--- title: "Actionstep Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Actionstep. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Actionstep is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/actionstep-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Law Practice Management Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/legal/law-practice-management-comparison/) / [Actionstep](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/actionstep-profile/) / Actionstep Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/actionstep-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/actionstep-profile/alternatives/) # Actionstep User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.2/5 - Total reviews: 135 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 3.9/5 - Customer support: 3.9/5 - Value for money: 3.9/5 - Functionality: 4.1/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 68 reviews (50%) - 4 stars: 45 reviews (33%) - 3 stars: 13 reviews (10%) - 2 stars: 4 reviews (3%) - 1 star: 5 reviews (4%) ### Most mentioned pros - I have been a computer user since around 1986/87 and I find that I can work with Actionstep quite well overall, with a rider that every such system can be improved and have downsides. - I like the workflows option - The system has built in workflows, which I appreciate, and it grows with my firm. ### Most mentioned cons - My biggest frustration is that we created a webform so with a couple clicks, staff can create a new potential client matter using that information as it integrates into the software. - Now, they do not have single use licence anymore (a very big downside for persons like me who are planning to have a single user licence). - The cost for customisation is expensive through third parties, it has terrible integration regarding document storage, and we were not satisfied with its functionality regarding trust. ## Actionstep customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 135 (page 1). ### Stick with it - it's amazing - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Daniel Danny R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: July 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review. Overall, it has been fantastic. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] was incredibly helpful, easy going, and keen to answer my questions. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] also incredibly knowledgeable and honest in his suggestions, I think he was one of the main reasons I decided to proceed with Actionstep - and I am very happy with that decision. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The features and functionality built in to Actionstep are amazing. This is a company that actually understands legal practice and legal software. I am impressed that Actionstep offer features that should be standard in every legal software, but aren't always included. #### Cons It does take some time to get used to it and to actually make it work for you. The key is to actually spend time using it and customising it to your needs. This isn't a plug and play solution out of the box, and firms will need to take time to make sure that they have configured it to meet their needs. #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep Pricing was much more accessible, the contracts did not lock the firm in for a long period of time, and it offered the features and functionality I needed without the hassle. #### Vendor response Thank you Daniel. Fantastic to hear you are making the most of the functionality built into actionstep - we pride ourselves on being an All-In-One solution. If you have any questions - please don't hesitate to contact our support team on support@actionstep.com or in our in-app chat. Replied July 2020 --- ### Mostly Good - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Mike D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It's been a good program for getting my legal practice up and running. As it has grown, I feel like their help department hasn't. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Actionstep is a blank slate that provides plenty of customisation when setting up a law practice, including templates and trust accounting. #### Cons The interface with Outlook is slightly clunky, which is a big con given how much email is used in today's day and age. #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep I moved from Actionstep to Smokeball because I found Smokeball superior. --- ### Upsides: File Management Downsides: Software Bugs, Customer Service, Integrations, and Set-up Costs - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Peter H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: March 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Unfortunately, the customer service is not up to par of that of our previous software, expect to receive a response from their support team 24-48 hours after you have contacted them. They have never answered the phone when I've called for immediate support, so I've stop trying this and just email even though i feel like for the amount we are paying we should be receiving quicker support. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros We like the matter dashboard a lot and it's probably the firms favorite feature since all the most important information is readily available. #### Cons INTEGRATIONS: If you're looking to switch to AS because of the integrations they offer make sure they actually work exactly how you intend them to. Lawpay: If you use lawpay their integration is useless since it only grabs new charges and does not include any past due amounts. I brought this up because we really wanted this to function, but we were told they would not fix the issue. InfoTrack - One of the reasons we switched to AS and they don't actually integrate in US, even though their website states they do... Outlook - The bottom bar of the desktop version may not bill the correct amount. I asked for this to be fixed since it's easier to use this bar than the right bar they have, but it's been over 9 months... BILLING: If you close your billing at the end of the month be prepared to manually enter Trust payments to allocate the funds on the closing date and not for the next billing cycle, since the automated billing will automatically post these payments on the date you are running them, not on the date which you wish will be allocated. Another feature I have brought up, but essentially fell on deaf ears. If you work with probate matters where you don't bill your time, so you input a $0 amount, and you have matters that weren't worked on for the month, you cannot filter out between the two, so you'll end up printing bills for all matters. This is something i asked to have fixed in July 2021 and have yet to hear back regarding a fix (3/3/22) #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep The our previous Client management software had a very poorly built practice management system, but had a really robust billing system #### Vendor response Hi Peter, Thank you for your feedback. I have passed this on to our product team. I have also passed on your details to our Customer Success Manager who will reach out to you to find solutions for these pain points. Thanks, Matt Replied June 2022 --- ### Excellent CRM for lawyers! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Lisa D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, this is a terrific product worth purchasing! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros We loved the ability to craft work flows based upon our specific practice. But we also had the flexibility to obtain pre-set work flows as well. The client management and task automation is incredibly helpful. #### Cons My biggest frustration is that we created a webform so with a couple clicks, staff can create a new potential client matter using that information as it integrates into the software. However, 90% of the webforms are spam that has to be read every day because bots are completing the form. Have not seen a remedy for this because AS just refers us to our own IT but we have filters and the bots are coming in through AS system. This is a huge issue I've spent so much time on and it is the one issue that would make our work lives so much better if it could be remedied. #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep There were several other products I do not recall because it was 10 years ago; some were not as flexible to create workflows we wanted. Others were not as intuitive in use and we liked the ability to add potential contacts through webforms right into the system. When we are retained, tin with a few clicks transformed into an active client matter. --- ### Lots of Customization options, but lacking some basic common sense - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Carol W. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Mixed. A number of positive features, but also a number of time consuming and expensive issues to set it up and keep going, and almost "TOO" much for our needs, since it is missing some simple features. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros For a small law office, there is a lot of potential to customize the matter setup and use different workflows. Also as a supervisor there is complete transparency so I see everything my support staff is doing, I like that the system does a complete backup of saved documents and matters. The Home page is very workable. And the timekeeping functions are good. I also really like the Microsoft Outook integration, even if I keep having to reboot it. #### Cons First, something simple. Make an "out of office" message available through the email system. When I set this up on my outlook, then even though it is integrated, if the client sends an email directly through the Actionstep platform,they do not receive that out of office message. Second, the billing system is not user-friendly. First, the billing templates are a lot harder to set up than they should be, even with the pre-made templates. Second, the trust accounting is difficult to integrate into the bills. Yes, it is there but not in a way that is client friendly. Third, this is so simple I fail to understand why it isnt in place. Make some simple billing features automatic like the ability to print aging on a bill. They have a form for it but it just looks weird! And why shouldn't you just be able to carry over onto a new bill in an easy way. Other case management software has this in a very easy format. Also, when we upgraded to the new billing format there are some ongoing and permanent glitches that make my bookeeper's job harder. Finally, this is a costly system compared to some others in the legal field. And we have received word that the cost is increasing. We will be in the process of reviewing other options. We may decide to stick with Actionstep since there are a lot of good features, but we don't feel strongly enough to keep it with a price increase down the road, even if we are "grandfathered" temporarily. We hired a consultant to help us get it set up. #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep Case supervision and backup, ability to customize workflow. #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep Mycase was lacking some oversight issues (Attorney could not see what the paralegal was doing unless copied) and did not back up documents. I think the oversight issues have now been fixed. #### Vendor response Carol - thanks for taking the time to write the review. We really appreciate your positive comments about Actionstep - particularly regarding transparency and Microsoft Office Integration. You have a number of suggestions which I am going to take to our product development team - hearing feedback like this is really helpful for us in planning out future product development work. We will be in touch with you directly to discuss these further. Thanks again. Replied July 2019 --- ### Actionstep still the best but not yet perfect - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Brahm D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2020 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall, I've been very happy with Actionstep. I get the most satisfaction when I get a new client and need to create a document that I have set up document assembly for, and am able to generate in seconds a document that would have taken an hour or more to create manually. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Document assembly tools are the most powerful of the many cloud based law practice management systems I have looked at. CLIO's document assembly comes close, but not quite as powerful. It is also the most customizable cloud based law practice management system I have tested. #### Cons Options for integration with accounting and invoicing software is fairly limited. Learning curve is a bit steeper than other cloud based systems. They seem to have heard these concern and over the past four years that I've been using Actionstep, and their development team has making progress on these two fronts. They aren't perfect yet, but they seem to be continually improving. #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep Document Automation was the key feature for me and narrowed the field down to CLIO and Actionstep. On this front, Actionstep is slightly more powerful than CLIO because of the calculated field type, which allows you to use PHP scripts to calculate values for use in your document automation. For example, I created a field that calculates the latest business day that is at least 90 calendar days before trial, which I can use to auto-generate a letter to expert witnesses telling them the deadline that we will need their expert report completed by. All of those calendar calculations are represented in my document template by a simple custom merge field, [[90days_b4_trial]], which keeps the document template quite readable. #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep I switched from CLIO to Actionstep because CLIO didn't have a good calendar tickling system to keep track of deadlines under the court rules of BC, Canada. CLIO had systems for tracking court rule deadlines in the USA, but despite being developed in Vancouver, Canada, they don't have a tickler system for their own hometown, and no good way of creating your own tickler system. #### Vendor response Hi Brahm, Thank you so much for your fantastic review. Its great to hear you are saving hours using our Document Automation functionality! Should you ever have any questions or would like to learn how how to get even more out of Actionstep, please do not hesitate to contact our customer success or support teams Thanks Replied October 2021 --- ### Workflows Good! But Search, Integration with other software, and Document Generation need work. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Dan K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We are happy with the workflows. We like that we are able to access our client data from anywhere with internet. We are disappointed in our ability to utilize all the data we have stored because of the terrible document and data search functions, limited document generation abilities and difficulty importing or exporting data to other software we use for drafting and client contact. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Workflows, workflows, workflows. They help us keep our law office on track and help us keep deadlines and make sure we do not miss a step in complicated transactions. We like that Actionstep seems to be trying to improve the product. #### Cons Search is terrible! Searching for documents is useless. Searching for contacts by employer/place of work is impossible. These are basic things a law office needs to do, and this software is a hindrance to getting work done because of its awful search capabilities. Also, the fact that you can only see so many results on a page is maddening. Imagine that you want to search your contacts and get a list of contacts that live in a certain city. You want to select them all and send an email or something. NOPE! Search results are limited to 200, no matter how many contacts you have from that city, and you can only see 10 per page, and the results are not sortable; they come in random order. Also, there is no way to select them all and take any action like sednding them all an email within the program. Copy and paste of contact info is also impossible. I have many opportunities during a week to send one person the contact info for another person. Actionstep has no way for me to easily do this. There is no button to click, function to use or work-around for selecting a contact and getting that contact's info onto the clipboard for pasting into a document or email. You can bring up the contact and drag your mouse over various places on the contact form to copy the address, then do it again for the name, then do it again for the email address, then do it again for the phone number, then do it again for the fax number. But be careful not to *click on the(I ran out of space on this form) #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep Workflows #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep Needed an online solution (as opposed to a local server-based solution) #### Vendor response Hi Dan, Thank you for your feedback - great to hear that workflows are empowering your firm. I have passed on your feedback to our product team who will reach out directly if they need more detail. Should you have any other specific requests or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email support@actionstep.com so our product team can assess them in light of upcoming development. Thanks Matt Replied June 2022 --- ### Powerful and flexible practice management - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Nigel M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review. I have used the product extensively over the last 5 years and would happily recommend it as a platform for legal practice management #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I have used the product in a number of different law firms and have been involved in the setup for those firms. It is easy to use and easy to adapt to your own requirements #### Cons I have no adverse comments as I have not found any aspect of the software to fall short of what is needed #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep Cost and ability to make the system fit most law practice processes #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep Lexis Affinity was extremely expensive and had little flexibility when it came to template document creation and general flexibility #### Vendor response Hi Nigel, Thank you for your response - Great to hear you have seen the benefit of our software across multiple firms. Should you have any feedback on the product, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our team. Thanks Replied April 2022 --- ### Catastrophic customer service and lack of common sense - too bad, it's a promising software - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Damien H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: September 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Given these problems, we are preparing our exit. It is an economic disaster for us (losses in implementation and losses on invoicing). #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Powerful and easily editable workflow engine. Really. Mass billing features. Customizable fields. Extremely powerful templating. #### Cons Bugs in invoicing and accounting made me lose a lot of money. Despite corrections, some invoices do not appear at the customer level and we work in files with open balances. It's very stressful, too. Money flows are case centred, not customer centred. This is highly problematic (retainers go on a case and not on the client, so you have to open X tabs for X cases opened in this client to make sure you are not going to send an invoice to a client who has provisioned you...). User acceptance is difficult. It is complicated to require changes in workflows and field fills (this is not the responsibility of Actionstep, but don't think it will run by itself. You will need to coach your employees). Customer service is catastrophic. I screamed for help when the system started to double-deduct (!) the retainers. It took 4 months to get a solution. In the meantime, I have continued to lose a lot of money. I have doubts about their financial strength, since six months after I started using the software, I received a notice of license increase. When I asked for some help to switch to a cheaper license, I was told that it would not be possible to keep my data (!!!!). #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep Workflow features and templating. #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep We wanted rock-solid invoicing and accounting features. #### Vendor response Hi Damien, Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback, and I'm very sorry you haven't had a great experience. To address your feedback; we have expanded our support team and our support processes. We now have in-app chat direct to our team to help troubleshoot any issues that arise. Additionally - we have made numerous improvement to simplify our software. Thank you again for your response Replied January 2020 --- ### Mostly good with some things which can be improved. - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Himanshu Jasvantray T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I have been a computer user since around 1986/87 and I find that I can work with Actionstep quite well overall, with a rider that every such system can be improved and have downsides. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It is easy to use and very helpful as it can be accessed from anywhere as such where internet connection is available. #### Cons 1. Now, they do not have single use licence anymore (a very big downside for persons like me who are planning to have a single user licence). 2. The creation of templates process can be easier and user-friendly. 3. The law-firms have Individuals and Companies as clients and also Family Trusts, Partnership Firms etc. and there are only two options - for individuals and for companies. which is limiting. Many things can be improved proactively. --- ### Very Detailed and Customizable CRM - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Holly P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Accounting - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: April 2025 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I am a new user but so far I have used it to mange my client base and it is more than what I need. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros In depth features and options. I like the workflows option #### Cons Quite intensive user set up is needed in order to maximize the potential --- ### Buyer beware - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Rebecca V. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2024 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered POOR. I actually liked the system the Support and costs have sent me actively searching the replacement. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I liked the systems capabilities. The concepts are perfect and functionality outstanding, IF YOU HAVE AN IT DEGREE AND 1000hrs to set it up. #### Cons VERY POOR SUPPORT. Their Business model -- purchase the product, they give you 15 hrs free education, then once that is used up you get charged exorbitant fees or referred to their affiliates, one that I was referred to had no idea and the templates were multi coloured font colours, then referred to another who was an "owner" of Actionstep... once I identified their business model ... signing everyone up, limited contact support, and the assistance you get is so generic, that eventually forces you to sign up to the outsiders that are actually insiders. DEPLORABLE ethics and business model in my mind. POOR XERO AND ACTIONSTEP integration SUPPORT and SYSTEM FLOWS WERE NEVER EXPLAINED #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep I had used Actionstep as a user prior. The firm I worked for had an admin person doing data entry, however had also purchased external help and hours that cost well over 10k. --- ### Great Features with Not So Great Service - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Jennifer H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: July 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall it's been a decent system. There is room for improvement, but ultimately it does give you a lot of customization for a better price than a lot of cloud based services out there. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros You can customize it according to your needs, including custom reports and exports. It's easy to use on a daily basis and has an attractive platform that is well organized. It has it's own document storage, so you don't have to use two different programs/services to get it to work (such as box or another doc storage service) It does conflict checks and syncs with e-mail so you can assign e-mails as you send/receive them to the matter they are relevant to. #### Cons The customer support is terrible. Response time has been poor. When there is a response, it typically is, refer to the on-line manual. My spouse is an IT person, so I'm fairly computer program savvy. So I don't contact tech support unless I've gone through everything in the manual and tried everything I can think of first. When that is met with "look at the manual" it's beyond frustrating. Once we get past that, it usually doesn't take them long to get the issue resolved or walk me through what needs to be done to achieve the goal. Also, in order to use the macros letters/documents where information auto-populates from your case into the letter or document, you pretty much have to be a computer programmer to get that to work. #### Vendor response Jennifer, thanks for your feedback. [Updated Aug 2020] - Over the last year, we have focused on improving our support teams response rate & the quality of their responses. We now see upwards of 90% positive feedback after customers have dealt with our team and strive to improve that even further. We apologize you had a poor experience with our team. If there is anything we can do to help you get the most from Actionstep, please do not hesitate to contact our team. Replied August 2020 --- ### Actionstep review - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: charmaine c. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I was frustrated at the start but online help was reasonable but not as good as live Technical Trainers #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 3/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros It is easy to navigate once you know what it can do and it is inexpensive to purchase and maintain, especially if you have a small firm. #### Cons The billing module could be easier and a live visit from technician would have bee wonderful at the start instead of having to learn everything online which took forever. #### Reasons for switching to Actionstep Cost mainly and Comparto was not in the cloud at that time --- ### Huge increase fees this year - Other than that, a great product - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Alison R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Was such a standout performer for a small firm. Loved all the functionality but the recent increase in costs is disappointing. I recommended this product to other firms and spoke so highly of this software. Their target customer/client may have changed. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Very user friendly and suited my firm perfectly. The time recording and accounting were great to use. There were always improvements, most didn't relate to my firm's needs but so good to see. Loved the product. #### Cons The recent increase in fees. It appears that this will not be viable to small firms. An increase in fees is always expected by not by 300-400% in the one year. Customer service has gone downhill with its growth which appears common in software companies. --- ### We regret using Actionstep - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Spencer W. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered We started using Actionstep in 2019 but we quickly realised that it was not suitable for small law firms. The only real attraction for using Actionstep was it used to be cheap but that is no longer the case. We moved software in late 2021 but left a single licence to access historical records. The cost for customisation is expensive through third parties, it has terrible integration regarding document storage, and we were not satisfied with its functionality regarding trust. It was an inferior product and it took less than two years to make the jump to something better. The cost of licences has increased from the cheapest software on the market to one of the most expensive with the necessary integration to make it almost useable. I can't see what type of law firm they could be targeting. It seems entirely unsuitable for any level of law firm. Although we would have been forced to something better with our growth, the only one benefit they had was low cost, and whilst that might still seem partly true, the functionality requires costly integration and it ends up more expensive. I would not recommend this product, and regret the hassle of using it temporarily and having to change to a different provider. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### Pros It used to be cheap, but that is no longer really the case. #### Cons Terrible/the worst document management. Limited trust accounting capabilities. Increasing cost. Cost of integration and customisation. Customer service issues. --- ### Need big improvement in billing system!!! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Arthur L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I used Actionstep in my previous company and it seems pretty good. However, after increasing the price, actionstep has not improved a lot and the billing system is still not work very good. At the beginning I have asked for Actionstep partner for help. But they did not come back - so I set up the actionstep by myself. It seems some of the function cannot be fully utilised. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 2/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros the display of the program is good and some of the support team is quite responsive #### Cons The invoice system is terrible as it is not able to add it back to the matter. Further, the invoice system does not accept other currency billing method - this must be changed asap. Other CRM can amend the invoice on the matter file - not like actionstep need to download and upload the documents manually - that's ridiculous #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep my previous exp. #### Vendor response Hi Arthur Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback, and we very sorry you haven't had a great experience. We have made significant upgrades to our billing since this review and hope you have had the opportunity to try them. Additionally, we have recently released our Lawpay add-on which should help amend some of the issues raised here. Addressing your questions around implementation, our support team is available to answer any queries you may have to make the most of our software - support@actionstep.com Thanks Replied January 2020 --- ### Finicky platform - arbitratry and unpredictable pricing - Overall rating: 3/5 - Reviewer: Max G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Terrible. Would not recommend. Looking for alternative providers now. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 2/5 #### Pros Decent practice management software, but terrible pricing structure. Have changed pricing drastically in the last couple of years and just introduced new access fee component which drastically increased cost of subscription #### Cons See above notes on costs. Do not recommend. --- ### Worst support - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Benard C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Easy to use, intuitive, and in many ways better than Leap #### Cons It has the worst customer service. No one responds and when they do, they don't get the problem and you have to explain yourself again and again. I hate their service. I hate their support. There's no phones number anywhere to contact them. I have an urgent issue and they don't care. --- ### Welcome addition for UK law firms - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Charles D. - Product usage: Used unspecified for unspecified - Reviewed: March 2015 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered We moved to ActionStep from a well-known cloud-based practice management system about a year ago. Although we are a small firm, the reality is that even small law firms have their share of admin and the need to demonstrate good procedures. We found that the other systems aimed at small law firms were certainly simple, but were too short on functionality. The biggest improvement for us was finally moving to a system which had a fully integrated accounts system. We also noticed big improvements when it came to extracting and reporting on data. ActionStep includes a very full set of features which would cater for much bigger organisations. This does mean that the initial set-up requires some thought and we'd recommend having a consultant guide you through the steps. It is possible to take things a step at a time, and the level of effort and complexity is proportionate the the benefits of the system. Our previous system was possible to use pretty much out-of-the-box, but we fairly quickly found that it didn't have the sophistication to do some fairly basic things. The workflow capabilities are a sound way to ensure that we adhere properly to procedures such as conflict searches, setting up new clients and new matters. By leading a user through the steps, there's no need to rely on the users having to remember to follow a policy document. Our office manual was over 100 pages long, but many of the requirements are now built into ActionStep. The trick is not to over-engineer this. You want a workflow which supports your work, not one which requires all the stars to line up before you can successfully start a new project. ActionStep is a new entrant to the UK market, with an HQ in New Zealand and operations in the US. There is now a local UK presence and we've also found that the NZ team are very adaptable to handling requests from the UK. Our consultant managed to be chirpy on the phone even when I knew we were calling in the very early hours of her morning. We've seen several significant new features rolled out during our use, so we're pleased with the ongoing investment in improvements. The latest time recording system has proved very popular in our office. There are a few features which the accounting system doesn't handle compared to our previous system (such as automatically posting VAT returns to HMRC) but the gaps have proved very minor compared to the gains from having the accounts system fully integrated with matter management. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 --- ### Effective and Efficient Law Practice Management - Overall rating: 4.5/5 - Reviewer: Scott M. - Industry: Law Practice - Product usage: Used unspecified for less than 6 months - Reviewed: August 2016 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I now have an almost complete solution to practice management. Before, I had no system, no way of keeping things straight. But then I started to become too busy to keep track of things in my mind, and it started getting chaotic. That's where Actionstep has saved my practice from disorganization. I track all of my time and do all of my billing from Actionstep. I keep my entire database of contacts on Actionstep. Trust ledger accounting is great. Tasks, calendar reminders, document storage, file notes. It's all great. When a client calls, I quickly pull up their file and *bam*, there's everything. There are many other useful features that I know I just haven't even tapped into yet. #### Cons - There is a pretty steep learning curve, and the user guides aren't always that helpful. Sometimes I find myself spending 20 minutes trying to figure out a very simple thing, like how to reopen a matter that I accidentally closed. - Before using Actionstep, I kept everything on Google Drive. Great, Actionstep integrates Google Drive. But not as well as I would like it to be integrated. I had to do a series of workarounds with Google Drive to get it *sort of* how I would like it to be. When you open a new matter, Actionstep creates a folder on Google Drive, but the folder is only the matter number. So if you're typing a document and want to use File > Save As > Google Drive, then good luck finding the folder. Instead every time I open a matter on Actionstep, I immediately find the folder it creates on Google Drive, then rename it to my matter name. - I would like a place to track mileage for business expense reimbursement. You can add things like this to matter disbursements, but I don't see a way to do it practice-wide. - I haven't gotten the Google email integration to work properly. Actionstep puts odd things in the subject lines of my outgoing email, so I stick to using Google's platform for that. - Document upload sometimes hangs when you try to do more than a couple files at once, but I'm not really using it because I'm keeping everything on Google Drive. --- ### Do not use Actionstpe if you are a smll firm and looking to focus on conveyancing. - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Christopher C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: August 2020 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I’m sure this software would be beneficial for a large (100 people +) firm who wants a customisable program. However, if you are a small operated and do not have unlimited resosres, you may want to steer clear of this software. I wish I did. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### Pros The fact that it is 100% web and cloud based. #### Cons The lack of cohesion between :- 1. Actionstep (ie the software provider), -2. the separate company which implements the installation and maintenance; and - 3. The 3rd party add on providers (ie the conveyancing add on is done by a company called Konekta) is problematic and horrendous to navigate. This software is full of issues and there is no accountability by anyone. When issues arise, my experience was that each of the 3 before mentioned parties blame each other and then come up with excuses. There are no workable precedents in my field (conveyancing – I also pay $49 for the add on). I found errors in the documents and some documents are out of date (by a number of years - and versions). Very embarrassing and potentially dangerous. #### Reasons for choosing Actionstep In all seriousness, It was a mistake to choose Actionstep. So the reason is not relevant. #### Vendor response Hi Christopher, Thank you for your feedback. It is a shame to hear that your implementation didn't allow you to get the most from Actionstep. We are working with your implementation partner & the 3rd party provider you mentioned to ensure this does not happen again. I have requested our Customer Success team to reach out & assist you in any way possible. Should you have any other questions please do not hesitate to contact our team at support@actionstep.com Thanks Matt Replied October 2020 --- ### Florida Hurricane Adjusters - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: John P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Insurance - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We are very please with the results and organization this program gives us!!!! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Very customizable!!!! This gives us everything we need to sort through as many files as we give it! We can sort via very specific criteria! #### Cons Although we are the kind of people that put a lot of time into things we want exactly the way we want them, we don't believe too many others are willing to put in the time to learn this program to customize it to their liking. The people that do put in the time will be greatly rewarded. This is the best program for Law Firms and Public Adjusters. #### Vendor response John - thank you for your really positive comments about Actionstep. We are delighted you have customized the system to the way you want it to work for Florida Hurricane Adjusters. One of the things we believe in at Actionstep is supporting unique and valuable ways of working! Replied July 2019 --- ### Feature Packed but missing a few key components - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Richard K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Law Practice - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Working with Actionstep has been great, but I am in the process of switching to another application due to the availability of integrations I am looking for. I would have no hesitation going back to Actionstep in the future. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros This is by far the best of the mainstream programs for document assembly. The tasked based orientation of the program is great once set up. Support has always been helpful and knowledgeable. Very easy to customize. Strong reporting. #### Cons While having a strong feature set, I feel the software is missing a few key integrations. The software really needs to integrate with LawPay, OneDrive and Quickbooks(I believe these were all under development, but not available when I last checked). #### Vendor response Richard, thanks for the positive comments. Great to hear you are embracing the customisation options available within Actionstep. Just by way of update: We now integrate with the applications you mentioned. LawPay, Quickbooks and now have one of the most comprehensive Outlook 365 integrations avaiable. Replied August 2020 --- ### This product does everything that we were hoping for! - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Jinny S. - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: August 2017 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I think I trialed almost all of the major case management software companies out there and this company blew all of the others out of the water for me. The product is reliable and does exactly what we need. Before we purchased this product I had to do most of my work manually and things would slip through the cracks. This product has resolved that issue. I also love the document generation feature and how deeply the product integrates with Microsoft Office Suite. Not having to type each document from scratch saves so much time! I personally enjoy how highly customizable the product is. I'm constantly pleasantly surprised to find new features it has that make my life easier. Some may complain that you need a third party firm to get you off of the ground and running, but I set up the entire system for my team by just reading their User Guide and talking to customer support. The price was another selling point for us. We're a local county government agency operating on a small budget so this price tag works well within what we could afford. The customer support is phenomenal. They try very hard to make their customers (or potential customers) very happy. Having our cases in a secure cloud means that we can work from anywhere which has greatly improved the way that we work. I would definitely recommend this product to anyone who is looking to get away from paper files and who wants to learn how technology can make your life easier and more organized. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/accounting/actionstep-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Actionstep Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice