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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 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."
"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,"
"I like that I can constantly add leads to Salesforce Marketing Cloud and look at accounts there. I also like that the solution lets me set up meetings."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the ability to sell the products we have made to customers. Overall the solution is very useful for business."
"The solution is very, very scalable."
"It's a software-as-a-service solution. Everything is managed centrally from the cloud. As far as I can tell, installation is relatively simple."
"The most valuable part of the solution are the selling features."
"Email Studio is one of the core parts of Salesforce Marketing Cloud."
"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 main action I want to do in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is to export data into Excel and use it. My company may have that feature locked down, or if the Excel data exporting function still isn't available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, that's the feature I want."
"The solution can be difficult to set up for non-technical individuals."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is expensive. The email functionality should be more modern and user-friendly."
"Customer support could be improved, especially for new features where I do not always receive proper solutions from the platform provider."
"The data extension tools are not very user-friendly."
"Marketing Cloud should change the script language that it uses because it's not good. It's tricky and difficult to develop."
"It should contain artificial intelligence, in my opinion."
"The general setup and understanding of how to use it can be improved. There should be easier self-service for setting up dashboards. Currently, we have someone setting them up for us. I wish it was easier."
"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

"The price is expensive."
"Its licensing is on an annual basis. Customers are okay with its licensing cost, and they don't find it expensive."
"My company pays to use this solution."
"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is very high and should be more flexible for smaller companies."
"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
45%
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.
856,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.