AWeber vs Salesforce
Trying to choose between AWeber vs Salesforce as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 3.4 TrustPilot
- 4.4 Capterra
- 4.2 G2
Average 4 / 5
AWeber
An email marketing software with automations and integrations. It can also be used to build landing and e-commerce pages.
Pricing
Starts from $12.50 a month for 500 contacts (billed yearly)
Key features
- Email automation
- Landing page builder
- Custom sales pages
- Web push notifications
- Integrations with various services
- Drag-and-drop email builder
Support
24/7 support via email, limited hours support on the phone and in the live chat.
- 1.4 TrustPilot
- 4.4 Capterra
- 4.3 G2
Average 3.4 / 5
Salesforce
Salesforce is a powerful marketing ecosystem that includes CRM, a system for marketing personalization, sales automation, analytics, and more — and all that is AI-powered.
Pricing
Dynamic, depending on the number of users, add-on products, and more
Key features
- CRM
- Email marketing automation
- Personalization
- Segmentation
- Analytics
- A/B testing
Support
Salesforce Help, phone, online chat, separate support systems for additional products
General info about company
AWeber
AWeber was founded in 1998 by Tom Kulzer. Headquarters in Chalfont, PA.
Salesforce
Salesforce, Inc. is a cloud-based software company that was founded in 1999 and is currently headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.
Difficulty
AWeber
No coding or design skills are required. The software is intuitive with many pre-made templates and automations but lacks advanced features like photo editing inside the email builder.
Salesforce
Most users claim that it takes at least a month to learn working in Salesforce, so it’s not beginner-friendly.
Best for
AWeber
Small to medium companies that only need an email marketing platform with basic features.
Salesforce
Large or scaling businesses and sales teams
Free plan
AWeber
Has a free plan for up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails a month. The features are limited, only basic templates and support are available on the free plan.
Salesforce
No free plan, 30-day free trial that includes:
- Preloaded data for learning
- Pre-configured processes, reports, and dashboards
- Online training and live onboarding webinars
Pricing
AWeber
For up to 500 contacts, billed yearly/monthly:
- Lite $12.50 / $14.99
- Plus $20 / $29.99
- Unlimited $899
Other pricing features:
- 3 months of service free and up to 60.5% discount for nonprofits
- 20% discount for students
- Customer referral program
- Account hold package for $4.99 a month
Salesforce
Salesforce has a very complex pricing system that includes several products. Since we’re only talking about email marketing, here are the pricing plans for the email, mobile, and web marketing package.
Basic: $410/month with unlimited users, billed annually, includes:
- Subscriber profiles
- Drag-and-drop segmentation
- Email and mobile-optimized templates
- Content management and workflows
- A/B testing
- Personalisation tools
- Preference center
- Integration with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud
- Reports and dashboards
Pro: $1282/month with unlimited users, billed annually, includes:
- Personalisation Builder
- Automation Studio
- Triggered Communications
- Automated workflow and campaigns
- Web and mobile analytics
Corporate: $3844/month with unlimited users, billed annually, includes:
- Journey Builder
- Mobile SMS and MobilePush
- Multi-channel predictive content
- Advanced reporting
Entreprise: pricing depends on contact and message volume, unlimited users, includes:
- Real-time big data segmentation
- Distributed sending
- Shared content, subscribers, and data
- Locked templates
- Custom roles and permissions
- Business Units
Support
AWeber
- 24/7 support via email
- Live chat: Mon-Fri 7:00 am — 10:00 pm ET (UTC-5)
- Sat-Sun 8:00 am — 5:00 pm ET (UTC-5)
- Support phone line: 8 am — 8 pm ET (UTC-5)
- Guides and YouTube tutorials
- 24/7 paid email marketing master class
- AWeber expert service
Salesforce
All customers regardless of a pricing plan can create a case in Salesforce Help using their Salesforce or Trailblazer accounts. Phone support in English is available 24/7 but support in other languages has limited availability for some regions:
- French Support (Canada) — Monday–Friday, 3:00 AM–11:30 AM EST
- Spanish and Portuguese Support for Latin American countries — Monday–Friday, 8AM–8PM EST
- French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese Support for European countries — Monday–Friday, 8AM–4:30PM GMT
- Mandarin and Korean Support for Asian countries — Monday–Friday, 10AM 7PM AEST
In addition to that, Salesforce also provides an extensive knowledge base, a YouTube channel with longform video tutorials, and communities for admins and developers.
Features
AWeber
- Email automation and pre-built autoresponders
- Landing page and sign-up forms builder
- Custom sales pages
- Web push notifications
- Integrations with various services
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Custom template design service
- Free migration services
- 3 mobile apps for iOS and Android with various features
Salesforce
- CRM
- Email marketing automation
- AI-powered list segmentation
- A/B testing
- No-code email template builder
- Analytics in customizable dashboards
- Google Analytics integration
- Integration with third-party data sources for relevant embedded ads
Templates
AWeber
600+ templates and 600+ free stock photos
Custom email template design service
Templates for:
- Newsletter
- Holiday
- Various industries (real estate, food services, agencies, etc.)
- Birthdays and anniversaries
- Events
Salesforce
- Pre-made templates are empty but offer different layout options.
- Salesforce includes three types of templates: Classic (basically plain text with little customization options), Lightning Experience (allow for images, links, rich text, etc.), and built-in Email Template Builder (your regular marketing email editor).
Video/screenshots
AWeber
Salesforce
Integrations
AWeber
700+ integrations including WordPress, PayPal, Intercom, Pipedrive, Shopify, Facebook, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Twilio, Zapier, and more
Salesforce
4000+ integrations and apps like other CRM systems, other ESPs (for example, Mailchimp), Slack, Tableau, Zoom, and more. Some of these integrations are free, others are paid for separately or only available for certain pricing plans.
Devices
AWeber
- Website
- 3 mobile apps for Android and iOS (possible to check email marketing stats, add new subscribers, create and send newsletters)
- No installable solution.
Salesforce
- Web app
- Desktop app
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android
Languages
AWeber
English
Salesforce
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
English
German
Italian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Russian
Spanish
Spanish (Mexico)
Swedish
Thai
Automation
AWeber
Offers 3 types of email marketing automations:
- Open-based to track and reward the most engaged subscribers
- Click-based to send campaigns based on subscribers’ actions
- List-based to easily organize lists
Salesforce
Salesforce offers Automation Studio for automating email journeys which allows users to create complex email sequences with many conditions.
Pros
AWeber
- Only necessary email marketing features
- 700+ integrations
- 3 mobile apps for different purposes
- Easy-to-use no-code automations
- 24/7 email support
- Landing page builder
Salesforce
- Great support on onboarding from the vendor
- Sophisticated customer journeys
- Dynamic content in emails
- Integrations with CRMs
Cons
AWeber
- Dynamic content requires coding
- Free plan and Lite plan are very limited
- Relatively high prices
- Lacks advanced features (like photo editing)
Salesforce
- Steep learning curve
- Very convoluted pricing system that caused most of the negative reviews on TrustPilot
- Hard to implement and maintain, requires a Salesforce administrator to help
- Very expensive and includes arising additional costs
Reviews from experts
AWeber
It’s fair to say, AWeber has all the basics you need for a small business and does quite a good job at educating first-time users with its range of customer support articles, videos, and podcasts. The issue is that, apart from customer service and landing page solution, there isn’t a particular area where Aweber really excel in when it comes to its features.
It allows me to quickly create engaging emails with their drag-and-drop email builder. I also appreciate that I can track the success of my emails with their comprehensive reporting suite. Additionally, I love the variety of automated features like segmentation, list segmentation, and automation rules. All of these features make AWeber a great choice for businesses looking to maximize the impact of their email marketing campaigns.
Cons: AWeber has some features that I found difficult to use. For example, I found the automation rules difficult to configure, and the interface was a bit overwhelming. Additionally, the customer service was not always helpful or responsive to my inquiries. I also found that some of the reporting was not very detailed and I was not able to access some of the data I needed
Salesforce
Salesforce scores a perfect 5/5 in our data reporting research category. It offers a lot of data visualization tools on all of its plans, which are important tools for any kind of business, and whether you’re looking for a sales or customer service CRM. These tools include custom reports, a chart builder, and revenue data views, and allow you to better understand data, explain trends, and generate valuable insights. When you can analyze data faster, you can create feasible business goals and targets.
When it comes to email marketing, you build your stack according to your size and maturity. You will consider Salesforce Marketing Cloud (either Engagement or Account Engagement) once you have data in your CRM and want to use it. In this case, Salesforce Marketing Cloud competitors would be Adobe, Oracle or Braze.
But Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a great solution if you consider the platform. You can easily use your CRM data, you have powerful Artificial Intelligence features with Einstein and one of the most powerful Customer journey orchestrators with Journey Builder.
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As for me, Salesforce meets the needs of both SMB and enterprise companies, but be careful with budgets: of course when customization needs are rising, you have to pay for that. But exactly the CRM gives you that opportunity.
*This information is current as of 09/28/2023. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
