Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. SAP Customer Data Solutions

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered, cloud-based digital marketing platform within the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.
$1,250
per month per installation
SAP Customer Data Solutions
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
The SAP Customer Data Cloud, based on Gigya (acquired by SAP in 2017) is a product suite that allows users to identify consumers, business customers, or partners across devices and channels to drive registrations and engagement; manage access, permission, and consent; and transform data into unified customer profiles.N/A
Pricing
Salesforce Marketing CloudSAP Customer Data Solutions
Editions & Modules
Account Engagement
$1,250
per month
Engagement
$1,250
per month
Intelligence
$3,000
per month
Loyalty Management
$20,000
per month
Personalization
$100,000
per year
Data Cloud for Marketing
$108,000
per year
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Salesforce Marketing CloudSAP Customer Data Solutions
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Salesforce Marketing CloudSAP Customer Data Solutions
Considered Both Products
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud
We are now more aware of how to use Salesforce rather than SAP. So ease of working is one of the reason.
SAP Customer Data Solutions

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Salesforce Marketing CloudSAP Customer Data Solutions
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
166 Ratings
2% above category average
SAP Customer Data Solutions
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.1117 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content7.9148 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.8107 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages7.7116 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing8.2146 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization7.4106 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.3127 Ratings00 Ratings
List management7.9124 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences8.191 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
120 Ratings
1% above category average
SAP Customer Data Solutions
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation7.9106 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading7.7107 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management7.8112 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks8.198 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
110 Ratings
3% above category average
SAP Customer Data Solutions
-
Ratings
Calendaring8.199 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.793 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.4
85 Ratings
2% below category average
SAP Customer Data Solutions
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns7.780 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration7.036 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
120 Ratings
6% above category average
SAP Customer Data Solutions
-
Ratings
Dashboards7.9114 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.0119 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports7.796 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.7
120 Ratings
1% above category average
SAP Customer Data Solutions
-
Ratings
API7.487 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals7.985 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability7.3107 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.5109 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM8.213 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM7.310 Ratings00 Ratings
Third-party software integrations7.120 Ratings00 Ratings
Tag Management
Comparison of Tag Management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
SAP Customer Data Solutions
7.7
28 Ratings
10% below category average
Tag library00 Ratings7.727 Ratings
Tag variable mapping00 Ratings7.725 Ratings
Ease of writing custom tags00 Ratings7.826 Ratings
Rules-driven tag execution00 Ratings7.626 Ratings
Tag performance monitoring00 Ratings7.825 Ratings
Page load times00 Ratings7.726 Ratings
Mobile app tagging00 Ratings7.525 Ratings
Library of JavaScript extensions00 Ratings7.624 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
SAP Customer Data Solutions
7.7
28 Ratings
9% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.828 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.827 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings7.527 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.926 Ratings
Customer Data Management
Comparison of Customer Data Management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
SAP Customer Data Solutions
7.7
29 Ratings
13% below category average
Account Scoring00 Ratings7.427 Ratings
Customer Data Governance00 Ratings7.928 Ratings
Data Connectors00 Ratings7.729 Ratings
Data Enhancement00 Ratings7.829 Ratings
Data Ingestion00 Ratings7.629 Ratings
Data Storage00 Ratings7.929 Ratings
Data Visibility00 Ratings7.729 Ratings
Event Data00 Ratings7.627 Ratings
Identity Resolution00 Ratings8.027 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Salesforce Marketing CloudSAP Customer Data Solutions
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.8 out of 10
Klaviyo
Klaviyo
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Klaviyo
Klaviyo
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Treasure Data
Treasure Data
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Salesforce Marketing CloudSAP Customer Data Solutions
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(324 ratings)
8.4
(59 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(114 ratings)
9.5
(10 ratings)
Usability
5.1
(35 ratings)
9.1
(7 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(11 ratings)
8.8
(57 ratings)
Performance
9.6
(9 ratings)
7.3
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
6.3
(36 ratings)
9.1
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
5.0
(4 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Online Training
8.1
(7 ratings)
9.1
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
3.0
(17 ratings)
7.3
(7 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.7
(33 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(3 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(3 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Salesforce Marketing CloudSAP Customer Data Solutions
Likelihood to Recommend
Salesforce
I rated this a seven because I love Salesforce, and it is excellent on the sales side. However, the marketing side has some pros and cons. It is terrific for keeping track of lead, customer, and dealer information, but it is not easy to automate workflows, integrate other software, or create well-designed emails. It is also straightforward to generate reports, which is very helpful in keeping track of lead progression to better market those leads and turn them into customers.
Read full review
SAP
It's best suited for business business to turn digital interaction in to richer and high value and experience that reach across computing platform also it offers a holistic and integrated approach to managing customer data and enhancing and personalized experience.it also draw actionable insights.because it offers wide range of products . perfect customer insight data solutions
Read full review
Pros
Salesforce
  • Filter relevant content so you can priorize those that are more relevant and resolve it first
  • Measure the traffic in the different social networks, as well as the response rate, average response time and other relevant metrics
  • Configure automation rules to order the work of those who must interact with the customer
Read full review
SAP
  • SAP's Customer Data Solutions provide a comprehensive customer view by collecting detailed data, including age, web activity, and buying history.
  • The software's strong analytics features give valuable information about how customers use content and products, so we can enhance our strategies.
  • SAP Customer Data Solutions offers insights to create specific marketing campaigns that sort audiences by preferences, browsing, and purchase behavior.
Read full review
Cons
Salesforce
  • The email builder does not offer any way to catch/check bugs across different email service providers
  • Creating SQL is not as easy as drag-and-drop; a lot of technical knowledge is required
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud is sold as a marketing tool, but to be honest, you need a LOT of technical IT support to run the tool
  • Einstein metrics are across the board; if you have multiple audiences in one instance of Salesforce Marketing Cloud you can't segment the data.
Read full review
SAP
  • I find the interface a bit complex and challenging to navigate. I remember having difficultly grasping it completely especially when I was new to the system. Simplifying the user experience would make it more accessible for everyone, making tasks quicker and more intuitive.
  • integrating it seamlessly with other software and platforms could enhance its functionality. I would really really love an integration between BenchMark email marketing tool.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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
Read full review
SAP
On the whole I am really impressed with SAP Customer Data Solutions and would highly recommend that other professionals look at this software to enhance their B2C and B2B sales
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
SAP
We mostly work with the API which is of very good quality and is well documented.However, some of our success is also due to having very talented developers on staff, and also understanding advanced gamification design. The tool supports a talented team! It won't actually do everything for you automatically.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
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.
Read full review
SAP
Customer Data Solutions availability has been pretty good, anytime there has been any issues like I mentioned before, support staff has been quickly avialable to help trouble shoot things. Customer data solutions has had very few outages during out time using it as well and when they happen it's a quick resolution.
Read full review
Performance
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.
Read full review
SAP
There are some latency issues. The 24 hour caching problem mentioned earlier is a problem. Sometimes the Gigya system makes two calls instead of a single call if we go directly to the social platform. For this reason, it's sometimes more efficient to go direct rather than use Gigya.
Read full review
Support Rating
Salesforce
They are really responsive and more than not solve the problem or give you insight to how you can manage the solution yourself. I do find however sometimes a long delay on the more complex issues when they need to loop in other departments. but overall a good experience with support
Read full review
SAP
We have had multiple instances of help from Gigya to get our custom implementation working, including detailed technical assistance to a third party. We have found Gigya to be thorough and timely in their responses to all queries, which are consistently excellent.
Read full review
In-Person Training
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.
Read full review
SAP
because it was made directly in the company
Read full review
Online Training
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.
Read full review
SAP
They trained me in a train the trainer model. I then trained the internal team. Total training was about two hours, with an additional two hours for system setup.
Training was maybe a little thin, but the system was fairly easy to learn and this wasn't really a problem.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
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.
Read full review
SAP
There was a bit of a learning curve in the beginning, and perhaps we were unclear on some of our requirements. Once they figured out what we wanted though, things went pretty smoothly. Just some minor hiccups in the beginning
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Salesforce
I think that all of the marketing platforms I have evaluated and used in the past serve different markets and purposes. Salesforce Marketing Cloud was more palatable to our team because of our existing tech stack where we had Salesforce CRM already deployed and in use. Compared to Marketo and Hubspot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a bit dated in terms of the UI/UX and the overall experience but still meets the needs of our organization. Mailchimp, however, isn't even playing in the same arena and is meant for small organizations and companies that don't have a need for a full fledged offering that SFMC brings to the table.
Read full review
SAP
There is a dedicated team for SAP setup that helps in providing specialized or customized services to the user. The platform's accessibility lets us obtain reports and information in real time so we reach clients at the proper moment by optimizing delivery time appealed to us the most.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Salesforce
was not involved with this part but i have not heard about clompaints
Read full review
SAP
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Salesforce
Prior to this, we had no solution and literally were doing things on paper in a world where technology is outpacing paper. Having this process optimized has made it easier for the sales and marketing people to change information. From the training perspective, it has allowed us to see holes in where we could create additional support training, so the ROI here has been a lot more than just the optimization of a process.
Read full review
SAP
because the platform actually allows you to scale at any time if designed following best practices
Read full review
Return on Investment
Salesforce
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to more efficiently reach out to a higher number of prospects.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to nimbly communicate important messages in a timely fashion to facilitate conversion.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to track who is opening our messages so that we can stop sending to those not interested and focus on the most engaged audiences.
Read full review
SAP
  • Having a single, stremlined point of entry for the customers improves the overall customer experience
  • By the same reason, maintenance costs are reduced because interventions focus on a single object
  • It's versatile in its integration so there is no need to change the surrounding software ecosystem
Read full review
ScreenShots

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Pardot Analytics - Pardot's reporting and analytics can be used to perform true revenue impact analysis and closed-loop reporting.Screenshot of Pardot Email Analytics - The reach and impact of  email marketing efforts are displayed in real-time with advanced reporting and analytics by device, and email client.Screenshot of Pardot Forms and Landing Pages - Pardot's form and landing page builders are used to turn online traffic to leads with targeted offers and content marketing.Screenshot of Pardot Email Marketing - Lead nurturing flows are defined via an interface that enables definition of the simplest or most complex segmented and targeted campaigns.

SAP Customer Data Solutions Screenshots

Screenshot of Customer Login in SAP Enterprise Consent and Preference ManagementScreenshot of User Identities report dashboardScreenshot of Search by Custom Fields windowScreenshot of Customer Data DataflowScreenshot of Account InformationScreenshot of SAP Customer Data Platform