Pega Platform vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Pega Platform
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Pega Platform is a combined business process management and robotic process automation (RPA) platform with advanced workforce analytics from Pegasystems.
$35
per month per user* (or $0.45 per case**)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) is a marketing automation platform. Its key features include lead management, lead generation, social selling, and email marketing.
$1,250
per month
Pricing
Pega PlatformSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Editions & Modules
Low-code Factory Edition
$35
per month per user* (or $0.45 per case**)
Standard Edition
$90
per month per user* (or $0.80 per case**)
Enterprise Edition
Custom Quote
Growth
$1,250
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Plus
$2,500
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Advanced
$4,000
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Premium
$15,000
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Pega PlatformSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*500 named user minimum. Additional users available in blocks of 100. Billed annually. Based on a 3-year term. **350,000 cases / year minimum. Additional cases available in blocks of 150,000.Salesforce Engage, an additional offering for sales and marketing alignment, is priced at $50 per month per user.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Pega PlatformSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Considered Both Products
Pega Platform
Chose Pega Platform
Pega has more customer's recent interaction/lifecycle base.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Pega PlatformSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
8.7
62 Ratings
7% above category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.0
94 Ratings
7% below category average
Dashboards9.061 Ratings7.789 Ratings
Standard reports8.661 Ratings6.793 Ratings
Custom reports8.660 Ratings6.570 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
8.7
64 Ratings
4% above category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Process designer9.463 Ratings00 Ratings
Process simulation9.655 Ratings00 Ratings
Business rules engine9.663 Ratings00 Ratings
SOA support7.049 Ratings00 Ratings
Process player9.447 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for modeling languages5.46 Ratings00 Ratings
Form builder9.658 Ratings00 Ratings
Model execution9.854 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
8.0
49 Ratings
0% above category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Social collaboration tools8.049 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
4.4
9 Ratings
58% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Content management4.49 Ratings00 Ratings
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.4
137 Ratings
19% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor00 Ratings3.391 Ratings
Dynamic content00 Ratings5.5119 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content00 Ratings4.979 Ratings
Landing pages00 Ratings5.890 Ratings
A/B testing00 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Mobile optimization00 Ratings3.279 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting00 Ratings8.098 Ratings
List management00 Ratings9.395 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences00 Ratings9.266 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8.6
93 Ratings
10% above category average
Lead nurturing00 Ratings9.285 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading00 Ratings8.586 Ratings
Data quality management00 Ratings7.686 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks00 Ratings9.181 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.9
85 Ratings
9% below category average
Calendaring00 Ratings6.976 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing00 Ratings7.073 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.9
68 Ratings
9% below category average
Social sharing and campaigns00 Ratings6.264 Ratings
Social profile integration00 Ratings7.521 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Pega Platform
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.2
93 Ratings
5% below category average
API00 Ratings7.065 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals00 Ratings7.062 Ratings
Customizability00 Ratings6.182 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com00 Ratings9.283 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM00 Ratings5.44 Ratings
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Pega PlatformSalesforce Marketing Cloud
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User Ratings
Pega PlatformSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(72 ratings)
8.1
(295 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(7 ratings)
9.8
(111 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(34 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(7 ratings)
4.0
(35 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
3.0
(17 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Pega PlatformSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
Pegasystems
Pega Platform has introduced the low code feature, using app studio seasonal and professional developer can develop application easily and quickly. The initial application can be build by Business analyst and product owner who has less knowledge of Pega Platform, further application can be enhanced/extended by professional developer. We can develop end to end application and promote to higher environment. Easily we can perform parallel development using branch.
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Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio is a very good option for publishing administration, following digital marketing campaings performance and results, social listening an monitoring your brand image in social media and other digital media. It has good features for engagement, but falls a little short for customer service. I'm surre it would work much better integrated with Salesforce as a CRM, but we use another CRM platform and it was not possible to integrate.
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Pros
Pegasystems
  • Quick development time. Much of the Pega "rules" are easy to configure and implement.
  • Visually friendly and modern. Much of the UI/UX elements in the system are continuously supported and updated, giving a nice feel to the apps.
  • Many of the configurations and rules Pega gives to the developers can also be delegated to business users. The organization and structure of the client's business can easily be adapted in the Pega platform.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
Pegasystems
  • Need more learning materials. For Beginners who have previous programming experience with another language takes more time to learn.
  • If the developer is met with an issue in pega platform , they have to rely on Pega supporting team to fix it.
  • Customization is available but is not encouraged. Pega does not support faults that occur in customized solutions.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
Pegasystems
Pegasystems has continued to demonstrate a strong partnership with our organization and investment in their product that aligns with our overall vision and need. Pegasystems has engaged us at every level, with the assistance of minor defects to the overall roadmap planning and alignment of our goals
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Salesforce
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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Usability
Pegasystems
Pega Platform is enhancing its product and launching new features day by day which help to achieve customers needs. If I talk about the earlier version of Pega Platform (i.e. pega v5 and 6.3) there were many numbers of limitations in Pega Platform and if we need to do some customization then needed to write custom java and jave scripts to achieve the functionally. Now I can say Pega Platform is running with market trends and demand. Pega Platform is giving all the options which support the current technologies like decisioning capabilities, real time processing, mashup, process fabrics etc..
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Salesforce
You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.
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Reliability and Availability
Pegasystems
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.
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Performance
Pegasystems
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
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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Support Rating
Pegasystems
It’s very slow sometimes, but that may be our servers. Also the Knowledge Library needs some work - again, not sure if it’s our setup or what- but I’m unable to search the body of an article for content, so I have to be very intentional with tagging, but it’s not ideal.
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Salesforce
They're fast and knowledgeable. You will always know what's the status of your request and they usually follow up with phone calls to ask you questions or provide updates. Sometimes it takes them a couple of days to investigate, especially if you have custom "situations" like my company usually does but at least they are very good at managing time expectations.
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In-Person Training
Pegasystems
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
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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Online Training
Pegasystems
The online training is an excellent one, but still it is missing hands on development.
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Salesforce
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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Implementation Rating
Pegasystems
Implementation is totally depend up on the requirement
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Salesforce
From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.
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Alternatives Considered
Pegasystems
We did evaluate multiple products offerings with Pega Platform capabilities and observed that Pega PRPC rules engine and case management capabilities are better over so many BPM Tools. We also conducted a detailed study with developers to identify the best products out of Suite of BPM products. It's observed that Rules engines integration is very streamlined with forms in Pega whereas other tools multiple have powerful data model capabilities but lacks the ease of creating business rules.
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Salesforce
We had some scenarios and limitations on Oracle Data Cloud. With help of Salesforce, we were able to overcome most of those limitations. This made the work more efficient and productive as integration and providing Ad data to other parties became much more sophisticated and easy. This is helping the business in saving a lot of time and effort.
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Scalability
Pegasystems
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
We had approximately 20,000 recipients of most email campaigns, with some higher amounts and some smaller campaigns. The tools is easy to use and the recipient list size is really not a factor in the complexity or work to create and email campaign. Our campaigns could just have easily been sent to many more people, with virtually no additional work.
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Return on Investment
Pegasystems
  • For one of the applications we worked on, we were able to reduce the processing time on a case from 2 days to 20 minutes by utilizing Pega
  • We were able to resolve the issue of the routing of cases to users based on a specific algorithm by use of Pega
  • Pega case management feature was extensively used in one of the application to establish a parent-child relationship which was very helpful for all the business users
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Salesforce
  • The ability to create sophisticated rules to personalize messages has helped us to create sophisticated rules to personalize messages.
  • The ability to track customer journey performance at every stage helped us to track the performance of customer journeys and make improvements.
  • The ability to quickly build and deploy complex customer journeys without the need for coding allowed us to deploy customer journeys faster and with fewer resources.
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ScreenShots

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Pardot Analytics - Pardot's reporting and analytics allow you to perform true revenue impact analysis and closed-loop reporting.Screenshot of Pardot Email Analytics - See the reach and impact of your email marketing efforts in real-time with advanced reporting and analytics by device, email client, and more.Screenshot of Pardot Forms and Landing Pages - Pardot's form and landing page builders allow you to turn online traffic to leads with targeted offers and content marketing.Screenshot of Pardot Email Marketing - Define lead nurturing flows via an intuitive interface that enables easy definition of the simplest or most complex segmented and targeted campaigns.