Act-On Software vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Act-On	Score8 out of 10	Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)	Act-On is an adaptive marketing platform designed to drive personal and purposeful multi-channel marketing. Its foci are inbound and outbound marketing, for enabling a tighter alignment with sales and turning data into actionable insights.	$900 per month
Salesforce Marketing Cloud	Score8.1 out of 10	N/A	Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered, cloud-based digital marketing platform within the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.	$1,250 per month per installation

The Professional package starts at 2,500 active contacts, 3 marketing users, 50 sales users and 30,000 API calls per day. The Enterprise allows for much more customization, the package starts at 2,500 active contacts, 6 marketing users, 100 sales users and 30,000 API calls per day. Annual contract required for all packages.

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Act-On	Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Considered Both Products	Act-On Collin Williams Marketing Automation Manager in Marketing at Essendant (Wholesale, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Act-On We chose Act-On for its ability to support our customers within a single account. The Marketing Network is a huge benefit to our business and the offerings we provide to our customers. In previously working with Hubpsot and Salesforce, we found the support to be lacking - often … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Act-On Superior in every way at a competitive cost. Incentivized Helpful? Mike Cubberly Demand Gen Manager in Marketing at Content4Demand (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On Many more, too^^^ The best after any free one. Once a company has a budget it's time for Act-On. Incentivized Helpful? Kyle Moloo Sr. Project Manager in Marketing at Big Presence (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On Act-On is easier to use than Marketo, but not as visually appealing and user-friendly as HubSpot. It's much better than Pardot, as Pardot feel clunky every step of the way. SharpSpring is comparable because of its price point but surpasses Act-On in its tools and intuitive … Incentivized Helpful? Danielle Armour Development Manager- Corporate Partnerships in Corporate at Young Survival Coalition (Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On Act-On was decided upon by the Marketing and Operations team. I am part of the Development team and was consulted on the aspects of reporting. However, our Marketing/Operations team were very pleased with the way you could personalize and create your own emails and campaigns … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Act-On We looked at using Pardot and decided to use Act-On due to pricing and ease of use. Pardot had a better Salesforce connection since they are owned by Salesforce. Pardot was very expensive and didn't offer some of the functionality we were looking for. For example, Pardot does … Incentivized Helpful? Sam Nedimyer Senior Content Marketing Specialist in Marketing at LeagueApps (Computer Software, 51-200 employees) Chose Act-On When our contract was running out, we were exploring all options. We looked at Pardot as the other option. Ultimately, we stayed with Act-On for three reasons. 1) The customer support is a slam dunk in Act-On's favor. In fact, I'm willing to bet there's not another marketing … Incentivized Helpful? Meghan Fleming Marketing and Communications Manager in Marketing at Inova Software (Computer Software, 51-200 employees) Chose Act-On We chose Act-On because it was by far the easiest to use and has a streamlined interface. It's the only one I looked at and wanted to jump in and start using. It's also a bargain compared to similar solutions. Incentivized Helpful? Johanna Adolfsson Lead Manager in Sales at Holmen Paper (Paper & Forest Products, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Act-On We were actually first leaning towards HubSpot, however they couldn't agree to our standard Code of Conduct (as a principle they never do) and since we have some strict purchasing routines that includes the supplier signing our CoC we were unable to go through with the deal. In … Incentivized Helpful? Stephanie Dowell World Wide Marketing Programs Coordinator in Marketing at Crossmatch (Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees) Chose Act-On I only used Pardot for a short time, but became really frustrated with their customer service. Having to wait 24 hours for an answer severely impaired my ability to quickly set-up, send and monitor email campaigns. Incentivized Helpful? Mikaela Kjell Consultant/ Client Advocate Marketing Automation at Element AB (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On I think Act-On is a more easy to use system and companies can get up and running faster and you can handle Act-On with a marketing department of one person. I really like the new UI (user interface) and the modules for creating easy assets (using drag and drop in most cases) … Incentivized Helpful? Helen Farrell Marketing Manager in Marketing at Advanced 365 (Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Act-On Act-On provides superior support, and ease of use in email creation and delivery. Incentivized Helpful? Kartik Krishnan Head of Demand Generation in Marketing at Onfido Background Checks (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Act-On Flexible payment options (hence better than HubSpot) and better service than Salesforce's marketing automation tool - Pardot. Incentivized Helpful? Steven A. Levano Marketing Communications Manager in Marketing at Alliant Cooperative Data Solutions (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On Salesfusion was the best alternative to Act-On in my evaluation but there were a few things that ultimately had us side with Act-On. Integrations with Outlook, Customer Service, User Friendly Interface and Sales portal for our Sales Executives. These tools really made the … Incentivized Helpful? Diogo Cabral CRM & Marketing Automation Lead at Driven® (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Act-On As a company, it's much more organized, much more in contact with customers, and much more willing and able to pick up their feedback and incorporate it into the product. Pricing wise, it's also much more balanced, with a fairer price mode. It's also more agnostic, in terms of … Incentivized Helpful? Francisco Ryder Sales & Support Manager in Sales at Driven® (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On It has similar features but lacks the competitors' analyses and some of the reports. Also the support team at Act-On is very open to suggestions and helping the customer the achieve their goals. Incentivized Helpful? Brandon Taylor Marketing Manager in Marketing at eFORCE Software (Law Enforcement, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On I choose Act-On because of the price, simplicity and customer service reputation. After sitting through a few demos, I also felt Act-On had more to offer a small company like ours. Their niche is small to mid-size businesses, which made me feel like they understood our needs … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Act-On Better has better integration with Salesforce than Pardot, ironically. Incentivized Helpful? Beth Dean Marketing Coordinator in Marketing at Nextep, Inc. (Outsourcing/Offshoring, 51-200 employees) Chose Act-On We compared Act-On against several different platforms during our evaluation period, including Marketo, Pardot, iContact, and more. This seemed like a middle of the road option for us - we could take a powerful step up from email blasting, but not bite off more than we were … Helpful? Steve Peterson Vice President of Marketing & Channel Development in Marketing at CellarStone (Internet, 51-200 employees) Chose Act-On We felt the other two products offered more things than we could possibly use. Plus, they were more expensive. We needed training wheels which Act-On provided. Helpful? Michael Artinger Vice President, Marketing & Strategic Partnering in Marketing at ViroCyt, LLC (Biotechnology, 1-10 employees) Chose Act-On Act-On has a very low pressure sales approach. The other systems I looked at had a different method that I found very off-putting. The month-to-month agreement with Act-On gave me confidence that , if I didn't like the system, I wasn't committed for a year. Helpful? Tom Grissinger Senior World Wide Demand Generation Manager in Marketing at Cross Match Technologies (Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees) Chose Act-On I kind of already covered this in my previous response. Manticore - Nice people, product didn't integrate with Oracle CRM, used it for email blasting only. Such a disappointment on the integration. Helpful? Audrey Dalton Director of Content Marketing in Marketing at CodeBaby (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On We primarily looked at Pardot and Eloqua. Eloqua was out of our budget range. At the time Pardot and Salesforce weren't merged yet, and had they been, it might have changed our mind. However, I have to say the price point and the really easy integration into Salesforce makes is … Helpful? Theresa Navarra Account Executive in Marketing at Catalyst, Inc. (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Act-On Pardot and Act-On have similar capabilities in terms of the functions and features; however, Act-On's customer service is far superior. With Pardot, I felt as if implementation was a on set timeline and once you were done that was it, you had a question and you needed to either … Helpful?	Salesforce Danielle Armour Development Manager- Corporate Partnerships in Corporate at Young Survival Coalition (Non-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud We moved from Act-On to Pardot almost a year ago. The way Pardot integrates with Salesforce and is able to report on the communications really drew us to change. We enjoyed the customization of the emails and the easier set up of the emails. Both products are similar but as … Incentivized Helpful? Kyle Moloo Account Executive in Marketing at Big Presence (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Pardot was less expensive than HubSpot or Marketo. Compared to Act-On, it was similar in price but had more features and the integration with Salesforce was better and natively supported. Compared to SharpSpring, it doesn't have the same strong features, but the integration … Incentivized Helpful? Teresa Whelan Sales Administrator in Marketing at Northwest Analytics (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Pardot is a much more robust product than Act-On. We had used Act-On back when we were just getting into the marketing automation use and Act-On was a very young company just starting out, so the fit was good for both sides. As we started requiring more and more, it seemed … Incentivized Helpful? Jack Pennuto Senior Vice President in Sales at Formtek Group, Inc. (Machinery, 51-200 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud We selected Pardot primarily because it is native to Salesforce and we felt that long term it would be the better solution for our needs, based on our commitment to Salesforce. HubSpot seemed to be targeted more towards a small business, based on our experience using that … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Pardot is pretty much on the same level. We chose Pardot because it integrates directly with Salesforce. We already use Contentful for landing pages, so we weren't too worried about using Pardot's builder. I really liked the simplicity of the visual email workflows. Coming … Incentivized Helpful? Shannon Johlic Director of Marketing in Marketing at Blueshift (Internet, 11-50 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Pardot is a VERY flexible tool. Most have thought of it as a very adolescent tool, but it holds its own against Marketo in the VAST majority of areas. You DON'T need a near full-time developer to keep it working (unlike Marketo). Act-on was limited in what it could do, HubSpot … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud For my current needs, Act-On outshined Pardot. But at my previous company, we picked Pardot over Marketo because at the time it outshined Marketo's abilities and the Salesforce connection made it a safer bet for support since the team was new to marketing automation. I have … Helpful? James Heckman Senior Manager Online Marketing in Marketing at ECi Software Solutions (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Difficult to say. I used Act-On several years ago so my knowledge of it is too far out of date to fairly compare the two. We had Marketo previous to switching to Pardot. That was before I arrived, but I heard the reasons for the switch were Marketo's complexity and higher cost. Incentivized Helpful? Geoff Talbot Vice President - Member Services Group in Sales at Sourcing Interests Group (Civic & Social Organization, 11-50 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud We looked at Act-on and Hubspot .... Pardot seemed to be a great fit for our org. based on capabilities, price, integration into SFDC and reviews. Helpful? Verified User Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud This was selected before I joined the team. In their selection process pricing was an issue as we couldn't afford the likes of Marketo and Eloqua. I have evaluated Marketo and Eloqua and Act-On at previous employers. Helpful? Vinny Poliseno Digital Marketing Manager in Marketing at Salsa Labs, Inc. (Internet, 51-200 employees) Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud Eloqua, Marketo, Genius. Eloqua was too expensive. Marketo, is a very slick product, and the pricing they offered us for the lowest-level version (Small and Medium Business) was competitive, but still about $3,000 per year more than Pardot. One big issue with Marketo though was … Helpful?
	Would buy again
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	Delivers good value for the price
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	Happy with the feature set
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	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
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	Implementation went as expected
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Features

Act-On

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Act-On Software and Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Feature	Act-On Software 8.6 113 Ratings	Salesforce Marketing Cloud 7.9 167 Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor	9.1112 Ratings	8.1118 Ratings
Dynamic content	9.192 Ratings	7.6149 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content	8.292 Ratings	7.7108 Ratings
Landing pages	8.2108 Ratings	7.8117 Ratings
A/B testing	9.195 Ratings	7.9147 Ratings
Mobile optimization	7.1102 Ratings	7.3107 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting	9.1112 Ratings	8.2128 Ratings
List management	9.1111 Ratings	8.6125 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences	8.287 Ratings	8.191 Ratings

Comparison of Lead Management features of Act-On Software and Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Feature	Act-On Software 8.6 113 Ratings	Salesforce Marketing Cloud 8.3 121 Ratings
Lead nurturing automation	9.1104 Ratings	8.3107 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading	9.1104 Ratings	8.2108 Ratings
Data quality management	9.1102 Ratings	8.1113 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks	7.395 Ratings	8.699 Ratings

Comparison of Campaign Management features of Act-On Software and Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Feature	Act-On Software 7.1 77 Ratings	Salesforce Marketing Cloud 7.8 111 Ratings
Calendaring	6.88 Ratings	8.3100 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing	7.376 Ratings	7.394 Ratings

Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Act-On Software and Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Feature	Act-On Software 9.1 71 Ratings	Salesforce Marketing Cloud 8.2 85 Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns	9.169 Ratings	8.480 Ratings
Social profile integration	9.163 Ratings	8.036 Ratings

Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Act-On Software and Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Feature	Act-On Software 8.5 114 Ratings	Salesforce Marketing Cloud 8.2 121 Ratings
Dashboards	8.2109 Ratings	8.4115 Ratings
Standard reports	9.1112 Ratings	8.4120 Ratings
Custom reports	8.284 Ratings	7.997 Ratings

Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Act-On Software and Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Feature	Act-On Software 8.3 107 Ratings	Salesforce Marketing Cloud 7.6 121 Ratings
API	9.167 Ratings	7.087 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals	9.171 Ratings	7.586 Ratings
Customizability	7.389 Ratings	7.4108 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com	9.165 Ratings	8.3110 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM	8.135 Ratings	8.713 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM	7.128 Ratings	7.610 Ratings
Third-party software integrations	00 Ratings	6.921 Ratings

User Ratings
	Act-On	Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend	8.2 (219 ratings)	8.1 (325 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.9 (112 ratings)	8.1 (114 ratings)
Usability	8.2 (33 ratings)	4.1 (35 ratings)
Availability	9.1 (14 ratings)	10.0 (11 ratings)
Performance	8.2 (13 ratings)	9.6 (9 ratings)
Support Rating	7.3 (39 ratings)	7.0 (36 ratings)
In-Person Training	8.7 (4 ratings)	5.0 (4 ratings)
Online Training	9.3 (16 ratings)	8.1 (7 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.6 (22 ratings)	3.0 (17 ratings)
Configurability	9.1 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	- (0 ratings)	5.0 (1 ratings)
Ease of integration	6.4 (2 ratings)	7.0 (2 ratings)
Product Scalability	9.1 (1 ratings)	7.6 (34 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	8.2 (2 ratings)	8.0 (3 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	9.1 (2 ratings)	7.0 (3 ratings)

Act-On Software vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Act-On Software

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

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