# Plainsend vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud Marketing Cloud is a big, capable suite. If you use most of it, stay. This page is for teams who mainly need email journeys, consent and a clean link to Salesforce, and find themselves paying for, and staffing, much more. Read on 2026-10-12. Salesforce changes its editions often: check the sources. ## Where Marketing Cloud is strong - **Breadth.** Email, SMS, push, advertising audiences, personalisation and analytics from one vendor, with Data Cloud (now Data 360) underneath. - **Scale and track record.** Very large senders run on it, and there is a large partner and consultant market. - **Salesforce itself.** If your CRM is Salesforce, it's the incumbent's own product, with Marketing Cloud Connect and now Marketing Cloud Next built on the core platform. ## Where Plainsend is different | | Marketing Cloud Engagement / Next | Plainsend | |---|---|---| | Pricing model | Editions per org per month, billed yearly; channels draw on a credit pool; add-ons extra | Contacts plus emails; no seats, no modules ([pricing](https://plainsend.app/pricing.md)) | | Entry list price | Pro+ $2,000 a month, Corporate+ $5,500, Enterprise+ $30,000 | Growth $149 a month; Scale from $500 | | Building a journey | Journey Builder in the browser; day-to-day work often needs SQL and AMPscript | A journey is a document in git: review it, simulate it, approve it. Or build it in the console | | Changing a live journey | An active version can't be edited; you publish a new version | The same: a new version, people already in it finish on the old one. Plan shows the change first | | Agents | Agentforce Marketing, which expects Data Cloud | An MCP server and CLI for any agent (Claude, others). Writes are drafts; a person approves | | Consent | Configured per business unit | A consent ledger (source, time, wording) and "any opt-out stops the person everywhere" by default | | Salesforce sync | Marketing Cloud Connect | Native connector: Contacts, Leads, Accounts, Opportunities in; opt-outs written back to every Contact and Lead | | Where it runs | Salesforce's cloud | Plainsend's cloud, data in Sydney. Your own AWS account is coming | ## Is Marketing Cloud Next a forced migration? **No.** Salesforce says Engagement has no end-of-life, end-of-sale or end-of-roadmap plan, and you don't need to migrate to start using Marketing Cloud Next ([Engagement pricing](https://www.salesforce.com/marketing/engagement/pricing/), read 2026-10-12). Next arrives through the "+" editions at renewal. What does change at that renewal: Salesforce's own guidance suggests a 12-month, three-phase training plan in Data 360 and Flow Builder for Engagement teams moving to Next ([Salesforce blog](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/your-roadmap-to-marketing-cloud-next/), 2026-09-24), and some Engagement features (AMPscript, plain-text email, forms) are only now reaching Next ([SalesforceBen](https://www.salesforceben.com/top-9-summer-26-updates-for-salesforce-marketers/), 2026-04-24). If you're going to re-skill anyway, it's a fair moment to compare. ## What Plainsend doesn't do Be clear about this before you talk to us: - No advertising audiences, social publishing, landing pages or CMS. - No SMS yet (coming, Australia first), and no mobile push or WhatsApp. - No send-time optimisation, predictive scoring or AI content generation built in. Your own agent can write copy; Plainsend checks it. - No SOC 2 report or penetration test yet. See [security](https://plainsend.app/security.md) for what we do have. - A small company. You'll be talking to the people who build it. ## Prices at a glance | Edition | Per month (list, billed yearly) | Includes | |---|---|---| | Engagement Pro+ | $2,000 | 2.5M emails, 15,000 contacts, Marketing Cloud Growth | | Engagement Corporate+ | $5,500 | 10M emails, 1M mobile messages, 45,000 contacts, Marketing Cloud Advanced | | Engagement Enterprise+ | $30,000 | 150M emails, 10M mobile messages, 500,000 contacts, Marketing Cloud Advanced | | Intelligence+ add-on | from $11,000 | | | Personalization+ add-on | from $15,000 per org | | Sources: [Engagement pricing](https://www.salesforce.com/marketing/engagement/pricing/) (read 2026-10-12); [Salesforce blog, next-gen Marketing Cloud](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/next-gen-marketing-cloud-details/) (2025). Run your own numbers in the [cost calculator](https://plainsend.app/calculator.md). [Plan a switch](https://plainsend.app/switch.md) ยท [Cost calculator](https://plainsend.app/calculator.md)