# ExactTarget implementation cost: Marketing Cloud Engagement licences and services ExactTarget is Marketing Cloud Engagement today, sold per org per month from US$2,000. What the editions include, what an implementation is built from, and what quotes leave out. **Published:** 2025-10-24 **Canonical:** https://synconai.com/exacttarget-salesforce-implementation-cost **Author:** SynconAI Architecture Team ## In short ExactTarget is now Marketing Cloud Engagement. As at October 2026 Salesforce lists three editions billed annually per org: Pro+ at US$2,000 a month, Corporate+ at US$5,500 and Enterprise+ at US$30,000 (AU$2,800, AU$7,700 and AU$42,000). Implementation services are quoted separately and depend on business units, contact volume, data model, journeys and the Sales Cloud connector. ## Sources - **The ultimate guide to Salesforce product rebrands** (retrieved 2026-10-10) https://gearset.com/blog/salesforce-product-rebrands/ > Email Studio, Mobile Messaging, Journey Builder, and legacy ExactTarget features were all consolidated under Marketing Cloud Engagement. - **Marketing Cloud Engagement Pricing** (retrieved 2026-10-11) https://www.salesforce.com/marketing/engagement/pricing/ > Engagement+ is available to both new and existing customers who want access to next-gen capabilities beyond Marketing Cloud Advanced. ## What to take away - Marketing Cloud Engagement is sold per org, not per user: Pro+ US$2,000, Corporate+ US$5,500 and Enterprise+ US$30,000 a month, billed annually, as at October 2026. - Contacts, message volume and business units decide the edition. Only Enterprise+ lists Multiple Business Unit Support, and it is the only edition with 500K contacts. - A services quote is built from business unit design, the Contact Builder data model, sender authentication, Marketing Cloud Connect, journey rebuilds and deliverability work. - No sandbox copies a Marketing Cloud account, so ask how testing is done, how contact and message overage is charged, and whether Premier Success is in the budget. ## The guide Most people who search for an ExactTarget implementation cost are not buying ExactTarget. They already run it, under a name Salesforce retired years ago, and they want to know what it will cost to rebuild it, upgrade it or simply put it in order. The product is Marketing Cloud Engagement. Salesforce publishes its list price, which surprises buyers who assume everything in Marketing Cloud is negotiated in private, and the services side of the bill is shaped by a handful of decisions you can make before you ask anyone for a number. ## What ExactTarget is called and sold as today The rebrand record is clear about where the old toolset went: "Email Studio, Mobile Messaging, Journey Builder, and legacy ExactTarget features were all consolidated under Marketing Cloud Engagement." Those are the studios your team still opens every morning. Email Studio, Journey Builder, Automation Studio and Contact Builder sit inside one Marketing Cloud Engagement account, divided into business units, and the account is licensed as a whole. That is the first thing to understand about cost. Marketing Cloud Engagement is sold per org per month, not per user. Ten marketers or a hundred can log in to the same account, and the price moves with contacts, message volume and capability rather than with seats. A buyer used to Sales Cloud, where the conversation is about how many people need a licence, often starts by asking the wrong question. Salesforce has also repackaged the editions. The current names carry a plus sign, and each one bundles a Marketing Cloud Next edition (Growth or Advanced) alongside the Engagement capability. The pricing page FAQ puts the offer this way: "Engagement+ is available to both new and existing customers who want access to next-gen capabilities beyond Marketing Cloud Advanced." In practice, an ExactTarget-era customer renewing in 2026 will be discussing Pro+, Corporate+ or Enterprise+, and deciding whether the Next capability inside the bundle is something the team will actually use. ## Published list prices, as at October 2026 Salesforce publishes three editions on its [Marketing Cloud Engagement pricing page](https://www.salesforce.com/marketing/engagement/pricing/). The figures below were read on 11 October 2026. Each is per org per month, billed annually. The Australian dollar figures are the ones Salesforce shows on its Australian site. | Edition | US list price | Australian list price | Bundled Next edition | Email messages | Mobile app messages | Contacts | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Pro+ | US$2,000 per org per month | AU$2,800 per org per month | Marketing Cloud Growth | 2.5M | None listed | 15K | | Corporate+ | US$5,500 per org per month | AU$7,700 per org per month | Marketing Cloud Advanced | 10M | 1M | 45K | | Enterprise+ | US$30,000 per org per month | AU$42,000 per org per month | Marketing Cloud Advanced | 150M | 10M | 500K | Multiply by twelve and the annual list commitment is US$24,000 for Pro+, US$66,000 for Corporate+ and US$360,000 for Enterprise+. Those are list prices. Contracts are negotiated, multi-year terms change the arithmetic, and an existing customer on an older edition may be renewing on terms that look nothing like this table. It is still the right starting point for a budget, because it tells you which band you are in. Two lines decide the band for most organisations. The first is contacts. Pro+ includes 15K, Corporate+ 45K and Enterprise+ 500K. A business with a quarter of a million subscribers does not fit Corporate+ without buying more contacts, and the step to Enterprise+ is large. The second is business units. The comparison table on the pricing page ticks Multiple Business Unit Support only for Enterprise+. If your ExactTarget account was set up years ago with a business unit per brand or per country, and you want to keep that shape, the edition decision has largely been made for you. ## Three kinds of project, three kinds of cost Not every ExactTarget quote is for the same job, and mixing them up is the commonest reason two quotes cannot be compared. The first is a health check and clean-up of the account you already have. That means retiring dead journeys and data extensions, fixing sender authentication, settling the Contact Key and tightening Marketing Cloud Connect. It changes no licence and moves no data between accounts. It is the smallest of the three, and it is often the one with the best return. The second is an upgrade in place, usually timed to a renewal, where you move to a plus edition and begin using the Marketing Cloud Next capability bundled with it. The Engagement account stays where it is. The new cost is the licence difference plus the work to stand up, govern and train people on the Next side. The third is a rebuild into a new account, because of a merger, a consolidation of business units, or a decision to start again with a clean data model. This is the largest, because everything in the inventory is touched and two accounts run side by side for a period. Ask each bidder which of the three they have priced. If two bidders have quoted different jobs, the lower number tells you nothing. ## What drives the services bill Licence and services are separate purchases. Salesforce sells the licence, and a partner or Salesforce Professional Services quotes the work. We have found no public source that states a typical services figure for Marketing Cloud Engagement, so treat any number offered before someone has looked inside your account with caution. What can be said with confidence is which features of the account make the work larger or smaller. **Business units and sender profiles.** Every business unit carries its own sender profiles, delivery profiles, send classifications, subscriber lists and user roles. An account with one business unit is a different job from one with twelve, and consolidating units is where a lot of hidden effort lives. **The data model in Contact Builder.** Accounts that grew over a decade tend to carry hundreds of data extensions: some sendable, some lookup tables, many abandoned. Attribute groups, relationships to the Contact Key, and the choice of Contact Key itself (an email address or a CRM Id) drive both effort and risk. Changing the Contact Key late in a project is expensive. **Marketing Cloud Connect.** The connector to Sales Cloud or Service Cloud brings leads, contacts, campaigns and custom objects into synchronised data extensions. Scope it object by object and field by field. Every synchronised object adds polling, storage and troubleshooting. **Content and scripting.** Emails built with AMPscript or Server-Side JavaScript, dynamic content blocks and CloudPages forms all need an inventory and a test plan. Templates from the classic editor may need rebuilding in Content Builder. **Journeys and automations.** Journey Builder journeys and Automation Studio automations (imports, SQL queries, file drops, extracts) are the business logic of the account. Count them, name an owner for each, and retire the ones nobody can explain. **Deliverability.** A new account, or a move of sending domains, means authenticating domains, setting up a dedicated IP where you have one, and warming it gradually. That takes calendar time as well as effort, and a plan that ignores it will slip. **Mobile channels.** SMS through MobileConnect and app messaging through MobilePush each bring their own setup, keyword and short code arrangements, and SDK work in your app. Corporate+ and Enterprise+ include mobile app messages; Pro+ lists no mobile app allowance. ## The work packages in a sound quote A quote you can compare names its work packages and the assumptions behind each one. Discovery and inventory comes first: business units, data extensions, journeys, automations, templates, integrations and their owners. On an old ExactTarget account this is not a formality. It is where you learn that a nightly automation feeds the finance team, or that a send classification is set in a way that affects unsubscribe handling. Design follows: the target business unit structure, Contact Key strategy, data model, consent and preference handling, and the scope of Marketing Cloud Connect. If you are buying a plus edition, design should also say what, if anything, will be built on the Marketing Cloud Next side, because the bundle includes it and someone will ask what it is for. Build and migration covers data extensions and their data, content, journeys and automations, sender authentication and IP warming, and the connector. Data migration in Marketing Cloud is mostly about structure and history: decide which tracking data and send history you need to keep, and in what form, because that history does not move between accounts by itself. Integration beyond the connector is often the swing item. SFTP imports from a data warehouse, API calls from your website or app, transactional sends triggered by an order system, and a link to Data 360 if you are building unified profiles there can each be larger than the core build. Testing is unusual. No sandbox copies an Engagement account the way a Sales Cloud sandbox copies an org. Teams test with a separate business unit, test data extensions, seed lists and test sends, and the quote should say which approach it assumes. Training, a phased cutover of journeys and sending domains, and a defined hypercare period close the project. ## Hidden costs and the questions to ask The licence table and the services quote rarely cover everything. These items most often surface after signature. **Contact and message overage.** Ask what happens when you exceed the edition's contact or message allowance, and how contacts are counted under your contract. On many accounts the count is driven by All Contacts, which can include records from synchronised data extensions and old imports, not only people you still mail. A neglected account can be over its allowance before a single campaign goes out. **More business units.** If you need more than one and are not on Enterprise+, ask what the alternative is and what it costs. **Support.** The pricing page lists Premier and Signature Success Plans. Premier is priced as a share of net licence fees, so it rises with the licence. Decide early whether it is in the budget. **Consumption credits.** If the plan uses Marketing Cloud Next features or Data 360 segmentation, ask which credits are included and what happens when they run out. **Admin time after go-live.** A Marketing Cloud account needs an owner to run automations, watch deliverability, manage users and keep the data model clean. If the quote assumes you have that person and you do not, the cost has simply moved onto your payroll. **Licence overlap.** When moving from one account to another, both run in parallel during cutover. Agree the overlap with Salesforce before you sign. When you ask for quotes, send every bidder the same inventory: business units, data extensions in active use, journeys, automations, templates, integrations, contact count and monthly send volume. Ask each to state its assumptions on testing, IP warming, content rebuild versus migration, and the number of journeys in scope. Quotes built on the same inventory can be compared. Quotes built on a sales call cannot. ## Where to go next Renewal and licence questions sit on [the ExactTarget licence cost page](/exacttarget-salesforce-licence-cost). The history of the acquisition is on [what happened to ExactTarget](/what-happened-to-exacttarget), and the product, studio by studio, is on [the Marketing Cloud Engagement page](/exacttarget-marketing-cloud-engagement). If you are choosing a firm, [who to hire for ExactTarget](/hire-exacttarget-salesforce-partner) sets out what to test. For connector and API work, read [integrating ExactTarget with Salesforce](/integrating-exacttarget-with-salesforce), and if the real question is whether to stay at all, [should I migrate from ExactTarget](/should-i-migrate-from-exacttarget) works through that decision. If the bundled Next capability is part of your plan, our [Marketing Cloud Next](/salesforce-marketing-cloud-next) page explains how we approach it. ## Questions ### How much does Marketing Cloud Engagement cost as at October 2026? Salesforce lists Pro+ at US$2,000, Corporate+ at US$5,500 and Enterprise+ at US$30,000 per org per month, billed annually. On its Australian site the same editions are AU$2,800, AU$7,700 and AU$42,000. These are list prices; contracts are negotiated. ### Is Marketing Cloud Engagement priced per user like Sales Cloud? No. It is priced per org per month. The edition is set by contacts, email and mobile message allowances and capabilities such as Multiple Business Unit Support, which the pricing page lists only for Enterprise+. ### What makes an ExactTarget implementation larger or smaller? The number of business units, the size and state of the data model in Contact Builder, the Contact Key choice, the Marketing Cloud Connect scope, AMPscript-heavy content, the count of journeys and automations, mobile channels, and whether sending domains and IPs must be warmed again. ### Can we test a Marketing Cloud rebuild in a Salesforce sandbox? No. A core sandbox does not copy a Marketing Cloud Engagement account. Testing is usually done with a separate business unit, test data extensions, seed lists and test sends. Ask every bidder to state which approach their quote assumes. ### What do ExactTarget quotes most often leave out? Contact and message overage, extra business units, Premier Success (priced as a share of net licence fees), consumption credits for Next or Data 360 features, a named admin after go-live, and the period when old and new accounts both run. --- SynconAI is a Salesforce Select Partner and an OpenAI Select Partner, delivering architect-led Salesforce and AI programmes across the United States and Australia. Related service: Marketing Cloud Next (https://synconai.com/salesforce-marketing-cloud-next).