I’m the founder & CEO of Net-Results, a marketing automation startup that regularly goes head-to-head with Marketo. I speak regularly with multi-year Marketo users considering whether they should switch to another platform.
The most common complaints I hear:
- The interface is not intuitive. It takes substantial effort to accomplish tasks
- The support is not very supportive. We hear stories of waiting 3 days for a reply (that only asks a clarifying question, then more waiting for the next reply…)
- Outdated documentation
- Everything costs more, costs continually escalate
- 100% opaque pricing. You’ll have to get deep into their sales process – and expend lots of time – before you get any price quote from them
If you weren’t aware, Marketo was acquired by Adobe. Being acquired by one of the largest software companies in the world has apparently shifted Marketo’s focus upstream toward *very* large customers.
This impacts their product roadmap, how they structure support, and certainly their pricing strategy.
All this leaves mid-market customers in a tough spot. Lesser solutions (HubSpot, Pardot) often can’t meet mid-market needs, and Marketo has moved on toward enterprise.
Net-Results – my company – offers *all-inclusive* pricing, unlimited live support, and technical flexibility that enable success for mid-market teams.
But don’t just take my word for it — see how Marketo ranks versus Net-Results in the marketing automation comparison report from G2 (all data comes from marketing users verified by G2). Hint: the smaller, agile startup wins 😉
