Freshdesk vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

The compared Freshworks and Salesforce solutions aren't in the same category. Freshworks is ranked #5 in CEM , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 6.1% mindshare in the category. Salesforce is ranked #2 in SC , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 13.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Freshworks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Freshdesk

Read 29 Freshdesk reviews

217 Views
147 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Read 54 Salesforce Marketing Cloud reviews

387 Views
213 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Freshdesk

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Freshdesk and Salesforce Marketing Cloud based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Qualtrics, ServiceNow, Salesforce and others in Customer Experience Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Customer Experience Management Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Customer Experience Management

December 2024

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Helped 830,726 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Freshdesk

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Customer Experience Management (5th), Field Service Management (3rd), Help Desk Software (9th), Knowledge Management Software (4th)

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Social CRM (2nd), Marketing Automation (1st), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Customer Relationship Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Freshdesk is designed for Customer Experience Management and holds a mindshare of 6.1%, down 8.0% compared to last year.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Social CRM, holds 13.0% mindshare, up 11.8% since last year.

Customer Experience Management

Social CRM

Featured Reviews

Alexey Timchenko

Senior Vice President Information Technology at TASC Towers

Incredibly user-friendly, flexible, and affordable

Automation and ticket routing rules in Freshdesk save us daily by streamlining routine tasks. We use reports to identify issues, allocate resources, and continuously improve our processes. It is a vital part of our daily operations, helping us stay proactive and efficient in handling various types of tickets. The reporting and analytics tools in Freshdesk are effective for measuring customer service performance. While our current subscription level has some limitations in terms of reporting, the next level provides more options. Budget constraints currently prevent us from upgrading, but the available reporting features still meet our basic needs. I highly recommend Freshdesk, especially for companies in their early stages. It is user-friendly, easy to configure, and great for those with a moderate volume of customer requests. The cost is reasonable, making it a quick and efficient solution to implement. Overall, I would rate Freshdesk as an eight out of ten.

Read full review

SantoshKrishna

Director at BMO Financial

Easy to deploy, stable, and scalable

The encryption and decryption have room for improvement. We need to be confident that the customer's data is secure when shared outside of the organization. I would like to request additional mobile app features that go beyond push notifications. As the mobile development industry continues to advance with new technologies, such as AI components, it is important to consider these advancements when setting up campaigns. Currently, campaigns are scheduled to be sent to customers at a prescribed time, but they may not be relevant to the customer unless they see them as valuable. For example, if I want to run a campaign offering loans, I would need to consider the customer's needs and balance. In the future, I hope Salesforce can incorporate an AI component that utilizes the shared data, rather than just scheduling campaigns.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It is quite easy to program custom apps and integrate them."

"Freshdesk provides a plain vanilla solution, making it user-friendly and less complex."

"Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour."

"Its simplicity is most valuable. It is easy and simple, and it requires negligible training effort. I don't spend all my time goofing around trying to find stuff in the ticketing system."

"It's free of charge for us. For our scale of business, it's very important. We don't have a lot of tickets."

"Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost."

"The most valuable features of Freshdesk are the automation of tickets to assign them to different agents, and the managing of documents is easy."

"It's easy to use and integrates with other tools. We can embed Jira into it, link Jira tickets with Freshdesk tickets, and use it for our knowledge base."

More Freshdesk pros

"We have found the solution to be scalable."

"The ability to automate processes is one of the most valuable features of Salesforce. This sets it part from other systems. We use the journey builder to design a fully automated journey."

"We use Marketing Cloud for marketing campaigns and engaging customers. It is a business-focused application for a specific area of business, which is acquiring customers."

"It is a great solution. I like its stability, scalability, and performance."

"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the reporting engine. Reports are very good and easy to build."

"The tool is flexible and helps us with insights and reports. Salesforce Marketing Cloud has improved our organizational functions by creating an environment where clients and internal staff can access information about various solutions. For instance, clients can apply for different projects, and internal staff can approve them based on donor requirements. This simplifies communication between clients, donors, and our company,"

"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the seamless conversion of lead to opportunity, in relation to orders is good. That seamless connection is beneficial and simple."

"Salesforce is constantly evolving and have a good release cycle."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pros

Cons

"There aren't any features that we want to enhance, but we need to mature in our usage of some of them. I can't say any feature is missing or needs improvement, but a tool's built-in features need to evolve customer feedback. We have a dialogue set up for that kind of feedback."

"While it's good for a small number of tickets, definitely in the future, we will require something more powerful."

"It should enhance its service and its reporting capabilities."

"I would like to see improvements in the account management aspect, having a customer portal for better visibility into my subscription, invoices, and trouble tickets."

"If Freshdesk had forms in it so that I could go to the portal and fill out a service request, that would improve it immensely and make it more valuable for enterprise customers, but that's not a current functionality. You can't have a certain catalog of any type. You can't be like, "Hey, I want to just go submit a ticket," and then type in. You can't prompt them to ask anything. It is just a blank form."

"There are some restrictions where you need automation and sometimes there is just no way to achieve what you need."

"Asset management and branding are two areas in the solution that have scope for improvement."

"We have many cases where a ticket comes in, and it ends up having multiple team members working on it. It would be really nice to be able to assign a single ticket to multiple people, rather than having to create the parent-child hierarchy that they have set up. It generates a proliferation of tickets that I really don't want to have. Having to jump from a parent to one child and then to another child makes it harder for me to be able to see the entire case from end to end. A simple example is our new hire process or our termination process. We have people who leave. We also have people who come on board. We have got multiple people participating and doing things related to the leaving or onboarding process. Currently, I have to go to different tickets to be able to see whether all tasks are really done or not. If I could assign lots of people to one ticket, it would be really nice."

More Freshdesk cons

"Technical support is good but could be faster, maybe more knowledgeable, and more customer friendly."

"We have struggled to get resolution of support tickets from the Salesforce team."

"In a future release it would be great to have the ability to connect the data from social media and email marketing and have it in one dashboard."

"Salesforce could benefit by implementing further integration with more platforms."

"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."

"The main action I want to do in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is to export data into Excel and use it. My company may have that feature locked down, or if the Excel data exporting function still isn't available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, that's the feature I want."

"User management could be better."

"We would like an improvement to the 'Einstein Engagement Frequency'; the optimal range of emails that our subscribers will engage with."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is pretty manageable and acceptable."

"We pay approximately $70 per agent to use Freshdesk. We have 10 agents, which is approximately $700 or $800 per month. It is a fixed license, there are not any additional fees."

"It was definitely not expensive. It was two grand or maybe three grand total for a year. It has just straight and simple standard licensing fees. There is no additional fee."

"The price could be better, but it's okay. Compared to ServiceNow and JIRA, Freshworks offers a competitive price. There are also additional licensing costs because you need Microsoft Outlook. Each new email account costs around $15 to $19."

"We use a combination of Freshdesk, Freshservice, and Freshchat. We use the whole suite. Weirdly enough, we pay more for Freshdesk than we do for Freshservice. I would rate it a three out of five in terms of pricing. You can get different bundles, and you can always move to different plans that are standard. Freshservice can go anywhere from $19 up to $120 per agent, per month. There is such a wide range, and it is very customizable to your needs."

"It is costly."

"Freshdesk was the best solution with the best price. It was cost efficient and included all the features that we needed."

"We use a licensing model only so we pay for the number of agents we have configured in the system only."

More Freshdesk pricing and cost advice

"Salesforce is an expensive solution."

"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."

"We have two types of licensing. We have a yearly license for end users and we have a concurrent login for selling."

"It's not cheap, which is why I recommend that you use Marketing Cloud to create automated journeys. If you plan to use Marketing Cloud just to send emails, use another tool."

"The solution is paid for monthly."

"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."

"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."

"Its licensing is on an annual basis. Customers are okay with its licensing cost, and they don't find it expensive."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

58%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Freshdesk?

Freshdesk significantly improved our customer issue resolution process. We can now easily record and track all customer requests, ensuring that no tickets are lost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Freshdesk?

Freshdesk's major drawback is its limitation in integrating tools for App Store and Play Store reviews, and social channels like Twitter, which come with additional costs. Despite having third-part...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Freshdesk?

The customer's primary use case for Freshdesk is handling emails and social media queries. It is mostly used for managing transactional queries such as deposits and withdrawals. Our support team is...

See all answers

What do you like most about Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Datorama is part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which is quite a valuable feature that provides customer analytics.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

The solution's pricing is very high and should be more flexible for smaller companies.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

I would like to see more ways to accomplish specific tasks. Instead of having one set method, there should be multiple options available. Additionally, sometimes the integration between Salesforce ...

See all answers

Comparisons

ServiceNow vs Freshdesk

Compared 25% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs Freshdesk

Compared 24% of the time

Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Freshdesk

Compared 9% of the time

Spiceworks vs Freshdesk

Compared 7% of the time

Maven AGI vs Freshdesk

Compared 6% of the time

More Freshdesk Competitors

Marketo vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 21% of the time

Oracle Eloqua vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

SAP Marketing Cloud vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

HubSpot Marketing Hub vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

Zeta Marketing Platform vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Freshdesk

January 2025

Download Freshdesk product report

Buyer's Guide

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

December 2024

Download Salesforce Marketing Cloud product report

Also Known As

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Freshworks

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Salesforce

Overview

Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support solution that provides organizations with the features necessary to effectively streamline their support processes. This includes powerful multichannel capability, integrated game mechanics, smart automations, and more.

The solution is designed to automate agent workflows and resolve routine questions using AI and bots. Freshdesk allows managers to prioritize, categorize, and assign tickets to their agents, making it easy for them to collaborate and quickly respond to customers.

Freshdesk Features and Benefits

Some of the solution's top features and benefits include:

Simplified ticketing: With Freshdesk, you can easily prioritize, manage, and assign trackable tickets. The management system ensures that multiple agents don’t work on the same ticket by accident. You can easily set deadlines for ticket resolution based on specific categories and create custom statuses that suit your workflow to identify what stage a ticket is in.

Automation: Automatically assign tickets to agents and groups based on keywords and requests and set up automated repeated actions and provide quick, consistent responses to common questions using pre-formatted replies. In addition, you can choose to prevent the reopening of tickets when customers reply with a thank you.

Improved collaboration: Share tickets with other teams while retaining full visibility into the progress being made on the issue. Related tickets can be linked together to better keep track of the big picture. Tickets can also be split into smaller child tickets and assigned to multiple agents to help resolve complex, multi-stage issues.

Build up your knowledge base: Create effective support documentation by enabling agents to convert their ticket replies into knowledge base articles, while they reply.

Metrics and reporting: See how different agents and groups are performing by viewing various help desk metrics and improve performance by identifying problems based on insights.

With Freshdesk’s reporting tools, you can schedule the periodic delivery of out-of-the-box and custom reports to your inbox. The solution’s customer satisfaction reports provide you with feedback on how your customers rate your support.

Forum moderation: Set up moderation workflows to ensure that forum posts that violate your guidelines are not immediately published. Critical issues raised in the community are automatically converted into tickets to ensure they get the required response.
Integration: Freshdesk’s open API can be used to integrate the solution with multiple third-party systems.

Comprehensive security: Freshdesk’s security features allow you to:
- Set custom access permissions for agents.
- Perform comprehensive audits of networks and systems.
- Secure your own support domain or vanity URL with custom SSL certificates.
- Whitelist IP ranges and restrict login access outside of work, or link IP whitelisting to a VPN.
- Set up SSO scripts for credential authentication.

Reviews from Real Users

Freshdesk stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its effective ticketing system and its intuitive interface.

Deepak B., an application manager, writes, “Freshdesk has allowed us to measure and track the response and resolution time of tickets which has been reduced from seven to eight hours down to 30 minutes to one hour. This information is valuable for board meetings.”

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive marketing automation platform that enables businesses to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

With its robust set of tools and features, marketers can easily manage and automate their email marketing, social media advertising, mobile messaging, and customer journey mapping.

The platform offers advanced segmentation capabilities, allowing marketers to segment their audience based on various criteria and deliver tailored messages to each segment.

Additionally, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides powerful analytics and reporting features, enabling marketers to track the performance of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

With its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with other Salesforce products, Marketing Cloud offers a seamless and efficient marketing automation solution for businesses of all sizes.

Sample Customers

Honda, 3M, Hugo Boss, Petronas, Sony Pictures, The Atlantic, goodreads, Clear Channel Radio, Penn University of Pennsylvania, unicef, Kuoni, Movember

American Express, Financial Conduct Authority, KPN, Merck KGaA, Peterborough City Council, The Chapar, ADP, Financial Times, Stanley Black & Decker, SureFlap, Western Union, Philips

Buyer's Guide

Customer Experience Management

December 2024

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We monitor all Customer Experience Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.