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Pardot 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

Pardot
Ranking in Marketing Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Ranking in Marketing Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (2nd), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Pardot is 3.4%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 21.2%, down from 24.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Vikram Rawani - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers an easy initial setup phase and good ROI
With Pardot, users can do the segmentation based on their requirements. You can segment your prospects based on their interests, locations, companies, or the sales cycle. You can also use the engagement studio to create a journey for the people you have segmented with the help of automation feature of the tool. The aforementioned area consists of the most useful features I found in the tool apart from its out-of-the-box features. The integration between Pardot and Salesforce is beneficial if you know how to share the leads that a company finds useful so that they don't have to invest in manual work or do anything blindly to reach out to leads. Users can segment the leads using the features that the tool provides. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. If a business is into B2B marketing and can afford to purchase Pardot, then they should buy it. If the product of a company is good, then Pardot can help multiply such an organization's ROI. Based on the product and how the sales and marketing team works, the tool can be useful. In short, the tool can be as good as the person who is using it. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
ADAIR WATHIER - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tracking and automation of outbound messaging is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Pardot directly integrates with CRM, specifically Salesforce, which has an excellent R&D team."
"It has made email marketing quicker and easier."
"It's easy to create email templates and landing pages."
"Campaign tracking is a valuable feature."
"The solution can be easily integrated with Salesforce."
"The product is stable."
"The most valuable feature is the customization of the solution."
"The Journey and CloudPages and automation are all great."
"Marketing Cloud offers a 360 customers experience as it integrates with Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, the CRM portion of Salesforce. The different platforms integrate easily which makes it easy to manage customer communication using a single point of truth."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud are the ease of use of the basic features."
"The solution is very, very scalable."
"Email automation is most valuable."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrates with multiple systems seamlessly, enabling effective lead management."
"Overall, I would rate Salesforce Marketing Cloud a nine out of 10."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution lacks integration with Instagram, which is our top problem with the product."
"For new people, the installation of the tool can be difficult."
"Pardot must be synced with Salesforce."
"Needs to improve list building."
"When it comes to integration with third-party tools, Pardot's APIs are not that robust."
"Pardot needs many improvements in terms of email design and design studio functionalities."
"The solution is quite expensive, at least, for smaller teams."
"The user interface could be made more intuitive and user-friendly."
"In the SMS area, it is not up to the mark, compared to what has been developed for email."
"It should contain artificial intelligence, in my opinion."
"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
"The customization of Salesforce, a generic CRM software, has room for improvement."
"We have struggled to get resolution of support tickets from the Salesforce team."
"There is a lot of room for improvement in Salesforce Marketing Cloud's dashboards and the visualization of information in each journey."
"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."
"Technical support is good but could be faster, maybe more knowledgeable, and more customer friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Make sure you do not pay for features that you may not need​."
"The price of this solution is expensive. However, you are going to receive good value for money. They could improve by reducing the price."
"We pay about $4000 a month."
"In terms of pricing, Pardot is cheaper than Marketing Cloud."
"It is a competitively priced product, considering what it provides."
"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 Marketing Cloud is affordable, considering the significant improvements it brings to our campaign results."
"The price is expensive."
"Salesforce is an expensive solution."
"The licensing cost for the solution is on a yearly basis."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"My company pays to use this solution."
"We have two types of licensing. We have a yearly license for end users and we have a concurrent login for selling."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
42%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pardot?
It has no limit for sending marketing emails.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pardot?
Pardot was somewhat costly for our requirements, nonetheless, the capacities of the item were limited.
What needs improvement with Pardot?
Pardot needs many improvements in terms of email design and design studio functionalities. It lacks a robust design studio, limiting our ability to perform various design activities efficiently. Yo...
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?
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ExactTarget
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Arketi Group
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 Pardot vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.