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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
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Marketing Management (5th)
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 (27th), Sales Force Automation (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Marketo is 7.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Marketo7.9%
SugarCRM Platform2.1%
Other90.0%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2391396 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer - Technology at a marketing services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Useful features, produces excellent results, with an easy setup
Some modern Marketo features could be improved. I'm quite good with the filters, and in the admin section, I can build it with many more third parties. This allows me to integrate some additional printers. Issues could be fixed rather than relying on third-party sources. While Marketo lacks a particular feature for calculating formulas, it could be integrated to allow easy calculation on forms. Right now, it only supports a single range of numbers. This feature might already be a default filter in the future. Marketo's lead scoring impacts the sales process, so improvements are possible. In the marketplace, I track campaigns and certificates, however, filter additions are needed. Having some calculated formulas in a default format would enhance functionality. Marketo filters are not very efficient, and timely updates or features could improve this aspect.
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

"One feature I like is the user interface. Compared to other tools I've used, it's much more friendly and easy to navigate. Additionally, it offers a wide range of features, which makes tasks like segmenting data much simpler."
"This solution gives me a qualified lead, it will drive your sales even faster."
"Overall - I am very pleased with Marketo for email automation and lead management."
"With the scoring and how we deploy it, we have a greater integration between Marketo and Salesforce, which allows our sales team to focus on people we believe are ready for conversations, rather than everyone they had to talk to before."
"We have a better alignment of sales and marketing."
"I like that the solution is flexible."
"The most valuable features are the Marketo emails, both sending and tracking."
"The product has been stable and scalable, the custom support is great, it's easy to set up campaigns, events, and objects, there are a lot of custom solutions from Marketo, it can be integrated well in various ways, and everything can be found in the solution."
"It works well with Jira. You can customize it to fit your needs."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
"Affordable and commercial open source solution is good for organizations with budget constraints."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost, and it works well."
"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
 

Cons

"Our experience with the renewal process has been frustrating. Marketo bakes a substantial price increase into each contract which has required renegotiation every year."
"Marketo should give more power to the users for data manipulation."
"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."
"Pricing. It is NOT cheap, given the functionality of the product. Feels like I could be paying less."
"Marketo is still very slow."
"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."
"Takes time to setup and manage."
"Segmentation in Marketo is limited to a maximum of 20 segments. Depending on the company's specific needs, these segments can be based on various attributes such as company, industry, or other values. Sometimes, there's a lag when sending data from Marketo to any CRM. It can take around five to fifteen minutes for the report to sync."
"Functionality and features are well suited for small business companies only."
"Putting so many things into SugarCRM became a much-hated task, mainly because of the horrible UI."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"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."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"Pipelines, forecasts, and reporting in general, are not that good in the free version."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. We have a yearly license."
"The licensing cost usually depends on the users."
"The initial pricing was excellent, but the pricing for renewals is not as good."
"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."
"Marketo is used a lot because it's cheaper and preferred by many firms."
"The pricing is not cheap, but it's not that expensive either."
"Marketo is too expensive for a small-sized company but more affordable for a larger-sized company."
"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."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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...
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: November 2026.
921,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.