted a contact from ACT!, we would open a backup copy and export the contact into the current ACT! database. You cannot do that in Goldmine because it does not allow you to export a contact from one Goldmine database to another. Not even a test database could exist, so testing of features had to be done on the live database-- very carefully.

"If you want a feature-rich, expansive, easy-to-use, customizable, SQL- and .NET-based contact management program that is reasonably priced, I recommend that you take a look at the latest versions of ACT! for a free demo visit BizSoftResource.com. If you do want some help with installation, class room or onsite training and customization, the people at JCS Computer Corp (www.jcscomputer.com) can help with that."