Marketing Software Resources

Articles and Discussions to expand your knowledge on Marketing Software

Resource pages are designed to give you a cross-section of information we have on specific categories. You'll find articles from our experts and discussions from users like you.

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Marketing Software Articles

80+ Marketing Statistics to Shape Your 2026 Marketing Strategy

Marketing has always changed shape with its channels, but the shift underway in 2026 is different in kind. The marketing statistics that mattered two years ago described a discipline organized around search traffic, social reach, and email lists, with budgets allocated accordingly.

by Darshayita Thakur

2023 Trends: Making Your Marketing Win in Times of Loss

This post is part of G2's 2023 digital trends series. Read more about G2’s perspective on digital transformation trends in an introduction from Emily Malis Greathouse, director, market research, and additional coverage on trends identified by G2’s analysts.

by Victoria Blackwell

Marketing Software Discussions

What's the best GDPR and CCPA-compliant mobile marketing platform for apps with users in Europe and California?

I've been evaluating the best GDPR and CCPA-compliant mobile marketing platform for apps with users in Europe and California, and compliance claims are much easier to make in a product brief than to verify in practice. What actually matters is consent management, data residency options, programmatic deletion and opt-out handling, and audit-ready reporting.

From reviews and product documentation where compliance is an explicit requirement:

MoEngage: Specifically lists GDPR, CCPA, SOC2 Type 2, ISO 27001:2022, and HIPAA compliance in its documentation. Reviewers who've been through enterprise compliance reviews call it out as a deciding factor.
Braze: References HIPAA support and reviewers describe using it in regulated contexts, though some flag the Salesforce integration not being native as a gap for teams needing unified compliance reporting.
CleverTap: Enterprise reviewers describe data governance and consent management as part of onboarding. BYOM capabilities get mentioned for teams that need to keep data within their own infrastructure.
Customer.io: Comes up for developer-friendly compliance tooling, with reviewers describing control over data flows and user deletion requests as straightforward via the API.

If you've been through a real GDPR or CCPA compliance review with any of these, I'd really appreciate hearing what held up and what needed workarounds.

The certification list is table stakes here (SOC2, ISO, the GDPR and CCPA checkboxes are on every brief, so they don't separate anyone. The part that bites in a review is that you're the data controller and the platform is just your processor, so you're on the hook for every copy of user data it creates, and a deletion or opt-out request has to reach all of them, not just the primary profile. That's where it gets real: when you fire a deletion through the API, does it also purge the records you synced to your warehouse and the ones sitting with the SMS sub-processor, or does it quietly leave orphaned copies you're still liable for? For anyone who's been through an actual audit, did a deletion request surface copies you'd forgotten the platform had spun off?

Answered: Amita Jain on July 13, 2026

I’d be most interested in what held up around consent and deletion requests once the compliance review got into the actual workflows. Did any of these platforms make it possible to handle both GDPR and CCPA requirements from the same process, or did teams still end up maintaining separate workflows for each?

Answered: Barkha Bali on September 15, 2026

MoEngage's compliance documentation held up well for us in an actual enterprise security review. Having GDPR, CCPA, and SOC2 all listed out clearly meant our legal team wasn't chasing down separate certificates from the vendor.

Answered: Mahima Chavan on September 16, 2026

The comment about data controllers and processors gets to the real compliance work. Certification checkboxes are table stakes. The part that surfaces in an audit is whether a deletion request you send cascades through every copy the platform made, including what it synced to your data warehouse or SMS partners. That's where most teams learn they had copies they forgot about.

Answered: Darshayita Thakur on September 16, 2026

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Is Braze actually worth the cost for an early-stage startup, or are there more affordable mobile marketing platforms with similar capabilities?

I've been trying to get a straight answer on whether Braze is actually worth the cost for an early-stage startup, or whether there are more affordable mobile marketing platforms with similar capabilities. The reputation is strong, but small business reviewers consistently flag that the pricing model, metered by MAUs and data points, gets unpredictable fast, and several describe the cost as hard to justify before product-market fit.

What early-stage teams say they actually need from a platform at this stage:

Multi-channel messaging (push, email, in-app) without paying for three separate tools
Behavioral triggers that work without a data engineer to configure them
Enough segmentation to run lifecycle campaigns, not just blasts
Pricing that doesn't penalise early user growth

Platforms that come up specifically in small business and startup reviews:

OneSignal: Reviewers describe the free tier as genuinely useful and setup as around 20 minutes. One reviewer called it "finally a push notification service that doesn't overcomplicate everything" and described meaningful reactivation results from month one.
MoEngage: Comes up for behavioral segmentation and journey building that doesn't require engineering to set up. Reviewers describe running campaigns fully independently of the dev team, which matters when the team is lean.
Customer.io: Frequently mentioned for startups that want reliable email and push with strong developer tooling and transparent pricing.
Braze: Small business reviewers who do use it call the capability unmatched, but consistently flag in-app and content cards priced separately, a separate onboarding fee, and some learning resources behind a paywall.

Is there a specific capability that made Braze worth it for your early-stage team, or a point where a cheaper alternative covered 90% of what you needed? I'd love to hear where that line was.

Honest version: before product-market fit the platform is rarely your constraint. Braze's edge (AI decisioning, per-user channel selection, Liquid) only earns its keep once you have enough users and distinct enough behaviour for per-user targeting to beat a good broadcast, and pre-PMF you usually have neither, so you'd be paying enterprise prices for capabilities sitting idle. Which means the upgrade trigger isn't ambition or how serious you are, it's data density: the point where your segments are big and different enough that decisioning actually outperforms a well-timed blast. For those who moved up to Braze, what actually tipped it: hitting that user and behavioural volume, or one specific capability the cheaper tool couldn't do at all?

Answered: Amita Jain on July 13, 2026

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Braze vs CleverTap vs MoEngage: which mobile marketing platform is actually better for a mid-size app with 500K monthly active users?

Hey G2 community! I'm researching the Braze vs CleverTap vs MoEngage question for mobile marketing, and which platform is actually better for a mid-size app with 500K monthly active users is one where the generic comparison articles aren't helping much. At this scale the tradeoffs are specific: enough sophistication for behavioral campaigns and lifecycle journeys, but manageable without a dedicated martech engineer keeping it running day-to-day.

Based on mid-size company reviews across all three:

Braze: Strong on multi-channel sophistication and canvas depth. Mid-market reviewers call out AI-native decisioning and the ability to run complex lifecycle programs without engineering. The MAU and data-point pricing model is the consistent friction point at this scale. How predictable does the monthly cost stay once you're running multiple active canvases?
CleverTap: Mid-sized app teams describe it as the strongest combination of built-in analytics and engagement at this tier. Automated journeys from onboarding to re-engagement, RFM segmentation, and predictive models are all cited as working well without heavy configuration. How steep is onboarding for a team without a dedicated data analyst?
MoEngage: Reviewers in this segment describe it as the platform most successful at reducing engineering dependency. Funnels, behavioral segments, and campaigns are all built visually and launched without developer support. Does the campaign builder feel as capable as CleverTap's for complex multi-step journeys?

Also worth looking at Iterable and Insider One if your use case is more cross-channel lifecycle than pure app engagement.

I'd really appreciate hearing from teams who've been through this evaluation at a similar MAU range: what made you choose one over the others, and what surprised you after go-live?

At 500K all three clear the feature bar: lifecycle journeys, behavioural segments, predictive models all work at that tier. So the real split isn't capability, it's what each one meters you on. Braze leans on MAUs plus data points, which means your bill tracks how much behavioural data you push per user: the more sophisticated your campaigns get, the more events you fire, the more you pay, so cost and sophistication climb together, an odd incentive against using the thing fully. Worth pinning down for the other two whether you're billed mainly on active users (more predictable, but you pay for dormant ones too) or on data volume as well, because at this scale that one answer swings the total more than any feature gap. For anyone who's been through it at a similar MAU: did the monthly cost stay predictable once you had several canvases running, or is that where the surprise landed?

Answered: Amita Jain on July 13, 2026

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