Streak vs Act
Side-by-side trajectory, velocity, and editorial themes.
Streak puts AI in the Gmail sidebar and cites its sources — the Gmail CRM bets on trust.
Streak's stream is heavily AI-themed. The headline move is citations for AI outputs — Ask a Question, AI Autofill on timelines, and AI Autofill on web research now show inline chips and a source reference list pointing back to the exact email, meeting, note, or URL behind each claim. AI is also moving where deals happen: the Streak sidebar inside Gmail now offers full deal summaries and Q&A, mobile (iOS/Android) gets AI Q&A with voice dictation. Around the AI work the team has shipped pipeline ergonomics — a combined stages-and-columns manager, a rebuilt keyboard-driven saved view editor — and a steady drumbeat of AI Autofill and reporting fixes.
Streak is positioning AI as the primary lens for understanding deal context, and citations are the move that makes that bet defensible: a CRM AI that hallucinates a quote is a liability, while one that points to the exact email is an asset. Putting full AI Q&A in the Gmail sidebar collapses the workflow further — sales reps never leave the inbox. The pipeline-management UX work in parallel reads like prep for power-user retention as AI raises the ceiling on what a single rep can manage.
Expect AI Autofill citations to extend to mobile, AI-suggested next actions (draft reply, suggested follow-up date) to land in the Gmail sidebar, and pricing-tier pressure as Streak monetizes AI credits more aggressively. A bring-your-own-key option is a plausible follow-on if customers push back on credit-based AI pricing.
Act! pivots from CRM-only to payment processor while modernizing its Cloud UX.
Act! is in the middle of a methodical Cloud modernization, rebuilding list views, navigation, and notifications to match the consistency users expect from modern CRMs. Alongside that polish work, Act! has just shipped Act! Payments via Propelr — turning the CRM into a place where credit card transactions close, not just leads. The product is still recognizably a small-business CRM, but its surface area is widening.
The release cadence shows two parallel tracks: weekly UX rationalization (notification center, list parity, faster task editing) and category expansion through embedded financial services. Act! is following the same playbook HubSpot and Pipedrive have run — keep the legacy users happy with quality-of-life work while quietly bolting on revenue-bearing features that compete with Stripe-adjacent SMB tools. Payments is the most directional move in years.
Expect deeper payments integration next — recurring billing tied to opportunities, dunning workflows from the contact record, and likely a payments-driven pricing tier that monetizes transaction volume rather than seats.
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