The need to build a single, comprehensive view of each consumer to power 1-to-1 journeys. Integrate every touchpoint and experience with your brand across advertising, marketing, commerce, sales, service, and apps.
Senior Marketing Automation Consultant at CloudShift Group
Allows organisations to engage customers with one integrated platform to unify sales, service, and marketing.
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
- Allows organisations to engage customers with one integrated platform to unify sales, service, and marketing.
- Allows organisations to connect with leads and customers across every channel, on any device.
- Allows organisations to implement automated solutions, saving time and money.
What is most valuable?
Content Builder: Content Builder is a cross-channel content management tool that allows you to consolidate images, documents, and content in a single location for use in the Marketing Cloud. With an easy-to-use, drag and drop interface, Content Builder allows you to create re-usable templates for emails and landing pages.
Advertising Studio: Advertising Studio uses existing customer data from email, mobile push interactions and conversions on your site to securely sync with the contact's Facebook, Twitter, Google AdWords and Social Studio accounts. Engage customers with relevant, timely messages and find new customers with similar attributes by combining the functionality of Advertising Audiences and Advertising Campaigns.
Social Studio: Social Studio is a one stop solution allowing you to manage, schedule, create and monitor posts organized by brand, region or multiple teams and individuals in a unified interface. Social Studio offers powerful real-time publishing and engagement platform for content marketers, plus the comprehensive content performance by social network and time frame.
Journey Builder: Journey Builder is used for creating responsive, automated, multi-channel campaigns. Use Journey Builder to design a communication plan that reaches customers at every stage of their journey with your brand.
What needs improvement?
Marketing Cloud releases product updates every three months. With each update, users have to adapt to the product changes and new interfaces.
To improve user experience, there should be clear workflows to assist the user through the setup processes. The help documentation also needs to reflect product updates more accurately. Being at the front of innovation is difficult if you are playing a guessing game.
Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
August 2025

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For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Marketing Cloud provide a live feed of any product issues, and users are notified in advance of any stability issues. As a side note, this product is cloud based and I would recommend using a Chrome browser to limit issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There are no issues with scalability as long as you have a well-defined solution prior to account configuration.
How are customer service and support?
Customer Service:
This is dependent on the license you purchase.
- I would rate Standard Support 8/10.
- I would rate Premium Support 10/10.
Technical Support:
This is dependent on the license you purchase. If you have a standard support agreement and need a quick fix, I would recommend escalating your cases as soon as the option appears in your case log.
- I would rate Standard Support 5/10.
- I would rate Premium Support 9/10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No.
How was the initial setup?
This is dependent on what your business is trying to achieve.
An integrated approach is always recommended. If you are using Salesforce Sales and Service Cloud, the initial set up is medium complexity. If you are integrating with other CRM systems, websites and apps, you will need an experienced developer to implement your solution.
A non-integrated approach, such as manual imports and file drops is a straightforward setup. However, you will not reap all the benefits of Marketing Cloud.
What about the implementation team?
As consultants, we will always implement Marketing Cloud for our clients. This requires working collaboratively with key stakeholders to discover, plan, build, test and deploy the correct solution.
What was our ROI?
We have have a dedicated Customer Intelligence Manager who works closely to define our clients' measures of success. We find it challenging to measure ROI directly through Marketing Cloud, often this is a wider conversation.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We make educated recommendations about which features would be used to implement our clients' solutions. Our clients engage directly with Marketing Cloud to negotiate licensing costs. In general, the costs are high.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Initially my previous company Davanti Consulting chose Marketo as an alternative Marketing Automation tool, however we did not see this as a good fit for the business.
My current company CloudShift Group stay ahead of the game by solely offering Marketing Cloud (B2C) and Pardot (B2B) as our preferred marketing automation tools.
What other advice do I have?
Consider your options and stay true to what is best for your business.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Current - CloudShift Group are a leading Salesforce Partner in the UK. They are believed to be the fastest partner to reach Platinum status. We provide a suite of Salesforce services across all Salesforce clouds - Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, CPQ, Einstein Analytics, Field Lightning Services, Marketing Cloud, Pardot.
Previous - Davanti Consulting are the Go-To-Market Partner in New Zealand for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and a global Platinum Partner for Salesforce.com

Sales and Marketing analytics Team Lead at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
We are able to concentrate all inbound and outbound data in one screen.
What is most valuable?
We are able to concentrate all inbound and outbound data in one screen.
How has it helped my organization?
This tool is user-friendly. They can improve on the analytics and visualization parts inside the tool itself.
What needs improvement?
The analytics feature needs some improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We did not encounter any issues with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We did not encounter any issues with scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I would rate the technical support at 8/10. I raised many problems on the website and I got good responses.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I worked on Oracle Eloqua and Marketo. However, Salesforce is user-friendly and the sales rep can easily handle data.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Add more features that include both analytics and visualization.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate any alternative solutions.
What other advice do I have?
It is a good product.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
August 2025

Learn what your peers think about Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Email Solutions Architect at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees
I found the script functionality and the cloud pages to be very useful.
What is most valuable?
For me, having a developer mindset, I found the script functionality and the cloud pages to be very useful.
How has it helped my organization?
I automated the creation of almost everything in the platform using scripts and cloud pages to make life easier for the deployment team.
What needs improvement?
There are a few bugs here and there, but nothing bad. The platform is pretty robust. One thing to improve would be the error messages which aren't very helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for more than two years now.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Deployments are fine, unless there is a human error.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The platform is quite stable, but the platform updates have made some issues in the past.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform is able to handle billions of subscribers and huge Data Extensions, so there nothing bad to report here in terms of scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
It seems that they try to sneak in a fee wherever they can. For instance, making you pay for Trigger emails to be instant instead of with a few minute delay.
Technical Support:That's where it gets bad, in my opinion. I have had to deal with the support several times. Almost every time, I told them the solution to the problem because I figured it out faster than they did. I guess the issue is the Level-1 support, because it's hard to make them understand what the issue is.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used the Experian email platform and it was very slow and hard to use. Mailchimp is great for small businesses, but I wouldn't recommend it for a big corporation. I also had a look at Alterian and once again, it might be right for smaller businesses, not for a big corporation.
How was the initial setup?
It takes a solutions architect like me to set it up because it's like setting up a database. You have to know what you're doing. There are a few things to setup at first, like defining if the SFMC is going to be the master data for the audience, or if it will sit in an external database.
What about the implementation team?
I am part of the "vendor team". In my previous position, it was deployed through an external company which did a great job, and from there, I took the in-house work.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Not everything sold is vital, but there are advantages to having items like Journey Builder. The platform is worth the money for big corporations who want to take channel services to a higher level.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I arrived after the platform was selected, so I can't say much about that.
What other advice do I have?
I sincerely recommend the SFMC platform and advise you to hire a Solutions Architect to set it up. It is quite a complex piece of technology, full of nuggets that can only shine through proper care.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Demand Generation Associate at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Helpful technical support, great automation, and easy to deploy
Pros and Cons
- "The automation is great. It saves us a lot of time and it makes us move faster."
- "I've noticed on one-to-one leads, the customer objection option is not available."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for email marketing.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution has made it easier and faster in marketing, specifically around automation.
In the deployment of lists, we can get a lead and share it with marketing right away. Everything is integrated within Salesforce. The sales team can connect to the potential client in regards to the product or project. Everyone can work together.
What is most valuable?
The automation is great. It saves us a lot of time and it makes us move faster.
The solution has been stable overall.
The initial setup is pretty straightforward.
The solution can scale.
Technical support has been helpful when we have raised tickets.
What needs improvement?
I really don't have any problem with the solution.
That said, I've noticed on one-to-one leads, the customer objection option is not available. Whenever I need to map the two same email letters with multiple forms, submissions, et cetera, we need to save time. There are just a few ways in which the solution doesn't allow us to customize so well. We'd like to see more features available to us.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have found the solution to be stable. It doesn't have bugs or glitches. it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution seems to be scalable.
We have about ten people on it right now.
We've already increased usage.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is fine. If we raise a ticket, we get the help we need.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did use a different solution, however, we switched based on the pricing.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup isn't too bad. It's not overly difficult.
For us, the deployment took about three months.
We have four or five people that are able to handle maintenance requirements.
What about the implementation team?
We handled the implementation in-house. Our marketing team handled it in part.
What was our ROI?
We have seen an ROI since using this product.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We do have to pay for a license. We don't have to pay for any extras.
What other advice do I have?
My company is a Salesforce customer. We do not have a specific business relationship with the organization.
I'm not sure which version number we're using.
I'd recommend this solution to other companies with marketing teams. It's not ideal for individuals.
I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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Updated: August 2025
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