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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
8.1
Freshdesk enhances time management, efficiency, and ROI, proving cost-effective and impactful despite manageable maintenance requirements.
Sentiment score
6.9
Salesforce Marketing Cloud challenges ROI measurement yet enhances marketing, personalization, and efficiency, yielding satisfaction despite limited quantifiable returns.
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
7.3
Freshdesk support is responsive and helpful, but improvements are needed in technical issue handling and communication timeliness.
Sentiment score
6.6
Salesforce Marketing Cloud support varies by tier, with premium praised for responsiveness, while standard faces slower resolutions.
We have not needed to contact technical support, as Freshdesk has met our needs efficiently.
I would rate them a nine on a scale of one to ten, as their service meets our expectations.
Customer support could be improved, especially for new features.
Salesforce customer service is excellent.
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
7.8
Freshdesk is highly scalable, suitable for various team sizes, with some integration limitations noted by users.
Sentiment score
7.7
Salesforce Marketing Cloud efficiently scales with high ratings, offering robust integration and cloud advantages, despite potential costs for smaller businesses.
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.
On a scale of one to ten, I rate its scalability at 9.5.
When more branches are opened for a dealer, or when the vehicle manufacturing company implements the software nationwide, the application needs to handle many changes and business rules smoothly.
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
8.2
Freshdesk is generally stable with high reliability, though minor issues and rare outages occasionally require technical support.
Sentiment score
8.1
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is highly stable, reliable, and performs well, especially with large data, though Chrome is recommended.
I have never experienced any issues with stability, outages, or downtime.
The maximum downtime I faced was about two to three hours.
 

Room For Improvement

Freshdesk users seek interface enhancements, improved ticketing, integration, and support with better customization, documentation, and multi-language support.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud struggles with usability, pricing, security improvements, and seamless integration, needing better support and intuitive interfaces.
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.
More automation would be beneficial, as it could greatly improve our efficiency and reduce manual tasks.
The current integration is more complicated and doesn’t work as well.
It takes the default language and doesn't accept custom language specifications, which creates discomfort in certain scenarios.
There are inaccuracies in how AgentForce retrieves information or interprets data.
We cannot debug the AM Script or SSJS code, which makes code debugging manual.
 

Setup Cost

Freshdesk offers competitive pricing per agent, favorably compared to alternatives, with optional integration costs and negotiable deals.
Enterprise buyers consider Salesforce Marketing Cloud costly yet valuable for its comprehensive features and effective campaign management.
Our organization pays about 200,000 Indian rupees per year for the license.
The pricing is around $10,000 per annum per user.
 

Valuable Features

Freshdesk is favored for its customizable features, seamless integration, user-friendly interface, and efficient customer support management.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers automation, integrations, and analytics for personalized campaigns, CRM integration, and scalable solutions across industries.
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.
Some of the best features of Freshdesk include automation, user-friendly interface, and comprehensive support options that enhance our workflow.
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 automation features, including AI Copilot actions, enhance functionality by providing information via chatbots as a substitute for physical representatives.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (4th), Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (6th), Knowledge Management Software (4th)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
58
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 5.7%, up 4.4% compared to last year.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Social CRM, holds 12.6% mindshare, up 11.0% since last year.
Customer Experience Management
Social CRM
 

Featured Reviews

SujayRao - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers insights into team performance, with ready-made reports and GenAI features that assist in creating reports
Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs. Despite having third-party integration options, these features should be inherently available in the tool without additional expenses. Integration with social media and review platforms should be built-in.
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…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
39%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing 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?
I would like a better integration towards Azure DevOps. The current integration is more complicated and doesn’t work as well. There's not a really good one for Jira, which we are also using.
What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?
I mainly use Freshdesk as a support system for our customers.
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

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 Qualtrics, Salesforce, ServiceNow and others in Customer Experience Management. Updated: June 2025.
857,585 professionals have used our research since 2012.