Intercom Customer Communications Platform vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

Intercom and Salesforce are both solutions in the Social CRM category. Intercom is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.5, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6. Intercom holds a 2.9% mindshare in SC, compared to Salesforce’s 12.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Intercom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Intercom Customer Communica...

Read 2 Intercom Customer Communications Platform reviews

98 Views
37 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Read 58 Salesforce Marketing Cloud reviews

260 Views
176 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Intercom Customer Communica...

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Intercom Customer Communications Platform are competing solutions in customer engagement and communication. Intercom gains an advantage with its comprehensive features, offering significant value for price despite Salesforce's favorable pricing and support reputation.

Features: Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers robust automation, extensive integration capabilities, and is ideal for large-scale operations. Intercom focuses on conversational interactions, with tools enhancing personalized engagement and innovative messaging and chat-based solutions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Intercom provides a straightforward deployment model with accessible support for agile implementations. Salesforce, while offering comprehensive educational resources, presents a more complex setup process.

Pricing and ROI: Salesforce Marketing Cloud features higher setup costs but promises substantial ROI for larger enterprises. Intercom, with a flexible pricing model, often delivers quicker ROI by streamlining communication processes, highlighting Salesforce's appeal to large organizations and Intercom's value in cost-efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Social CRM Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Social CRM

June 2025

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Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

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

Intercom Customer Communica...

Ranking in Social CRM

6th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (10th), CRM (25th)

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Ranking in Social CRM

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Marketing Automation (1st), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Social CRM category, the mindshare of Intercom Customer Communications Platform is 2.9%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 12.6%, up from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Social CRM

Featured Reviews

Kumar Abhishek Anand

Director at Revivo Technologies

Customer support has improved significantly with seamless chat integration for quick resolutions

The feature we appreciate most about the Intercom Customer Communications Platform is the messenger functionality. We are able to integrate it into our application and provide support to customers directly through our application. The messenger works efficiently, allowing users to have conversations without entering their details repeatedly. There is conversation history available for each customer interaction, and they can access the help section within the chat itself. The Finn AI agent handles conversations both in chat and WhatsApp, which is particularly beneficial. Regarding automation tools, we have enabled the AI agent to answer customer queries instantly, reducing the need for constant staff presence. The AI agent quickly responds to customers and summarizes their issues, informing us when it cannot resolve a problem independently.

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ADAIR WATHIER

Team Manager at Banco do Brasil S.A.

Provides efficient data integration features and good technical support services

Our primary use cases for the product include website personalization and email campaign evaluation The platform has significantly expedited our campaign implementation process and provided centralized control over operations. The platform's most valuable features include ease of implementation…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The live chat is pretty good because you can create a macro, which is a predefined input we can give customers."

"The feature we appreciate most about the Intercom Customer Communications Platform is the messenger functionality, allowing users to have conversations without entering their details repeatedly."

"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."

"Marketing Cloud has improved our productivity and our team enjoy using it."

"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."

"The most valuable of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is seeing the customer's journey."

"It is easy to send emails and SMS's."

"The user interface is easy to use, especially for my staff who use assistive technology."

"I think the product's best feature is its analytics, as that's where customers derive value. The second thing is its ease of implementation."

"We use Marketing Cloud for marketing campaigns and engaging customers. It is a business-focused application for a specific area of business, which is acquiring customers."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pros

Cons

"Sometimes, the solution lags and takes time to update something."

"It would be beneficial if there was a way to train the AI to better understand customer language."

"I would like to see more ways to accomplish specific tasks."

"They could improve the product's data integration functionality for larger companies."

"The encryption and decryption have room for improvement."

"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."

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should be linked to an email ID, so the features after 15 days can update on the opportunity. You should not have to update them manually to the next step."

"The product could use a little bit of BI in the sense of rule-based building."

"The main action I want to do in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is to export data into Excel and use it. My company may have that feature locked down, or if the Excel data exporting function still isn't available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, that's the feature I want."

"I've noticed on one-to-one leads, the customer objection option is not available."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."

"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."

"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."

"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."

"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."

"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Educational Organization

28%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Intercom Customer Communications Platform?

The live chat is pretty good because you can create a macro, which is a predefined input we can give customers.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Intercom Customer Communications Platform?

For the Intercom Customer Communications Platform, we are updating our knowledge base to help the AI read more proactively. It would be beneficial if there was a way to train the AI to better under...

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What is your primary use case for Intercom Customer Communications Platform?

When asked about AI tools and AI coding tools, we were using ChatGPT until recently. We switched to GitHub Copilot, which we have integrated into our IDE for software development purposes. Regardin...

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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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

In terms of improvements, it would be beneficial to enhance the Copilot actions. The issue lies with the internal language setup. It takes the default language and doesn't accept custom language sp...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

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CRM Customer Engagement Centers

June 2025

Intercom Customer Communications Platform report

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Buyer's Guide

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

June 2025

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Also Known As

Intercom

ExactTarget

Overview

Intercom Customer Communications Platform enhances interactions by offering robust tools designed to streamline customer engagement and support, effectively catering to modern business communication needs.

Providing a comprehensive approach to customer interaction, Intercom facilitates seamless conversation management through its adaptable suite of messaging, logistical, and analytical features. Frequently utilized for customer support and marketing, its flexibility and user-friendly design encourage efficient communication. While offering valuable insights through analytics, some users note areas for improvement in customizability and pricing models, pointing towards a potential enhancement in fine-tuning its cost-effectiveness and adaptability to diverse business strategies.

What are the standout features of Intercom?

Live Chat: Immediate customer support through real-time messaging.
Automated Bot: Streamlines inquiries by handling routine questions.
Integration Capabilities: Connects seamlessly with third-party tools.
Inbox Management: Organizes conversations for efficient response.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Faster resolutions lead to happier clients.
Improved Team Efficiency: Automation reduces manual workload.
Actionable Analytics: Data-driven insights optimize strategies.
Scalable Solutions: Adapts to growing business demands.

Industries such as e-commerce, SaaS, and tech-driven businesses often implement Intercom for its ability to provide personalized customer journeys. Its messaging platform excels in maintaining customer relationships and resolving issues quickly, which is crucial in these fast-paced sectors.

Intercom

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive marketing automation platform that enables businesses to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

With its robust set of tools and features, marketers can easily manage and automate their email marketing, social media advertising, mobile messaging, and customer journey mapping.

The platform offers advanced segmentation capabilities, allowing marketers to segment their audience based on various criteria and deliver tailored messages to each segment.

Additionally, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides powerful analytics and reporting features, enabling marketers to track the performance of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

With its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with other Salesforce products, Marketing Cloud offers a seamless and efficient marketing automation solution for businesses of all sizes.

Salesforce

Sample Customers

Expensift, Moz, Invision, Salesforce, Droplr, Vend, BugHerd, Ghost, Put.io, Codeship

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 Sprinklr, Salesforce, Qualtrics and others in Social CRM. Updated: June 2025.

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