Adobe Marketo Engage vs. WordPress

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Marketo Engage
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Marketo Engage (acquired by Adobe in 2018) is a marketing automation platform whose basic features include email marketing, drip nurturing, landing pages, and lead scoring, but other editions offer additional advanced features. Typical customers are B2B firms with complex sales cycles.N/A
WordPress
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Wordpress is an open-source publishing platform popular with bloggers, and a content management system, known for its simplicity and modifiability. Websites may host their own blogging communities, controlling and moderating content from a single dashboard.
$3
per month 6 GB storage
Pricing
Adobe Marketo EngageWordPress
Editions & Modules
Growth
Pricing based on database size.
per month
Select
Pricing based on database size.
per month
Prime
Pricing based on database size.
per month
Ultimate
Pricing based on database size.
per month
Personal
$4
per month 6 GB storage
Premium
$8
per month 13 GB storage
Business
$25
per month 50 GB storage
Commerce
$45
per month 50 GB storage
Enterprise
Contact for pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Marketo EngageWordPress
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for Business and Commerce plans vary on number of GB.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Marketo EngageWordPress
Considered Both Products
Adobe Marketo Engage
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo is much more robust. But it is more complex. HubSpot offers integration with google analytics, WordPress, a blog platform, etc. But it does not give you the rich nurture options that Marketo does, and their reporting is more simple.
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
I would say that in terms of ease of use Marketo lies right in the middle of Eloqua and HubSpot (probably closer to Eloqua). Eloqua is an extremely robust tool requiring a number of tech ops professionals to manage the tool along with marketing to run it. HubSpot is best suited …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo is the perfect match between performance and features and price. While not quite as robust as Eloqua, it is far more simple to use and has a much better price. It is more feature rich and customizable than both HubSpot and Infusionsoft - though both of those marketing …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
We selected Marketo because it has more capabilities for HubSpot.
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
They are much more robust when it comes to keeping tabs on leads and customers. The ability to ensure no-duplication is fantastic in Marketo and the design and WYSIWYG editor is much more powerful and correct than Constant Contact. However, it is very reflective of these …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
First, I didn't select Marketo but it would be one of my top two choices. I think Marketo is the most user friendly for marketers that are not technically savvy. I consider Eloqua better as long as you don't have anyone in it that doesn't understand how to use it properly.

Marke…
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
HubSpot seemed to be more suited for smaller companies. We asked for references of companies of a similar size, and they instead directed us to people at very small companies—a few were ~10 people. Also, some of the areas where HubSpot is stronger than Marketo were not …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo is definitely far superior to Silverpop and Vertical Response. We ran into limitations very quickly with the other two products.
WordPress
Chose WordPress
The two other open source tools, Joomla! and Drupal, were at one time comparable to WordPress but have since been left behind as WP has more developers working on it. Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace are all great platforms for small companies who don't want to spend any attention …
Chose WordPress
WordPress is a bit easier to use than Joomla and Drupal, but lacks some features of these competitors. If you want to build out a truly custom site, Drupal is a strong choice, but you better have some coding experience. Whereas with WordPress, you can pretty much drop and drag …
Chose WordPress
Joomla - which did not have a stable product.
HubSpot - which says it has a CMS but does not.
Features
Adobe Marketo EngageWordPress
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.9
1020 Ratings
4% above category average
WordPress
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.1928 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content7.6903 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.5882 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages7.6945 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing8.0930 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization7.6900 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting7.9987 Ratings00 Ratings
List management8.1984 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences8.2893 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
8.0
986 Ratings
3% above category average
WordPress
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation8.4959 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.1935 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management7.7934 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.7884 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead segmentation and distribution8.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.7
913 Ratings
3% above category average
WordPress
-
Ratings
Calendaring7.5737 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.9871 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.2
574 Ratings
4% below category average
WordPress
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns7.1565 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration7.2375 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.3
986 Ratings
0% below category average
WordPress
-
Ratings
Dashboards7.2928 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports7.5966 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports7.1920 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.9
978 Ratings
6% above category average
WordPress
7.9
134 Ratings
3% above category average
API8.0845 Ratings8.0124 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals7.8718 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability7.4867 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.4841 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM7.7295 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM7.2194 Ratings00 Ratings
Third-party software integrations8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings7.9103 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
-
Ratings
WordPress
8.2
159 Ratings
0% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.2159 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
-
Ratings
WordPress
8.1
166 Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings7.9151 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings7.3152 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings8.3164 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings8.7160 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings8.5162 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings8.6161 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings8.2154 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings7.2131 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
-
Ratings
WordPress
8.2
164 Ratings
10% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings8.2142 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings8.0148 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings7.5125 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings9.2152 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings8.3152 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe Marketo EngageWordPress
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.2 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.2 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe Marketo EngageWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(1191 ratings)
8.6
(203 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
4.9
(147 ratings)
5.9
(38 ratings)
Usability
5.0
(99 ratings)
8.1
(50 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(25 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(30 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(92 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(12 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
6.7
(29 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(37 ratings)
9.0
(10 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
7.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
1.1
(9 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(10 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
9.4
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(6 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Marketo EngageWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
If you are looking to, you're looking to scale up your lead gen work. Adobe Marketo was a very good tool for that. You're looking to deliver leads to a sales team from marketing campaigns. It's a very good tool for that. It runs everything we do on the marketing side and I think a small lead gen team or a very large one could use an equally well.
Read full review
Automattic
Wordpress is a great solution for a website of nearly any type. It may not be as suitable if a fully custom solution or app is needed, and it does have some limitations when it comes to connecting it to external products (especially if the product doesn't have any support from a native system), and it does require a lot of testing. Multiple plugins in one install are common but also increase the risk of conflicts, and when those do occur, it can be exceptionally time-consuming and tedious to identify what is causing the issue. As third parties create many plugins, you're also at risk with each potential security breach, which needs to be kept in mind. I would be cautious to use WordPress to store any sort of sensitive PPI. That said, it's a wonderful, easily customizable solution for many, many different types of websites and can allow even inexperienced client users with low-tech knowledge to update basics.
Read full review
Pros
Adobe
  • Adobe Marketo Engage is a great platform for custom email design. The user interface is simple and easy to navigate.
  • With Campaign Optimization, Adobe Marketo Engage allows for real-time adjustments, ensuring my campaigns remain relevant and effective.
  • With Advanced Analytics, Adobe Marketo Engage provides robust marketing data analysis, helping us better understand our campaigns' effectiveness.
Read full review
Automattic
  • Easy to use User Interface
  • Coding / Plugin Implementation is awesome
  • There's always a solution available for the platform
  • Security is easy to use and robust
  • Implementation with 3rd party platforms, such as Google's variety of tools
  • Can download and host on your own server or use their hosted servers
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • Marketo's email editor is basic in comparison to other cheaper alternatives out there.
  • Marketo doesn't work as well in B2C scenarios as it does in B2B. One of the painpoints of this is it's difficult to showcase a selection of product recommendations based on purchase behaviour without a very time consuming workaround. It's manageable if you're only selling a handful of products, but it's inefficient when dealing with a large catalogue.
  • Marketo's form and landing page builder are also behind the times. Perhaps not as bad as the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform, but for an enterprise company the product should be much better.
Read full review
Automattic
  • WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
  • Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
  • WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We're likely to renew for several reasons:
  • Now that it's been implemented, I can't imagine not having marketing automation and the easy interface that Marketo provides to run our campaigns
  • Marketo's community and customer service is fantastic; I know that when I need help, I'll get it
  • Marketo continues to improve the product, so I know that I can expect it to be even more useful in the future
Read full review
Automattic
The complications we have and the lack of support. Every plugin has a differente team of support in charge and make one plugin work with the other one always affects the website performance. It's a thousand times better to have only one provider with all functionalities included unless you are an expert web developer or have a team dedicated to it
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
In some aspects, the tool can feel quite clunky in parts. But with the rich feature set it has, it's understandable. There is a lot of room for improvement for the user interface. The system itself doesn't have a slick or modern feel, so the usability could feel nicer to use with these areas considered.
Read full review
Automattic
Extremely easy to use and train users. It took very little time to get everyone trained and onboarded to start using WordPress. Anytime we had any issues, we were able to find an article or video to help out or we were able to contact support. The menu options are well laid out so it is easy to find what you are looking for.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Adobe
Marketo provides different way and abilities to connect. If you are having product support or unexplained errors you can get someone on Marketo support 24 hours a day. One of Marketo's greatest assets in my opinion however would be the community. Often times our company is just looking for case success stories from someone else. In the community you can search for problems you are currently facing and see others having the same issue and solutions for those issues. If not, you can pose a question to the whole community and champions of the product and others can chime in to provide suggestions to fix your needs. The community is truly a 24/7 place to get your answers quickly.
Read full review
Automattic
Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.
Read full review
Performance
Adobe
There are times when it is slightly slow for us, where we sit on a screen waiting for it to load. This could be our internet since we have had the same issue occasionally with other systems, but it is enough to make you crazy.
Read full review
Automattic
Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.
Read full review
Support Rating
Adobe
On multiple occasions we've had Marketo support (technical and license based) issues. Technical issues were minor and resolved within a day. License based issues (even things encouraged by Marketo for partners, like provisioning another license) took WEEKS. They actually took so long to respond that the client we were working with withdrew from the contract because they were no longer convinced Marketo was capable of supporting their business. As an agency trying to sell the software, you can only explain away so much before they just made us look silly.
Read full review
Automattic
I give this rating, which I believe to be a great rating for a community based support system that's surrounding it. Most platforms and products have their own, and as WordPress does have their own team that help here and there, a lot of it's handled by community involvement with dedicated users who are experts with the system who love to help people.
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In-Person Training
Adobe
Our account rep stopped out in Lincoln, NE to ensure we were properly set up and running. This was very much appreciated. I was very, very new at this point, so I can't comment very much on the extent of what was taught because I was still brand new to the company and the system
Read full review
Automattic
Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.
Read full review
Online Training
Adobe
I had never used Marketo prior to taking this job so online training was my starting point. I was able to follow along, it was interesting and quickly and efficiently taught me what I needed to know without a lot of fluff. It was far from boring and really helped me get my hands dirty with Marketo.
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Automattic
It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Adobe
1. Have a content marketing plan to run in parallel with the marketing automation installation--you'll need a lot of content to make full use of Marketo's capabilities. 2. Work with sales (and ISRs) to define and document a workflow--build your Marketo installation around how you do business--not figure out how to apply your business to the tools 3. Spend time of data cleaning--both an initial project as well as a strategy for ongoing data management. We found some change manaement issues (no more appending ZZZ to the first name to identify contacts who have left the company, for example, or prohibiting the entry of "info@company.com" email addresses). 4. Find some champions in the sales and ISR teams. You'll have both fans and detractors--work with the fans to build some success stories
Read full review
Automattic
WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
Adobe Marketo Engage is one of the best email sending platforms I have worked with, because there is so much you can do on a lead scoring area and also then connect this to other platforms such as Salesforce. It allows for seamless reporting and working alongside sales colleagues. We chose Adobe Marketo Engage because it allows for more sophisticated audience segmentation and management of ongoing large scale nurture flows across a number of complex criteria.
Read full review
Automattic
WordPress isn't as pretty or easy to use as certain competitors like Jimdo, Squarespace or HubSpot, but it makes up for it with its affordability, familiarity and the ability to find quality outside help easily. The same can't be said for certain competitors, as you might need to find an expert and it could get costly.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
The total cost is a little bit higher than we expected.
Read full review
Automattic
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
We look at scaleability in a few different ways. First, the speed while using Marketo has remained relatively the same as our database has grown. Though I would say Marketo is slow at times, it has not gotten slower over the last few years. If anything, it has improved, and they are working to improve it. Second, the amount of programs we have developed in Marketo has exponentially grown as well. Marketo has allowed us to drastically increase our output without having to drastically increase our headcount.
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Automattic
WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Generated a 35% higher return on investment (ROI) in demand generation in the company.
  • The focus on the accounts that presented a greater sales potential, allowed us to prioritize and reduce costs by 20 Million USD.
  • Being personal and optimized. reduced efforts towards a more personalized customer experience, in working hours by almost 100 h.
Read full review
Automattic
  • Allowed us to being all websites under a single umbrella, saving costs on similar products.
  • It's increased our website turn time and made us faster and more efficient at launching websites.
  • Edits and tweaks happen much faster as we have a customized environment.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Adobe Marketo Engage Screenshots

Screenshot of the Contact Timeline in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of the Audience Feature in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of Progressive Profiling in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of the Insights Dashboard in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of Sources in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of Metrics in Adobe Marketo Engage