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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
7.4
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (2nd), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
SAS Marketing Automation
Ranking in Marketing Automation
17th
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 June 2025, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 22.0%, down from 24.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Marketing Automation is 1.7%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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…
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

"The solution is very, very scalable."
"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,"
"The tool's most valuable feature is its automation. We can integrate data with the Salesforce hub. Its Einstein feature tells us whether our campaigns are on the right track. It also helps with ideas."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the reporting engine. Reports are very good and easy to build."
"The ability to automate processes is one of the most valuable features of Salesforce. This sets it part from other systems. We use the journey builder to design a fully automated journey."
"Overall, I would rate Salesforce Marketing Cloud a nine out of 10."
"We use this solution for reporting, pipeline generation, and forecasting."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the seamless conversion of lead to opportunity, in relation to orders is good. That seamless connection is beneficial and simple."
"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 cost is always a concern for anyone using a SaaS product."
"An additional feature needed would be better capacity for personalization."
"User management could be better."
"In terms of improvements, it would be beneficial to enhance the Copilot actions. The issue lies with the internal language setup."
"The majority of my clients are happy, but when it comes to the CDP of Salesforce, the client gets confused. They have no clue that Salesforce has a CDP platform too. If my clients want to go ahead with the same vendor, Salesforce, they get confused about the different marketing suites which are available. There is no clear marketing done for the suites available for the clients, this is where the client is facing the real challenges."
"Customer support could be improved, especially for new features where I do not always receive proper solutions from the platform provider."
"The performance is sometimes sluggish, but I think that's to be expected with a heavy CRM tool because they're running reports in real-time on the data that you have entered."
"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is affordable, considering the significant improvements it brings to our campaign results."
"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."
"The licensing cost for the solution is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"It's not cheap, which is why I recommend that you use Marketing Cloud to create automated journeys. If you plan to use Marketing Cloud just to send emails, use another tool."
"The solution is paid for monthly."
"The price is expensive."
"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
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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?
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...
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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: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.