Act-On Review: A Complete Look [2026]

Act-On has spent nearly two decades in the marketing automation space, targeting mid-market teams that find enterprise platforms too complex and entry-level tools too limited. Founded by the co-creator of Responsys (later sold to Oracle for $1.5 billion), the platform was built on the premise that marketing automation should be sophisticated without being painful. With over 4,000 customers across financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing, Act-On has found its audience.

To write this Act-On review, we analyzed the platform extensively. We believe it's the right choice if:

• You're a mid-market B2B team that needs marketing automation without enterprise complexity

• You want to pay only for contacts you actually email, not your entire database

• You need native CRM integration with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, or SugarCRM

• Customer support quality ranks high on your priority list

• You operate in a regulated industry requiring HIPAA or ISO 27001 compliance

However, Act-On might not be the best choice if:

• You need B2B data and contact intelligence alongside your marketing automation

• You want to identify in-market buyers using intent signals before they enter your funnel

• You need AI-powered account prioritization and buying group identification

• You require a platform that unifies sales prospecting, marketing orchestration, and data management

• You want to build and activate audiences using natural language without engineering support

In this case, you should consider ZoomInfo: an AI GTM platform that goes beyond marketing automation by combining B2B data (500M contacts, 100M companies, 135M+ verified phone numbers, and 200M+ verified business emails) with an intelligence layer called the GTM Context Graph that captures not just what happened in your pipeline, but why. Where Act-On automates your marketing campaigns, ZoomInfo powers the entire go-to-market motion, from identifying who to target and when they're ready to buy, through to execution across sales and marketing.

We've included a detailed look at ZoomInfo later in this review as a broader alternative for teams that need data-driven intelligence powering their marketing and sales efforts. If you're ready to explore what that looks like, you can start with ZoomInfo's free trial.

What is Act-On?

Act-On is a cloud-based marketing automation platform founded in 2008 by Raghu Raghavan, who previously co-founded Responsys in 1998 and served as its CTO. Raghavan saw that existing marketing automation platforms were either too expensive or too complex for mid-market organizations, so he built Act-On to be a "sophisticated, but affordable" SaaS marketing tool mid-market companies could use without pain.

Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Act-On has raised $92.7 million in funding and employs approximately 170-238 people. The platform serves customers across financial services, banking, healthcare, manufacturing, insurance, and agencies.

Today, Act-On calls itself "the smartest, easiest to use" marketing automation platform, with a focus on what it calls Growth Marketing Automation: helping marketers move beyond lead generation to engage targets at every step of the customer lifecycle. The platform covers email marketing, SMS, lead scoring, landing pages, forms, analytics, and CRM integration.

Source: Act-On

Act-On Pros & Cons

Act-On Review: How it Works & Key Features

Email Marketing and Multichannel Campaigns: Act-On delivers automated campaigns across email, SMS, social, and web from a single platform.

Act-On's email marketing centers on its Automated Journey Builder, where marketers design workflows between Start and Exit points. Users add steps (including Send Email, Send SMS, Branch, and Wait) to create drip campaigns, engagement-based splits, and conversion programs with early exit conditions.

Source: Act-On

Email creation follows a four-stage process: Address, Design, Review, and Send. The design stage offers a drag-and-drop Email Composer and Dynamic Content blocks that show different content to different recipients based on contact fields and conditions.

The platform supports A/B testing with up to five email variants, selecting winners by click-through rate. Its Adaptive Send feature delivers each email when individual contacts are most likely to engage, using a predictive algorithm that analyzes up to 25 months of behavior data. Act-On also provides AI-driven True Open tracking to separate genuine opens from bot activity and privacy software noise.

Beyond email, SMS messages can be added to Automated Programs alongside emails on a credit-based system with 160-character limits. Social media publishing works through Social Publish for X (Twitter) and LinkedIn, with an optional Advanced Social Media Module that adds Instagram Reels support.

One differentiator: Act-On's email deliverability infrastructure. Unlike competitors that rely on third-party SMTP providers, Act-On runs its own SMTP servers, which yields strong deliverability rates. The company also offers Email Deliverability Services to help with email reputation and compliance with CAN-SPAM, CCPA, GDPR, and HIPAA regulations.

Lead Generation and Lead Scoring: Act-On combines manual scoring frameworks with AI predictions to prioritize sales-ready leads.

Act-On's lead generation works through a multi-step workflow. The platform attracts leads with multichannel campaigns, captures them through custom landing pages with built-in forms and automated follow-up, then feeds them into Automated Programs for nurturing.

Source: Act-On

For lead scoring, Act-On offers both manual rule-based systems and AI predictions. The manual system provides two scoring dimensions: Profile-based and Activity-based. Teams score prospects on engagement activity such as website visits, content views, form-fills, email opens, webinar attendance, and social media replies. The platform supports multiple Score Sheets (up to 4 additional) for different teams, regions, or products.

On the AI side, Act-On's machine learning models use tracked contact behaviors and CRM outcomes to predict results. The models draw on website and landing page views, webinar registrations, media link clicks, form submissions, email opens and clicks, and CRM opportunity status. AI predictive lead scores are calculated and updated daily.

CRM integration ties these together. Act-On passes lead scores into the CRM where sales reps work, along with Act-On's lead profile widget on the CRM record, giving reps the behavioral context they need for informed conversations.

Analytics and Reporting: Act-On provides tiered analytics with AI-powered natural language queries and automated insight discovery.

Act-On's analytics runs on a three-tier model: Standard Reporting (included with all accounts), Dynamic Business Analytics (add-on), and Premium AI Analytics (add-on).

The platform uses two building blocks: Answers (individual reports or charts) and Liveboards (dashboards combining multiple Answers) that refresh within one hour. For CRM-integrated accounts, the system offers Revenue Impact, Pipeline, Funnel Metrics, and Attribution reports.

Source: Act-On

The AI capabilities are notable. Users can type plain-language questions into a natural language search bar and receive generated reports. SpotIQ automated analysis discovers trends, correlations, explanations for metric changes, and outliers automatically.

For teams needing raw data exports, Data Studio enables automated data pipelines covering behavioral data from email, forms, landing pages, SMS, webinars, and webpages, with delivery via downloadable file, FTP, or cloud storage (Amazon S3, Google Drive, Power BI, or Microsoft Azure).

Data retention spans 15 months for Standard and Dynamic packages, extending to 27 months for Premium AI Analytics.

Integrations: Act-On connects with CRM, social, webinar, and ABM platforms through native and third-party connectors.

Act-On calls itself a "best-of-breed" Marketing Automation Platform and lists over a thousand integrations.

The standout is CRM integration. Act-On offers native, bidirectional integrations for Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SugarCRM, Oracle NetSuite, and Zendesk Sell. These include bidirectional data sync through scheduled push/pull syncs and synchronization options for automatic lead qualification and deduplication.

Source: Act-On

Webinar integrations include native connections with Zoom, GoToWebinar, and Webex. For ABM, the platform integrates with DemandBase, 6Sense, Rollworks, ZoomInfo, and Terminus. Social media connects through Oktopost. Ad platform connections include Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Meta/Facebook Ads.

For non-native integrations, Act-On offers Open API, Zapier, and Cazoomi connectors. The platform also provides a REST API with documentation and support for both outgoing and incoming webhooks.

One important note: CRM integrations are only available on the Enterprise tier. Professional tier users are limited to Open API, Zapier, and Cazoomi connections.

Pricing: Act-On's Active Contact model charges only for contacts you email, starting at $900/month.

Act-On uses an "Active Contact" pricing model where customers pay only for the contacts they actually email, never for the entire database. If you have 5,000 contacts but only email 2,500 in a given month, you pay for 2,500.

Professional Tier: $900/month for 2,500 active contacts. Includes the full marketing automation platform: automated engagement programs, visitor tracking, lead scoring, email and SMS campaigns, landing pages and forms, pre-built templates, API/Zapier/Cazoomi integrations, AI Predictive Lead Score, and AI Audience Insights. Standard (email-based) support is included.

Enterprise Tier: Custom pricing. Adds native CRM integration (Salesforce, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Dynamics), Data Studio for advanced reporting, Account-Based Marketing capabilities, and 2x user accounts.

Both tiers have paid add-ons for SMS marketing, transactional email, InSite AI Web Agent, and AI-Powered Advanced Analytics.

Act-On requires annual contracts, and the license automatically renews for successive twelve-month terms with an automatic 5% fee increase unless you provide 30 days' written notice before the end of your subscription term. Customers get 4 gigabytes of media storage, with additional capacity available in 10GB blocks. Non-profit discounts are available.

Where Act-On Falls Short

Act-On delivers solid marketing automation for mid-market teams, but several limitations surface as marketing operations grow. These reflect a platform built for campaign execution, not full go-to-market intelligence.

No Built-in Contact or Company Data: Act-On automates your campaigns but doesn't help you find the people to campaign to. The platform has no B2B contact database, no company intelligence, and no way to discover new prospects. Marketers must source their own data through separate tools or manual research, then import it. This gap between "who to target" and "how to reach them" creates extra cost and friction.

Limited Intent and Signal Intelligence: Act-On scores leads based on their interactions with your content, but it doesn't track what prospects research across the broader web. Without buyer intent data, marketers can't identify accounts that are actively in-market before those accounts engage directly. By the time a prospect fills out a form or opens an email, they may have already shortlisted competitors.

Pricing Barrier at Entry: At $900/month for the Professional tier, Act-On is a significant investment for mid-market teams, especially when CRM integration requires the Enterprise tier at custom pricing. Multiple reviewers note that Act-On is "incredibly expensive" and "one of the most expensive tools" on the market. The automatic 5% annual price increase on renewal adds further pressure.

Interface Modernization in Progress: Users note the interface can feel outdated with occasional glitches. The UI is being overhauled slowly, so some sections feel modern while others haven't caught up. When compared to HubSpot on G2, reviewers found HubSpot easier to use, set up, and administer.

Reporting Gaps: The AI analytics show promise, but the standard reporting falls short. Users note that out-of-box reports aren't great and reporting capabilities don't meet expectations. The advanced analytics that fill these gaps are paid add-ons, not included in the base tiers.

Ownership Uncertainty: Act-On was set to be acquired by Banzai International for $53.2 million in January 2025, but the deal fell apart in June 2025 after Banzai's funding collapsed. This raises questions about Act-On's long-term direction as an independent company.

These limitations aren't failures of Act-On's marketing automation. They're the natural result of a platform focused on campaign execution rather than upstream intelligence: finding the right buyers, understanding when they're ready, and connecting that intelligence across sales and marketing. For teams that need both intelligence and execution, a broader platform is worth considering.

Top Act-On Alternative for Data-Driven GTM: ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is an AI GTM platform that gives your sales reps the context to walk into every call knowing why a deal is moving, who's championing it, and what's likely to happen next. Your marketers can describe audiences in plain language and launch plays against accounts that match your proven win patterns, with no engineering ticket required. Your leaders can see deal risk before it shows up in CRM stage fields.

That depth comes from the GTM Context Graph, an intelligence layer built on a large B2B dataset (500M contacts, 100M companies, 135M+ verified phone numbers, and 200M+ verified business emails), unified with your CRM records, conversation transcripts, and behavioral signals. Your team accesses it through the GTM Workspace for sellers, GTM Studio for marketers and RevOps, or APIs and MCP in any front-end.

Comprehensive B2B Data: ZoomInfo provides the contact and company intelligence that Act-On lacks entirely.

Act-On automates your campaigns. ZoomInfo tells you who those campaigns should target. The platform covers 500M contacts and 100M companies across three data dimensions: identity data (who buyers are and how to reach them, with 120M direct-dial phone numbers and 200M+ verified business emails), company context (org charts, technographics across 30,000+ technologies), and signals that reveal when accounts are actively in-market.

This data is verified through a multi-source pipeline backed by 300+ human researchers, achieving up to 95% accuracy on first-party data. In a Fortune 500 competitive RFP analyzing 25 million contacts across vendors, the independent consultant concluded that "no other competitor came even close."

For marketers who source data from one tool and execute campaigns in another, this changes the workflow. ZoomInfo's Contact & Company Search with 300+ company attributes lets you build targeted audiences (by job title, technology stack, department org chart, and more) without leaving the platform.

Vensure's VP of Revenue Operations: "ZoomInfo gives us the information we need to execute. We don't have to go through and spend our time digging. It's already there, so we can be three steps ahead." (Vensure)

Buyer Intent and Signal Intelligence: ZoomInfo identifies in-market accounts before they engage with your content.

Where Act-On scores leads based on interactions with your emails and landing pages, ZoomInfo tracks buying signals across the broader web. ZoomInfo Intent monitors signals from 210 million IP-to-Organization pairings and 6 trillion+ keyword-to-device pairings sourced monthly. You can see which companies are researching topics related to your product, even if they've never visited your website.

Guided Intent, exclusive to ZoomInfo, goes further by identifying topics historically correlated with deal success rather than requiring manual topic selection. Instead of guessing which keywords matter, the system surfaces research patterns that actually predict closed deals based on your CRM data.

WebSights resolves anonymous website traffic to specific companies and identifies buying team members with direct contact information. The system includes Automatic Traffic Filtering to separate real visitors from bot traffic.

For marketers, this shifts the approach from reactive (waiting for leads to raise their hand) to proactive (reaching accounts when buying signals indicate readiness).

Seismic attributed 39% of active pipeline to opportunities identified or influenced by ZoomInfo signals. Their Chief Business Officer: "That combination of our internal CRM data, external signals, and AI that's given all that context has helped us craft very specific account- and persona-based messages. And people have responded to them right away." (Seismic)

GTM Studio: ZoomInfo gives marketers an AI-powered canvas for building and activating GTM plays.

GTM Studio is ZoomInfo's front-end for marketers, RevOps, and GTM engineers. It solves a problem Act-On doesn't touch: the gap between defining your audience and activating a play across channels, often blocked by engineering tickets and manual data pulls.

With GTM Studio, marketers can describe audiences in natural language, enrich with first- and third-party data, define triggers, and activate plays across email, calls, ads, and direct mail, without engineering support. Pre-built GTM plays for inbound acceleration, champion tracking, competitive displacement, and ICP targeting launch in one click.

The platform includes waterfall enrichment from 25+ data sources, evaluating each and returning the highest-confidence result at no additional cost. Plays run around the clock and get smarter as prospects respond: every click, open, and reply improves targeting automatically.

Expansion plays that used to take 3 weeks now launch in 30 minutes. Top-performing teams run 3x more plays than average (50+ per quarter).

Redwood Logistics achieved a 99% reduction in CPC and 310% increase in CTR. Their Senior Director of Digital Strategy: "It's not just the data itself. It's more about the right data at the right time to help us reach out with the right message across that full buyer journey." (Redwood Logistics)

Universal Access: ZoomInfo's intelligence works inside any tool through APIs and MCP, not just inside ZoomInfo's own products.

Act-On integrates with various marketing tools. ZoomInfo goes further by making its data and intelligence available as infrastructure any tool can consume.

APIs expose ZoomInfo's data through structured endpoints covering search, enrichment, AI intelligence, audience management, and engagement data. The MCP server connects AI models directly to ZoomInfo's B2B data with no custom coding, currently supporting Claude and ChatGPT.

API access is included in all relevant plans, so teams can power their own internal tools, custom agents, or partner platforms with the same intelligence that runs ZoomInfo's native products.

BDO Canada's Senior Marketing Intelligence Analyst: "The plug-and-play aspect of the API means I can integrate it very easily into any process and get information at a moment's notice," achieving an 87% reduction in time spent on data dashboard updates. (BDO Canada)

Act-On or ZoomInfo: Comparison Summary

Final Verdict

The choice between Act-On and ZoomInfo depends on whether your team needs a marketing automation tool or a full go-to-market platform.

Choose Act-On if:

• You already have a reliable source of contact data and need tools to nurture those contacts

• Your campaigns rely on email, SMS, and web automation

• You’re a mid-market B2B organization, especially in regulated industries like healthcare or financial services

• HIPAA compliance and strong CRM integration are essential

• You prefer Active Contact pricing that rewards focused marketing efforts

• You value a hands-on support team that acts as a partner

• Your main challenge is campaign execution, not prospect discovery

Choose ZoomInfo if:

• Your GTM challenges go beyond execution into finding the right prospects and knowing when to engage

• You need B2B data and buyer intent signals to identify in-market accounts

• You want to align sales and marketing around shared intelligence

• You need visibility into why deals move or stall through a GTM Context Graph

• Your team uses tools like GTM Studio and GTM Workspace to act on insights

• You require API or MCP access to integrate intelligence into custom workflows

• You’ve outgrown basic automation and need to discover, prioritize, and act on opportunities

Discover, prioritize, and win more deals with ZoomInfo.

The difference comes down to scope. Act-On executes your marketing playbook. ZoomInfo helps you write it by showing you who to target, when to engage, and why it matters, then powering the execution across every team and tool involved.

Act-On FAQ

What does Act-On cost?

Act-On's Professional tier starts at $900/month for 2,500 active contacts, with annual contracts required. The Enterprise tier, which adds native CRM integration and Account-Based Marketing, requires custom pricing. Both tiers auto-renew with a 5% fee increase unless you provide 30 days' written notice. Additional costs include paid add-ons for SMS marketing, advanced analytics, transactional email, and the InSite AI Web Agent.

Does Act-On have a free plan or free trial?

Act-On does not offer a permanent free plan or a general free trial for its full platform. It provides a 30-day free trial for its Advanced Analytics features only. ZoomInfo, by comparison, offers ZoomInfo Lite as a permanent free tier with access to its B2B database, 10 monthly export credits, and website visitor reveals.

What CRM systems does Act-On integrate with?

Act-On offers native bidirectional integrations with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SugarCRM, Oracle NetSuite, and Zendesk Sell. However, CRM integration is only available on the Enterprise tier. Professional tier users are limited to API, Zapier, and Cazoomi connections. The Salesforce integration is frequently praised for its depth and reliability.

Does Act-On include a B2B contact database?

No. Act-On is a marketing automation platform focused on campaign execution. It does not include a database of business contacts, companies, or organizational data. Marketers must source their own contact data through separate tools, manual research, or third-party providers and import it into Act-On. ZoomInfo provides 500 million contacts and 100 million company profiles with verified phone numbers and email addresses.

Is Act-On HIPAA compliant?

Yes. Act-On became HIPAA compliant in October 2025 and holds ISO 27001 certification. This makes it one of the few marketing automation platforms suitable for healthcare organizations that handle protected health information. The platform is also TX-RAMP certified and TRUSTe certified.

How does Act-On's Active Contact pricing work?

Act-On charges based on the number of contacts you actually email in a given month, not the total size of your database. If you have 10,000 contacts but only send emails to 2,500 of them, you pay for 2,500 active contacts. Act-On says this model can cut costs by up to 48% compared to competitors like Marketo that charge based on total database size.

What AI features does Act-On offer?

Act-On includes several AI features: AI Create (generative email content and subject lines powered by OpenAI), AI Predictive Lead Score (machine learning models that identify leads likely to close), AI Audience Insights (developed with Intel), natural language analytics queries, SpotIQ automated insight discovery, InSite web agents for personalized website experiences, and Adaptive Send for optimized email timing.

Who is Act-On best suited for?

Act-On is built for mid-market B2B organizations (typically 51 to 1,000 employees) that need marketing automation without enterprise complexity. It is particularly strong for teams in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and insurance. The platform works well for small marketing teams that need minimal IT involvement and value strong customer support. It is less suitable for teams that need built-in B2B data, buyer intent signals, or unified sales and marketing intelligence.