If you work in marketing or sales, chances are that you’ve probably heard about marketing automation tools like Marketo and HubSpot. These are brands that have built solid names in the software community for a while now and most times, it can be hard to tell which one is better for you.

In this article, we will look at how they compare, the features they offer, their integrations, and their pricing. We’ll look into these aspects in a clear and fair way as much as possible.

Let’s start with the basics.

What is Marketo

Marketo, an Adobe product, was launched in 2006 as a lead management tool. It specializes in account-based marketing automation, with a focus on lead management, content personalization, and automated lead nurturing. Like HubSpot, Marketo closely integrates with other Adobe products.

Marketo is marketed as a solution for midsize to enterprise organizations with a primary focus on sales and lead generation. All Marketo plans come with custom pricing, with costs scaling based on the size of your database.

What is HubSpot

HubSpot is a cloud-based customer platform that can help scaling businesses grow better with their sales, service, marketing, and content management software.

HubSpot provides various tools across marketing, web content, sales and operations. With HubSpot, you can automate and streamline your marketing activities too.

Marketo vs HubSpot: Comparison Table

Features	Marketo	HubSpot
Marketing Automation	Yes	Yes
Email Marketing	Yes	Yes
B2B Marketing and lead management	Yes	Yes
Real-time Personalization	Yes	Yes
Inbound Marketing	Yes	Yes
Email and Campaign Management	Yes	Yes
Measure and Optimize ROI	Yes	Yes

Deciding between Marketo and HubSpot for your marketing automation needs involves understanding their pricing structures, feature sets, and strengths and weaknesses.

Pricing

Marketo offers a tiered pricing structure with three plans: Basic ($895 per month), Pro ($1,795 per month), and Elite ($3,195 per month). Pricing is not publicly available and requires contacting Marketo for a quote.

HubSpot uses a freemium model with a free tier offering basic features. Paid plans start at $20 per user per month for the Starter plan, with more features unlocked in the Professional ($890 per month) and Enterprise (starting at $3,600 per month) tiers.

Feature Comparison

Marketo emphasizes cross-channel marketing, allowing you to manage campaigns across various platforms. It boasts a strong integration with Salesforce and offers features like content intelligence, data and insights, and integrations with popular tools like Microsoft products, Adobe Creative Suite, Zoom, and social media platforms.

HubSpot focuses on user-friendliness with responsive email templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and tools for lead generation like subscription forms and landing pages. It offers powerful marketing automation capabilities, a form builder, popup tools, and integrates with various marketing and sales tools like Distrobird, Mailchimp, Slack, Intercom, Calendly, LinkedIn, Zapier, and Salesforce.

Pros and Cons

Marketo is praised for its ease of use, particularly for those already using Salesforce. It offers quick setup, good customer support, and an active community. However, users criticize its limited landing page and form builder functionality, along with a lack of detailed analytics and reporting. Additionally, the pricing structure has significant jumps between tiers.

HubSpot shines as an all-in-one solution with powerful automation tools and the ability to scale with your business needs. It boasts an integrated content management system and offers good scalability. However, it might not always be the most budget-friendly option, requires time investment for setup, has limitations in customization compared to Marketo, and can present challenges when integrating with some third-party tools.

Choosing between Marketo and HubSpot

Marketo and HubSpot are excellent tools that help marketers execute their role of promoting businesses/brands across various channels like social media, websites, and email. Although they offer similar services, they have their differences.

Marketo is a marketing automation software. But, it is not an all-in-one solution. With Marketo, you need to use other tools to get some marketing tasks and activities done. It does not come with an in-built CRM but integrates with Salesforce.

Using Marketo requires more time to master navigating through the software efficiently. It also heavily focuses on email marketing, which isn't the only marketing needs users are looking forward to sorting out with marketing automation tools. Marketo has more analytical capabilities than HubSpot, which is an added advantage.

HubSpot is an all-in-one solution that supports and balances all aspects of marketing from top to bottom. With HubSpot, everything you need to skyrocket your marketing effort is readily available. It also offers a smooth user experience that is easier to implement, learn and use. HubSpot is more affordable and easy to use and understand, unlike Marketo.

But the choice of which to use boils down to what you look forward to achieving with any of them.

What sets Distrobird Apart?

Distrobird seamlessly run cold email & SMS sequences, inbound and outbound calling, unified inbox, form tracking, lead routing, and more in one place.

Features: Distrobird features include data enrichment, contact management, cloud call centre, form tracking, block list, shared inbox, Office 365, Gmail, and custom SMTP inbox sync, campaign exclusions, and scheduled campaigns.
Integrations: HubSpot, Gmail, Stripe, Microsoft Outlook, Twilio, Zapier, Clearbit, Zoho, Telnyx, Salesforce and NGP VAN.
Pricing: There is a free plan for the Voice, Sequences, and Shared Inbox products. Startup plan for the Shared Inbox is $8/month. Startup, Growth & Enterprise plans for both the Sequences and Voice products are $25, $50, and $75 respectively.

If you are looking for a comprehensive and affordable solution with a free plan, Distrobird is a great option. It offers all the essential features you need to manage your sales & customer engagement tech stack in one place - multi-channel sequences and campaigns, web messenger, outbound dialer, inbound call center software, shared team inbox, and conversation analytics - in a single solution. Distrobird is also easy to use and integrates with a variety of popular apps.

Whether you're a startup or an established business, Distrobird's scalable pricing plans make it a cost-effective choice.

All-in-one platform

Sales

Customer Support

Products

Campaigns & Sequences

SMS - P2P & Campaigns

Voice

Web Chat

Shared Inbox

Form Tracking

Email Sequences

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