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Salesforce Marketing Cloud: the products under one name, and which one you need

Engagement, Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Next mapped, with the published entry prices and how to find out what your org already owns.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 13 October 2026

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud" is not one product. It is the brand over a set of separately licensed products, and the names have changed more than once, which is why two people in the same company can both say they use Marketing Cloud and mean different software. On 9 October 2026, Salesforce groups its marketing line on salesforce.com/marketing as Marketing Cloud Next, a B2C marketing platform, a B2B marketing platform, unified customer data, a content management system, conversational experiences, personalization, customer loyalty, marketing analytics and a small business option. This page maps those pieces, gives the published entry prices, and shows how to find out which ones your own org already owns.

This page covers the product map and the licensing decision. For the engine room of the established B2C platform, the studios and the data model, see Marketing Cloud and ExactTarget. For choosing between automation routes on a Salesforce CRM, see marketing automation for Salesforce.

The names, old and current

Most confusion traces back to renaming. Three facts clear up the majority of it:

  • Pardot is the legacy name for Account Engagement. Salesforce states on its own B2B marketing automation page that Pardot is the legacy product name for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and that they are the same product. Checked 9 October 2026.
  • Engagement is the platform that began as ExactTarget. It is the high volume B2C sending and journey platform, built around studios and a data model of its own.
  • Marketing Cloud Next is the current generation. It is sold in a Growth edition and an Advanced edition, priced per organisation rather than per user.

So when somebody says Marketing Cloud, ask which one: Engagement, Account Engagement, or Next. The three are built for different jobs and bought on different licences.

What each product is for

ProductBuilt forTypical buyer
Marketing Cloud Next (Growth, Advanced)Campaign creation, multi channel journeys, forms and landing pages, with agent assisted buildTeams starting now, or consolidating onto the current platform
Marketing Cloud EngagementHigh volume B2C email, SMS and push, complex journeys, heavy data manipulationRetail, travel, media, anyone sending to a large consumer list
Marketing Cloud Account EngagementB2B lead capture, scoring, nurture and handover to salesB2B teams whose pipeline lives in Sales Cloud
Salesforce PersonalizationReal time web, mobile app and email personalization, product and content recommendationsEcommerce and content sites with enough traffic to act on
Marketing IntelligenceMarketing analytics, paid media optimisation, campaign reporting across channelsTeams spending enough on media to need a single reporting layer
Loyalty ManagementPoints, tiers and promotions as a managed programmeConsumer brands running a membership or rewards scheme
Data 360Bringing customer data together from several sources so the other products share one viewAnyone whose data sits in more than two systems

The published prices, and what they are per

The unit matters more than the number. Most of these are priced per organisation per month, billed annually, which is a different budgeting exercise from a per user licence. From salesforce.com/marketing/pricing, checked 9 October 2026, in US dollars:

  • Marketing Cloud Next Growth Edition: 1,500 USD per org per month, billed annually. Includes agent assisted campaign creation, multi channel journeys, forms and landing pages.
  • Marketing Cloud Next Advanced Edition: 3,250 USD per org per month, billed annually. Adds path experimentation and two way conversations for SMS and WhatsApp.
  • Salesforce Personalization: 8,000 USD per org per month, billed annually.
  • Marketing Intelligence: 10,000 USD per org per month, billed annually.
  • Loyalty Management: 20,000 USD per org per month, billed annually.
  • Account Engagement+: 1,250 USD per org per month, billed annually, as an addition to existing B2B programmes.
  • Engagement+: 2,000 USD per org per month, billed annually, which the pricing page states includes Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced.
  • Salesforce Starter: from 25 USD per user per month, a combined CRM suite with email marketing included, where transaction fees apply.

Salesforce also publishes these figures in euros, pounds, Australian dollars, yen and Swedish krona, and the lists are not simple conversions, so take the number in your own billing currency from the pricing page rather than converting the dollar figure. Where a configuration is quoted only after a conversation with sales, work with the capability list on the edition comparison and settle the number in the contract.

Picking between them

Four questions settle it faster than a feature matrix.

  • Who are you sending to? Named business contacts moving towards a salesperson points at Account Engagement. Millions of consumers with behaviour to react to points at Engagement or Next.
  • Where does the record of truth live? If every marketable person already exists as a Lead or Contact in your CRM, the products that sit natively on that data cost far less to run. Engagement keeps its own data model, which is powerful and is a skill to staff for.
  • How many sources does your customer data come from? Two or fewer, and you can connect them directly. More than that, and the unified data layer stops being optional, because every product downstream inherits whatever mess it is given.
  • Who is going to build the journeys? A marketer who can configure a flow, or a developer. Be honest here. Engagement rewards technical depth. Next and Account Engagement are built for marketers to operate.

How to find out what you already own

Before any renewal conversation, establish the facts yourself:

  • Ask your account executive for the current order form and the list of provisioned SKUs. The SKU names, not the marketing names, are what you are paying for.
  • In Setup, check the installed packages and the connected apps. Account Engagement, Personalization and the data products each leave traces there.
  • If an Engagement instance exists, check how many business units are provisioned and who the administrator is. Inherited instances often have business units nobody has opened in years.
  • Pull the sending volume and the contact count for the last twelve months. Volume is what drives the cost of the consumer platform, and it is the number to negotiate against.
  • List the integrations that write into the platform. Each one is a dependency if you change products.

Questions buyers ask about Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Is Marketing Cloud the same as Salesforce CRM?

No. Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are the CRM. The marketing products are licensed separately and connect to it. Owning Salesforce CRM does not include a marketing platform, although the Starter suite bundles basic email marketing with CRM.

Is Pardot still a product?

It is the same product under a current name. Salesforce states that Pardot is the legacy name for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. Documentation, job adverts and consultants still use both names, so treat them as one thing.

Which one should a small B2B team buy?

Start from where the pipeline is managed. A small B2B team running on Sales Cloud gets further with Account Engagement, or with the Starter suite if the whole requirement is email and forms. The consumer platform is built for a scale of sending that a small B2B list does not have.

Do I need the unified data product?

You need it when the same customer exists in several systems with no shared identifier, and when personalization or analytics has to act on data that is not already in the marketing platform. With one source and one list, connect directly and revisit later.

How long does an implementation take?

Plan in phases rather than one date. A first phase that covers data in, one channel out and one reporting view is a realistic opening scope; the journeys, the personalization and the analytics layers follow once that is sending cleanly. The work that sets the timeline is almost always data preparation rather than platform configuration.

Can I run two of these at once?

Yes, and plenty of companies do, typically a B2B platform for the sales pipeline and a consumer platform for the retail list. Decide in advance which one owns the subscriber preference and the unsubscribe, because two systems with separate consent records is the one overlap that causes real trouble.

The channel the platform does not report

Salesforce Marketing Cloud reports on emails, journeys, ads and social, all of it activity it can see. A buyer who asked an assistant which marketing platform suits a mid size retailer, and arrived at a demo form already persuaded, leaves a gap in its attribution.

Fill it by hand if you must. Put the comparison questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and keep a log of the names and cited pages. AI Knows Us produces the same log across assistants, ready to sit beside your Marketing Cloud reports.

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