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Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs SugarCRM Platform 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
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (2nd), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
SugarCRM Platform
Ranking in Marketing Automation
12th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (9th), CRM (25th), Sales Force Automation (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 12.3%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 1.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud12.3%
SugarCRM Platform1.8%
Other85.9%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"It is very easy to use from a marketing standpoint."
"I like that Salesforce allows for the integration of different data sources."
"We haven't had any issues with integration."
"The Salesforce ecosystem is more powerful than Siebel.Salesforce is fully integrated."
"The most valuable feature is the 'Accelerators', which are expert-taught subject matter webinars on items such as personalization of emails and SMS to contacts and prospects."
"It has excellent lead and opportunity tracking."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten."
"Marketing Cloud offers a 360 customers experience as it integrates with Service Cloud and Sales Cloud, the CRM portion of Salesforce. The different platforms integrate easily which makes it easy to manage customer communication using a single point of truth."
"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"Available source code, good documentation, training programs, and a relatively active community, provide the hallmarks for a successful open source effort."
"The performance and stability are fine."
"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost."
"Good, basic out-of-the-box solution, however, in my estimation not a long term play as the design flow and user interface make it a true chore to enter data."
 

Cons

"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud could improve by having more graphical options because a lot of tables are now only numbers and percentages and data. I prefer graphs, lines, and pie charts. I know there are ways to receive this from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It doesn't play a huge role in my daily work to invest the time to figure it out. I feel that it would be time wasted. They could make the graphical options easier to find and use in the future."
"Technical Support: That's where it gets bad, in my opinion. I have had to deal with the support several times."
"They could improve the product's data integration functionality for larger companies."
"The dashboards should be more intuitive, as there are far too many items on them."
"The response from the customer service team could be faster and the agents could be more knowledgeable."
"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."
"At the moment, there is a complicated flow in regards to the user's permissions and what they can see."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company pays to use this solution."
"It is a license per user."
"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."
"The licensing cost for the solution is on a yearly basis."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a highly expensive solution, it needs to be less expensive. We are on an annual license to use the solution."
"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."
"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
14%
Engineering Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

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?
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
The main use case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud is email marketing through Salesforce for the B2B segment on a day-to-day basis.For B2B email marketing using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, I can prov...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sugar Enterprise?
All are almost the same pricing. Maybe the cheapest is Salesforce, I believe.
What needs improvement with Sugar Enterprise?
The only challenge was that we implemented it in our on-premise data center instead of using it in the cloud. That was a little bit of a challenge. But it was overcome with the help of SugarCRM com...
What advice do you have for others considering Sugar Enterprise?
To start with, SugarCRM is a very good platform. It's easy to implement and easily customizable. Might be later when you want to scale, then I would recommend Salesforce. Overall, I would rate it a...
 

Also Known As

ExactTarget
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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
Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. SugarCRM Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.