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Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs SugarCRM Platform 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
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (3rd), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
SugarCRM Platform
Ranking in Marketing Automation
10th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (8th), CRM (25th), Sales Force Automation (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 11.6%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 1.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud11.6%
SugarCRM Platform1.9%
Other86.5%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1345677 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager / IT Planning & Architecture Services at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Easily customizable, automation enhances the marketing campaigns but support is the main hiccup for us
It has been effective in managing customer relationships. It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory. And there are centralized reports for the CEO and the general managers. We work with automation for these marketing and email campaigns. It sends out emails to prospective customers related to sales offers automatically. And it copies the sales team so that they can follow up. They are tracking the sales leads. So, the automation within SugarCRM enhances the marketing campaigns. For now, my work is done because I am the IT strategy and planning manager. I just try to deliver the solution according to the requirements of the business. From my side, it's implemented already, the requirement related to the sales funnel. But if they have any other requirement from the business side, they will submit it to me, and then I will look for a suitable solution.

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 the ease of use of the basic features."
"We haven't had any issues with integration."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the ability to sell the products we have made to customers, and overall the solution is very useful for business."
"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."
"We use Marketing Cloud for marketing campaigns and engaging customers, and it is a business-focused application for a specific area of business, which is acquiring customers."
"Offers many great features and is intuitive."
"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."
"Datorama is part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which is quite a valuable feature that provides customer analytics."
"Good, basic out-of-the-box solution, however, in my estimation not a long term play as the design flow and user interface make it a true chore to enter data."
"Affordable and commercial open source solution is good for organizations with budget constraints."
"The performance and stability are fine."
"Available source code, good documentation, training programs, and a relatively active community, provide the hallmarks for a successful open source effort."
"It works well with Jira. You can customize it to fit your needs."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost, and it works well."
"By default, it comes with a really good model where you can start working with it without having a lot of developers in your team."
"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
 

Cons

"A few of our clients found using Salesforce Marketing Cloud challenging after they upgraded, they were finding it difficult to just move to the newer version of Salesforce and they were complaining about the customer support because they did not help them out."
"Marketing Cloud's forecasting could be improved."
"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 UA could be better designed for a mobile connection."
"Customer support could be improved, especially for new features where I do not always receive proper solutions from the platform provider."
"Managing large volumes of data takes too long."
"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"Putting so many things into SugarCRM became a much-hated task, mainly because of the horrible UI."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"Pipelines, forecasts, and reporting in general, are not that good in the free version."
"At the moment, there is a complicated flow in regards to the user's permissions and what they can see."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"Functionality and features are well suited for small business companies only."
 

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."
"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."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."
"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
15%
Engineering Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

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 Sugar Enterprise?
All are almost the same pricing. Maybe the cheapest is Salesforce, I believe.
What needs improvement with Sugar Enterprise?
The only challenge was that we implemented it in our on-premise data center instead of using it in the cloud. That was a little bit of a challenge. But it was overcome with the help of SugarCRM com...
What advice do you have for others considering Sugar Enterprise?
To start with, SugarCRM is a very good platform. It's easy to implement and easily customizable. Might be later when you want to scale, then I would recommend Salesforce. Overall, I would rate it a...
 

Also Known As

ExactTarget
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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
Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. SugarCRM Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.