Marketo vs Pardot vs Hubspot

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I am a massive Marketo advocate and user for the last 7 years but have been asked by our CEO to evaluate other marketing automation options. As much as this is just frustrating, I'm sure I'm not the only one this has happened to. Can anyone please help me get Marketo over the line!

Has anyone used Pardot, Hubspot or any other marketing automation tool...Act-On, Active Campaign, InfusionSoft? What is your experience? How does it work with;

- Salesforce integration

- Lead nurturing

- trigger campaigns

- alerts and marketo sales insights for sales, website monitoring

- webinar management (gotowebinar)

- event management (tradeshows)

- WordPress blog integration (automatically sending blog emails)

- Lead scoring

- Lead activity

- a/b testing

- Training, ease of use, installation, migration

- anything in general!

Help!

[gergana]

Since it has been 7 years since this post was created, I wanted to revive this post and know your opinion on the various marketing automation tools today, as all the tools have evolved in the meantime. Specifically, I am interested in a comparison between Pardot and Marketo. What are your thoughts on these? For those who have used both tools recently, what are the features you can't do without in Marketo and those in Pardot? Are there things that can't be done on Pardot or are much more complicated, where Marketo excels instead, and vice versa?

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone for your feedback! This was exactly what I was after and brought forth even more insight into how powerful Marketo is. We have decided to stay with Marketo. It provides the most powerful functionality, loss of all data is a huge issue and others do not provide any other substantial functionality to warrant a change.

For our database, Marketo was actually the cheapest of Act On (AUD $-4k - +2k), Pardot and Hubspot being $8k more --> then there is onboarding, training and rebuilding costs.

Hubspot, Pardot and Act On all have different sections for each element, email, landing page, workflows etc. Whereas Marketo's programs enable cloning of similar programs, saving time and all elements of that program is in one place. Lead nurturing capability and customer journey is also a big plus for us.

Hubspot blog functionality is great! And if we were implementing from scratch, it may have been a contender.

I would be nervous implementing Pardot, with no added functionality benefit and SFDC sync poor.

Act On are still a bit immature, lacking functionality and didn't have an office or much presence in Australia. They did have some kind of account based marketing functionality.

I think once you have gone Marketo, it's hard to go back!

[Anonymous]

Hi Vanessa,

Can you elaboarte on the poor SFDC sync with Pardot? We have a very custom Salesforce instance and are currently using Marketo. We were acquired and our parent company is looking to get onto Marketing Cloud and/or Pardot (they currently use Exact Target). We have been challenged to compare Marketo and Pardot/Marketing Cloud in case we were to mirgrate over as well so the entire organization is onto one platform.

We heard that by using Salesforce Marketing Cloud you can integrate multiple Salesforce instances to one Marketing CLoud instance. Our parent company has 1 instance of Salesforce, and we have a second. That was a very appealing feature of Marketing Cloud that my boss liked. Has anyone had experience with that before?

Also for the others who commented with experience on Pardot can you elaborate on your experience syncing to SFDC as well, thank you! Grace Brebner​, Phillip Wild​, Daniel Murray​, Betsy Landon​, Heidi Ramich​

[Phillip_Wild]

Hi Amanda,

I haven't used Pardot myself so I'm probably not in the best position to comment. But overall, the idea of paying for both Pardot AND SFMC in order to get the full functionality of Marketo doesn't seem to make sense to me. Not sure how those costs could stack up. However, maybe you don't need all the B2C functionality of SFMC (eg. pushing audiences to Facebook) or the B2B functionality of Pardot (drips).

[Betsy_Landon1]

Marketo for my current company is only a little more expensive than Pardot was at my previous company (same database limit). Our Marketo cost includes Web Personalization and Pardot does not have this. We recently migrated from Eloqua to Marketo, because it seems that Oracle is abandoning this product. I speculate that Oracle purchased Eloqua so they could buy their customer base and compete against Salesforce for CRM. The Eloqua UI and usability pales against Marketo and so do the features, in my opinion. We have been an Eloqua customer for years and our subscription was extremely inexpensive. Yet, we made the decision to migrate to Marketo. One of the deal breakers was Eloqua's inability to trigger an alert when a known visitor loads a "High Value" web page. Eloqua tech support confirmed with engineering that this feature used to work, is now broken and they don't plan to fix it. I feel like there isn't anything we can't do with Marketo and Eloqua was limiting us. Pardot is OK if you've never used MA before. However, it is roughly the same cost, in my experience, so why not choose the best of breed?

[Anonymous]

I've used both Pardot and Hubspot the products.

• Hubspot is the best on top of the funnel features.
• Pardot has a very good lead nuturing tool called engagement studio that is easy to use
• Marketo I would say is all around the best for automations and doing more with your Marketing Automation tool.

[Anonymous]

Hi Vanessa,

Super high level discussion here. Kudos everyone.

I was lucky enough to have exposure to all of the tools you guys mentioned above, and I gotta say that, personally, I'd categorize Marketo and Eloqua differently than others like Hubspot, Pardot, Infusionsoft, Act-on, etc.

While Eloqua is a powerhouse, not super user-friendly and expensive, Marketo holds its strengths in flexibility, predictive and dynamic content. Some of the pain points I had (and have) with Marketo are:

- Not fan of interface

- Reports are too limited out of the box

- Not many easy-to-run integrations with different platforms, such as WebSphere (yes, people, there are some WebSphere users out there.)

- Lack of intuitive campaign canvas, such as the Eloqua one.

- Support is not responsive enough

In some ways, a couple of those are easily addressed using paid add-ons or are not that critical, provided that you have also a tool like Salesforce integrated (I recommend you always rely on Salesforce to build robust sales and revenue reports).

I'd strongly recommend you to take a look at couple details, such as your needs and your capacity to afford the tool. Most of the time you'll have a powerful tool that is also underused. I happened to me and my clients (when working for agencies) many times. Again, I'd use some criteria, such as costs vs. ROI associated, number of people involved (for tools like Marketo and Eloqua you are more likely to need external help), programs and functionality you'll need on the marketing cycle (usually 2 years) among other important factors. As @Josh has mentioned, when planning to get a tool like this onboard, you wanna tackle the World, and most of the times end up with an underused email platform with couple scoring rules. Personally, this is what I see on the market:

Stronger and more powerful tools (more expensive)

1- Eloqua

2- Marketo

Easy-to-use, but limited (more affordable)

1- Hubspot

2- Pardot

3- Infusionsoft

4- Silverpop

5- Act-on

Hope it helps.

don't hesitate to contact me at any time.

Cheers,

Saulo

[Anonymous]

I agree with Saulo's assessment.  Marketo and Eloqua have more robust functionality and are well suited to mid-size and Enterprise organizations.  These solutions scale very well to support global organizational needs.  Pardot is rapidly growing up (has historically been an SMB solutions) and it still is not quite on par with Marketo, but that gap is rapidly closing.  Pardot has a nicer and more intuitive interface for users new to marketing automation, but I prefer how Marketo handles the logic to create lists/smart lists, use of tokens, cloning and setting up nurture programs.  I also like how Marketo can easily write data to Salesforce (including campaigns) and leverage the Salesforce reports and dashboards. 
Hubspot, Act-On, Infusionsoft and others are best for SMB organization, and can handle basic marketing automation requirements.  In my experience, organizations often "outgrown" these SMB marketing automation systems because their organizations require tighter integration with their Salesforce data including custom objects and also want to support more complex marketing automation scenarios.  

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much Saulo. Funny enough as Marketo is actually cheaper than Hubspot for us. Pardot is very similar cost.

Your list of easy to use - are these in order of preference? I have a call with Act on tomorrow, so interesting to see how that is used.

[Liliana_Cheng1]

Hi Saulo Avelar​, can you elaborate on some of the pain points you've experienced with Eloqua?

[Anonymous]

Hi Liliana,

We used Eloqua for nurturing and scoring prospects as well as running customer programs to support Client Services and the Account Management teams.

Bottom Line is that Eloqua is probably the most expensive marketing automation tool on the market. In some ways, it worth it, but here are the pain points that would make me switch (not considering the cost of migration, of course):

• Some of our biggest problems with Eloqua come from still being on E9 (old version). This obviously only affects existing clients, but we were one of them.
• I never felt like Eloqua played well with other systems. Sure they have an integration with Salesforce, but it's not as good as some other options.
• Of course, costs
• [Not from me, but from the team] Since the Oracle acquisition, we felt that the overall quality of the customer-facing organization has declined substantially. It just seemed like it wasn't a priority for Oracle. And then all the people that I personally felt like made Eloqua great (and me a huge advocate for them) left or were pushed out.

I hope it helps.

Regards,

Saulo

[Anonymous]

Yes, I agree. Marketo has the most flexibility in everything you mentioned below. Pardot is pretty good, but it isn't as robust as Marketo. Hubspot is great for building out complex social campaigns, but with Marketo you do the same. It seems Marketo is very popular on the west coast, but not as prominent on the East...which makes it difficult to find local agencies that specialize in Marketo.

Hope this helps a bit.

Best regards,

Donte

[Anonymous]

We are actually in Australia. So Marketo has an office here...however I dont believe the others do.

[Phillip_Wild]

A lot of good thoughts here!

I went through a similar process myself around 6 months ago. We have been with Marketo for about 3 years. I framed it to the other vendors as this: What's your big killer feature that Marketo doesn't have that will justify the 6 months - 1 year that we will spend rebuilding? Without a good answer for that question, the negatives will outweigh the positives.

We previously used Eloqua and found that to be quite good too. At the time, they couldn't integrate with Salesforce using SF ID as the unique identifier, which prompted our move away from them. Now they can do that - and I think they are quite a good solution as well. But they are at the upper end of the price scale.

On Pardot, since we use tools such as pushing to Facebook, we worked out we would need to buy both Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot to get the same Marketo functionality. Crazy, huh? And in terms of the efficiency of nurture streams, I haven't seen a solution as good as Marketo's.

[Jasmine_Kyles]

I've used Hubspot and agree with the sentiments above, while it's easier to train new employees on Hubspot the functionality is limited once a marketer is well versed in automation. With Hubspot you can go wide, but with Marketo you can go deep.

If there isn't a massive need to switch services due to capabilities I'd highly caution against it. Hubspot migrations are super expensive.  The migration alone is so time-consuming and processes and productivity will be lost in the process, negating any potential software cost savings.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The migration alone is so time-consuming and processes and productivity will be lost in the process, negating any potential software cost savings.

Likes++ on that, Jasmine!

IMO the blindest spot people have about migrations is Who's running the current show while everyone's being retrained? Of course you'd usually hire an outside agency (for $$$) to handle the technical parts of the migration (to the degree it's even possible to migrate your data) but that just papers over the real productivity sink.

[Amy_Goldfine]

At my last company we started with Pardot, and then migrated to Marketo as soon as our 2-year contract was up. (Like Vanessa, my experience was around 2014-2016, but I don't think it's changed much.) Pardot is very easy to use, and the UI is very nice, but it's very limited. Lists, emails, flows, etc., are all separate items, so there's no concept of "programs." It makes everything so disorganized! They also don't have a concept of tokens. For example, when we switched to Marketo and I created robust, tokenized program templates, my time to set up a webinar reduce by about 90%. I would never, ever go back to Pardot.

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Vanessa,

I've used both Hubspot and Pardot, and Marketo is definitely my preferred solution. In my previous role I moved the business off Pardot & onto Marketo due to the issues we had with the tool. In my current role (agency side), I manage clients who use both Marketo and Hubspot.

Bearing in mind that my experience with Pardot is from 2014-mid 2016, and I'm not sure whether these things have improved since...

Pardot specifically:

• We had major issues with the SF sync reliability (data was ~80% accurate on a good day)
• Couldn't do dynamic content on anything that isn't at the account level - so we couldn't use opportunity data for dynamic content which was a big issue for us.
• Lack of comprehensive reporting, lack of ability to support more complex marketing activities.

Basically, it was a data complex business and Pardot wasn't able to deliver on requirements.

Hubspot

• Very similar to Pardot in terms of its organisational structure
• Better able to handle some more complex cross-team processes
• But still much more restricted workflow functionalities compared to Marketo's smart campaign options.
• Not sure whether there's as much value in it if you aren't using the CRM + Sales + Marketing + Web features in tandem.
• No equivalent to marketo's "programs", so event management, webinar management etc... you can build it, but it's not as tidy and contained as Marketo.
• Drag and drop landing page/email templates are very clever as ideas but don't allow for modular control at the individual email level, personally this is enormously frustrating. I much prefer Marketo's email template functionality.

Generally, it's important to note that Pardot is owned by Salesforce but it is not their only, or their focus product. Hubspot's Marketing Automation solution, again - not their sole product. Marketo does Marketing Automation, and doesn't try to be the be-all-and-end-all of other areas. Key thing to take is that Pardot is never going to get the full focus of R&D at Salesforce, and Hubspot's MA tool isn't going to get theirs.

From my experience I would recommend Hubspot over Pardot, but Marketo over Hubspot. BUT it's really also dependent on the business - if you're working with a team that is low on the maturity curve, if you're not using some of the more advanced features and capability, and your data isn't particularly complex, Hubspot could work well. It is a very good tool - really. Our clients that are on Hubspot are clients that are just not ready to go straight to Marketo - Hubspot is a starting point for them. My frustrations with it are largely around its organisational structure, and just how simple it tries to make everything, restricting your ability to easily access and change some more complex details... In my view, great tool to start on, but if you've used Marketo well, it does feel like going backwards.

What I would ask is what is the business's concern with Marketo (e.g. is price a factor?) and what are the features within Marketo that you are using and can't live without? (Also, what CRM are you on? SFDC?)

Sorry for the novel, hope this helps

[Josh_Hill13]

Nice write up.

I agree with the last comment -- what does your business need? If you don't understand your requirements now and over next 3 years, you will get sold by a vendor.

Things to consider about some of the other vendors:

• Infusionsoft - tends to be more SMB like HubSpot but with more complex visio tools like Eloqua. In my view tends to be used by pro bloggers and ecommerce.
• Act On - has improved a lot since 2012. Similar to HubSpot. Has better workflow tools. Lacks Engagement programs and many Marketo like tools. A good choice for those with less automation needs because.

Some of the features you mention may work differently from vendor to vendor. Pardot doesn't have a batch recurring concept.

Blog Automation is solved through low cost third parties or LaunchPoint for Marketo. Remember - many of these firms strive to be platforms and individual use cases can be solved with plug in tools. Marketo has a lot of these.

Event Management - most marketers tend to overstate their needs. Marketo handles most events very well as long as the event mgr is organized (true anywhere!). You only need eventbrite or cvent when running your own user conference. And those two plug into Marketo. So I urge you to understand what it is you a trying to do before looking at vendors. Marketo already can do most of what you need.

Your CEO probably wants to negotiate more with Marketo or see if there are better or cheaper tools. In my experience, if you chose Marketo 7 years ago and are happy with it, there's no reason to change because the other tools don't do the same things in the same way. You will spend a year rebuilding.