Recommendations for hosting 1.5 million contacts

[laurie.collins]

I am looking for some advice.

I have a customer that is running ACT! Premium 2008.  They have 65K contacts in the database now.  And want to add a substantial amount of new contacts (250K).  They anticipate increasing to 1.5 million over the next year or so.

They have a server that has 8GB Ram, Dual Core 3.0 GHz

They are running on a 100mbps lan and have 6 to 8 simultaneous users.

Most of the desktops in their lan are 3 years old and have 2GB Ram or less.

Some of the users complain that the response is a bit slow now.

Questions:

What is the maximum contact limit for their version of Act!?

Will they have to upgrade to the latest version?

Their db is currently 708MB. I think the increase will take them over the 2GB sql express limit, what to do about that?

Do the specs of the client machines really matter much?

Would you recommend that I upgrade them to GIGABIT lan?

Is there such a thing as a "hosted" Act Service I could transition them to?

The would like to be able to send mass emails from act.  What will work best?  They are using OmniRush right now, but that program is dead.

[jonmklub]

There is no official limit as to the number of contacts, however, you may see some performance degradation with that many contacts. 

ACT does have an official Hosting Provider Program of which we are a member. Please contact me if you have questions.

[ghollister]

Hello Laurie,

I will try and shed some light on some of your questions:

What is the maximum contact limit for their version of Act!?

There is no record limit, but as Jon said you will experience a gradual slowdown due to the number of records in the contact table that ACT! will have to sift through.

Will they have to upgrade to the latest version?

That would be highly recommended, as ACT! 2011 uses the latest version of the SQL Server database engine

Their db is currently 708MB. I think the increase will take them over the 2GB sql express limit, what to do about that?

The limit for SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (which ACT! 2011 uses) is 10 GB

Do the specs of the client machines really matter much?

Yes..especially the RAM (at least 2GB recommended) and processor speed. Has more of an impact if they are running a local database.

Would you recommend that I upgrade them to GIGABIT lan?

It depends on the numer of concurrent users, the amount of data being passed through, and the load from other apps using the network

Is there such a thing as a "hosted" Act Service I could transition them to?

There are ACT! hosting providers (network and web). You can view them at http://www.act.com/Partners/Hosting-Providers

The would like to be able to send mass emails from act.  What will work best?  They are using OmniRush right now, but that program is dead.

ACT! 2011 is integrated with Swiftpage (requires subscription), an excellent e-marketing manager

If you find that your requirements exceed what ACT! can provide, then you may want to look at Sage's mid-level CRM system SageCRM.

[GLComputing]

I haven't seen a database of that size outside of a test environment.

More important than RAM (or as important) is the speed of the hard drive. For that size, either 15K RPM or SSD ... fast drives and lots of RAM

SQL 2008 Express can only use 1GB RAM and 1 processor... for that size, upgrading to SQL Standard would allow up to 64GB RAM and 4 processors.
For the specs on SQL 2008 editions, see: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/editions.aspx

BTW: Even ACT! 2008 used SQL 2005 and the Express version of it could handle 4GB, not 2GB

A lot really depends on how you want to use the data ... obviously not as a CRM (6-8 users won't be putting much personal info in that number of contacts)

Another issue is how many attachments you might have ... over 10,000 causes issues and there are some workarounds