Adobe Marketo Engage vs Pardot

What users are saying about

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Score 8.3 out of 10

Based on 2319 reviews and ratings

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Score 7.7 out of 10

Based on 789 reviews and ratings

Feature Set Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage ranks higher in 6 feature sets: Email & Online Marketing, Lead Management, Campaign Management, Social Media Marketing, Reporting & Analytics, Platform & Infrastructure

Email & Online Marketing

7.8

Adobe Marketo Engage

78%

7.5

Pardot

75%

Adobe Marketo Engage ranks higher in 8/9 features

WYSIWYG email editor

7.1

71%

804 Ratings

6.1

61%

88 Ratings

Dynamic content

7.7

77%

781 Ratings

7.1

71%

79 Ratings

Ability to test dynamic content

7.8

78%

760 Ratings

7.6

76%

76 Ratings

Landing pages

7.6

76%

819 Ratings

7.3

73%

87 Ratings

A/B testing

8.0

80%

806 Ratings

7.9

79%

80 Ratings

Mobile optimization

7.2

72%

780 Ratings

6.5

65%

76 Ratings

Email deliverability reporting

7.9

79%

1469 Ratings

7.9

79%

178 Ratings

List management

8.4

84%

855 Ratings

8.6

86%

91 Ratings

Triggered drip sequences

8.5

85%

778 Ratings

8.3

83%

62 Ratings

Lead Management

8.3

Adobe Marketo Engage

83%

7.6

Pardot

76%

Adobe Marketo Engage ranks higher in 4/4 features

Lead nurturing

8.5

85%

841 Ratings

7.7

77%

84 Ratings

Lead scoring and grading

8.4

84%

816 Ratings

7.9

79%

85 Ratings

Data quality management

7.9

79%

814 Ratings

7.1

71%

85 Ratings

Automated sales alerts and tasks

8.5

85%

773 Ratings

7.9

79%

80 Ratings

Campaign Management

7.7

Adobe Marketo Engage

77%

7.6

Pardot

76%

Adobe Marketo Engage ranks higher in 1/2 features

Calendaring

7.3

73%

640 Ratings

7.6

76%

75 Ratings

Event/webinar marketing

8.2

82%

757 Ratings

7.6

76%

72 Ratings

Social Media Marketing

7.3

Adobe Marketo Engage

73%

7.0

Pardot

70%

Adobe Marketo Engage ranks higher in 2/2 features

Social sharing and campaigns

7.1

71%

483 Ratings

6.4

64%

63 Ratings

Social profile integration

7.5

75%

377 Ratings

7.5

75%

21 Ratings

Reporting & Analytics

7.2

Adobe Marketo Engage

72%

7.0

Pardot

70%

Adobe Marketo Engage ranks higher in 2/3 features

Dashboards

7.0

70%

804 Ratings

7.2

72%

86 Ratings

Standard reports

7.5

75%

840 Ratings

6.9

69%

89 Ratings

Custom reports

7.1

71%

800 Ratings

7.0

70%

67 Ratings

Platform & Infrastructure

7.9

Adobe Marketo Engage

79%

7.4

Pardot

74%

Adobe Marketo Engage ranks higher in 4/6 features

API

7.9

79%

729 Ratings

7.3

73%

64 Ratings

Role-based workflow & approvals

7.8

78%

618 Ratings

7.0

70%

61 Ratings

Customizability

7.5

75%

749 Ratings

7.0

70%

81 Ratings

Integration with Salesforce.com

8.8

88%

733 Ratings

9.4

94%

82 Ratings

Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

7.8

78%

240 Ratings

8.3

83%

3 Ratings

Integration with SugarCRM

7.6

76%

150 Ratings

5.4

54%

4 Ratings

Attribute Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage is rated higher in 7 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Likelihood to Renew, Availability, Performance, Support Rating, In-Person Training, Implementation Rating
Pardot is rated higher in 2 areas: Usability, Online Training

Adobe Marketo Engage

83%

1021 Ratings

7.7

Pardot

77%

149 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

89%

145 Ratings

1.4

Pardot

14%

86 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

81%

98 Ratings

8.5

Pardot

85%

17 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

90%

48 Ratings

7.5

Pardot

75%

16 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

90%

58 Ratings

8.3

Pardot

83%

10 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

89%

164 Ratings

6.4

Pardot

64%

28 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

100%

12 Ratings

9.0

Pardot

90%

3 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

55%

29 Ratings

8.1

Pardot

81%

7 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

100%

109 Ratings

8.2

Pardot

82%

22 Ratings

Contract Terms and Pricing Model

7.8

Adobe Marketo Engage

78%

4 Ratings

Pardot

N/A

0 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

70%

10 Ratings

Pardot

N/A

0 Ratings

Adobe Marketo Engage

94%

3 Ratings

Pardot

N/A

0 Ratings

Pros

The ability to clone entire programs and campaigns should not be underestimated as a marketing manager. This is a stand-out feature that other automation tools can't do (yet) in my experience.
myTokens: Campaign-based/local variables that can be used in emails and landing pages for everything from basic text, rich text, email scripts, CSS, scoring, and more. Set up your emails and LPs with myTokens and you'll be able to create an entire campaign without opening the email or LP editor. Clone program, update myTokens, test, and launch.
Engagement Programs: let you quickly create basic email nurture tracks with ease. Currently EPs can only send on a cadence of once per week, but future product release announcements suggest variable cadence will be possible soon.
AB Testing: using Email Programs and AB Test or ABCDEFG Test is simple to set up and report on. Manually chose the winner of your test or have Marketo choose automatically.

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Greg Beazley

Senior Marketing Automation Manager (EMEA & APAC)

CouchbaseComputer Software, 201-500 employees

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Pardot enables you to set up different environments via the Pardot Business Unit feature, this is helpful for when decentralization is still needed, but you want all business units working with the same tool.
Pardot enables you to quickly and easily create automation rules that can clean the database retro-actively.
Pardot has the ability to have multiple lead scoring models run at the same time.

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Robert Nagelmaker

Marketing Automation Specialist

Wolters KluwerInformation Services, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

It would be nice to have an expansive view of all active triggers and flows.
Some reporting functions can take quite a bit of time to execute if they use too much data.
Some error codes and mistakes can take time to uncover/solve.

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Matt Davidson

Demand Generation Media Buyer

BambooHRInformation Technology & Services, 501-1000 employees

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Email templates and drafts are really confusing. I trained various people to create their own templates, but they consistently got confused between publishing a template or just saving a draft, and where they needed to go back to find it.
Their help process is broken, at least for our particular use case. Because we have an enterprise license for Salesforce (even though we had a separate license for Pardot) whenever I needed help with something, I'd get stuck down a rabbit hole and couldn't submit a ticket.

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Verified User

Manager in Product Management

Information Technology & Services Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 149 answers on this topic

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

TBD

Starting Price

—

Adobe Marketo Engage Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

$1,250 per month

Pardot Editions & Modules

Edition

Growth	$1,250¹
Plus	$2,500¹
Advanced	$4,000¹
Premium	$15,000¹

/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually

Additional Pricing Details

Salesforce Engage, an additional offering for sales and marketing alignment, is priced at $50 per month per user.

Likelihood to Renew

Adobe Marketo Engage 8.9

Based on 145 answers

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

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Dan Prokop

Marketing Manager

MECCOMachinery, 11-50 employees

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Pardot 1.4

Based on 86 answers

As of right now we have not seen any other program that integrates as seamlessly into our Salesforce platform. We have barely scratched the surface of all the features and use cases. It would be irresponsible to make a move to another platform in the near future. We have not come up against any limitations that would prompt a need to switch

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Karol Clark

Marketing Manager

Soilworks, LLC - Soil Stabilization & Dust ControlEnvironmental Services, 11-50 employees

View all 86 answers on this topic

Usability

Adobe Marketo Engage 8.1

Based on 98 answers

There's a fair amount of flexibility, but as you start moving beyond the basics and get into more complex programs, it gets a bit cumbersome; for example, flexible drip campaigns that can customize / change content based on triggers after the initial start. Some way of normalizing scoring so older, less intensive users don't overshadow newer, more-intense users. Etc.For a basic setup and taking control of the user flow from contact to lead without leaks, Marketo is awesome, once you've got the core data governance and standardized processes in place.Template design is difficult - designers find it restrictive and there is a LOT of debugging needed, with finished templates sometimes behaving very oddly in some environments - adding / deleting code snippets, disabling some scripts - not enough to break it, but definitely some odd behaviors

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Ashish Tewari

Senior Manager, Marketing Technology

Tata Communications (Americas) Inc.Telecommunications, 5001-10,000 employees

View all 98 answers on this topic

Pardot 8.5

Based on 17 answers

The system has so many features that it does take a while to get spun up on what they all do and how they interact with each other. Once you dedicate the time to training to reach that crucial level of understanding however, it is easy to creatively apply the varied functionality of the program to address issues that would have previously seemed to mandate the use of another system.

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Marshall Darr

Sales Optimization Specialist

Stock & Option Solutions51-200 employees

View all 17 answers on this topic

Reliability and Availability

Adobe Marketo Engage 9.0

Based on 48 answers

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.

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Brittany Stover

Digital Marketing Manager

Des-Case CorporationMechanical or Industrial Engineering, 51-200 employees

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Pardot 7.5

Based on 16 answers

There have been a couple of service incidents over the past few months. I'm not sure if it has to do with Pardot integrating their infrastructure with ExactTarget. However, they responded well with proactive communication and a debrief as to what happened.

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Pam Risch

Lumina MarketingComputer Software, 51-200 employees

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Performance

Adobe Marketo Engage 9.0

Based on 58 answers

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.

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Amber Hobson

Demand Generation Specialist

Applied SystemsComputer Software, 1001-5000 employees

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Pardot 8.3

Based on 10 answers

Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.

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Verified User

Manager in Marketing

Telecommunications Company, 51-200 employees

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Support Rating

Adobe Marketo Engage 8.9

Based on 164 answers

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.

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Emilee Anderson

Client Relationship Manager

TrekkMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

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Pardot 6.4

Based on 28 answers

Pardot support is tremendous. The knowledge base and in-application targeted help articles and videos are thorough and straightforward. If those don't do it, Pardot has office hours every business day with members of the team available to answer anything. I've called twice and they are incredibly helpful.

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Verified User

Administrator in Marketing

Financial Services Company, 11-50 employees

View all 28 answers on this topic

In-Person Training

Adobe Marketo Engage 10.0

Based on 12 answers

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

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Kristi Eide

Marketing Specialist

LI-COR Biosciences201-500 employees

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Pardot 9.0

Based on 3 answers

The trainers at the Pardot user conference (Elevate and Connections) were very knowledgeable and presented the material well. Again, the content was targeted to more of a new user audience, and was not really relevant for folks who had been using the product for 2+ years.

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Pam Risch

Lumina MarketingComputer Software, 51-200 employees

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Online Training

Adobe Marketo Engage 5.5

Based on 29 answers

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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Robert Barrett, MBA

Marketing Automation Manager

GE Healthcare ITHospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees

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Pardot 8.1

Based on 7 answers

Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc...The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.

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Sean Marsh

Digital Business Developer

Quarsh CreativeComputer Software, 11-50 employees

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Implementation Rating

Adobe Marketo Engage 10.0

Based on 109 answers

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 tools3. 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

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Steve Susina

Director, Demand Generation Services

Crain CommunicationsPublishing, 501-1000 employees

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Pardot 8.2

Based on 22 answers

Love the tool, so much easier to see what our visitors are doing, creating campaigns etc. One recommendation about forms in campaigns etc is to make sure the form is not shared between countries. To send out notifications to responsible, you should have one form per country or question.

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Anna Johansson

Web- & Community Manager

IFS in ScandinaviaInformation Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Marketo does stack up against [Hubspot] and there are positives and negatives. To me, [HubSpot] is easier to work as far as layout and steps. Marketo has more steps and the layout is more confusing but it is also more dynamic - it syncs better with our other platforms and has positives that outweigh negatives[.]

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chan reed

marketing programs manager

iSpecimenBiotechnology, 51-200 employees

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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 stated, the reporting and processes were positive to my organization. The upside of Act-On is the ability to make lists and learn the system on your own. Pardot requires much more training on the front end.

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Danielle Armour

Development Manager- Corporate Partnerships

Young Survival CoalitionNon-Profit Organization Management, 11-50 employees

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Contract Terms and Pricing Model

Adobe Marketo Engage 7.8

Based on 4 answers

The total cost is a little bit higher than we expected.

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Oleksandr Torlo

Product R&D Manager

IntelzaInformation Technology & Services, 1-10 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Scalability

Adobe Marketo Engage 7.0

Based on 10 answers

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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Jennifer Robertson

Marketing and Analytics Manager

NavicureComputer Software, 201-500 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

Improved efficiency across teams in the business. When you don't have to manually send out emails, you gain more time back!
More targeted lead nurture has led to faster lead conversion and real-time engagement. In today's day and age, customers want the right CTA at their fingertips and Marketo can provide that.

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Crystal Vaughan

Customer Community Manager

InvocaMarketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees

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We spent several months and lots of money working with a outside integration partner, only to find out the journey we were trying to automate couldn't really be done and was better suited for Marketing Cloud. We ended up cancelling and switching to Marketing Cloud.

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Verified User

Director in Marketing

Financial Services Company, 11-50 employees

View all 149 answers on this topic

Screenshots

See All (8) Adobe Marketo Engage Screenshots

See All (4) Pardot Screenshots

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

WYSIWYG email editor

Dynamic content

Ability to test dynamic content

Landing pages

A/B testing

Mobile optimization

Email deliverability reporting

List management

Triggered drip sequences

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Lead nurturing

Lead scoring and grading

Data quality management

Automated sales alerts and tasks

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Calendaring

Event/webinar marketing

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Social sharing and campaigns

Social profile integration

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Dashboards

Standard reports

Custom reports

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

API

Role-based workflow & approvals

Customizability

Integration with Salesforce.com

Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Integration with SugarCRM

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Pros

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Cons

Adobe Marketo Engage

Pardot

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price