Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs Sprout Social comparison

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Read 17 Sprout Social reviews

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Sprout Social and Salesforce Marketing Cloud compete in social media management and digital marketing sectors. Data indicates Salesforce Marketing Cloud holds an edge due to its robust feature set, preferred by users seeking comprehensive marketing capabilities.

Features: Sprout Social focuses on social media management tools, analytics, and engagement tracking, offering an intuitive approach to enhancing brand presence. Salesforce Marketing Cloud features marketing automation tools including email marketing, journey builder, and advanced targeting options, presenting a versatile solution for detailed campaigns.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Sprout Social offers quick deployment and accessible support, ideal for businesses aiming for fast implementation. Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides comprehensive support but involves a more complex deployment process due to its extensive features.

Pricing and ROI: Sprout Social offers a lower initial investment and faster ROI, appealing to budget-conscious businesses. Salesforce Marketing Cloud requires a higher setup cost but delivers substantial returns through its comprehensive feature set, benefiting companies focused on long-term growth.

To learn more, read our detailed Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Sprout Social Report (Updated: September 2026).

Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Sprout Social

September 2026

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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 Social CRM

4th

Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Marketing Automation (1st), Marketing Management (1st)

Sprout Social

Ranking in Social CRM

2nd

Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Social Media Analytics Software (1st), AI Customer Experience Personalization (9th), AI Content Creation (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Social CRM category, the mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 5.9%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sprout Social is 8.0%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Social CRM Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Sprout Social	8.0%
Salesforce Marketing Cloud	5.9%
Other	86.1%

Social CRM

Featured Reviews

GauravSingh2

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.

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Mirella Karpiesiuk

Social Engagement Manager at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Centralized social channels have transformed daily engagement and reporting workflows

Regarding how Sprout Social can be improved, these are very minor areas. Sometimes we have this metric called action rate, which reflects how fast a message has been touched in Sprout Social, whether that is the message being tagged, responded to, or closed out. Apparently, we cannot get a 100% action rate because some responses come in that are auto-replied to, and that action rate misses that. I think this is one thing that can be improved: figuring out how to count those auto-responded messages. This is a niche area. Outside of that, I do not have much advice for improvements in Sprout Social; I truly think it is a hub of value and provides a lot for us. The user interface is great; it is super friendly. For someone who has never touched it before, I knew where everything was and maneuvered through it within a week of using it. The integrations are seamless with all of our social media accounts: Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and all of that. We can also export data and PDF files, which helps us with other projects. I see very minimal improvements needed on my end; I think it is a very valuable program that we use.

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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

"It is a great solution. I like its stability, scalability, and performance."

"The Salesforce ecosystem is more powerful than Siebel.Salesforce is fully integrated."

"The solution is user-friendly."

"The scalability of the solution is perfect."

"The solution has made it easier and faster in marketing, specifically around automation, and in the deployment of lists, we can get a lead and share it with marketing right away."

"I recommend Salesforce Marketing Cloud; it is easier to implement and cost-effective."

"I sincerely recommend the SFMC platform and advise you to hire a Solutions Architect to set it up."

"The ability to automate processes is one of the most valuable features of Salesforce, which sets it apart from other systems, and we use the journey builder to design a fully automated journey."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pros

"I have definitely seen a return on investment with Sprout Social, as it has led to time savings, improved efficiency, and financial returns since not everything had to be manually posted."

"Sprout Social has saved us a lot of time, provided the convenience of a single login to multiple socials, and requires less time for training, making it very easy to use and start using it."

"Sprout Social is the best; it is very good, actually, because I have used Intercom and Zendesk, but when I look at the different software I have used as a customer service agent, I would go for Sprout Social as it is more complete and easy to navigate."

"The only outcome I have seen in my workflow because of Sprout Social is the time, as the same thing if I do manually will cost me around maybe one day or two days, and using Sprout Social this time has shortened to maybe one hour or one and a half hour maximum."

"Sprout Social has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to streamline the scheduling of content, get ahead of everything so we can focus on the present, and pivot when necessary based on what is happening or not happening."

"Sprout Social has positively impacted the organizations that I have worked with by helping us to be more efficient and it was much easier to use rather than manually going into these social channels."

"My main use case for Sprout Social is enterprise-level social media management and analytics, and I use it for all my social media operations, from publishing, customer care, and social listening through one channel."

"The best features Sprout Social offers are the ability to post across all platforms from one place, the ability to review the performance of this post in one place, and also the ability to combine all the analytics from all these platforms into one report."

More Sprout Social pros

Cons

"The solution can have a better UI. Salesforce Marketing Cloud should consider making its solution more robust for error handling."

"Data protection and region specfic customization."

"When you use your iPhone or Android phone, Salesforce is not as user-friendly as it could be. That UX needs to be improved."

"The solution can be difficult to set up for non-technical individuals."

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is expensive; it can be more affordable, but it doesn't matter where we implement or use it for our organization since we are able to manage well so far."

"Marketing Cloud's forecasting could be improved."

"We'd like to see more integrations with third-party products."

"To improve user experience, there should be clear workflows to assist the user through the setup processes."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud cons

"My advice to others considering Sprout Social is that I believe it is a good platform to use temporarily for some clients, but it does not scale well for growth."

"There is a limitation for us with Sprout Social in publishing boosted content within LinkedIn, and we would appreciate that to be improved."

"Realistically, I find the pricing quite high."

"I know Sprout Social is expensive; it is on the higher side."

"Sprout Social can be improved because the user experience of having hundreds of channels to navigate can be quite fiddly, especially when trying to bulk post."

"If you do not already have existing solutions and you are using the platform to help schedule out marketing campaigns, it will not be that helpful."

"Maybe trying to figure out the reason why sometimes the engagement could be less when posted through Sprout Social rather than manually."

"Currently, in the pilots that I have done, I have not found it to be very highly accurate, so there is a felt need to get improvements in those areas."

More Sprout Social cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a license per user."

"The solution's pricing is very high and should be more flexible for smaller companies."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The solution is paid for monthly."

"Its licensing is on an annual basis. Customers are okay with its licensing cost, and they don't find it expensive."

"It's normal pricing."

"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."

"My company pays to use this solution."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Outsourcing Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	34

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	18

Questions from the Community

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sprout Social?

We do not mind the setup cost because the organization provides whatever we are asking for, and we are just working on it. We do not know much about pricing and setup costs as we have a separate te...

What needs improvement with Sprout Social?

I think enhanced AI features as well as APIs to talk to CRM programs would certainly make Sprout Social more efficient. Regarding Sprout Social's AI capabilities, I currently think they manage it w...

What is your primary use case for Sprout Social?

My main use case for Sprout Social is management of the social media channels at Harman, where we manage it for eight plus brands across key platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, an...

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Product Reports

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

August 2026

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Download Sprout Social product report

August 2026

Also Known As

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Overview

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers robust tools for content management, customer engagement, and multi-channel campaigns, enhancing personalization and communication with insightful analytics.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrates CRM functions, supporting automation and scalability while providing real-time notifications. It enables effective marketing campaigns through features like Content Builder and Journey Builder. Its AI-powered tools streamline data management and enhance productivity, though improvements in interfaces, third-party integrations, and development environments are needed. Companies benefit from email marketing capabilities and leverage the platform for lead generation and sales management.

What are the key features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Content Builder: Streamlines content management for effective campaigns.
Advertising Studio: Engages customers across multiple platforms.
Journey Builder: Manages multi-channel marketing campaigns with ease.
Automation and Integration: Supports CRM functions, enhancing personalization and analytics.

What benefits or ROI should be considered in evaluations?

Ease of Use: User-friendly interface improves marketing efficiency.
Scalability: Adapts to growing marketing needs of companies.
Real-Time Notifications: Keeps users informed for timely actions.
AI-Powered Tools: Enhances productivity and strategy optimization.

Industries implement Salesforce Marketing Cloud for diverse applications such as email marketing, campaign management, and customer engagement, leveraging CRM capabilities for enhanced sales strategies. Organizations use it for integrating advertising, direct communication, and automation, targeting improved customer interactions and increased outreach.

Salesforce

Sprout Social provides social media management solutions with strengths in scheduling, analytics, and audience insights, assisting businesses in refining strategies.

Known for its intuitive interface and unified platform, Sprout Social supports efficient management across networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It facilitates campaign coordination, communication centralization, and derives insightful reports on audience interactions. The platform’s social listening aids in tracking mentions and engaging with followers. Despite acclaim for its features, challenges include high pricing and a learning curve due to feature complexity. Feedback calls for improved data customization, image support, and third-party integrations.

What are the key features of Sprout Social?

Post Scheduling: Efficiently plan and automate posts across multiple accounts.
Smart Inbox: Centralizes messages from all social networks for streamlined communication.
Advanced Analytics: Offers comprehensive insights into audience engagement and performance metrics.
Social Listening: Monitors brand mentions for improved interaction and responsiveness.
Content Planning: Supports structured scheduling and publication to maintain brand consistency.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Time-Saving: Features like bulk scheduling enhance productivity and efficiency.
Audience Engagement: Detailed analytics help improve strategies and increase interaction rates.
Campaign Coordination: Centralized communication simplifies cross-platform management.
Brand Consistency: Ensures uniform messaging and adherence to brand guidelines.

In healthcare, there is a need for more tailored tools and templates. The industry seeks enhancements in analytics, scheduling, and integration capabilities. Non-marketing teams require simplified access to analytics and smoother integration with a broad range of social networks, including TikTok.

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

Hyatt, Stanford University, Coldwell Banker, Razorfish, UPS, Box, Zipcar, PepsiCo, YogurtLand, Dove, TechSmith