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SAS Marketing Automation 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

Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Ranking in Marketing Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (2nd), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
SAS Marketing Automation
Ranking in Marketing Automation
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 21.4%, down from 23.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Marketing Automation is 1.5%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Napitch K - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration challenges impact workflow efficiency
The features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that I have found most valuable are the Journey Builder and Flow. These capabilities are valuable because they make managing automation easy. Automating customer journeys saves time when scheduling content through every channel, and we can set the automation in advance when planning marketing content. The AI-powered tools such as Salesforce Datorama and Einstein save time and have an impact on marketing strategy decisions for my customers. I have noticed a positive impact from Salesforce Marketing Cloud through customer feedback. For example, a customer mentioned after project completion that it had a significant impact on their marketing team by eliminating the need to hire additional staff for marketing content and planning.
Trini Olivan - PeerSpot reviewer
It's good at visualizing large amounts of data
You need to buy connectors to integrate Marketing Automation with various suppliers. For example, if I want to see the data through Power BI, I need a connector to see the data directly. Otherwise, you need to do everything manually. You have to download information from SAS and then save a text file, and then I can import it into Power BI. I would like Marketing Automation to have this native functionality without the need to pay more for connectors.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud are that it performs well and gives me what I need. It's the most friendly interface system for CRM I've worked with. Additionally, it integrates fairly well with different kinds of AI and ML to allow you to receive more out of your application."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to get quotes out in a timely manner."
"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."
"Offers many great features and is intuitive."
"The most valuable part of the solution are the selling features."
"You can schedule reports, there's a lot of supporting tools, and you have access to all that information."
"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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its automation. We can integrate data with the Salesforce hub. Its Einstein feature tells us whether our campaigns are on the right track. It also helps with ideas."
"SAP Marketing Automation is user-friendly. The interface is nice and clear. You can see the different diagrams and define various filters and targets. You can also export the customer information you collect to make the campaign. It's easy to understand how this information is entered. There are also a lot of platforms that show the results of campaigns. You can customize your data and define different reports, but SAS also provides a standard report."
"You can enable it for business users or marketing users to use it in a self-service way. So, the technical team is needed to build the features or processes, and then those processes can be used in a self-service way by your non-technical users."
 

Cons

"It should contain artificial intelligence, in my opinion."
"An additional feature needed would be better capacity for personalization."
"Marketing Cloud's forecasting could be improved."
"We need a development environment for Marketing Cloud. Currently, there is no development environment for this solution. Other Salesforce products, such as Sales and Service Cloud, have a development environment in which the developers can do some things and then post them in production. Currently, everything happens in the production for Marketing Cloud. There is only one environment, and the developers and the end-users have to work in the same environment, which seems to be challenging. If Salesforce can bring a developer environment for Marketing Cloud, it will be good."
"The product could use a little bit of BI in the sense of rule-based building."
"The customization of Salesforce, a generic CRM software, has room for improvement."
"I would like to see more ways to accomplish specific tasks."
"In the SMS area, it is not up to the mark, compared to what has been developed for email."
"You need to buy connectors to integrate Marketing Automation with various suppliers. For example, if I want to see the data through Power BI, I need a connector to see the data directly. Otherwise, you need to do everything manually. You have to download information from SAS and then save a text file, and then I can import it into Power BI. I would like Marketing Automation to have this native functionality without the need to pay more for connectors."
"The product is highly customizable, but the marketing and business teams want a lot of things to be built out of the box. A lot of features that could be out of the box aren't there. The main concern is to keep the system in such a way that it provides you with some out-of-the-box features and some customizable features as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"My company pays to use this solution."
"It is a license per user."
"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."
"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is affordable, considering the significant improvements it brings to our campaign results."
"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."
"I'm not aware of the full cost. The financials are not with me. In terms of additional costs, there are always OpEx and CapEx. That's one way to look at it. You also need separate hardware to deploy the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
An area of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that could be improved is the connectivity between Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud platforms. The issues with integration between different platforms arise bec...
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Also Known As

ExactTarget
SAS Campaign Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Express, Financial Conduct Authority, KPN, Merck KGaA, Peterborough City Council, The Chapar, ADP, Financial Times, Stanley Black & Decker, SureFlap, Western Union, Philips
Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Marketing Automation vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.