No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

HootSuite vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

HootSuite
Ranking in Social CRM
2nd
Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Social Media Analytics Software (2nd)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Ranking in Social CRM
4th
Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Automation (1st), Marketing Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Social CRM category, the mindshare of HootSuite is 10.3%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 6.1%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Social CRM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HootSuite10.3%
Salesforce Marketing Cloud6.1%
Other83.6%
Social CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Calin Balaita - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer at Wärtsilä
Consistent scheduling has amplified our global branding and simplified weekly content sharing
HootSuite does a good job at what it does, and I didn't have any issues with it. If I had to think about one thing that could make my experience even better, the interface on the iOS version could be a bit smoother and things could be more visible, but other than that, it works fine.
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

"HootSuite has positively impacted my organization by making it easy for us to post our socials without having to add staff."
"The best features HootSuite offers in my experience are the pipeline and the order status."
"HootSuite has positively impacted my organization by offering the possibility to connect everything in one platform, all the social channels, import the assets, and create the copies."
"If you are into social media marketing or any other digital media, then you should have knowledge of HootSuite because it is the industry standard that has been helping industry professionals."
"HootSuite has positively impacted my organization by helping us manage our content in a central location rather than having everything scattered everywhere."
"One of the best things about HootSuite is their clear UX design that is easy to navigate around the platform, and also to see the social media calendar of the clients, so we can see on which channel which post is going when and how the posts look."
"Hootsuite feels like an all-in-one tool; I can publish content on Hootsuite and then answer comments, which is what I do for my customers."
"HootSuite has an AI engine to suggest trending topics related to our business. The engine works really well and comes up with excellent suggestions for more posts."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the ability to sell the products we have made to customers, and overall the solution is very useful for business."
"The notification system for customer alerts, including the integration of various communication channels such as email, SMS, and mobile push, is excellent."
"I like the user interface it has a nice look and feel."
"It is straightforward to set up."
"The Salesforce ecosystem is more powerful than Siebel.Salesforce is fully integrated."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud's integrations are seamless since it is a native application. It helps us with B2B and B2C send-outs and can handle large columns."
"Datorama is part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which is quite a valuable feature that provides customer analytics."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the reporting engine. Reports are very good and easy to build."
 

Cons

"Before choosing HootSuite, I evaluated the sales team, which is acceptable, but I need the legal team, the finance team, and integration about the pipeline, which is not very good."
"Sometimes the suggestions or the content suggestions that the OwlyWriter AI gives are not up to the mark that we want."
"If I had to think about one thing that could make my experience even better, the interface on the iOS version could be a bit smoother and things could be more visible, but other than that, it works fine."
"I think HootSuite can be improved with a better user interface."
"However, sometimes the admin dashboard and the backend panel can be a bit slow and clunky, so it could improve in terms of speed and managing its load."
"Last I checked, you can't schedule Twitter threads where each tweet is a reply to a previous tweet."
"Bulk scheduling."
"There are a few issues with it being somewhat glitchy and the timeline not showing up consistently as of recently, but overall, it is a great product."
"The cost is always a concern for anyone using a SaaS product."
"The encryption and decryption have room for improvement."
"The solution can have a better UI. Salesforce Marketing Cloud should consider making its solution more robust for error handling."
"Query Studio in Salesforce Marketing Cloud needs to be improved because not all queries are supported and we cannot debug the AM Script or SSJS code, which makes code debugging manual."
"The solution can be difficult to set up for non-technical individuals."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should provide some debugging facilities for every user."
"Improvements can be made in the processing speed, how information displays, and options for scrolling."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​I have only used the free versions.​"
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Its licensing is on an annual basis. Customers are okay with its licensing cost, and they don't find it expensive."
"It is a license per user."
"The solution's pricing is very high and should be more flexible for smaller companies."
"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."
"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."
"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."
"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Social CRM solutions are best for your needs.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
20%
Outsourcing Company
10%
University
9%
Media Company
8%
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 Business14
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HootSuite?
In terms of branding and brand mentions, it would be useful if we could use multiple sources to pull data from, which would be more helpful. Reporting would be somewhat more helpful if we were able...
What is your primary use case for HootSuite?
My main use case for HootSuite is scheduling social media posts and managing all our social and content calendars in a central location. We mainly use HootSuite to schedule our posts by bulk produc...
What advice do you have for others considering HootSuite?
HootSuite serves the purpose of what it is designed for. However, sometimes the admin dashboard and the backend panel can be a bit slow and clunky, so it could improve in terms of speed and managin...
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

Vega, TicketLeap, Radio Italia, The PureMatter Agency, Kiva, The Vancouver Canucks
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 HootSuite vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.