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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
4th
Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Social Media Analytics Software (1st)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Ranking in Social CRM
2nd
Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Automation (1st), Marketing Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Social CRM category, the mindshare of HootSuite is 7.7%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 5.9%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Social CRM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud5.9%
HootSuite7.7%
Other86.4%
Social CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Anish Bajracharya - PeerSpot reviewer
Postgraduate at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Efficient management of social media campaigns while noting pricing challenges
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. It makes life easier and somehow lowers stress, which is why I would recommend HootSuite It saves me…
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

"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."
"It has a social media presence outside of the hours people are able to devote to an organization."
"The main improvement HootSuite offers is allowing my organization to run social media campaigns."
"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. Overall the solution is very useful for business."
"Offers many great features and is intuitive."
"The solution is very, very scalable."
"You can schedule reports, there's a lot of supporting tools, and you have access to all that information."
"The AI-powered tools such as Salesforce Datorama and Einstein save time and have an impact on marketing strategy decisions for my customers."
"I like the user interface it has a nice look and feel."
"It makes it easy for a business to use any module based on their preference."
"If you want to be able to communicate with your client using email, WhatsApp, and push notifications, know if the client opened the communication or not, and create and automate their journey, Marketing Cloud is very good."
 

Cons

"Last I checked, you can't schedule Twitter threads where each tweet is a reply to a previous tweet."
"The company should reduce the pricing to make it easier for companies to deploy to larger social teams."
"There is a lot of room for improvement in Salesforce Marketing Cloud's dashboards and the visualization of information in each journey."
"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 have a better UI. Salesforce Marketing Cloud should consider making its solution more robust for error handling."
"The majority of my clients are happy, but when it comes to the CDP of Salesforce, the client gets confused. They have no clue that Salesforce has a CDP platform too. If my clients want to go ahead with the same vendor, Salesforce, they get confused about the different marketing suites which are available. There is no clear marketing done for the suites available for the clients, this is where the client is facing the real challenges."
"I've noticed on one-to-one leads, the customer objection option is not available."
"The performance is sometimes sluggish, but I think that's to be expected with a heavy CRM tool because they're running reports in real-time on the data that you have entered."
"We have struggled to get resolution of support tickets from the Salesforce team."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should provide some debugging facilities for every user."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​I have only used the free versions.​"
"Licensing fees are paid 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."
"The solution is paid for monthly."
"It's normal pricing."
"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"We did a yearly license. We negotiated and got a great deal. I don't think we would have gotten far with the regular price, but they negotiated, so it was worth that."
"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
11%
Retailer
11%
Media Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HootSuite?
HootSuite is very seamless. I'm sure there might be more functionality that HootSuite offers, but I've only used it for basic social media posting. I can't really think of anything to improve on.
What is your primary use case for HootSuite?
My main use case for HootSuite is scheduling social media posts across various social media platforms. In the past we've had campaigns for various things, but I use HootSuite because it's really ni...
What advice do you have for others considering HootSuite?
I don't use it for reporting; it's mainly for analytics. You're able to get a dashboard of analytics from posts. If you post on LinkedIn, Facebook, or X, you're able to see everything all in one sp...
What do you like most about Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Datorama is part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which is quite a valuable feature that provides customer analytics.
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?
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 ...
 

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: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.