We're deep into Salesforce Sales Cloud. We use it for all sales ops and reporting. Now looking at marketing automation.
The obvious choice seems to be Pardot, given the Salesforce ownership. But many blogs suggest HubSpot's marketing features are superior, even with the integration.
I've done a lot of reading, but most cost comparisons seem to start from zero. Ours is different because we already pay for Salesforce.
My core question: for a team already paying for Salesforce licenses, what does the *real* total cost look like when you add Pardot (with its potential hidden costs) versus adding HubSpot Marketing Hub (with its known integration limits)?
I'm particularly curious about:
- The actual cost of the Salesforce-Pardot connector (is it an extra add-on?)
- Any hidden costs in making Pardot reporting work with our existing Salesforce objects
- Whether HubSpot's lower cost for marketing features is offset by the manual work or integration tools needed to sync data back to Salesforce reliably.
Thank you for any insights from teams who made this choice.