Act! Zapier integrationAutomate Act! with Zapier.
The Act! Zapier integration gives you 3 triggers, 7 actions and 2 searches for contacts, opportunities, notes, activities and groups. Every trigger is polled, the app runs on the free plan, and the traps sit in the required fields.
Verified Trustpilot reviews · AI, automation & growth agency
What the Act! Zapier integration actually does
It links your Act! CRM to the other tools you use, without code. Zapier watches Act! for new contacts, edited contacts and new opportunities, and it can write back into Act!: contacts, notes, activities, history entries, opportunities and groups. You build each link once, and it keeps running on its own.
A scheduled follow-up on every fresh deal. When a sales rep logs an opportunity, New Opportunity starts the Zap and Add Activity books the next call with the contact. Nobody has to remember to put it in the calendar.
A clean contact base fed from outside. A webinar sign-up or a support ticket elsewhere becomes an Act! record through Find or Create Contact, which checks first and only creates when nothing matches. Duplicates stop piling up.
A paper trail other teams can read. Each time a contact is edited, Contact Updated can push that change to a spreadsheet or a chat channel, so finance or support sees what sales changed without logging into the CRM.
What it doesn't do: none of the three triggers is instant, so an event in Act! waits for the next check. There is no trigger on new notes, activities or history entries, no operation to delete anything, and no search for opportunities. If a step you want is missing, you'll need a workaround or another tool. For a side-by-side view of the alternatives, read Make vs Zapier and n8n vs Zapier.
Zapier vocabulary in one minute
Eight words come back on every line of this page. Here they are in plain English.
- Zap
- The automation you set up in Zapier: one starting event, then one or more steps that run every single time that event shows up.
- Trigger
- The event that starts a Zap, such as a new contact in Act!. Once the Zap is switched on, Zapier sits and waits for it.
- Action
- What the Zap does once it has started: the step that writes, sends or moves something for you, like adding a note in Act!.
- Task
- The unit Zapier bills. One task is one action that your Zap finished successfully, and your plan counts nothing else.
- Polling vs instant
- A polling trigger is checked on a timer for anything new. An instant one is pushed by the app itself the moment it happens.
- Filter
- A step that lets the Zap carry on only when the incoming data meets the condition you chose, and quietly stops it otherwise.
- Search step
- A step that looks up something already stored in an app, so the following steps can reuse what it found.
- Connection
- Your Act! account linked to Zapier one time, then reused by every step in every Zap that touches Act!.
What an Act! Zap really costs
Act! isn't a premium app, so it works on the free Zapier plan. Your bill is counted in tasks, and the trigger never costs one.
- Premium appNo, free plan works
- Free plan100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps
- BilledEach successful action
- Not billedTriggers, checks, failed actions
Checking Act! for new records is free, however often it happens. Each action that succeeds counts as one task, and a failed one counts for nothing. A Zap with three actions uses three times what a single-action Zap uses. The free plan gives 100 tasks a month and unlimited Zaps, but only two steps per Zap: one trigger, one action. Add a filter, a search or a second action and you have a multi-step Zap, which needs a paid plan.
Connect your Act! account to Zapier
- 01
Open the Apps page
From your Zapier account, go to Apps and click + Add connection. You need an Act! login first, plus rights on any record you don't own and want the Zap to touch.
- 02
Pick Act! and confirm
Type Act! in the search box of the dialog that appears, select it, then click Add connection. A new browser tab opens on the Act! side, ready for the sign-in.
- 03
Sign in and grant access
Log into Act! in that tab and allow Zapier to use the account. The connection then appears in your list, and every future Act! step in any Zap reuses it.
Your first Zap: book a call on qualified deals
GoalWhen a sales rep logs a new opportunity in Act!, a filter keeps only the ones worth chasing, a search finds the contact, and Act! gets a scheduled call with them.
- 01
Build: pick the trigger
Create a Zap, choose Act! as the starting app and
New Opportunityas the event. Then select the Act! connection made earlier. - 02
Test the trigger
Run the test. Zapier brings back the three most recent opportunities from your account, so pick a real one to map the next steps on.
- 03
Add the filter
Click the plus icon, choose Filter, then set the field, the rule and the value. Mind the type: a text rule never matches a number.
- 04
Find the contact
Add
Find or Create Contact, choose the field to search by and map the value from the opportunity. Its result feeds the Schedule With box. - 05
Schedule the activity
Add
Add Activity, set the activity type, the start and end times, and the contact from the search. Test the step and check the result in Act!. - 06
Publish
Click Publish to switch the Zap on. This one has four steps, so it needs a paid plan. On the free plan, keep the trigger and the activity only.
Act! triggers: 3 events that start a Zap
3 events start a Zap when something happens in Act!. Zapier checks for them at the interval your plan allows.
New Contact
Polling triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when a new contact is created.”
Fires on each contact freshly created in Act!, whoever entered it: a rep typing a business card, an import, or another Zap. It hands the new record to the following steps so you can greet, tag or copy it elsewhere.
Contact Updated
Polling triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when a Contact is updated.”
Reacts when an existing Act! contact is edited, not when one is added. It's the right starting point for keeping a second tool in step with the CRM after someone corrects a phone number or a company name.
New Opportunity
Polling triggerIn Zapier“Triggers when a new opportunity is created.”
Starts a Zap whenever a deal is opened in Act!. This is the trigger to reach for when the pipeline, not the address book, should drive the next move: alert a manager, prepare a quote, or schedule a first call.
Act! actions: what a Zap can write into your CRM
Act! gives you 7 actions. For each one: what it does for you, when to reach for it, and what to watch out for.
Add Activity
ActionIn Zapier“Adds an activity to a contact.”
Puts a scheduled activity on a contact's calendar in Act!: you set its type, who it is scheduled with, and a start and end time, all four required. A private flag is optional.
Add Note
ActionIn Zapier“Adds a note to a contact.”
Attaches a written note to a contact, with the contact and the text both required. Notes are public by default and can be marked private.
Add Opportunity
ActionIn Zapier“Creates a new opportunity.”
Opens a deal in Act!, tied to a contact and to an estimated close date, both of which are required.
Add Contact
ActionIn Zapier“Creates a new contact.”
Creates a brand-new contact record in Act! from data captured somewhere else.
Add History
ActionIn Zapier“Adds a history to a contact.”
Logs something that already happened on a contact's history in Act!. It needs a type, the contact, a start time and an end time; a private option exists too.
Add Group
ActionIn Zapier“Creates a new group.”
Makes a new group in Act! from a single required field: its name, which must be unique.
Update Contact
ActionIn Zapier“Updates a new contact.”
Changes an existing Act! contact instead of making a new one. The only required field is the contact to edit, which a search step usually provides.
Act! searches: look up before you write
2 search steps look for data that already exists in Act!, so a later step can use it.
A search step finds a record that already exists so the next steps can use it. In the editor, Act! searches sit at the bottom of the Action event list, under SEARCH. Three settings decide what happens when the result isn't a clean single match.
Find or Create Contact
SearchFind or createIn Zapier“Finds or creates a contact.”
Looks for a contact using a field you choose and the value you map into it, both required. The editor also lists a find-or-create line under the same name: same search, box ticked, no extra operation.
Find Group
SearchFind or createIn Zapier“Looks up groups in Act!”
Checks whether a group already exists in Act!, then hands it to the steps after it. The editor shows Find Group twice: the second line is the find-or-create version of this same search, not an extra operation.
The three settings every search exposes
- Successful if no search results are found?Left on its default, an empty search stops the Zap right there and the dependent steps are skipped. Switch it on and the Zap goes on with nothing in hand.
- Create X if it doesn't exist yet?Ticking it turns the search into a find-or-create: the previous setting disappears and Zapier asks for the fields needed to create the missing record.
- If multiple search results are found?Three exits when several records match: keep the first one (the default), stop the Zap, or pass all of them on together.
When an Act! Zap breaks
Zapier publishes no help article dedicated to Act!, so the failures below are the general ones that hit CRM Zaps hardest.
Most broken Act! Zaps come from four causes. None of them shows up as an error on day one; they appear once real data flows. If a Zap still won't behave, the Zapier troubleshooting page is the next stop.
The old contacts never arrive
A Zap only reacts to what happens after you switch it on. The contacts and deals already in Act! are ignored, and moving that backlog is a separate job.The Zap keeps restarting itself
Contact Updated followed by Update Contact on the same record writes where the trigger watches. Each run sets off the next one and the task count drains quickly.A bulk import stalls
After a mass import into Act!, a trigger can suddenly return a huge batch. Zapier's flood protection can hold that batch back instead of running it all.No duplicate runs, by design
On a polling trigger, Zapier remembers what it has already seen, so the same contact or deal never starts the Zap twice. Edits go through Contact Updated.
Need help automating Act! with Zapier?
A person reads every message.
