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Freshdesk vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.1
Freshdesk enhances customer service efficiency, offering ROI through streamlined operations and Salesforce integration, despite initial setup challenges.
Sentiment score
6.6
Users find positive ROI with Salesforce Marketing Cloud's enhanced marketing, despite challenges in direct measurement; automation and personalization aid satisfaction.
I have seen some return on investment with Salesforce Marketing Cloud through features such as reporting, automation, and Journey parts that save resources.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Freshdesk support is generally competent with a mix of responsiveness and challenges in complex issues and initial integrations.
Sentiment score
6.6
Salesforce Marketing Cloud's support varies by license, with responsive service but inconsistent performance and potential additional charges.
We have not needed to contact technical support, as Freshdesk has met our needs efficiently.
The first-time response should be within 30 seconds.
From my experience, once it is set up, we have never had problems.
Salesforce customer service is excellent.
When facing technical issues such as coding, they provide valuable suggestions for my developer team.
I have communicated with the technical support of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and would give them a rating of 9.5 since they have resolved my issues most of the time and are quite responsive.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Freshdesk excels in scalability and integration, with user ratings of 7-9, despite some noted integration limitations.
Sentiment score
7.7
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is scalable, ideal for large enterprises, integrating well but may be cost-prohibitive for smaller companies.
Additional features like email, WhatsApp, and SMS ticketing, along with Slack integration, can be enabled as required.
In our environment, which is a fairly small company in one country, Freshdesk is easy to scale.
The scalability of Salesforce is very good.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate its scalability at 9.5.
Not everyone can use Salesforce Marketing Cloud unless they have some exposure to the platform and understand how it works, which informed my scalability rating.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Freshdesk is stable with high user ratings, quickly resolving minor issues like data loss and occasional service glitches.
Sentiment score
8.1
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is highly stable and reliable, managing large data well, with users rating it 8-9 out of 10.
The goal is always to respond to customer tickets in a timely fashion, ensuring that customers feel seen and heard while also providing solutions.
After installation and continuous operation, I have encountered no problems.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is highly stable.
The maximum downtime I faced was about two to three hours.
 

Room For Improvement

Freshdesk users seek better customization, integration, automation, and functionality, while expressing concerns over support and limited features for small teams.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud needs improvements in error handling, UI, integrations, pricing, customization, documentation, performance, and feature accessibility.
Currently, some features like SMS or WhatsApp integration are only available to larger user groups, but even smaller teams should have access based on their specific needs.
The current integration is more complicated and doesn’t work as well.
More automation would be beneficial, as it could greatly improve our efficiency and reduce manual tasks.
It takes the default language and doesn't accept custom language specifications, which creates discomfort in certain scenarios.
We cannot debug the AM Script or SSJS code, which makes code debugging manual.
There are inaccuracies in how AgentForce retrieves information or interprets data.
 

Setup Cost

Freshdesk offers competitive and scalable pricing for enterprises, with costs primarily based on agent licensing and custom plans.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is expensive but valued by Fortune 500 companies for its comprehensive marketing capabilities despite cheaper alternatives.
Our organization pays about 200,000 Indian rupees per year for the license.
Pricing has always been handled by the company I work with, and even when I get in-house feedback, I have never had issues with pricing or complaints when compared to what others have outside.
The pricing is around $10,000 per annum per user.
 

Valuable Features

Freshdesk offers customizable solutions, omnichannel integration, robust automation, and insightful reporting, making it adaptable for diverse customer support needs.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud enhances engagement and efficiency with automation, integration, content management, analytics, and personalization across platforms.
The insights I gather have benefited my strategy by providing actionable data that informs our operations and decision-making.
These features are easy to use, and the filtering is really good, providing a good overview of active tickets and who's working on them.
The auto-assignment feature is particularly valuable as it alleviates the administrative task of manually checking for available engineers to assign tickets.
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.
The most valuable features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud include the timely alerts and notification systems, which greatly enhance communication not only with customers but also within dealerships.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrates with multiple systems seamlessly, enabling effective lead management.
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (4th), Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (6th), Knowledge Management Software (5th)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (2nd), Marketing Automation (1st), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Customer Relationship Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Freshdesk is designed for Customer Experience Management and holds a mindshare of 5.0%, up 4.8% compared to last year.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Social CRM, holds 11.9% mindshare, up 11.4% since last year.
Customer Experience Management
Social CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Bharanidharan K - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly interface but needs enhancement in ticket tracking and response times
There is no room for improvement in Freshdesk. We can set a time period for particular employees as something that could be better. For example, if some new employees are unfamiliar with Freshdesk, it should be more user-friendly. They need to give shortcut keys to use the ticketing portal. If some users don't know how to generate a ticket, providing them with a help desk or tutorial portal would be useful for the end-user.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Freshdesk?
Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.
What needs improvement with Freshdesk?
More automation would be beneficial, as it could greatly improve our efficiency and reduce manual tasks.
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
My primary use cases with Freshdesk involve help desk software as well as additional functionalities tailored to our operations. For the industry that I'm working in, Freshdesk is used primarily fo...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ExactTarget
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember
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 Salesforce, Qualtrics, ServiceNow and others in Customer Experience Management. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.