Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs Sprout Social comparison

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Read 12 Sprout Social reviews

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Sprout Social and Salesforce Marketing Cloud compete in social media management and digital marketing sectors. Data indicates Salesforce Marketing Cloud holds an edge due to its robust feature set, preferred by users seeking comprehensive marketing capabilities.

Features: Sprout Social focuses on social media management tools, analytics, and engagement tracking, offering an intuitive approach to enhancing brand presence. Salesforce Marketing Cloud features marketing automation tools including email marketing, journey builder, and advanced targeting options, presenting a versatile solution for detailed campaigns.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Sprout Social offers quick deployment and accessible support, ideal for businesses aiming for fast implementation. Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides comprehensive support but involves a more complex deployment process due to its extensive features.

Pricing and ROI: Sprout Social offers a lower initial investment and faster ROI, appealing to budget-conscious businesses. Salesforce Marketing Cloud requires a higher setup cost but delivers substantial returns through its comprehensive feature set, benefiting companies focused on long-term growth.

To learn more, read our detailed Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Sprout Social Report (Updated: March 2026).

Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Sprout Social

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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

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Ranking in Social CRM

2nd

Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Marketing Automation (1st), Marketing Management (1st)

Sprout Social

Ranking in Social CRM

6th

Ranking in Social Media Management Solutions

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Social Media Analytics Software (2nd), AI Customer Experience Personalization (112th), AI Content Creation (66th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Social CRM category, the mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 5.9%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sprout Social is 7.8%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Social CRM Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud	5.9%
Sprout Social	7.8%
Other	86.3%

Social CRM

Featured Reviews

GauravSingh2

Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Targeted email journeys have boosted campaign insight and now need better data access and support

I feel that Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be improved in how the data views are accessed; it would be better to have something more physical. With data extensions, you can view them directly, but for data views, it is very difficult as you can only send it out or load it into data extensions. Improvements can also be made in the connections to different external tools such as Azure or AWS. Customer support can be improved in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as sometimes it is not clear what the issue is or how to approach solving it, and it also takes time to resolve issues.

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Joyce Mayor

Project Manager at Procter & Gamble

Unified social workflows have transformed reporting, listening, and engagement across channels

The best features Sprout Social offers are exceptional reporting capabilities and an intuitive user interface. I have several colleagues who use it to create posts, and the training takes about five minutes, especially for new users. Excellent customer service and a great social listening tool stand out as well. Aggregating mentions, quickly assessing the competitive landscape by channel, and excellent and highly responsive customer service are key strengths. I love the Sprout Social link feature to connect Instagram users with the URLs I am directing them to, and the flexibility to schedule across platforms in bulk or individually at optimal post times is valuable.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What is most valuable is that you can schedule reports, there are a lot of supporting tools, and you have access to all that information."

"This solution has improved organization brand awareness with prospects and clients."

"Overall, I would rate Salesforce Marketing Cloud a nine out of 10."

"We haven't had any issues with integration."

"We have found the solution stable, the performance is good, there are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."

"It is straightforward to set up."

"This is a very powerful and scalable solution."

"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,"

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pros

"Sprout Social has positively impacted my organization through time saving, quick reporting, and easy connection to our social media platforms."

"Sprout Social has saved us a lot of time, provided the convenience of a single login to multiple socials, and requires less time for training, making it very easy to use and start using it."

"Sprout Social has positively impacted my organization by saving us time and effort."

"Sprout Social is a great tool because it has helped me unify my social media program on a single platform, enables me to track the impact of social media campaigns, and has allowed my support team to streamline their workflows to handle social media tickets effectively."

"Switching to Sprout Social saved our business and helped us achieve all we needed to achieve."

"Sprout Social has positively impacted my organization by helping support steady follower growth through consistent posting, improving efficiency with easy content planning and scheduling, and enabling us to track everything, which is something we could not do before."

"Sprout Social is a great and top-notch tool primarily for scheduling and planning our social media content on different pages, with really great support and it is a very cost-effective tool."

"Sprout Social has positively impacted my organization by facilitating seamless content planning and publishing, allowing us to engage with our clients and the public with well-timed and relevant posts."

More Sprout Social pros

Cons

"Query Studio in Salesforce Marketing Cloud needs to be improved because not all queries are supported and we cannot debug the AM Script or SSJS code, which makes code debugging manual."

"The technicality of the solution can be streamlined."

"If someone wants to implement a best-of-breed solution, I'm uncertain whether Salesforce Marketing Cloud will be able to work, fit, or integrate smoothly."

"There is a lot of room for improvement in Salesforce Marketing Cloud's dashboards and the visualization of information in each journey."

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should include more point-and-click functionality."

"This solution could be more user-friendly."

"Customer support can be improved in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as sometimes it is not clear what the issue is or how to approach solving it, and it also takes time to resolve issues."

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

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud cons

"As of now, I have been using Sprout Social for almost two years, but there are some glitches in the back-end; sometimes the posts are not integrated or do not come with the proper details, proper dates, or proper content."

"I wish the ability to tag other Facebook pages was a reality with Sprout Social."

"I sometimes find it difficult to drill down into deeper analytics when using Sprout Social."

"There were definitely a lot of issues with billing regarding how Sprout Social bills, and that actually is my biggest issue with the platform."

"Sprout Social could be improved in several areas. The user interface could be more user-friendly and intuitive for new users."

"Additionally, it does not always support high-quality images or videos, and it is difficult to figure out how to get them into the platform."

"Sprout Social can be improved because the user experience of having hundreds of channels to navigate can be quite fiddly, especially when trying to bulk post."

"I believe technical support must be improved in Sprout Social."

More Sprout Social cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is affordable, considering the significant improvements it brings to our campaign results."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

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

"I don't know if my company pays for Salesforce Marketing Cloud monthly or yearly. It's a SaaS, so it's a recurring cost, but I have no information on its price."

"The solution is paid for monthly."

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

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

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

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.

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

I did not work on any pricing or implementation aspects but learned on my own when dealing with Revenue Cloud products.

What needs improvement with Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sprout Social?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that Sprout Social delivers good value for the price, making it very cost-effective.

What needs improvement with Sprout Social?

I wish the ability to tag other Facebook pages was a reality with Sprout Social. I think a partnership with unavailable platforms like Nextdoor would be a great improvement for my experience with S...

What is your primary use case for Sprout Social?

My main use case for Sprout Social is social media scheduling, posting, and analytic reports, as it is a helpful tool with comprehensive reporting on social media accounts, detailing the campaign's...

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Product Reports

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Download Salesforce Marketing Cloud product report

Download Sprout Social product report

Also Known As

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Overview

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.

Salesforce

Sprout Social is a comprehensive social media management platform that helps organizations streamline their social media presence. Its primary use case is to simplify the process of managing multiple social media accounts, scheduling posts, engaging with followers, and analyzing performance.

The most valuable functionality of Sprout Social is its unified Smart Inbox, which consolidates all social media messages, comments, and mentions into one place. This allows organizations to efficiently respond to customer inquiries, monitor brand mentions, and engage with their audience in real-time.

Sprout Social also offers robust scheduling capabilities, enabling users to plan and publish content across multiple social media platforms in advance. This feature saves time and ensures consistent messaging across channels.

Furthermore, Sprout Social provides in-depth analytics and reporting tools, allowing organizations to measure the impact of their social media efforts. Users can track key metrics, such as engagement, reach, and conversions, to gain insights and make data-driven decisions.

Sample Customers

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

Hyatt, Stanford University, Coldwell Banker, Razorfish, UPS, Box, Zipcar, PepsiCo, YogurtLand, Dove, TechSmith

Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Sprout Social