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Marketo vs SugarCRM Platform comparison

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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

Marketo
Ranking in Marketing Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Management (7th)
SugarCRM Platform
Ranking in Marketing Automation
16th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (11th), CRM (29th), Sales Force Automation (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Marketo is 8.0%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 2.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Marketo8.0%
SugarCRM Platform2.0%
Other90.0%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Anika Gaur - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Digital Solutions Analyst at Rich Products
Effective lead management and useability with room for reporting improvements
Customer support could be more helpful. The reporting could be better, with more engaging reports and the ability to collaborate more objects, like opportunities. Incorporating AI features similar to tools like HubSpot and Salesforce account engagement would be beneficial. Additionally, Marketo should work on automating tools and updating the product since it looks similar to how it did five years ago.
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 feature of this solution is Smart Campaigns."
"This is the best marketing automation solution out there, for the ease of use, the amazing metrics, the integration to SFDC, and the price."
"I like that the solution is flexible."
"Great ease of use creation for campaigns."
"I like that Marketo is user-friendly and has an easy view. It's like a one-stop solution for everyone. It is very good, and you can categorize leads in different ways. You can also create your custom objects and enjoy good connectivity."
"It is a very user-friendly solution. I'm mainly working on Design Studio, which is useful for companies in tracking repeat users. The progressive proofing is also useful. It is not available in other solutions."
"Marketo is excellent in terms of hands-on usability and lead database management."
"It's pretty good at handling customization and templates. We can put in different variables, so even someone without coding knowledge can create and develop emails that look good on different browsers."
"Affordable and commercial open source solution is good for organizations with budget constraints."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
"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."
"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 feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"The performance and stability are fine."
 

Cons

"Changing a campaign in progress (i.e. changing the wait period between emails) is unnecessarily complicated."
"One limitation is the user limit. For bigger organizations with large audience sizes exceeding, let's say, 500k, the solution may not be as efficient as larger enterprise platforms like Salesforce or Oracle Eloqua. However, Marketo is one of the best platforms for mid-scale and small-scale organisations."
"I had an issue while integrating JavaScript with forms. When you embed JavaScript, you can either embed it in a landing page or some other self-contained management system like WordPress. Currently, it provides you access to CSS, where you can customize your form design, but there is no option for JavaScript modification for a particular form. This area needs to be improved where you can integrate JavaScript, and it has the JavaScript functions for that particular form. There are a lot of other areas of improvement. In the design area, they can give us more testing options instead of relying on email testing alone. It would be great if they can provide responsive testing where email clients can be tested within Marketo. It would be also helpful if they can implement some in-built options for users or forms for blocking a generic email ID such as Yahoo or Gmail. Similarly, it would be helpful to have JavaScript features and forms as well as the option to add Google analytics and a header and footer for the landing pages."
"Adobe, the parent company, needs to improve on getting more information published to allow users to educate themselves on how to use the solution."
"Pricing. It is NOT cheap, given the functionality of the product. Feels like I could be paying less."
"Revenue management, attribution, and ABM can all be improved."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Wish it had a better user interface"
"Putting so many things into SugarCRM became a much-hated task, mainly because of the horrible UI."
"Functionality and features are well suited for small business companies only."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"Sugar Enterprise could improve by removing bugs and glitches. For example, a comment was made but in the comment section, it was never displayed. However, the problems we faced might not be the fault of the solution."
"While it is already user-friendly, a slight enhancement in UI design, especially in terms of color combinations, could make the platform more visually appealing and comfortable to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The initial pricing was excellent, but the pricing for renewals is not as good."
"It is expensive. We have a yearly license."
"Marketo is too expensive for a small-sized company but more affordable for a larger-sized company."
"The solution is expensive compared to others."
"Marketo is used a lot because it's cheaper and preferred by many firms."
"Marketo's pricing depends on the number of contacts and the level of features you need. Compared to other platforms like Oracle Eloqua and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo is generally more affordable. Like other platforms, it offers different packages based on your needs."
"I'm not sure about the cost because I don't get into this aspect. Clients normally take care of that. I only know that it is costly, and I don't think there are any additional costs to the licensing."
"The licensing cost usually depends on the users."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Engineering Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Marketo?
The user interface could be improved. I would like to see an updated UI for 2025.
What is your primary use case for Marketo?
As a seasoned Marketo Expert with a decade of experience and a deep understanding of Adobe's ecosystem, I can confidently say that the primary use case for Marketo lies in empowering businesses wit...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Marketo?
The solution is cheaper than Alacor. That said, I do not know the exact price.
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Marketo has a customer base of thousands of companies, including Sony, Citrix, BrightTALK, Curves International, HootSuite, Hyundai, SanDisk, and Samsung Electronics.
Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor
Find out what your peers are saying about Marketo vs. SugarCRM Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.