Best Marketing Automation Software (2026): Top 10 Compared
Compare buyer fit, pricing notes and trade-offs. How entries are ordered.
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Compare at a glance
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| Vendor | Consider for | Pricing notes | Standout |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot Marketing Hubmid-market | Small and mid-sized teams wanting marketing on the HubSpot contact record | Free for 2 users; Starter $7 or $20/seat/mo; Professional from $800/mo + $3,000 onboarding; Enterprise from $3,600/mo + $7,000 onboarding (checked Sep 2026) | Published four-step ladder with contacts, seats and onboarding fee per tier |
| Adobe Marketo Engageenterprise | B2B marketing ops teams on Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics or Veeva CRM | Quote-based; four packages with no figures, user and API limits published (checked Sep 2026) | Package table states user counts, API call limits and custom object allowances |
| Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagemententerprise | B2B teams already on Salesforce Sales Cloud | Growth+ $1,250, Plus+ $2,750, Advanced+ $4,400, Premium+ $15,000 per org/mo, billed annually; annual contract (checked Sep 2026) | Every edition price published in several currencies with contact allowances |
| ActiveCampaignsmb | Small businesses wanting email automation, AI help and optional WhatsApp | Four plans from 'Starts at' monthly figures billed annually, set by email and WhatsApp contact count (checked Sep 2026) | Email, WhatsApp or both, with automation builder and AI assistant from the entry plan |
| Klaviyomid-market | Ecommerce and B2C brands automating email, SMS and push | Free up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends/mo; paid via calculator by product and profile count (checked Sep 2026) | Marketing, analytics, CDP and helpdesk share one customer profile |
| Brevosmb | Small businesses wanting low entry pricing for email plus automation | Free $0; Starter $9/mo; Standard $18/mo; Professional $499/mo; Enterprise custom (checked Sep 2026) | Priced by email volume rather than stored contacts |
| Mailchimpsmb | Small businesses starting with email newsletters | Free under 250 contacts and 500 sends/mo; paid by plan and contact tier, regional introductory prices (checked Sep 2026) | Exceeding a contact limit adds a charge rather than interrupting service |
| Customer.iomid-market | Product-led software and consumer apps sending event-triggered messages | Essentials from $100/mo with 5,000 profiles; Premium from $1,000/mo billed yearly; Enterprise quoted (checked Sep 2026) | Billed on maximum identified people and objects, with no data storage charge |
| Brazeenterprise | Consumer brands with large mobile and web audiences | Quote-based; four editions scale with monthly active users and Action Credits (checked Sep 2026) | Billing on monthly active users rather than total profiles |
| Oracle Eloquaenterprise | Large B2B organisations running complex lead and account scoring | Quote-based; no plan, price or package list published (checked Sep 2026) | Guided Campaigns lets non-technical marketers launch from step-by-step workflows |
These comparisons draw on public product information, not hands-on testing of every tool. Source records identify available references and checks; missing evidence is marked. Buyer fit is an editorial assessment, not a measured performance score. How to use this research.
Marketing automation software sends marketing messages and updates customer data on rules and triggers instead of by hand. A product typically stores contact or customer profiles, segments them, runs multi-step journeys across email and increasingly SMS, push, WhatsApp and in-app channels, scores leads, and reports on campaign results. Most vendors now add AI agents that draft campaigns, suggest segments or book meetings.
The ten products below split along the buyer they are built for. Adobe Marketo Engage, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Oracle Eloqua are B2B suites organised around leads, accounts and CRM hand-off. Klaviyo, Braze and Customer.io are B2C and product-led platforms driven by customer events. HubSpot Marketing Hub, ActiveCampaign, Brevo and Mailchimp serve smaller teams across both. Pricing models differ as much as features: contacts, email volume, monthly active users and org-level fees all appear. Pricing was checked in September 2026 on each vendor’s own pages. Entries with dated source checks appear first, recording research readiness rather than product quality.
Related pages cover CRM software, customer data platforms and social media management tools.
Vendor details and trade-offs
HubSpot Marketing Hub
mid-marketMarketing Hub is the marketing product within HubSpot's platform, sharing its contact records with the company's sales and service products. The product page groups its capabilities into three areas: attracting and converting visitors, automating campaigns, and reporting on return.
Acquisition tools include ad management across Meta, Google, LinkedIn and TikTok, adaptive forms, audience segments that target anonymous visitors by fit and intent, lookalike lists, and an AEO tool that tracks brand visibility in AI answers. Automation is organised around Marketing Studio, a workspace for planning and executing campaigns, AI-assisted email personalised from CRM data, and website personalisation. Reporting covers campaign analytics and dashboards, multi-touch revenue attribution, customer journey analytics and a journey analysis tool called Pathfinder. Customer Agent and Prospecting Agent are presented as AI agents for converting traffic and sending outreach. Social media management is included, which overlaps with standalone social tools.
Potential strengths
- Contact, seat and onboarding terms are all published, so a first-year cost can be estimated before a sales call
- Additional seats are priced on the page, at $45 per month on Professional and $75 per month on Enterprise
Trade-offs
- The step from Starter to Professional is large, and Professional adds a mandatory $3,000 onboarding fee
- Included marketing contacts are modest, 2,000 on Professional and 10,000 on Enterprise, so list size drives cost upward
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Per seat on Starter; per month with included core seats on Professional and Enterprise; Enterprise requires an annual commitment
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Adobe Marketo Engage
enterpriseAdobe describes Marketo Engage as an enterprise marketing automation product for scaling personalised buyer engagement and building pipeline. The product page lists seven capability areas: AI and agentic features, campaign operations, omnichannel engagement, personalised content, sales intelligence, marketing analytics, and profiles and audiences.
Campaign operations covers multi-step campaigns built in a visual interface, rules that update field values and lead scores, and cloning of campaigns and assets. Engagement is documented across email, web, mobile, chat, events, webinars and digital advertising. Generative AI, including Firefly-powered images, is presented for email copy and subject lines, and agents are described as handling journey creation, data normalisation and lead investigation. The package table places lead and account database, segmentation, scoring and routing, landing pages and campaign reporting in all four packages. Attribution and ROI dashboards, predictive content, dynamic chat and interactive webinars appear from Select or Prime upward, with Marketo Measure and workspaces at the top.
Potential strengths
- Native CRM integration with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and Veeva is listed in every package
- Account-based marketing, journey analytics and Marketo Measure attribution are available as higher packages rather than separate products
Trade-offs
- No price, range or starting figure is published for any package
- Target account management, predictive audiences, sandboxes and workspaces are reserved for upper packages, so a Growth buyer may need to upgrade for common B2B needs
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Not published; quoted per package
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
enterpriseAccount Engagement is Salesforce's B2B marketing automation product. The product page frames it around AI agents that capture and qualify leads, nurture buyers, run multi-step nurtures and hand opportunities to sales.
The pricing page states that every current edition includes Marketing Cloud Next, Growth Edition on Growth+ and Advanced Edition on the higher three, which adds agent-built campaigns, native SMS and WhatsApp, and advanced personalisation. Documented capabilities include lead generation, qualification and management, unlimited email marketing, Salesforce Flow for marketers, lead nurturing and scoring, AI-powered scoring and B2B marketing analytics from Plus+, and business units with developer sandboxes on the higher editions. Premium+ adds predictive analytics and Premier Success support. The product page also promotes Piper, an AI agent that engages website visitors and books meetings, and account-based programmes across email, SMS, web and WhatsApp. Attribution across paid and owned channels is presented as a unified view.
Potential strengths
- Published org-level pricing makes it possible to budget without a sales conversation
- Each edition now includes access to Marketing Cloud Next, adding agent-built campaigns and personalisation features
Trade-offs
- The entry edition is $1,250 per month on an annual contract, which excludes very small teams
- The 50-form and 50-landing-page limits on Growth+ are lifted only from Plus+, which more than doubles the price
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Per org per month, billed annually on an annual contract
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
ActiveCampaign
smbActiveCampaign positions its product as autonomous marketing, built around an AI layer it calls Active Intelligence. The current release, Active Intelligence 3.0, is described as drafting campaigns, keeping memory and custom instructions across workflows, tracking external signals such as competitor website changes, and running scheduled recurring tasks.
The plan table lists marketing automation and email marketing on every plan. Starter caps each automation at five actions; Plus, Pro and Enterprise allow unlimited automation actions. Segmentation rises from limited to standard, advanced and premium across the four plans, and business goals from 15 to 200 active goals. Pro adds predictive and conditional content, predictive sending and attribution tracking; Enterprise adds custom objects, single sign-on and a dedicated account team. AI features on the page include an automation builder, campaign builder, suggested segments, spam check and content and image generation. An Enhanced CRM add-on adds pipelines and sales engagement.
Potential strengths
- Marketing automation and unlimited automation actions are included from the Plus plan
- Email sends scale with plan as a multiple of contacts, from ten times on Starter to fifteen times on Enterprise
Trade-offs
- Starter limits each automation to five actions and allows limited segmentation
- The pricing page does not display a figure until a contact count is chosen, so plans are hard to compare at a glance
- Product reference
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Monthly figure billed annually, scaled by contact count
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Klaviyo
mid-marketKlaviyo describes itself as an AI marketing and service platform for B2C brands, stating it serves over 205,000 brands in 100 countries. Its product structure combines marketing channels, analytics, a customer data platform and a service helpdesk around a single profile.
Marketing covers email, SMS and mobile push, with flows and campaigns responding to customer behaviour in real time. The Klaviyo Data Platform is presented as unifying behavioural, transactional and engagement data. Composer is an AI marketing agent that, from one prompt, audits flows, segments and forms and creates campaigns; it can also schedule recurring tasks and answer questions about account data. Customer Agent is an AI service agent that the vendor states resolves 65% of questions autonomously. The helpdesk adds ticket management with full customer context. The homepage lists SOC 2 Type II certification and EU and US data residency. Integrations with ecommerce platforms, CRMs and data sources are available on the free plan, according to the pricing FAQ.
Potential strengths
- The free plan includes automations, segmentation, web forms and reporting rather than only one-off campaigns
- The pricing FAQ states what happens at the free limits: sending pauses until the next cycle or an upgrade
Trade-offs
- Paid plan prices do not appear in the page text, so budgeting requires the calculator
- Full support on the free plan ends after 60 days
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Free up to stated limits; paid plans calculated by profile count
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Brevo
smbBrevo sells email and multichannel marketing to small and mid-sized businesses and states over 600,000 customers. The pricing page describes Starter for single users beginning with email, Standard for small businesses ready to automate and test, Professional for teams using data and AI across channels, and Enterprise for companies with over one million contacts.
Feature descriptions on the page include unlimited automated multi-step workflows, A/B testing of subject lines and content, AI send-time optimisation, on-site behaviour and custom event tracking for triggers and segments, contact scoring including RFM and customer lifetime value, AI segmentation, and ecommerce features such as product recommendations, back-in-stock alerts and coupons. Professional adds WhatsApp, pop-ups, mobile and web push, and ten seats. Enterprise lists a dedicated IP, single sign-on, tailored onboarding, a custom loyalty engine and connectors to warehouses, POS and ERP systems. Sales tools are bundled at Essentials or Advanced level depending on plan.
Potential strengths
- Low published entry price with a free tier
- Unlimited multi-step automation workflows are described on the plans that include marketing automation
Trade-offs
- The jump from Standard at $18 to Professional at $499 per month is steep for teams that need more seats or channels
- SMS credits are sold separately from every plan
- Product reference
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Monthly or annual; price scales with monthly email volume; Enterprise quoted
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Mailchimp
smbMailchimp presents itself as email and SMS marketing for businesses that want a short learning curve. Its help centre documents four marketing plans and a pay-as-you-go alternative.
Price is set by plan and contact tier. The help article defines a contact as any audience member, subscribed, unsubscribed or non-subscribed, while archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not count. Exceeding the contact limit mid-cycle triggers an additional charge rather than a service interruption. The plan table sets monthly sends at ten times contacts on Essentials, twelve on Standard and fifteen on Premium. Automation flows are absent on Free, capped at four steps on Essentials and allow up to 200 flows on Standard and Premium. Seats rise from one on Free to three, five and unlimited. Branded templates, custom reports and dynamic content begin at Standard; Premium adds phone and priority support and a dedicated onboarding specialist. SMS is an add-on, and over 300 integrations are listed on every plan.
Potential strengths
- A free plan and a pay-as-you-go option are documented
- Standard and Premium include up to 200 automation flows, dynamic content and custom reports
Trade-offs
- Essentials is limited to four flow steps, and the Free plan has no automation flows
- Unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts count toward the contact total that drives price
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Monthly by contact tier; annual plans through sales; overage charged when contacts exceed the limit
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Customer.io
mid-marketCustomer.io describes itself as a customer engagement platform for personalised journeys across email, push, SMS and in-app messages, built on customer data.
The pricing page lists a visual workflow builder, cross-channel campaign automation, send-time optimisation, API-triggered broadcasts, transactional email, and native WhatsApp and LINE on the higher plans. Data features include custom objects, nested data, ad audience sync, reverse ETL, data warehouse destinations and data replay. An MCP server and a beta AI agent with scheduled routines are listed. The FAQ states that customers choose a US or EU data centre at sign-up, that Customer.io stores all account data without an extra storage charge, and that each account is reviewed manually before outbound messages can be sent. Security features include SSO, two-factor authentication and SOC 2 compliance, with HIPAA compliance and audit logging also listed. A startup programme offers companies that have raised under $10 million twelve months free.
Potential strengths
- Published entry and overage rates make costs predictable at low volume
- The pricing FAQ states team member seats are not limited
Trade-offs
- Premium starts at ten times the Essentials price and requires annual billing
- Monthly subscriptions are payable only by credit card; invoicing is limited to annual plans
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Essentials monthly; Premium and Enterprise annual; billed on maximum profiles
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Braze
enterpriseBraze positions itself as a customer engagement platform for cross-channel messaging, journey orchestration and AI-driven decisioning. Editions progress from Braze Go for early-stage growth teams, through Select for wider governance and user provisioning, to Pro with predictive AI and personalised recommendations and Enterprise with enterprise-grade orchestration and experimentation.
Every tier lists the Braze Data Platform, with cloud data ingestion, zero-copy segmentation and personalisation, custom data and catalogues, and data transformation. Channels on every tier are email, push, SMS, MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, LINE, in-app messages, banners, content cards, landing pages and feature flags. Orchestration uses Campaigns and Canvases with testing, frequency capping, rate limiting and geofences. BrazeAI features listed on every tier include generative AI, an Intelligence Suite and path and variant optimisation. SAML single sign-on, two-factor authentication and granular permissions are included in all editions.
Potential strengths
- All four editions list the same channel set, including email, push, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, in-app messages and content cards
- Action Credits can be spent across channels, so the channel mix can shift without renegotiation
Trade-offs
- No price or starting figure is published for any edition
- Predictive AI and AI recommendations sit on Braze Pro and above
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Pricing source
- Billing terms: Not published; scaled by monthly active users with Action Credits
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Oracle Eloqua
enterpriseOracle Eloqua is Oracle's B2B marketing automation product, presented as unifying revenue teams around cross-channel campaigns and sales-ready opportunities.
The product page groups capabilities into campaign orchestration, guided campaign workflows, lead management, account-based marketing, data management, and measurement. Segmentation combines behavioural and firmographic data from several sources. Asset tools include progressive forms and dynamic emails and landing pages. Campaigns are built on a drag-and-drop canvas across email, native SMS, display, search, web, video and social. Program Canvas automates repetitive data tasks. Eloqua Advanced Intelligence applies AI to audience selection, asset creation and send timing. Guided Campaigns lets less technical marketers select prebuilt segments from Eloqua, Oracle Unity or an upload, reuse brand-approved content, and measure results at account level. Scores can be aggregated to accounts and passed to Oracle CX Sales as qualified opportunities. Oracle states that Eloqua supports multiple lead and account scoring models.
Potential strengths
- Program Canvas automates data workflows on triggers such as score changes or new contacts
- Account-level scores can be aggregated and delivered as opportunities to Oracle CX Sales
Trade-offs
- No pricing information is published
- Several documented workflows assume the wider Oracle stack, such as Oracle Unity segments and Oracle CX Sales
- Product reference
- Product documentation
- Billing terms: Not recorded
- Source review: checked Sep 22, 2026
- Vendor confirmation: not confirmed
Frequently asked questions
What is marketing automation software?
Marketing automation software runs marketing messages and data tasks on rules and triggers rather than by hand. A typical product holds contact or customer profiles, segments them, sends email and often SMS, push or in-app messages, runs multi-step journeys started by behaviour or dates, scores leads, and reports on results. The category spans B2B lead management suites and B2C lifecycle messaging platforms, which differ mainly in the data they are built around.
What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing automation?
B2B suites such as Marketo Engage, Account Engagement and Eloqua centre on leads and accounts: forms, lead scoring, nurture programmes and hand-off to a CRM for a sales team. B2C platforms such as Klaviyo, Braze and Customer.io centre on customer events: purchases, app sessions and product usage that trigger messages across email, SMS, push and in-app channels. HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Brevo and Mailchimp serve both, mostly for smaller teams.
How much does marketing automation software cost?
Published entry prices range widely. Brevo lists Starter at $9 per month and Customer.io lists Essentials from $100 per month. HubSpot lists Professional from $800 per month and Enterprise from $3,600 per month. Salesforce publishes Account Engagement editions from $1,250 to $15,000 per org per month, billed annually. Marketo Engage, Braze and Eloqua publish no prices, and ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo and Mailchimp calculate prices by contact or profile count.
What billing metrics do these products use?
Four are common. Stored contacts or profiles drive Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo and Customer.io. Email volume drives Brevo. Monthly active users drive Braze, which states this avoids paying for dormant profiles. Seats or an org-level fee with a contact allowance drive HubSpot and Salesforce Account Engagement. The right metric depends on whether a list is large but mostly inactive, or small but heavily messaged.
Does marketing automation software replace a CRM?
Usually not. Marketing automation handles campaigns, nurturing and scoring; a CRM manages the pipeline, deals and sales activity. Marketo Engage and Account Engagement are built to sync with Salesforce or Dynamics, and HubSpot Marketing Hub shares records with HubSpot's sales product. Buyers selecting the sales system should compare CRM software separately.
How does marketing automation differ from a customer data platform?
A customer data platform collects and unifies customer data and sends it to other tools; it generally does not design or send messages. Marketing automation products send the messages. The line has blurred: Klaviyo, Braze and Customer.io now describe built-in data platforms, warehouse connections or reverse ETL. Teams whose main problem is unifying data across many tools should also compare customer data platforms.
Which products offer a free plan?
Four publish one. HubSpot Marketing Hub offers a free plan for up to two users. Klaviyo's free plan covers 250 active profiles and 500 email sends per month. Mailchimp's free plan applies under 250 contacts with up to 500 sends per month and has no automation flows. Brevo lists a free tier. Braze and ActiveCampaign offer trials, and Customer.io runs a startup programme for companies that have raised under $10 million.
What should a buyer check before signing?
Which metric drives the bill and how overage is charged, since exceeding a contact limit adds charges on several products. Whether automation limits apply to the tier being bought, such as five actions per automation on ActiveCampaign Starter or four flow steps on Mailchimp Essentials. Whether onboarding fees or annual contracts are required, as with HubSpot Professional and Account Engagement. And which channels are included or sold as add-ons.
Suggest a vendor or correction
Send factual corrections to editorial@statwharf.com. Corrections are free. For inclusion or placement enquiries, contact partnerships.
First published September 2026. Page update dates reflect editorial changes, not a fresh check of every vendor.