Pardot and Marketing Cloud have been two leading Salesforce marketing automation tools since 2013. By 2022, more than 37,000 companies had integrated Pardot with Salesforce, and over 22,000 businesses had used or were using Marketing Cloud, according to statistics from Infoclutch.com and Enlyft.com.
Compare Pardot vs Marketing Cloud pricing and features to determine their specific use cases, ensuring a focused investment in the appropriate tool without being sidetracked by unnecessary extras.
| Market Segment: B2B | Market Segment: B2C |
| Pardot Pricing Starts at: $1,250 /month/up to 10,000 contacts | Marketing Cloud Pricing Starts at: $400 org/month |
Pardot Key Features:
| Marketing Cloud Key Features:
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Pardot Add-Ons:
| Salesforce Marketing Cloud Add-Ons:
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Pardot (rebranded to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) is a B2B (Business-to-Business) marketing automation solution particularly suited for organizations with extended sales cycles and multiple decision-makers that was created by David Cummings and Adam Blitzer in 2007. It was purchased by ExactTarget in 2012 and then was finally acquired by Salesforce in 2013.
The name “Pardot,” meaning “to market or sell” in Latvian, reflects its core function of fostering connections, boosting pipeline, and enhancing sales team performance.
Later, Salesforce introduced the Pardot Lightning App in 2018 to synchronize marketing and sales efforts and integrate seamlessly with Sales Cloud.
In the same year, Salesforce launched another product version – Pardot Einstein. It is powered up with AI (Artificial Intelligence) features for:
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a B2C (Business-to-Consumers) suite for empowering digital marketing teams who often engage in more straightforward, transactional exchanges with an all-inclusive set of social media, email marketing, and digital advertising management tools.
It was officially created in 2013, right after the acquisition of three powerful solutions:
After that, in 2014, Salesforce united Radian6 and Buddy Media into Social Studio. Now, Marketing Cloud is a large group of marketing automation solutions including:
Salesforce marketing automation enhances campaign management and operational efficiency across various channels, offering:
Effective implementation of marketing automation can significantly increase lead conversion rates, with 77% of businesses reporting growth after adoption. It also enables staff to automate routine tasks, reduces errors, and supports business expansion and adaptability.
As we’ve already mentioned earlier in the blog post, both Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud were created to automate and improve marketing activities.
Pardot and Marketing Cloud, although now under the same Marketing Cloud Engagement brand, remain separate in functionality and are not integrated. Each requires a separate license and serves different marketing needs.
However, both platforms share some commonalities, such as:
Each platform offers escalating tiers of service at higher prices, reflecting the scale and complexity of the features provided. Choosing between Salesforce Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud should be based on the organization’s specific needs, technical resources, and marketing goals.
Pardot is tailored for ease of use, particularly for non-technical teams and it is more suited for detailed, company-to-company engagement. Marketing Cloud caters to a wider range of marketing activities with its array of specialized tools. It provides a solution for businesses looking to reach a broad customer base across multiple channels.
Let’s dive into Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud pricing, features, and purposes.
MC Account Engagement (сonsolidated and rebranded from Pardot] now encompasses all of the Account-based (or B2B) marketing automation solutions.
Pardot is a feature-rich tool whose functionality varies significantly from edition to edition. It helps move your visitors and prospects through a sales funnel which begins when you create marketing materials to generate interest in your products and ends when qualified prospects are assigned to a sales rep.
Pardot (Account Engagement) easily integrates with Salesforce featuring bidirectional synchronization with standard Salesforce objects such as leads and contacts, and now aligns with Salesforce campaigns within the Pardot app.
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Salesforce Pardot Pricing Plans range from $1,250/month to $15,000/month based on the included functionality set and contacts you want to engage with. Like any other Salesforce product, Pardot subscriptions are paid annually.
* Please note: Quantity of Contacts is not limited by edition. You can purchase additional ones at any moment. And depending on your need you can expect discounts from Salesforce.
Pardot’s (Account Engagement) Growth edition includes all the basic features users need to get started — including:
Active Prospects in Pardot (MC Account Engagement)
Email Templates in Pardot (MC Account Engagement) | Ascendix
All Active Campaigns in Pardot (MC Account Engagement) | Ascendix
Pardot (MC Account Engagement) Reports | Ascendix
Linkedin Connector in Pardot (MC Account Engagement) | Ascendix
Additionally, this package includes access to a suite of up to 50 forms, landing pages, and automation rules.
In this pricing tier, clients have access to 100MB of file hosting and a daily allowance of 25,000 API calls. By investing an extra $400 per month, clients can upgrade to include Advanced Dynamic Content, Advanced Email Analytics, and tools for Email Rendering and Preview Analysis.
Even at this very basic edition, you can add a Pardot Tracking code to your website to oversee the actions of visitors and prospects such as clicking on links, viewing pages, or downloading information.
Pardot Evergreen Connector in MC Account Engagement | Ascendix
Pardot can be easily connected to your existing forms on the website.
Form Handler in Pardot (MC Account Engagement) | Ascendix
Pardot is known for its user-friendly “What You See Is What You Get” interface, making it easy to navigate for those using it for its intended purpose. Managed by specialists, Pardot enables users to master its basic functions quickly, but delving into more complex customizations requires highly specialized consultants.
So, if you need a thorough Pardot audit or help with Pardot setup or landing pages, forms, features customization, or platform training, contact our team.
Our Pardot specialists will ensure that the platform is utilized to its full potential and identify areas for improvement in alignment with your marketing goals.
Pardot’s (Account Engagement) Plus edition offers all the features of the Growth edition together with B2B Marketing Analytics for the marketer who wants to analyze better marketing performance.
Besides that, Pardot users enjoy:
This plan provides unlimited landing pages, 500MB for file hosting, and a quota of up to 50,000 daily API calls.
Pardot’s (Account Engagement) Advanced package offers Salesforce Einstein AI-powered features like:
This tier grants access to advanced features including custom object integration, a dedicated IP address, up to 100,000 daily API calls, and 10GB of file hosting.
The Pardot (Account Engagement) Premium edition is tailored for sophisticated marketing teams looking to expand their digital reach, offering enterprise-grade tools such as:
You can check more information on different pricing details on the Pardot plans page.
Here is a more detailed Pardot marketing suites comparison chart:
MC Account Engagement (Pardot) Editions Comparison | Ascendix
Salesforce Reports for Sales Guide: What Metrics to Track and What to Place on Dashboards
As it’s been mentioned before, MC Account Engagement (Pardot) helps to track email opens and enable A/B email testing. It provides guidance for email sending reputation and deliverability so your emails will less likely hit the Spam folder.
Pardot can boost email marketing automation in Salesforce and provides a confirmed Opt-In Process to verify the authenticity of email addresses & requests.
All accounts in this tool include an unsubscribe page. You can also create Email Preference Pages.
Pardot enables sending operational communications to prospects who have opted out of marketing communications.
“ Besides a marketing automation tool, there are two other things that have an impact on an opening rate: Subject and Preheader. These 2 words are small steps in creating your email templates. It is really important to prepare quality, catching Subject and informative Preheaders if you want to guarantee a high opening rate. ”
Furthermore, Account Engagement provides administrators with robust controls to manage user permissions for email content modifications.
Pardot offers an array of sophisticated tools designed to automate workflows. The image below serves as a guide to selecting the appropriate tool for your needs.
Integration with 4 custom objects is only available out-of-the-box in the Pardot Advanced edition.
Custom objects are read-only in Pardot, so any changes that need to be reflected in Pardot must be made on the Salesforce side.
To use a custom object field in emails or dynamic content, a formula field must be created on a standard object record to map to the custom field.
For integration, all Salesforce fields must be mapped to an existing field. Otherwise, you need to create a new field in Pardot. Adding a field in Salesforce does not add a field to Pardot.
Our Pardot agency will provide customized and secure Pardot integration with Salesforce and website forms to enhance your marketing automation and customer relationship management.
Pardot provides a range of add-ons to enhance Account Engagement capabilities.
| This solution helps integrate your marketing automation, sales, and service data to leverage predictive insights for actionable strategies. |
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| This add-on enables Sales teams to engage promptly and frequently by using Sales Emails and Alerts designed for Account Engagement | ||
| Extra contacts can be acquired as needed. | ||
| Access engagement metrics for accounts, leads, contacts, or opportunity records. |
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Journeys
Salesforce Marketing Cloud utilizes connectors for data integration and operates on a distinct architecture outside the core Salesforce platform.
It unites numerous products under one hood with their own pricing plans and core features. While Marketing Cloud also handles email, it extends beyond that with packages for each marketing channel, offering a broader range of capabilities. Let’s discuss them in greater detail.
MC Engagement, previously known as Core Messaging/Journeys, enables the delivery of tailored cross-channel experiences throughout the customer lifecycle, complemented by sophisticated campaign management.
It ensures consistent messaging across all marketing channels and designs visual customer journey maps, from the straightforward to the intricate, for continuous refinement and reference.
Marketing Cloud Engagement also unites all the features offered in a Marketing Cloud package known as Email, Mobile, and Web Marketing Suite like email personalization, content builder and tagging, and audience segmentation.
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By subscribing to the Professional edition, you will be able to:
In a Corporate plan, you’ll find everything available in a Professional plan, plus:
With the Enterprise plan, you’ll get more sophisticated capabilities like:
For additional fees, you can purchase the following add-ons:
| For advanced analysis, visualization, and reporting on email, mobile, and journey data. | ||
| Encrypt data at rest to meet corporate privacy policies, regulatory mandates, and private data handling contractual requirements, decrypting it only when sending. | ||
| Track performance and engage through various channels using web or app activity, necessitating a Google Analytics 360 license and Journey Builder access. |
MC Personalization, previously Interaction Studio, enables genuine one-to-one customer engagement across every touchpoint, leveraging Salesforce’s premier solution for real-time personalization and interaction management.
It is a universal suite that centralizes marketing activities to view, track, and manage the customer experience in real-time and helps humanize every moment and optimize your impact.
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Marketing Cloud Personalization comes in two editions: Growth for $108,000 org/year and Premium for $300,000 org/year.
With the Growth suite you’ll get:
The given features in the Growth plan can be enhanced with AI-driven cross-channel marketing personalization as well as:
Further, you can enhance MC Personalization with additional Unique Visitors tracking for $9,000 per 100,000 and Named Profiles for $6,000 per 100,000.
The Data Cloud for Marketing aggregates ,consolidates, and leverages your audience data to enhance customer experiences with personalized interactions. This platform allows you to integrate all customer data for a holistic customer profile, create precise audience segments through an intuitive interface, and deploy this data across all marketing channels.
For $108,000 /org/year clients can leverage the following features:
For an added fee, Data Spaces can be acquired at $60,000 per Data Space, on an annual billing cycle, to expand the functionalities of Data Cloud for Marketing:
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Loyalty Management enables the aggregation of all loyalty member data to get a 360-degree view of member details and loyalty activities.
Besides that, this product suite helps:
You can expand your Loyalty Management capabilities with Tableau CRM for Loyalty Management to empower it with advanced AI insights.
MC Intelligence, rebranded from Datorama, offers a unified marketing dashboard that allows you to connect, analyze, and act on your data, enhancing ROI, efficiency, and business growth.
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Datorama is a one-stop-shop platform for monitoring and managing marketing data, investments, and KPIs.
This marketing suite enables:
Marketing Cloud Advertising AKA. Advertising Studio
Marketing Cloud Advertising offers a campaign management and CRM targeting platform tailored for digital marketing initiatives. You can get MC Advertising at $ 2,000/month and use your CRM data for managing your digital advertising at scale.
With MC Advertising, you can:
Thinking of Implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud or Pardot? Check the Hidden Cost of Salesforce Products Setup
Distributed Marketing & Marketing Cloud Connect
This solution seamlessly integrates corporate marketing, employees, channel partners, and brand engagement to ensure cohesive experiences throughout corporate and partner networks. Marketers can create and circulate on-brand content via Marketing Cloud.
Teams across the board can customize and share content directly through the CRM system, thanks to the Distributed Marketing package. This package, installable in the CRM, allows for efficient content collaboration, leveraging Marketing Cloud’s capabilities for reliable and scalable business engagement.
Einstein for Marketing
It empowers marketers to optimize each customer’s journey through predictive insights, enabling the creation of tailored messages and content. It also provides strategic engagement recommendations, enhancing customer interactions.
Our consultants will help you enhance and refine the Marketing Cloud platform to maximize its effectiveness and efficiency.
If you have a B2C, highly transactional business with larger databases, Marketing Cloud can be a better fit for you. This suite is geared towards larger databases with smaller value sales.
If you run a B2B company with smaller databases, longer sales cycles but higher volume sales, that needs an advanced email marketing platform, then Pardot can be a better fit.
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The main advantage of Marketing Cloud over Pardot is that it is more versatile. With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can manage your marketing activities via different channels:
It simplifies marketing data analysis and the launch of digital advertising campaigns making it a comprehensive platform for digital marketing.
Marketing Cloud is especially suitable for those with a long-term vision that includes cross-channel marketing and who require advanced automation and personalization features. While Marketing Cloud does not provide lead scoring automation out-of-the-box, it can be achieved through integration with a CRM system.
On the contrary, Pardot has more advanced features for launching and managing email marketing campaigns as well as some social media functionalities, although it doesn’t cover all social platforms. In addition, Pardot includes lead scoring as a standard feature that Salesforce Marketing Cloud doesn’t provide.
It’s ideal if your current focus is solely on B2B automation without the need for extensive cross-channel marketing in the future.
Choosing Pardot means committing to a platform that’s closely integrated with sales and built on the Salesforce core platform.
Conversely, Marketing Cloud operates as a separate application with its own set of functionalities but can still integrate with Salesforce CRM through point-and-click tools.
However, if you’re working with a different CRM system and wish to leverage Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s capabilities, integration is still possible, provided that the other CRM supports API connectivity.
Pardot’s user-friendly design intentionally limits how deeply users can delve into its system, preventing accidental disruptions and ensuring a smooth operation that typically requires a specialist, even though it operates on a declarative code basis.
In contrast, Marketing Cloud offers an array of product suits that may necessitate specialized skills in areas like data management and advanced marketing techniques. It is inherently more complex and may require development knowledge, but once set up, it can be operated by someone without a developer background.
Salesforce Integration Guide: Top Tools You Need To Connect Right Now
A B2B, or “business-to-business” and a B2C, or “business-to-consumer,” are two separate business models that serve different types of customers: other businesses or direct to consumers.
A B2B company offers products or services to other businesses. A B2C company provides products or services directly to individual consumers.
Pardot is positioned for B2B marketing specifically, so its strengths lie in aligning marketing and sales, lead management, automated actions, and marketing campaigns.
Marketing Cloud offers greater capabilities for social media marketing and advertising, plus SMS campaigns. It focuses more on the B2C brands that communicate one-to-one via social or transactional mobile messaging.
However, both B2C and B2B companies can benefit from Pardot as their chosen marketing automation platform, and likewise, both B2B and B2C companies can leverage all the advantages of Marketing Cloud.
If Pardot and Marketing Cloud implementation doesn’t justify its investment, their features are malfunctioning or you need an outside pair of eyes to reimage your marketing strategy, hire Ascendix.
Our Pardot and Marketing Cloud consulting services are designed to ensure you’re maximizing your Pardot and Salesforce investment. As your trusted consultants, we aim to boost product utilization and your marketing campaign effectiveness.
Ascendix Technologies, based in Dallas, Texas, is a certified Pardot and Marketing Cloud consultancy, and an AppExchange app development firm. As a Salesforce Summit Consulting Partner, our team boasts over 120 Salesforce certifications highlighting our expertise in various aspects of the Salesforce ecosystem.
Want to take advantage of Pardot and Marketing Cloud capabilities to their full extent? Book a free consulting call.
Yes, Salesforce helps automate marketing activities via email marketing, social media management, content management, and digital advertising tools. Proper implementation of Salesforce helps increase marketing ROI by 37% on average.
Yes, Pardot belongs to a larger Salesforce product group – Marketing Cloud, along with other suites like Loyalty Management, Email, Mobile, and Web Marketing, Social Studio, Advertising Studio, Datorama, Google Marketing Platform, and Interaction Studio.
Pricing for Pardot (Account Engagement) editions varies between $1,250 and $15,000 per month, based on contact quantity and feature complexity.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, previously Pardot, is Salesforce’s automation tool for B2B marketing, enhancing lead generation, personalization, and actionable insights to deepen account relationships.
Anzhelika is a seasoned B2B content marketing strategist with extensive experience in elevating corporate profiles through compelling content. At Ascendix, she offers a wealth of knowledge in Salesforce consulting, providing valuable tips, tricks, and comprehensive guides. Additionally, Anzhelika stays at the forefront of the industry, delivering expert analysis on the latest Salesforce tools and emerging technology trends.
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