12 Best Salesforce Marketing Cloud Alternatives & Competitors [2025 Guide]

As businesses strive to engage customers in smarter, more personalized ways, they’re looking for marketing platforms that can continuously adapt to their goals and needs. While Salesforce Marketing Cloud remains a powerful option, many companies are realizing that the software isn’t always the perfect fit for their organization.

Marketing teams using Salesforce often find themselves paying for features they rarely use, facing complex adoption challenges, or feeling outpaced by rapid AI-driven updates. When technology stops aligning with how teams work, enterprises start exploring alternative platforms built for adaptability, simplicity, and control.

In this guide, we’ll look at why organizations are seeking Salesforce Marketing Cloud alternatives, which capabilities matter most, and the leading platforms worth considering to help you find the platform that fully supports your marketing goals and long-term growth.

Key Takeaways

• Many Salesforce Marketing Cloud users explore alternatives due to high costs, complex setup, and limited flexibility, seeking platforms that are easier to use, customize, and scale.
• When evaluating alternatives, organizations prioritize unified data management, intuitive no-code tools, multichannel automation, AI-driven insights, and smoother integrations.
• Leading alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud are Creatio Marketing, HubSpot, Adobe Marketo Engage, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Zoho, Mailchimp, Braze, and ActiveCampaign — each offering different strengths for marketing efficiency and growth.
• To prepare for migration from Salesforce Marketing Cloud, companies should map existing workflows, review data structures, assess required features, document integrations, rebuild core journeys, and thoroughly test the new system before transitioning fully.

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive digital platform that helps organizations manage and automate marketing campaigns across multiple channels, including email, social media, SMS, website, and mobile apps. As part of the broader Salesforce ecosystem, it integrates with Salesforce CRM and other specialized products to create a unified customer view and ensure seamless data flow across diverse business units.

With in-built tools for audience segmentation, personalization, and performance analytics, Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps businesses deliver more targeted and consistent customer experiences to improve revenue growth and drive customer loyalty.

The pricing for Salesforce Marketing Cloud typically ranges from $1,500 per month for the Growth edition to $3,250 per month for the Advanced edition per organization. While AI capabilities are included in both plans, advanced features such as predictive scoring, path optimization, and unified conversations are available only in higher-tier editions. Pricing can also vary depending on factors like the number of contacts, additional email or WhatsApp messages, and the extent of AI interactions required.

5 Key Reasons to Consider Alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud

For many organizations already using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the platform delivers strong automation and integrates well within the Salesforce ecosystem. Yet as marketing operations grow in scale and complexity, some teams find that it no longer fully aligns with their goals or keeps pace with evolving business needs.

According to Capterra reviews, users often mention Salesforce Marketing Cloud as expensive, citing high implementation and maintenance costs. Though the platform provides many great features, Salesforce customers also find it complex to navigate, with campaign setup and configuration requiring multiple steps and advanced technical skills. These factors can make everyday marketing tasks and automations more time-consuming, prone to errors and delays.

Having reviewed feedback from Salesforce Marketing Cloud customers, the most common reasons behind their shift are:

1. Rising total cost of ownership – Licensing, add-ons, and usage-based costs for emails, SMS, or AI tools can scale quickly, prompting teams to seek platforms with more predictable and transparent pricing.
2. Longer time-to-launch and operational effort – Building and maintaining customer journeys often requires extensive configuration and testing, which can slow campaign launches and increase operational effort.
3. Complex user experience – Marketing Cloud’s setup and maintenance often require specialized expertise or external consultants, delaying time-to-value for many teams.
4. Integration beyond Salesforce – Connecting Marketing Cloud with non-Salesforce tools and external data systems can be really challenging for organizations with mixed tech stacks.
5. Unified customer experience – Many teams struggle to deliver consistent, real-time engagement across email, mobile push, SMS, WhatsApp, and web channels without additional setup or fragmented workflows.

Realizing these challenges, many businesses are now exploring alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud that better align with their maturity level, agility goals, and operational model, which can help accelerate marketing performance and customer engagement.

What Features to Look for in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Alternatives?

When evaluating alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, enterprises typically look for platforms that offer comparable functionality but with greater flexibility, transparency, and ease of use. The goal is to simplify operations, reduce overhead, and enable faster, data-driven engagement.

1. Unified customer data and segmentation

A strong alternative should include built-in customer data management (CDP) that unifies information from multiple sources into a single, real-time profile. Features like AI-enhanced segmentation, audience insights, and event-based triggers are essential to ensure timely, relevant engagement across channels.

2. Multi-channel campaign orchestration

Unlike Salesforce’s add-on structure, leading alternatives provide built-in orchestration across all major channels, including email, mobile push, SMS, WhatsApp, in-app messaging, web, and digital ads. For example, marketing platforms like Creatio and HubSpot offer a single workspace to build, automate, and analyze journeys, ensuring consistent cross-channel experiences and faster execution.

3. AI-driven personalization and analytics

Modern marketing platforms include AI-native tools and marketing agents that analyze engagement patterns and recommend next-best actions to improve campaign performance at scale. These capabilities also optimize send times and generate personalized content, allowing teams to enhance relevance and efficiency with minimal manual effort.

4. No-code automation and usability

Ease of use is a top priority for businesses exploring Salesforce Marketing Cloud alternatives. The alternative marketing solutions offer intuitive no-code journey builders, reusable templates, and drag-and-drop interfaces that let marketers build journeys, run A/B tests, and automate complex workflows without heavy reliance on IT or technical specialists.

5. Integration and ecosystem flexibility

High-performing marketing teams rely on a diverse technology stack that includes CRM, ecommerce, analytics, advertising tools, and many more. That is why, the top alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud must offer open APIs and prebuilt connectors to ensure seamless data flow, unified reporting, and easier campaign management across the entire ecosystem.

6. Real-time performance tracking and optimization

Robust marketing platforms should provide advanced dashboards and analytics to help marketers get a clear view of campaign performance, ROI, and engagement metrics. This real-time visibility helps teams quickly react to audience behavior and optimize campaigns on the fly.

7. Scalability and compliance

Just like Salesforce, enterprise-grade platforms must scale across regions, business units, and data volumes while maintaining compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. Built-in consent management and data residency controls help teams run large, compliant campaigns without compromising customer trust.

Top 12 Salesforce Marketing Cloud Alternatives for 2025

The main goal for organizations seeking to replace Salesforce Marketing Cloud is to find a platform that enables marketing teams to execute campaigns faster, manage data more effectively, and deliver personalized customer experiences with less technical effort.

Below is an overview of the leading alternatives in 2025 that offer distinct features and specific business needs.

Last updated: November 2025

1. Creatio Marketing

Best for: Midsize to large marketing teams looking for an agentic platform with built-in AI and no-code capabilities for automating lead-to-revenue campaigns.

Creatio Marketing stands out as one of the most comprehensive alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Built on an AI-native, no-code platform, it enables marketing teams to plan, design, and launch personalized, multi-channel campaigns with maximum flexibility and speed. The solution combines predictive, generative, and agentic AI to help marketers derive customer insights, segment audiences, and boost conversion rates across the entire funnel.

The platform features a robust set of marketing applications that empower marketers build powerful marketing campaigns on scale. They include:

• Customer 360: A unified, 360-degree view of contact and account data with omnichannel engagement history throughout the customer journey.
• Lead Management: AI-driven tools for capturing, qualifying, nurturing, and converting leads through the full lifecycle.
• Campaign Management: Intuitive journey design and automation tools for orchestrating multi-channel marketing campaigns.
• Digital Ads: End-to-end advertising management with built-in analytics, optimization, and performance tracking.
• Email Marketing: Fully automated email workflows with visual builders, A/B testing, and detailed reporting.
• Event Management: Centralized planning and execution for online and offline events, including segmentation, task management, and budgeting.

Beyond its out-of-the-box capabilities, Creatio Marketing provides a composable architecture and no-code customization functionality, which allows teams to adapt and extend the platform to their specific business needs without developer support.

To further streamline marketing workflows, the platform includes ready-to-use AI marketing agents that automate routine tasks and accelerate execution, helping teams focus on strategic planning and creative work:

• Marketing Content Agent – generates and optimizes campaign content.
• Email Generation Agent – creates personalized email sequences.
• Campaign Agent – launches and monitors multi-channel campaigns.
• Lead Scoring Agent – evaluates lead quality based on behavior and engagement.
• Lead Distribution Agent – automates assignment of leads to sales teams.
• Attribution Agent – analyzes campaign impact and ROI.

Marketing teams can customize Creatio’s role-specific agents to meet their unique needs, or even build their own digital agents from scratch using Creatio’s no-code Agent Builder. 

Creatio has been recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms for five consecutive years. In 2025, Gartner highlighted the role of AI agents within the platform as a key innovation.

Key Features:

• Unified CRM ecosystem – Seamlessly integrates with Creatio’s CRM products for Marketing, Sales, and Service to maintain data consistency and shared workflows across the entire customer lifecycle.
• AI-powered automation – Enables AI agents to handle content creation, quote generation, account research, and campaign optimization.
• Composable architecture – Provides modular components that can be extended, reused, and reconfigured to quickly adapt to evolving business needs.
• Industry-specific solutions – Offers ready-made templates and workflows designed for more than 20 industries.
• Extensive integrations – Supports more than 700 third-party applications available at Creatio Marketplace to ensure seamless data flow and efficient marketing operations.

Potential Challenges:

• May involve a short learning curve for teams new to no-code development when designing complex customizations.

Pricing:

Creatio offers a composable pricing model that lets businesses pay only for the products they use. The core platform is available in three plans — Growth at $25, Enterprise at $55, and Unlimited at $85 per user/month — and CRM products (Marketing, Sales, and Service) are priced at $15 per user/month each, available individually or as a complete suite.

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2. Zoho Marketing Automation

Best for: Small to midsize marketing teams seeking an affordable, all-in-one automation platform to manage multi-channel campaigns and lead nurturing.

Zoho Marketing Automation is a comprehensive marketing platform that helps organizations automate campaign workflows to generate, nurture, and convert leads. As a practical alternative to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, it allows teams to build and launch campaigns across email, web, social, SMS, and WhatsApp channels, helping marketers reach audiences with the right message at the right time. Sales and marketing teams use Zoho to track behavior, analyze performance, and align marketing execution with data insights within a unified dashboard, simplifying campaign management and driving growth through unified data and process automation.

Key Features:

• Customer journey builder that enables teams to design personalized engagement plans for different leads.
• Multi-channel marketing across email, social, SMS, and WhatsApp channels.
• Marketing planner offering a real-time overview of all ongoing marketing activities.
• E-commerce automation for Shopify, WooCommerce, and Zoho Commerce to enhance sales conversions.
• Analytics dashboards that measure campaign performance and audience engagement.

Potential Challenges: 

• Limited third-party integrations outside the Zoho ecosystem.
• A moderate learning curve for advanced automation setups.
• Users occasionally report inconsistent support and documentation when working across multiple Zoho apps.

Pricing:

Zoho Marketing Automation pricing ranges from $19 to $59 per 1,000 contacts per month, depending on the chosen plan (Standard, Growth, or Professional). Pricing scales with contact volume, and free trials are available for new users.

See also: Top 10 Zoho CRM Alternatives and Competitors

3. HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best for: Companies seeking an integrated inbound-marketing and CRM platform that simplifies campaign execution and scale.

HubSpot Marketing Hub is among the top Salesforce Marketing Cloud competitors that offer a comprehensive marketing automation platform to help businesses drive leads, convert them, and grow customer relationships. It centralises key marketing activities — like email, landing pages, social media, and automation — on a single platform that seamlessly connects with other HubSpot’s products, including CRM, Sales, Service, Content, Data and Commerce Hubs. HubSpot Marketing is highly known for its broad feature set and growth-oriented design, particularly in Professional and Enterprise Packages.

Key Features:

• Drag-and-drop email builder, landing pages, forms, and lead capture tools.
• Automated workflows, segmentation, and behavioral triggers for prospect nurturing.
• Social media scheduling, ad management, and content tools integrated with marketing campaigns.
• Analytics and reporting dashboards to get a better understanding about campaign performance, ROI, and contact engagement.
• Native CRM integration (HubSpot CRM) to ensure alignment between sales and marketing teams.

Potential Challenges: 

• Some advanced capabilities (e.g., marketing studio, custom reporting and Breeze AI agent) are locked behind higher tiers, requiring upfront onboarding and costs.
• A steeper learning curve, as the feature set may include more complexity for small marketing teams.
• Pricing increases significantly as contact volumes and advanced functionality scale.

Pricing:

HubSpot offers a Free plan with basic marketing tools, its paid tiers start at $15 per seat per month (Starter plan) and scale up to $890/month for three core seats (Professional) and $3,600/month for five seats (Enterprise), depending on contact volume and seats required.

See also: Top 10 HubSpot Alternatives & Competitors 

4. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Best for: Enterprises already operating within the Microsoft ecosystem that need a unified customer data and real-time journey orchestration software

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a decent Salesforce Marketing Cloud competitor, particularly for organizations heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. The platform enables organizations to unify data from multiple sources, build real-time customer journeys, and deliver personalized engagements. In the marketing context, it supports segmentation, behavioral triggers, and multichannel orchestration while allowing marketers to leverage the platform’s AI and analytics capabilities. Dynamics 365 Customer Insights offers a robust functionality to understand your audience, enhance customer engagement and boost teams' productivity across various cross-channel campaigns.

Key Features:

• Unified customer profiles combining transactional, behavioral, and demographic data for a 360° view.
• Real-time journey orchestration to enhance cross-channel campaigns (email, push, SMS and others).
• AI-powered insights and segmentation via Microsoft Copilot that help generate content, segments and next-actions.
• Integration with Microsoft ecosystem (Power Platform, Azure, Dynamics CRM) enabling seamless data and workflow connectivity

Potential Challenges: 

• Limited built-in tools for managing campaigns across email, ads, and social channels.
• Complex setup and configuration that often require technical or partner support.
• Capacity-based licensing can make pricing and forecasting less straightforward.

Pricing:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is currently priced at $1,700 per tenant/month, paid yearly.

5. Adobe Marketo Engage

Best for: Large B2B and enterprise marketing teams looking for advanced lead management, multi-channel automation, and deep analytics capabilities.

Adobe Marketo Engage is one of the most established marketing automation platforms and a recognized alternative to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which helps teams scale personalized buyer engagement and grow predictable pipelines and revenue. It helps businesses manage complex buyer journeys by combining lead nurturing, scoring, and personalized engagement across multiple channels, keeping sales and marketing in sync, and deliver insights that drive marketing ROI. As part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, it integrates natively with analytics, data, and content tools, allowing marketers to align campaigns with customer behavior and deliver measurable results.

Key Features:

• Lead management with advanced scoring, nurturing, and segmentation capabilities.
• Multi-channel campaign orchestration across email, web, mobile, and ads.
• AI-driven personalization and predictive analytics powered by Adobe Sensei.
• Integration with Adobe Experience Cloud, CRM systems (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics), and third-party tools.
• Detailed performance analytics and ROI dashboards for pipeline visibility.

Potential Challenges:

• Setup and campaign configuration can be complex, especially for teams without technical specialists.
• The interface is feature-rich but can feel overwhelming for smaller marketing teams.
• Pricing scales with database size and functionality

Pricing:

Adobe Marketo Engage provides custom pricing based on database size, number of users, and selected modules (such as account-based marketing or advanced analytics).

6. Oracle Marketing Cloud

Best for: Large enterprises and global organizations that need advanced marketing automation and cross-channel campaign management at scale

Oracle Marketing Cloud, is a powerful enterprise marketing suite designed to unify customer data from all sources and manage personalized, cross-channel campaigns. It helps organizations plan, execute, and measure marketing campaigns at scale, nurture and engage targeted audiences, and generate conversation-ready opportunities for sales teams. Oracle Marketing offers several robust products to provide a unified view of the customer journey and support marketing workflows, such as Eloqua Marketing Automation, Unity Customer Data Platform, Responsys Campaign management and CrowdTwist Loyalty Management.

Key Features:

• Cross-channel campaign orchestration across email, mobile, social, and web channels.
• Advanced lead and campaign management through Eloqua (B2B) and Responsys (B2C).
• AI-driven audience segmentation and predictive analytics for more targeted engagement.
• Integration with Oracle CX, CRM, and third-party data sources for unified customer profiles.
• Comprehensive analytics and reporting for performance tracking and attribution.

Potential Challenges:

• Comprehensive analytics and reporting for performance tracking and attribution.
• Comprehensive analytics and reporting for performance tracking and attribution.

Pricing:

Oracle Marketing Cloud offers custom, quote-based pricing depending on the edition (such as Basic, Standard, or Enterprise) and the number of contacts being managed.

7. ActiveCampaign

Best for: Growing businesses looking for flexible marketing automation with built-in CRM, content creation and email marketing features.

ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive marketing automation platform designed to help marketers streamline workflows, optimize cross-channel journeys, and gain insights into what drives revenue. It enables teams to create automated campaigns that connect email, SMS, WhatsApp, and web interactions—ensuring consistent engagement across the entire customer lifecycle. As one of the most accessible Salesforce Marketing Cloud competitors, it combines usability, affordability, and robust automation features, making it a strong fit for fast-scaling businesses.

Key Features:

• Visual automation builder that lets teams design personalized customer journeys with ease.
• Built-in AI tools to optimize content, timing, and channel selection while identifying high-value audiences.
• Advanced segmentation and dynamic content for delivering targeted, relevant communication.
• Behavioral triggers and event-based automation to engage customers based on actions such as clicks, opens, or purchases.
• Comprehensive analytics and performance reports to measure engagement, conversions, and campaign ROI.

Potential Challenges:

• Limited enterprise-level scalability compared to larger platforms like Salesforce or Creatio.
• Some marketing automation and email campaign features can be complex for new users to master.
• Custom and advanced reporting capabilities are restricted in lower-tier plans.

Pricing:

ActiveCampaign’s plans start at $39 per user/month (Starter) for up to 2,500 contacts, scaling to $95 (Plus), $149 (Professional), and $255 (Enterprise). Pricing increases with contact volume and feature access, with higher tiers unlocking predictive sending, advanced automation, and enhanced CRM tools.

8. Klaviyo Marketing

Best for: E-commerce and retail brands looking for data-driven marketing automation to personalize customer experiences across email, SMS, and web.

Klaviyo is a marketing automation and customer data platform built specifically for e-commerce businesses. It allows marketers to connect customer, purchase, and behavioral data to deliver highly targeted, personalized campaigns. Positioned as one of the strongest Salesforce Marketing Cloud alternatives for ecommerce, Klaviyo combines automation, analytics, and AI-driven personalization to help brands increase customer retention and drive repeat sales.

Key Features:

• Deep ecommerce integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento.
• Advanced audience segmentation and personalization powered by real-time customer data.
• Omnichannel campaign builder to create and manage multi-step, multi-channel campaigns from a single interface.
• Automated email, SMS, mobile push, and WhatsApp campaigns triggered by customer behavior, lifecycle stage, or purchase history.
• Customizable email templates and pre-built flows designed to drive engagement and conversions.

Potential Challenges: 

• Primarily tailored for e-commerce; less suited for B2B or non-retail industries.
• Limited flexibility in advanced reporting and custom dashboards.
• May lack the scalability and feature depth required for large enterprise marketing operations.

Pricing:

Klaviyo offers a composable pricing model based on the selected products, number of contacts, and additional tools required. Pricing starts at around $75 per month for up to 2,500 contacts (Email + Mobile Messages plan) and scales with contact volume and feature usage.

9. Braze

Best for: Digital-first and consumer brands focused on real-time, personalized engagement across mobile and web channels.

Braze is a customer engagement and marketing automation platform designed to help brands deliver contextually relevant experiences across every touchpoint in real time. It enables marketing teams to design and launch cross-channel campaigns that combine email, SMS, in-app messaging, web push, and WhatsApp into a single, connected customer journey. Braze stands out for its data-driven personalization, advanced mobile engagement, and AI-enhanced decisioning tools.

Key Features:

• Journey orchestration tools to design and automate personalized, cross-channel experiences.
• Detailed analytics dashboards and predictive models for campaign performance and retention tracking.
• AI Decisioning Studio to determine the optimal message, channel, or timing for each customer.
• Advanced audience segmentation and dynamic personalization powered by real-time user data.

Potential Challenges:

• Implementation and data integration can require technical assistance for complex workflows.
• Pricing is available only upon request, which can make cost planning less transparent.
• Marketing functionalities may not fully meet the needs of large enterprise environments.

Pricing:

The pricing for Braze is available upon request through the Braze sales team, and varies depending on scale and feature requirements.

10. Keap

Best for: Growing businesses and startups seeking an easy-to-use CRM and marketing automation platform to streamline sales and customer engagement.

Keap is a CRM and automation software designed to help small teams manage leads, automate follow-ups, and organize sales and marketing workflows in one place. It offers a straightforward, user-friendly experience, enabling businesses to capture leads, send targeted email campaigns, and track client interactions without requiring deep technical expertise. As a great Salesforce and HubSpot alternative, Keap focuses on simplicity, combining CRM, email marketing, and automation in a single solution tailored to the basic business needs.

Key Features:

• Built-in CRM to manage contacts, leads, and client communications from a single platform.
• Lead capture tools with customizable landing pages and forms to collect and organize prospect data.
• Lead management functionality, including pre-built blueprints, dedicated sales funnels, internal forms, and appointment scheduling for qualified leads.
• Email marketing capabilities to send broadcasts, automate follow-ups, and personalize 1:1 communications.
• Text marketing tools to deliver timely, behavior-based messages and nurture engagement via SMS.

Potential Challenges: 

• Limited scalability and customization for complex enterprise workflows.
• Reporting and analytics capabilities are more basic compared to higher-end platforms.
• The setup and onboarding can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Pricing:

Keap’s pricing starts at $335 per month for up to 2,500 contacts and 2 users. Pricing scales with contact volume and user count, while the unified plan includes a rich set of features, such as CRM, marketing automation, payments, sales pipeline tools, and more.

11. Zeta Marketing Platform

Best for: Teams seeking an all-in-one system to manage and automate marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP) is an enterprise-grade marketing automation and customer intelligence platform built to help organizations connect, analyze, and activate data at scale. It combines a customer data platform (CDP), analytics, and omnichannel campaign execution in a single view, helping teams enhance customer engagement with every touchpoint. Zeta unifies paid, owned, and earned media with real-time signals, giving marketers total visibility and control to acquire and grow customer relationships.

Key Features:

• Unified customer data platform to consolidate proprietary data for a single customer view.
• Omnichannel orchestration across email, mobile, web, and programmatic advertising.
• Real-time analytics dashboards to optimize campaign performance and uncover customer insights.
• Prebuilt audience templates and lookalike modeling to enhance segmentation accuracy.

Potential Challenges: 

• The interface can feel cluttered and difficult to navigate.
• Segment building and data processing can be slow for large datasets.
• Setup and implementation require strong data and IT support.

Pricing:

Zeta Marketing Platform provides custom pricing, which is available upon request.

12. SAP Emarsys

Best for: Mid-to-large businesses that want to scale personalized, omnichannel marketing campaigns and drive customer loyalty.

SAP Emarsys is an omnichannel customer engagement platform that helps marketers deliver personalized omnichannel marketing campaigns, including promotional and transactional messages, that are tailored to the specific industry. The platform connects data and channels to personalize omnichannel customer engagement and enable teams to quickly adapt to market needs by personalizing campaigns at scale. These capabilities make SAP Emarsys a decent Salesforce Marketing Cloud competitor.

Key Features:

• Omnichannel campaign orchestration across email, mobile, web, social, and direct mail.
• Built-in customer segmentation and personalization powered by AI.
• Pre-configured, industry-specific automation templates to accelerate campaign setup.
• Real-time analytics dashboards for performance tracking and optimization.
• Native integrations with other SAP products and partners, such as Mention Me, SAP Customer Data Platform, SAP Sales Cloud and third-party systems.

Potential Challenges: 

• The interface can feel complex for users new to omnichannel automation.
• Custom integrations and data setup often require technical support.

Pricing:

SAP Emarsys provides custom pricing, which is available upon request.

What Customers Look for in Salesforce Alternatives: Key Findings by Nucleus Research

Nucleus Research interviewed organizations that evaluated or migrated away from Salesforce and Microsoft to identify what drives businesses to adopt alternative CRM platforms like Creatio. The study revealed three key priorities influencing their decision-making process:

1. Faster Time-to-Value (TTV). Companies migrating from Salesforce report achieving much quicker TTV results. According to Nucleus Report, organizations that implemented Creatio CRM solutions shortened deployment timelines by up to 70%, which enabled teams achieve ROI far sooner.
2. Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). After migration, businesses cite reduced maintenance, simplified customization, and less reliance on external developers as key benefits. For example, Nucleus Research found that companies that migrated to Creatio achieved an average 37% reduction in technology costs.
3. Strong Integration Capabilities. Many organizations struggle with limited integration flexibility in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Alternatives address this with more open frameworks and no-code connectivity, supporting unified data and smoother cross-team workflows.

As Nucleus Research findings show, organizations prioritize speed, efficiency, and flexibility when seeking alternatives to Salesforce and Microsoft, which allows them to stay more agile and competitive.

How to Get Ready for Switching from Salesforce: A Simple Checklist

Before moving your marketing workflows to the alternative platform, it’s important to understand your current setup and prepare the key elements that will ensure a smooth migration. Here’s a simple checklist highlights the essential steps to take before making the switch.

• Step 1: Map what you currently use. List your active journeys, key segments, templates, automations, forms, and data sources. This helps you understand what needs to be migrated.
• Step 2: Review your data structure. Identify where your customer data lives, how consent is stored, and which systems rely on Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Make sure everything is clean and up to date before migrating.
• Step 3: Identify your must-have features. Clarify which capabilities you want to keep, improve, or remove when moving to a new platform (e.g., email, SMS, web, personalization, analytics, automation).
• Step 4: Check your integrations. Document all connections such as CRM, ecommerce, analytics, and data warehouses. Note which APIs or connectors must be reconfigured in the new platform.
• Step 5: Rebuild core customer journeys first. Start with your most important journeys — welcome series, transactional emails, key promotions — before moving more complex or less frequently used campaigns.
• Step 6: Test thoroughly before going live. Run test sends, validate personalization, check data syncing, and ensure all automations behave as expected.
• Step 7: Run a short overlap period. Keep Salesforce active while you validate your new platform to avoid disruptions in customer communication.
• Step 8: Deactivate Salesforce once everything runs smoothly. After verifying data, journeys, and deliverability, you can safely turn off remaining automations and close out your account.

These simple but essential steps will help you transition from Salesforce Marketing Cloud to an alternative platform like Creatio Marketing, HubSpot Marketing Hub, or another choice, while maintaining continuity, minimizing risk, and supporting long-term marketing effectiveness.

Summary

Choosing the right alternative to Salesforce Marketing Cloud means prioritizing platforms that offer flexibility, simpler workflows, and dependable integration options. By switching, marketing teams can adopt tools that streamline data management, enhance multichannel execution, and reduce the complexity common in enterprise systems. Many leading competitors now provide no-code automation, AI-driven features, and clearer pricing models to help organizations build campaigns and workflows more efficiently.

Among them, Creatio stands out for its unified CRM, agentic capabilities, composable no-code architecture, and adaptable pricing. Nucleus Research reports that companies that migrated to Creatio achieved faster implementation, lower technology costs, and improved operational agility, which makes it a practical, future-ready choice for modern marketing teams.