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Pardot vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Pardot
Ranking in Marketing Automation
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Pardot is 2.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 11.6%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud11.6%
Pardot2.7%
Other85.7%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Vikram Rawani - PeerSpot reviewer
Pardot Consultant at Target
Offers an easy initial setup phase and good ROI
With Pardot, users can do the segmentation based on their requirements. You can segment your prospects based on their interests, locations, companies, or the sales cycle. You can also use the engagement studio to create a journey for the people you have segmented with the help of automation feature of the tool. The aforementioned area consists of the most useful features I found in the tool apart from its out-of-the-box features. The integration between Pardot and Salesforce is beneficial if you know how to share the leads that a company finds useful so that they don't have to invest in manual work or do anything blindly to reach out to leads. Users can segment the leads using the features that the tool provides. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. If a business is into B2B marketing and can afford to purchase Pardot, then they should buy it. If the product of a company is good, then Pardot can help multiply such an organization's ROI. Based on the product and how the sales and marketing team works, the tool can be useful. In short, the tool can be as good as the person who is using it. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution can be easily integrated with Salesforce."
"For me, the best thing is the Custom Redirect. That's one key thing I like because using that particular Custom Redirect, I can track a link wherever I'm sharing it. I can track how and when people are accessing it."
"The solution is very fast, it's easy to create email templates and landing pages, and it is very good at score lists and sending signals to a salesperson for outreach purposes."
"The tracking and automation of outbound messaging is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"Pardot's most valuable feature is its B2B marketing capabilities."
"Our ROI is huge, not just in cost avoidance, but also in increased sales."
"It has made email marketing quicker and easier."
"The most valuable feature is the customization of the solution."
"If you want to be able to communicate with your client using email, WhatsApp, and push notifications, know if the client opened the communication or not, and create and automate their journey, Marketing Cloud is very good."
"The user interface is easy to use, especially for my staff who use assistive technology."
"Offers many great features and is intuitive."
"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."
"Allows organisations to engage customers with one integrated platform to unify sales, service, and marketing."
"The Journey Builder, which has been around for a while and follows the steps that customers use, is the greatest tool that Salesforce has."
"Marketing Cloud has improved our productivity and our team enjoy using it."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides an edge for my organization by tracking the budget, how it is spent, where we stand, and how many cold calls or nurtured calls have been converted into sales."
 

Cons

"Pardot needs many improvements in terms of email design and design studio functionalities."
"Lacks sufficient free custom fields."
"Pardot must be synced with Salesforce."
"The solution is quite expensive, at least, for smaller teams."
"Needs to improve list building."
"For new people, the installation of the tool can be difficult."
"The solution lacks integration with Instagram, which is our top problem with the product."
"​Technical support has been quick and helpful every time."
"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."
"Marketing Cloud should change the script language that it uses because it's not good. It's tricky and difficult to develop."
"They can perhaps simplify the dashboards. In my opinion as an end-user, reports could also be simplified, but it also depends on how your company is set up. It depends on how the processes are set up within your company natively. It is linked to the way you do business. So, it varies."
"The quality of support for this solution has been decreasing over time and the support team are sometimes more focused on closing tickets that resolving issues. Often the support team is not well trained or aware of the new features or products released by Salesforce."
"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
"We'd like to see more integrations with third-party products."
"The product could use a little bit of BI in the sense of rule-based building."
"The customization of Salesforce, a generic CRM software, has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution is expensive. However, you are going to receive good value for money. They could improve by reducing the price."
"​Make sure you do not pay for features that you may not need​."
"It is a competitively priced product, considering what it provides."
"In terms of pricing, Pardot is cheaper than Marketing Cloud."
"We pay about $4000 a month."
"It is a license per user."
"We have two types of licensing. We have a yearly license for end users and we have a concurrent login for selling."
"My company pays to use this solution."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a highly expensive solution, it needs to be less expensive. We are on an annual license to use the solution."
"The licensing cost for the solution is on a yearly basis."
"Salesforce is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pardot?
It has no limit for sending marketing emails.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pardot?
Pardot was somewhat costly for our requirements, nonetheless, the capacities of the item were limited.
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
ExactTarget
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Arketi Group
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 Pardot vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.