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Act-On Software vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Act-On Software
Ranking in Marketing Automation
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Ranking in Marketing Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (4th), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Act-On Software is 1.8%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 11.1%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud11.1%
Act-On Software1.8%
Other87.1%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

it_user82449 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Systems Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
The adaptive nurturing, segmentation, multiple lead scoring rules, and simple CRM integration stood out the most.
The CRM integration with Act-On is better with Salesforce and had more value for sales representatives than it did with Microsoft Dynamics CRM; that was MS CRM's downfall. Act-On Anywhere is a nice feature for general users, but the tracking in CRM is lost, and Marketing team subject lines do not carry over on the email templates.
GauravSingh2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Targeted email journeys have boosted campaign insight and now need better data access and support
I feel that Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be improved in how the data views are accessed; it would be better to have something more physical. With data extensions, you can view them directly, but for data views, it is very difficult as you can only send it out or load it into data extensions. Improvements can also be made in the connections to different external tools such as Azure or AWS. Customer support can be improved in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as sometimes it is not clear what the issue is or how to approach solving it, and it also takes time to resolve issues.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Our organization was operating blindfolded before implementing Act-On."
"Act-On has an outstanding customer support team and they escalate issues to their technical teams before the frustration level."
"It is now much easier for us to send and segment emails, analyze our results and make smarter decisions."
"Act-On is simple to use and it makes campaign development a breeze."
"Before I joined, my company used a larger, more expensive but more popular software, and after switching to this, my team can still do everything it needs to for cheaper."
"We use this solution for reporting, pipeline generation, and forecasting."
"The feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that has had the largest impact on improving my campaign outcomes is the recent WhatsApp integration, which allows Salesforce to connect with subscribers through different channels such as SMS, email, or WhatsApp."
"Its licensing is on an annual basis, and customers are okay with its licensing cost, and they don't find it expensive."
"I like the user interface it has a nice look and feel."
"The scalability of the solution is perfect."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud has helped the organization by having centralized management capabilities."
"Datorama is part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which is quite a valuable feature that provides customer analytics."
"The solution is completely scalable, the sky really is the limit, and if a company needs to expand it, it can do so as much as it wants."
 

Cons

"The CRM integration with Act-On is better with Salesforce and had more value for sales representatives than it did with Microsoft Dynamics CRM; that was MS CRM's downfall."
"One area of improvement would be ability to use dynamic content fields. It is available, but not to the fullest extent where it would help me."
"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
"The dashboards should be more intuitive, as there are far too many items on them. You're not always sure what you're looking for."
"I think it's not easy and it's expensive."
"We need a development environment for Marketing Cloud. Currently, there is no development environment for this solution."
"I've noticed on one-to-one leads, the customer objection option is not available."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud could improve by having more graphical options because a lot of tables are now only numbers and percentages and data. I prefer graphs, lines, and pie charts. I know there are ways to receive this from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It doesn't play a huge role in my daily work to invest the time to figure it out. I feel that it would be time wasted. They could make the graphical options easier to find and use in the future."
"The product could use a little bit of BI in the sense of rule-based building."
"The general setup and understanding of how to use it can be improved. There should be easier self-service for setting up dashboards. Currently, we have someone setting them up for us. I wish it was easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We have two types of licensing. We have a yearly license for end users and we have a concurrent login for selling."
"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Salesforce is an expensive solution."
"The solution is paid for monthly."
"The licensing cost for the solution is on a yearly basis."
"It's not cheap, which is why I recommend that you use Marketing Cloud to create automated journeys. If you plan to use Marketing Cloud just to send emails, use another tool."
"I don't know if my company pays for Salesforce Marketing Cloud monthly or yearly. It's a SaaS, so it's a recurring cost, but I have no information on its price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
I did not work on any pricing or implementation aspects but learned on my own when dealing with Revenue Cloud products.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Regarding areas for improvement, the realization of value from Salesforce Einstein's predictive AI features is a notable challenge. Although the implementation partner highlighted these capabilitie...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
As a consultant, I partner with organizations to optimize their use of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). My engagement often begins pre-implementation, where I lead the requirements gathering proc...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ExactTarget
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NYU, Tableau, Xerox, ASPCA, Lego Education, Hoopla, Avery Dennison and SolarWorld.
American Express, Financial Conduct Authority, KPN, Merck KGaA, Peterborough City Council, The Chapar, ADP, Financial Times, Stanley Black & Decker, SureFlap, Western Union, Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about Act-On Software vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.