Adobe Marketo Engage alternatives: 14 marketing automation tools compared

Adobe Marketo Engage is the platform B2B marketing operations teams have long treated as the default, and the people searching for a replacement tend to be those who inherited an instance nobody fully understands, or who pay for enterprise depth they never switch on. They move either to a CRM-native suite, to a lighter and quoted-or-published rival, or to open source they host themselves.

Short answer: Looking for a replacement for Adobe Marketo Engage? HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Account Engagement and Oracle Eloqua come first in our marketing automation ranking. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Start with HubSpot Marketing Hub if you want one database for marketing and sales and no dedicated operations specialist. All 14 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Marketing Automation Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Adobe Marketo Engage.

Paid placement exists here, but it does not alter our verdicts. Read how it is kept apart.

Adobe Marketo Engage

#12 of 16 in our marketing automation ranking

  • Pricing: Pricing on request; no price list seen on the pages we could read
  • Established in: United States
  • Built for: B2B marketing teams with a dedicated operations owner and Salesforce or Dynamics as CRM
  • Not for: Small teams without marketing operations staff, or companies on a different CRM
01

Why buyers look past Adobe Marketo Engage

  1. 01

    An instance that needs a specialist to run

    Adobe's own documentation describes Smart Campaigns as the engine of the product, built from a Smart List, a Flow and a Schedule, and notes that moving a campaign between programs leaves references pointing at the old one until someone fixes them by hand. That is workable for a dedicated marketing operations hire. For a three-person team it turns every new nurture stream into a small project.

  2. 02

    No published price to plan against

    On the Adobe pages we could read, Marketo Engage is sold through sales rather than a price list. The only way to compare it with Account Engagement, whose edition prices Salesforce publishes, or with Act-On, which shows a starting figure, is to run a procurement round first. Buyers who want a number before a call start the search for alternatives at this point.

  3. 03

    CRM sync built around two systems

    Adobe documents synchronisation with Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. A company on HubSpot, NetSuite or another CRM is therefore working against the grain of the product, whereas several rivals either bundle a CRM or list a wider set of CRM connections. Teams change platforms mostly when the CRM underneath them changes.

02

14 alternatives at a glance

Smaller vendors first, big brands after
AlternativeHeadquartersFree optionPricing model Switch ifOur rank
HubSpot Marketing HubUnited StatesYesPublishedyou want one database for marketing and sales and no dedicated operations specialist#5
Salesforce Account EngagementUnited StatesNo free tierSee profileSalesforce is already the system of record and the sales team lives in it#13
Oracle EloquaUnited StatesNo free tierOn requestyou run Oracle sales tools or want a second enterprise vendor to benchmark against#14
Act-OnUnited StatesNo free tierOn requestyour database is large but you email only a fraction of it each month#15
ActiveCampaignUnited StatesNo free tierPublisheda small team wants real automation without Marketo's operations overhead#3
Manago AI (formerly SALESmanago)PolandNo free tierOn requestyour audience is consumers and a European host matters#1
MauticNot stated by the vendorYesPublisheddata sovereignty and zero licence cost outweigh the effort of running it#16
CopernicaNetherlandsNo free tierOn requestyou are a European company sending large volumes of triggered mail#2
BrevoFranceYesPublishedvolume of sending, not contact count, drives your costs and your needs are modest#4
GetResponsePolandNo free tierPublishedyou run webinars as a lead source and want them in the same tool as email#6
KlaviyoUnited StatesYesPublishedyour marketing now centres on a webshop rather than B2B pipeline#7
e-goiPortugalYesPublishedyou are a mid-sized company that wants email and SMS from a Portuguese vendor#10
MailjetFranceYesPublishedyou mostly send campaign and transactional email and want to pay by volume#9
OmnisendLithuaniaYesPublishedyour Marketo instance now mainly sends retail lifecycle mail#8
03

What each one does differently

HubSpot Marketing Hub

United States · Published

Starts from a free tool set and a 14-day trial of the premium editions, where Marketo begins with a sales conversation. Marketing, sales and service share one database. It is lighter to administer than Marketo, though the advanced reporting and enterprise controls sit on its higher editions.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if you want one database for marketing and sales and no dedicated operations specialist.

HubSpot Marketing Hub, #5 of 16 in our marketing automation ranking →

Salesforce Account Engagement

United States · See profile

The B2B automation product of Salesforce, formerly called Pardot, with edition prices published per organisation per month from $1,250 and an annual contract. It reads the Salesforce CRM natively. Contacts are bundled in blocks of 10,000, and extra blocks cost $100 a month.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if Salesforce is already the system of record and the sales team lives in it.

See the full Salesforce Account Engagement entry, ranked 13 of 16 among marketing automation products →

Oracle Eloqua

United States · On request

Oracle's enterprise automation platform, aimed at the same large B2B buyer as Marketo. Its Program Canvas orchestrates multi-step campaigns, and account-level scores can be handed to Oracle CX Sales. Pricing is by demo request, so this is a like-for-like enterprise swap, not a saving.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if you run Oracle sales tools or want a second enterprise vendor to benchmark against.

Read our review of Oracle Eloqua (position 14 of 16 on the marketing automation list) →

Act-On

United States · On request

Charges for active contacts, meaning those you emailed last month, instead of the whole database. Professional lists $900 a month at 2,500 active contacts. Salesforce, NetSuite and Dynamics connections, plus account-based marketing, are add-ons on Professional and part of Enterprise.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if your database is large but you email only a fraction of it each month.

Act-On holds rank 15 among 16 entries in our marketing automation guide →

ActiveCampaign

United States · Published

Sold by contact tier on Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans, with a free trial and no required sales call for the lower tiers. Starter includes multi-step automation. SSO and HIPAA support are on Enterprise. Its account-based and territory tooling is thinner than Marketo's.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if a small team wants real automation without Marketo's operations overhead.

ActiveCampaign holds rank 3 among 16 entries in our marketing automation guide →

Manago AI (formerly SALESmanago)

Poland · On request

Manago AI (formerly SALESmanago) is a Polish customer data platform with automation on top, sold in packages that start at 3,000 active contacts, with unlimited email sending included. It stores 360-degree profiles, RFM analysis and consent records, and states EU hosting. It targets consumer engagement more than B2B pipeline.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if your audience is consumers and a European host matters.

#1 out of 16 marketing automation products: read the Manago AI (formerly SALESmanago) review →

Mautic

Not stated by the vendor · Published

Open source under GPL-3.0, so there is no licence fee and you keep the data on your own infrastructure. The project also lists managed plans through Dropsolid from €247.50 a month. You carry the upgrades, deliverability and plugin choices yourself, which Marketo does for you.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if data sovereignty and zero licence cost outweigh the effort of running it.

Mautic, #16 of 16 in our marketing automation ranking →

Copernica

Netherlands · On request

A Dutch suite built around one layered customer database, with pricing stated as from €99 a month and then tailored to platform usage. It keeps customer data in Europe by its own account. Its reach is email, SMS and push, and it has no ABM module.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if you are a European company sending large volumes of triggered mail.

Copernica, #2 of 16 in our marketing automation ranking →

Brevo

France · Published

A French platform with a free-forever plan and paid tiers based on send volume instead of stored contacts. Multi-step automation starts on the Standard plan, and SMS credit is bought separately. There is no account-based marketing or sales-aligned scoring on the level of Marketo.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if volume of sending, not contact count, drives your costs and your needs are modest.

See the full Brevo entry, ranked 4 of 16 among marketing automation products →

GetResponse

Poland · Published

A Polish vendor with plans from €16 a month on its monthly list and a 14-day trial without a card. Starter allows one custom automation workflow, while Marketer and above lift that cap. Webinars and sales funnels sit in the package. Enterprise is custom priced.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if you run webinars as a lead source and want them in the same tool as email.

GetResponse, #6 of 16 in our marketing automation ranking →

Klaviyo

United States · Published

Built for stores. The free plan covers 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, and product and order data feed segmentation directly. It does not do B2B lead scoring against opportunities, so it only suits a Marketo user whose real business is ecommerce.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if your marketing now centres on a webshop rather than B2B pipeline.

Klaviyo holds rank 7 among 16 entries in our marketing automation guide →

e-goi

Portugal · Published

A Portuguese multichannel platform with a 14-day free trial and a 30-day refund window. Base starts at €8.92 a month for 500 contacts and Pro at €33.79, with prepaid GoSend for occasional senders. It targets small and mid-sized firms rather than enterprise marketing operations.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if you are a mid-sized company that wants email and SMS from a Portuguese vendor.

Read our review of e-goi (position 10 of 16 on the marketing automation list) →

Mailjet

France · Published

Priced by emails sent, from a free 6,000 a month (200 a day) to Premium at $29 a month, where Automations and landing pages appear. Contacts are not the unit. It is closer to a sending service with an editor than to a B2B lead-management system.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if you mostly send campaign and transactional email and want to pay by volume.

Mailjet holds rank 9 among 16 entries in our marketing automation guide →

Omnisend

Lithuania · Published

A Lithuanian ecommerce platform whose free plan covers 500 emails and 250 contacts a month, with a five-day assisted migration offered. Automation is retail-shaped (carts, browse, orders). Nothing in it compares to Marketo's lead scoring or CRM-opportunity reporting.

Switch from Adobe Marketo Engage if your Marketo instance now mainly sends retail lifecycle mail.

Read our review of Omnisend (position 8 of 16 on the marketing automation list) →

04

When Adobe Marketo Engage is still the right choice

Marketo Engage remains the sound choice for a B2B company that has a trained operations owner, runs account-based programmes at volume and syncs with Salesforce or Dynamics. Adobe's documentation lists scoring, target account management, native interactive webinars and Dynamic Chat in one product. Replacing that depth with several smaller tools costs more in integration than it saves in licence fees, so do not move only because the interface feels dated.

05

What moving off Adobe Marketo Engage involves

  1. 01

    Inventory the programs before the contracts

    Smart Campaigns, scoring models and program templates are the content of a Marketo instance, and they do not export into another vendor's format. List what is live, retire what nobody can explain, and rebuild the rest as workflows in the new tool. This audit often shows that a large share of the instance is dormant.

  2. 02

    Rebuild the CRM sync as its own project

    Whichever CRM you hold, the field mapping, lead-status logic and lead-to-account matching must be re-created from scratch. Account Engagement and HubSpot make this simpler if you already use their CRM. With an independent tool such as Act-On or Mautic, test sync of a few hundred records before cutting over.

  3. 03

    Plan the sending reputation

    A new platform sends from new infrastructure. Authenticate your domain, warm up gradually and keep Marketo sending to its most engaged segments during the overlap. Rushing the cutover is the most common way to damage deliverability on a list that took years to build.

06

Questions about replacing Adobe Marketo Engage

6 answers
What are the best Marketo alternatives for B2B teams?

For a CRM-led team the closest are HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Account Engagement and Oracle Eloqua. Act-On suits a company that wants active-contact pricing, and Mautic suits one that prefers open source. Which is right depends mostly on your CRM, not on the feature list.

Is Pardot the same as Account Engagement?

Yes in practice. Salesforce now sells the B2B product as Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, with Growth+, Plus+, Advanced+ and Premium+ editions published at $1,250, $2,750, $4,400 and $15,000 per organisation per month on an annual contract. The older Pardot name still appears in many integrations.

Is there a free Marketo alternative?

Mautic carries no licence fee because it is GPL-3.0 open source, though hosting and operation cost money. Brevo, Klaviyo, Omnisend and Mailjet have free plans, but those cover email sending with light automation, not B2B lead scoring.

Which alternative is cheapest to start?

HubSpot has free tools and Brevo has a free-forever plan. Act-On shows $900 a month for Professional at 2,500 active contacts, and Mautic's managed Essential plan starts at €247.50 a month. Marketo and Eloqua publish no figure on the pages we could read.

Does Marketo work without Salesforce?

Adobe documents CRM synchronisation with Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. You can run it without a CRM, but lead scoring and sales alerts lose most of their value. Account Engagement, by contrast, is built to read the Salesforce CRM directly.

How long does a migration from Marketo take?

It depends on how many programs you rebuild and whether the CRM sync is reworked. The inventory and the sync are the long parts, not the data export. We cannot give a vendor-stated duration, since none of these vendors publishes one.

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Sources

Checked 30 October 2026
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Who wrote this

Last reviewed 30 October 2026

Sebastiaan Smits

Founder · Amsterdam, Netherlands

Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.

Sebastiaan Smits wrote and checked this page, most recently on 30 October 2026. See how we review.

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