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  2. Buyers Guide

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Showing 1 - 25 of 598 products

HubSpot Marketing Hub
HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot is a leading growth platform. Over 52,000 total customers in more than 100 countries use HubSpot’s award-winning software, services, and support to transform the way they attract, engage, and delight customers. Marketing Hub helps companies of all ...Read more about HubSpot Marketing Hub

2

recommendations

Creatio CRM
Creatio CRM

Creatio CRM is an all-in-one platform that helps businesses manage the customer and revenue processes. It serves a variety of industries such as banking, credit unions, insurance, and telecommunications. The platform provides a unified CRM experience, enab...Read more about Creatio CRM

1

recommendations

emfluence Marketing Platform
emfluence Marketing Platform

The emfluence Marketing Platform offers an intuitive interface and powerful features to streamline your digital marketing efforts. Whether launching personalized campaigns, managing multiple brands, or crafting strategies, our platform empowers you to succ...Read more about emfluence Marketing Platform

1

recommendations

Net-Results
Net-Results

Net-Results is a cloud-based marketing automation solution for small, midsize and large businesses. Primary features include lead management, lead scoring, marketing list management, email builder, social media management, insights and analytics. Othe...Read more about Net-Results

1

recommendations

Publer
Publer

Publer is a social media management software designed to help businesses manage content across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google My Business, YouTube, and WordPress. The platform enables users to add watermarks to images a...Read more about Publer

Notifii Track
Notifii Track

Notifii is a cloud-based package management and community notification platform that allows users to streamline package management operations. Primary features of Notifii include package information, the ability to log packages, automatic notification...Read more about Notifii Track

ContactPigeon
ContactPigeon

ContactPigeon is a customer engagement platform designed for retailers and ecommerce businesses. The platform helps brands personalize the customer experience and drive business outcomes across multiple marketing channels. Key features include omnichannel...Read more about ContactPigeon

AccuRanker
AccuRanker

AccuRanker is a cloud-based solution that helps marketing agencies handle SEO activities, track keyword ranking and analyze organic reach of websites. It allows administrators to classify data into various segments including keywords, tags, landing pages o...Read more about AccuRanker

Conte.ai
Conte.ai

Conte.ai is a web-based solution that handle the whole process of managing social media accounts for companies of all sizes and in any sector. What distinguishes us is our unique content production system: by combining the talents of our creative inspired...Read more about Conte.ai

Zoho Social
Zoho Social

Zoho Social is a holistic social media management tool that lets you effortlessly expand and grow your social media presence from one platform. Zoho Social supports major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, GMB...Read more about Zoho Social

Omnisend
Omnisend

Trusted by 125k+ ecommerce businesses, Omnisend’s all-in-one email marketing and SMS tool automates your marketing across the entire customer journey — reaching the right audience, with the right message at the right time. Capture and grow subscriber lists...Read more about Omnisend

Renderforest
Renderforest

Renderforest is an animation software designed to help businesses utilize built-in templates to create videos, graphics, websites, logos and mockups. The platform enables designers to upload files and preview edited designs on a unified interface. Creator...Read more about Renderforest

MailerLite
MailerLite

MailerLite: Advanced email marketing tools. Effortless execution: MailerLite is an email marketing and automation platform designed to help creators, small businesses, and ecommerce stores grow their audience and boost revenue—quickly, effortlessly and on...Read more about MailerLite

Missinglettr
Missinglettr

Missinglettr is a marketing platform designed to help businesses automatically create micro-content from blogs and post it across social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. Administrators can use a template library to cust...Read more about Missinglettr

Instagram
Instagram

Instagram is a social media application that enables businesses to manage content, create and edit posts and monitor customer engagement. It lets users share photos and videos, comment on other users’ posts, send private messages and search posts using cus...Read more about Instagram

Textline
Textline

Textline is a cloud-based text messaging solution, which enables businesses to connect with clients using phone numbers. Customer support teams can and include images, emojis, URLs and other file attachments within messages. Key features of Textline inclu...Read more about Textline

NiceJob
NiceJob

NiceJob is a cloud-based reputation management solution that helps organizations manage reviews, referrals and sales. Key features include emailed review invitations, review reminders, reputation monitoring, website integration, SMS messages with photos, c...Read more about NiceJob

Referrizer
Referrizer

Referrizer is a marketing automation solution designed to help businesses acquire new customers and manage recurring purchases, communication, referral, reputation and more. The platform enables organizations to run email marketing and drip campaigns using...Read more about Referrizer

Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a website crawling tool designed to help businesses extract onsite data, audit SEO issues and analyze results in real-time. Features include duplicate page detection, site visualization, crawl scheduling, forms-based authentica...Read more about Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Cloud Campaign
Cloud Campaign

Cloud Campaign is a social media marketing solution that helps businesses schedule posts, monitor feeds, and track engagement for various social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. It lets managers measure return on investments (R...Read more about Cloud Campaign

Ahrefs
Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a suite of SEO tools that familiarizes users with the ins and outs of content marketing. It helps users do competitor research to determine high-ranking PPC keywords, backlink approach and more. The provided overview of competitor’s strategies he...Read more about Ahrefs

ContentStudio
ContentStudio

ContentStudio is an integrated cloud-based social media management and content marketing solution that caters to small to midsize businesses and solo entrepreneurs. Key features include automated publishing, content management, multi-account management, mu...Read more about ContentStudio

EngageBay CRM
EngageBay CRM

EngageBay is an integrated marketing, sales, support and CRM solution designed to help small to midsize enterprises acquire, engage and convert website visitors into customers. The cloud-based platform lets businesses use marketing tools to build relations...Read more about EngageBay CRM

SmarterQueue
SmarterQueue

SmarterQueue is a social media management tool that helps influencers, entrepreneurs, marketers, and businesses manage monitoring, content posting, scheduling, customer engagement, and more across Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social net...Read more about SmarterQueue

Brandfolder
Brandfolder

Brandfolder is a cloud-based asset management solution that provides various processes to organize, store and retrieve media assets and manage digital rights and permissions. The solution can be customized for businesses in industries such as sports, retai...Read more about Brandfolder

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Buyers Guide

This detailed guide will help you find and buy the right marketing software for you and your business.

Last Updated on January 27, 2025

The marketing technology landscape is growing and diversifying. As more consumers go online to look for information and research products, more marketers are focusing on digital strategies. Over the years, new categories of marketing software have emerged to support this shift.

Today, there are a plethora of software options to help marketers manage and optimize digital campaigns. In fact, some experts estimate the greater marketing technology landscape now has close to 2,000 vendors across nearly 50 categories. If you’re new to marketing software, this breadth of options can feel daunting.

This guide will help you understand your many options and make an informed purchase decision. Here’s what we’ll cover:

(#what is)

A Comparison of Top Marketing Solutions

Common Features of Marketing Software?

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Key Considerations

What Is Marketing Software?

In general, marketing software helps organizations perform the following functions:

  • Attract new customers and visitors 

  • Turn customers into leads that can be nurtured through the sales funnel

  • Deliver marketing and promotional materials (e.g., via email marketing, social media, etc.)

  • Surface insights about customers to improve marketing efforts

  • Automate time-consuming, repetitive manual tasks

Reporting-dashboard-screenshot-in-Pardot

Reporting dashboard screenshot in Pardot

While some products are sold as “best-of-breed” systems (i.e., they offer a single marketing application), others are sold as “marketing clouds” or “integrated suites” (they house multiple marketing applications all in one place).

Whether a business should choose a suite or a best-of-breed solution depends on the range of functionality needed. Marketing suites are generally more expensive, but allow users to do more without having to integrate products from multiple vendors.

Best-of-breed solutions tend to be more affordable, and are best for companies that want to focus more heavily on specific applications—or that want to build their own suite of marketing tools.

A Comparison of Top Marketing Solutions

There are many popular marketing solutions on the market, and it can be hard to know what distinguishes one product from another and which is right for you. To help you better understand how the top marketing systems stack up against one another, we created a series of side-by-side product comparison pages that break down the details of what each solution offers in terms of pricing, applications, ease of use, support and more:

Top Act-On Comparisons

Top AWeber Comparisons

Top Constant Contact Comparisons

Act-On vs. HubSpot Act-On vs. Marketo Act-On vs. Pardot

AWeber vs. Constant Contact AWeber vs. MailChimp

AWeber vs. Constant Contact

Top Oracle CX Marketing Comparisons

Top HubSpot Comparisons

Top MailChimp Comparisons

Oracle CX Marketing vs Pardot

Act-On vs. Hubspot

AWeber vs. MailChimp

Top Marketo Comparisons

Top Pardot Comparisons

 

Act-On vs. Marketo

Act-On vs. Pardot Oracle CX Marketing vs Pardot

Common Features of Marketing Software

Below is a list of common types of marketing applications that may be available either on their own, or bundled as part of a marketing suite:

Marketing automation

Used for developing, executing and tracking marketing campaigns. Automates workflows, tracks prospect behavior and qualifies leads.

Lead generation

Automates the capture, segmentation and assignment of leads to improve targeted marketing communications and shorten sales cycles.

Lead management

Automates the movement and tracking of leads through the life cycle from acquisition to conversion.

Email marketing

Used to create, send and track email campaigns and autoresponders.

Social media management

Provides the means for users to create, launch and administer social campaigns and promotions. Manages creative assets on social media platforms.

Social media monitoring

Identifies words used in association with brands, and locates where on social media platforms these conversations are occurring.

Social media analytics

Measures campaign performance and impact, and tracks a brand’s share of voice across social channels to determine how effective social media efforts are.

Mobile marketing

Handles the routing, management and delivery of SMS messages.

Marketing resource management

Manages marketing projects, digital assets, workflows, budgets and approval processes across teams, departments or agencies.

Marketing analytics

Measures marketing activities across multiple online and offline channels to get a view of those channels’ return on investment (ROI).

Content marketing

Helps manage the distribution of content across the Web. Creates, deploys, manages and stores content on Web pages.

Search marketing

Helps businesses generate traffic by providing information or advice to improve marketing content so it’s optimized for search engines.

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Before making a purchase, companies should evaluate their marketing strategies to determine how to choose software that supports overall business objectives.

Outbound marketing.

Outbound marketing is when a marketer contacts prospects, hoping for engagement. Tactics can include advertising on search engines, paying website publishers to post your ads or sending emails to lists of leads. Businesses that primarily want to reach out to customers in these ways should look for applications that offer email and/or mobile marketing functionality. Most marketing automation platforms include outbound email marketing capabilities. You could also consider lead generation and lead management solutions.

Inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing gets buyers to find you. This is done by providing interesting, helpful content on websites, blogs or social media that engages buyers. Businesses using inbound marketing tactics should look for software that helps optimize marketing content for Web search (so that buyers can easily find it) and provides lead nurturing functionality—for example, inbound marketing automation, content marketing or search marketing applications.

Social media marketing.

If you use (or plan to use) social media channels to connect with customers, consider applications that monitor social media conversations, track the results of social media marketing activities and allow you to measure the results of these campaigns. While social media marketing functionality is sometimes included in marketing automation platforms, many vendors also offer this as a best-of-breed solution.

Planning and measurement focus.

Marketers that want to measure the ROI of marketing projects should look for software that provides detailed analytics. While this functionality is often included in other types of marketing software, you may want to consider the in-depth reporting tools offered by best-of-breed marketing analytics and social media analytics software. Additionally, businesses that need help planning and executing marketing campaigns can consider marketing resource management software.

It's important to note that marketing functionality can also be incorporated into suites outside of the typical marketing software industry. For example, leading event management software often includes some element of marketing, such as tools for creating customizable websites, email marketing and push messaging campaigns. These are described in more detail here.

Key Considerations

To further narrow things down, here are two key factors to keep in mind as you evaluate marketing products:

Prioritize the applications you use most often

Avoid purchasing systems with bells and whistles that don’t support your business processes. However, do consider any applications, features and functionality that you will need in the future, even if you’re not quite ready to use them today.

Make sure your new system supports necessary integrations.

When comparing options, you’ll want to know whether—and how well—a given marketing system will synchronize with your existing data and tools. For example, you may want to consider marketing software that offers native CRM integration. If you plan to access the system while on the go (via mobile phones or tablets), consider a system with a native mobile app. If you’re building your own marketing technology stack, be sure to check that the systems you combine will work together seamlessly. You may also want to look for vendors that offer integration support and services.