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SAS Marketing Automation vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

 

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

Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Ranking in Marketing Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (2nd), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
SAS Marketing Automation
Ranking in Marketing Automation
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 20.6%, down from 23.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Marketing Automation is 1.5%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud20.6%
SAS Marketing Automation1.5%
Other77.9%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Trini Olivan - PeerSpot reviewer
It's good at visualizing large amounts of data
You need to buy connectors to integrate Marketing Automation with various suppliers. For example, if I want to see the data through Power BI, I need a connector to see the data directly. Otherwise, you need to do everything manually. You have to download information from SAS and then save a text file, and then I can import it into Power BI. I would like Marketing Automation to have this native functionality without the need to pay more for connectors.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I think the product's best feature is its analytics, as that's where customers derive value. The second thing is its ease of implementation."
"It is easy to send emails and SMS's."
"The most valuable of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is seeing the customer's journey."
"This is a very powerful and scalable solution."
"Salesforce is constantly evolving and have a good release cycle."
"The tool is flexible and helps us with insights and reports. Salesforce Marketing Cloud has improved our organizational functions by creating an environment where clients and internal staff can access information about various solutions. For instance, clients can apply for different projects, and internal staff can approve them based on donor requirements. This simplifies communication between clients, donors, and our company,"
"Salesforce allows for the integration of different data sources."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud are the ease of use of the basic features."
"SAP Marketing Automation is user-friendly. The interface is nice and clear. You can see the different diagrams and define various filters and targets. You can also export the customer information you collect to make the campaign. It's easy to understand how this information is entered. There are also a lot of platforms that show the results of campaigns. You can customize your data and define different reports, but SAS also provides a standard report."
"You can enable it for business users or marketing users to use it in a self-service way. So, the technical team is needed to build the features or processes, and then those processes can be used in a self-service way by your non-technical users."
 

Cons

"The data extension tools are not very user-friendly."
"User management could be better."
"We have struggled to get resolution of support tickets from the Salesforce team."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should provide some debugging facilities for every user."
"It's a very good solution, but the way the prices are structured is not always good, and I feel like that is a problem."
"In a future release it would be great to have the ability to connect the data from social media and email marketing and have it in one dashboard."
"Customer support could be improved, especially for new features where I do not always receive proper solutions from the platform provider."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should be linked to an email ID, so the features after 15 days can update on the opportunity. You should not have to update them manually to the next step."
"You need to buy connectors to integrate Marketing Automation with various suppliers. For example, if I want to see the data through Power BI, I need a connector to see the data directly. Otherwise, you need to do everything manually. You have to download information from SAS and then save a text file, and then I can import it into Power BI. I would like Marketing Automation to have this native functionality without the need to pay more for connectors."
"The product is highly customizable, but the marketing and business teams want a lot of things to be built out of the box. A lot of features that could be out of the box aren't there. The main concern is to keep the system in such a way that it provides you with some out-of-the-box features and some customizable features as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know if my company pays for Salesforce Marketing Cloud monthly or yearly. It's a SaaS, so it's a recurring cost, but I have no information on its price."
"Salesforce is an expensive solution."
"We did a yearly license. We negotiated and got a great deal. I don't think we would have gotten far with the regular price, but they negotiated, so it was worth that."
"It's normal pricing."
"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."
"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."
"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."
"I'm not aware of the full cost. The financials are not with me. In terms of additional costs, there are always OpEx and CapEx. That's one way to look at it. You also need separate hardware to deploy the product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise28
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

ExactTarget
SAS Campaign Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Express, Financial Conduct Authority, KPN, Merck KGaA, Peterborough City Council, The Chapar, ADP, Financial Times, Stanley Black & Decker, SureFlap, Western Union, Philips
Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Marketing Automation vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,483 professionals have used our research since 2012.