Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. SMTP Email Relay Solutions

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Score 7.9 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
SMTP Email Relay Solutions
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
SMTP Email Relay Solutions is a transactional email service formerly from SharpSpring and now a J2 Global company.
$25
per month
Pricing
Salesforce Marketing CloudSMTP Email Relay 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
ESSENTIAL
$25
per month
STARTER
$80
per month
GROWTH
$300
per month
BUSINESS
$500
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Salesforce Marketing CloudSMTP Email Relay Solutions
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Salesforce Marketing CloudSMTP Email Relay Solutions
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Salesforce Marketing CloudSMTP Email Relay Solutions
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
167 Ratings
3% above category average
SMTP Email Relay Solutions
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.1118 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content7.9149 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.8108 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages7.7117 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing8.2147 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization7.4107 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.3128 Ratings00 Ratings
List management7.9125 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
121 Ratings
1% above category average
SMTP Email Relay Solutions
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation7.9107 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading7.7108 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management7.8113 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks8.199 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
111 Ratings
5% above category average
SMTP Email Relay Solutions
-
Ratings
Calendaring8.1100 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.794 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
SMTP Email Relay Solutions
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns7.880 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
121 Ratings
7% above category average
SMTP Email Relay Solutions
-
Ratings
Dashboards7.9115 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.1120 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports7.797 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.7
121 Ratings
3% above category average
SMTP Email Relay Solutions
-
Ratings
API7.487 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals7.986 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability7.3108 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.5110 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM8.313 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM7.410 Ratings00 Ratings
Third-party software integrations7.121 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Salesforce Marketing CloudSMTP Email Relay Solutions
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.9 out of 10
Mailjet
Mailjet
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.2 out of 10
Mailjet
Mailjet
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.2 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Salesforce Marketing CloudSMTP Email Relay Solutions
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(325 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(114 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
4.4
(35 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.6
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.8
(36 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
5.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.1
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
3.0
(17 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.7
(34 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Salesforce Marketing CloudSMTP Email Relay 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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
It works great as an onsite relay to provide email sending functionality without having to pass through the firewall in order to reach the Office 365 gateway. This is particularly evident when using older programs. A lot of the older, no longer developed, programs will only allow a hard coded port to send email. Office 365 uses a non-standard SMTP port for security. This does not allow the hard coded SMTP ports to use this service. Exchange gives you the control to change those ports and securely use the standards without compromise.
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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
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Ziff Davis Inc
  • It allows us to send email through the secure email gateway.
  • We are able to track and scan all email communications
  • It provides a way for legacy and current applications to send out notification and mass email communications.
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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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
  • As with any technology on a server, we sometimes see issues with downtime related to network changes or firewall updates.
  • It can be a challenge to work with some of our older applications when the TLS feature is used.
  • I wish there was a more direct way to reliably use SMTP for mass email sends without the fear of being blacklisted.
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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
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
Office 365 does use secure non-standard ports for SMTP connectivity causing a problem with older programs. SMTP Email Delivery from Exchange solves this problem by giving the network admin full control over ports and specific program connections. While we do use both Office 365 and the SMTP Email Delivery we find that a mix is needed in order to meet all expectations for our end users. The majority of our SMTP communications, for users, go through Office 365 while the majority of our applications and servers do go through the SMTP Email Delivery service.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Salesforce
was not involved with this part but i have not heard about clompaints
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Ziff Davis Inc
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Ziff Davis Inc
  • It's the easiest way to send mail out. No worries about complex configurations.
  • It can be finicky when used in a hybrid Office 365 environment to get the proper pathways secured and working.
  • I wish there were a better way to send out mass emails, on-site, without our domain or server IP being blacklisted.
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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.