December 2026. That's when SAP Marketing Cloud support ends.
When evaluating alternatives to SAP Marketing Cloud, Emarsys often comes up as SAP’s marketing platform. The key question is whether its architecture fits the complexity of your sales process.
So what does this decision mean in practice for your organization?
TABLE OVERVIEW
1. Understanding the Context Behind This Migration
3. Emarsys and Your Enterprise Needs
4. What to Know About SAP Ecosystem Integration
5. Patterns We See in Migration Decisions
7. Questions That Help Reveal Platform Fit
8. Thinking Through Your Decision
9. How We Approach These Migrations
Most platform migrations give you time to evaluate options carefully. This one operates under different constraints.
SAP acquired Emarsys in 2020 when SAP Marketing Cloud was losing market momentum. The acquisition addressed an immediate need. Emarsys brought a proven platform built for B2C e-commerce (fashion retailers, travel sites, online stores).
Four years later, the deep SAP integration the market expected hasn't materialized. Emarsys and SAP Marketing Cloud remained largely separate despite common ownership.
What does this history tell us? If integration between Emarsys and the platform you’re leaving didn’t happen over four years, it changes expectations for future SAP C/4 HANA integration.
Your sales process might be complex if you have:
Your sales process might be simpler if you have:
Emarsys was designed for the second scenario. If your organization operates in the first scenario, you'll want to understand the platform gaps.
3. Emarsys and Your Enterprise Needs
Understanding platform limitations helps you evaluate whether they'll impact your specific situation.
Account-Based Marketing Capabilities
Emarsys focuses on individual contact tracking. It doesn't have native functionality for coordinating campaigns across buying committees or tracking account-level engagement.
If you work with 6-8 person buying committees and need to track stakeholder progress across your organization, this creates workflow challenges.
CRM Integration Architecture
Emarsys requires a separate CRM, meaning you need to integrate three systems: Emarsys, your CRM, and SAP ERP.
HubSpot provides a built-in database for managing contacts, companies, and deals at no extra cost, which can simplify your integration architecture. However, for full sales automation and pipeline management, you would still need HubSpot’s Sales Hub. Reducing the number of separate systems helps minimize the points where data synchronization could fail.
Content Management Infrastructure
Emarsys provides basic landing page functionality. It doesn't include website management, document tracking, or content strategy tools.
If your prospects consume substantial technical content before engaging with sales (white papers, case studies, implementation guides), you'll need additional tools to support that strategy.
The ecosystem consistency argument makes intuitive sense. Let's look at how integration actually works in practice.
SAP ownership alone doesn’t guarantee tighter technical integration. HubSpot connects to SAP through middleware platforms, such as ElixirSync or other iPaaS solutions. These middleware tools provide proven reference architectures and real-time or batch synchronization, enabling hundreds of customers to integrate SAP and HubSpot without building custom point-to-point connections.
For organizations seeking specialized capabilities, a best-of-breed approach can be very effective. SAP is a leader in ERP and financial systems, while HubSpot invests heavily in marketing automation and CRM for mid-market businesses. Each platform focuses its development on its core area, ensuring strong performance where it matters most.
The question becomes: does ecosystem simplicity outweigh the functional differences between platforms built for different purposes?
The decision depends on which factors matter most for your specific operations.
Read more about HubSpot x SAP-integration possibilities here
Emarsys: Emarsys performs best for B2C businesses running high-volume campaigns (100K+ emails/month), e-commerce product recommendations, SMS marketing, and short purchase cycles under 30 days. If your business sells directly to consumers online, Emarsys handles these scenarios effectively.
HubSpot: HubSpot offers an integrated marketing automation platform with a built-in CRM database, enabling mid-market businesses to manage contacts, campaigns, and deals in one system. When connecting to SAP, middleware solutions like ElixirSync provide proven integration architecture, ensuring smooth data flow and reliable synchronization.
We work with enterprise organizations across Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, the USA, and Canada. We've been part of enough SAP Marketing Cloud migration conversations to notice some patterns.
Organizations that choose Emarsys often:
Organizations that choose HubSpot often:
Neither choice is wrong. The fit depends on your specific situation and priorities.
What we consistently see: organizations that match their platform choice to their actual sales complexity (not what they wish it was) get better adoption and ROI.
Read more our migration service here
Emarsys Migration: Timeline: 4-6 months minimum Investment: €60,000-€120,000 Reality: Platform requires workarounds for enterprise needs
HubSpot Migration: Timeline: 3-4 months Investment: €50,000-€80,000, depending on complexity Reality: Built for your use case from the start
Our typical enterprise migration includes multi-hub implementation, SAP integration, team training, and comprehensive adoption support.
Before scheduling platform demos, these questions help clarify your specific requirements and what to evaluate:
For Emarsys: “Can you show us how we'd track and nurture multiple contacts within a target account across a 12-month sales cycle?”
Their response reveals whether this is native functionality or requires custom development.
For HubSpot: "Can you walk us through your SAP integration approach and share reference customers we could speak with?"
This helps you understand the integration architecture and talk to organizations with similar requirements.
For Both Platforms: "Which enterprise organizations migrated from SAP Marketing Cloud in the last 12 months, and would any be willing to share their experience?"
The length and relevance of their reference list tells you a lot about platform adoption in situations similar to yours.
Emarsys fits organizations that:
HubSpot fits organizations that:
Most organizations reading an article about SAP Marketing Cloud enterprise migration fall into the second category. But your specific situation determines the right fit.
We're Elite HubSpot Partners with deep SAP ecosystem experience across Europe. We've worked with SAP customers for over 10 years.
What makes our approach different: we understand both systems. Your ERP should absolutely be SAP. For your marketing platform, we help you choose what actually works best for your marketing team and sales process.
We make both systems work together using proven middleware integration patterns. Our proven implementation methodology ensures smooth transitions, data integrity, and most importantly, that your team actually adopts the new platform.
Our management team stays involved in every project. We challenge scope when we see a better way forward. We don't just deploy software and leave. We make sure everyone gets on board and the system delivers real business value.
Read more our migration service here
The December 2026 deadline is 10 months away. With 4-6 month implementation timelines, organizations need to begin platform evaluation by Q1 2026 for manageable transition timing.
We've created an SAP Migration Evaluation Framework that walks through the specific questions to ask during platform demos. It helps clarify which capabilities matter most for your situation.
About Elixir
Digital business engineers specializing in complex HubSpot implementations for European enterprises. Elite Partner since 2015 with offices in Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, Stockholm, and Paris. We combine SAP integration expertise with advanced HubSpot capabilities through proven implementation methodology. Learn more at elixir-solutions.net.
Read more about Elixir Solutions as Your HubSpot Partner here