Product teams choose GrowthBook over Optimizely when they want to reduce complexity and cost with a warehouse-native experimentation, feature flags, and product analytics platform.
GrowthBook supports developer-led experimentation and rollouts, while Salesforce MC Personalization is a marketing tool sold in bundled Salesforce licensing.
- Built by engineers for engineers to test and target at a fraction of the price
- Seamless integration with warehouse-native analytics and 24+ lightweight SDKs
- Launch feature flags in minutes, run 100s to 1000s of experiments
- Designed for enterprise marketing teams with strong marketing ops capabilities
- Uses an opaque, AI-decision engine to personalize marketing across touch points
- Limited testing capabilities, requires complex integration with Salesforce ecosystem
GrowthBook’s warehouse-native architecture lowers cost and complexity while giving product teams smarter feature flags and a single source of truth for all their product and experiment data.
Developer-friendly, full-stack experimentation platform
Cloud Data Platform (CDP) add-on for marketing personalization
Designed For
Developers, product teams, analysts
Marketing and CRM teams using Salesforce CDP
Primary Use
Test any new feature you build in any platform
CDP-driven personalization
Statistical Methods
Bayesian, frequentist, sequential (with CUPED, post-stratification)
Undisclosed
Deployment Options
Cloud or fully self-hosted
Salesforce-hosted only
Pricing & Plans
Per-seat pricing with unlimited tests, unlimited traffic
Enterprise, bundled, expensive
Setup Time
Hours
Weeks to months
When black-box statistics prevent confident decision-making, it’s time to switch to GrowthBook.
GrowthBook is built for product experimentation —with transparent statistical methods and developer-friendly workflows that Salesforce simply doesn't offer.
Developer Experience
GrowthBook works best for product teams that want a modern approach to experimentation with transparency and flexibility.
GrowthBook
- Developer-friendly, intuitive environment for fast iteration
- Chrome debugger + visual editor
- Clear documentation, AI chatbot access, and responsive support
- Flexible for both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- 24+ SDKs: JavaScript, React, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, Java, Swift, Kotlin, etc.
Salesforce MC Personalization
- Requires marketing ops teams and deep Salesforce expertise
- Slow experiment setup with heavy manual QA
- Documentation and training are not designed for experimentation teams
- Enterprise support is generalized and slow
Performance & Scale
GrowthBook is designed for high-velocity experimentation and feature flags used by the largest websites and apps in the world.
GrowthBook
- Run any number of experiments on any amount of traffic
- Low-latency SDKs with rapid rule processing
- Scales from small teams to large enterprises on the same core platform
- 99.999% uptime for high traffic websites and apps
Salesforce MC Personalization
- Platform complexity slows experimentation
- Multi-page testing limited to identical changes
- Limited mobile experimentation capabilities
Experimentation Depth & Flexibility
GrowthBook gives product teams the ability to test almost anything with complete control and flexibility.
GrowthBook
- Testing types: Supports A/B tests, multivariate tests, redirects, visual editor, and holdouts
- One platform for server-side, client-side, mobile, and edge experiments
- Full-stack coverage: server-side, client-side, mobile, and edge experiments
- Flexible targeting and randomization units user, location, postal code, URL path, etc.
- Statistical frameworks: Bayesian, frequentist, sequential (with CUPED, post-stratification)
Salesforce MC Personalization
- Designed for personalization, not experimentation
- Limited beyond basic A/B tests
- No support for non-contextual bandits
- No built-in qualitative research tools
Feature Flagging & Flag-Based Experiments
GrowthBook is preferred by teams that consider feature flags core infrastructure to product development.
GrowthBook
- World-class feature flags at the core
- Controlled rollouts, gradual exposure, and instant kill switches
- Zero network call SDKs for low latency and high reliability
- Unified system for flags and experiments
Salesforce MC Personalization
- Feature flags are not a core capability
- Not designed for product release workflows
Transparency & Warehouse-Native Architecture
GrowthBook's architecture is the most cost effective way to keep all your data in one place, with full control and visibility.
GrowthBook
- Bring your data architecture Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Postgres, etc.
- Analyze all your product and experimentation data in one place
- Customize metrics using SQL, use metric libraries, and even add metrics retroactively
- Reproduce and confirm any GrowthBook calculation
Salesforce MC Personalization
- Not warehouse-native
- Black-box analysis and statistics locked inside Salesforce
- No documented statistical engine
- CMS functionality is possible but complex and awkward
Privacy, Security & Deployment
GrowthBook works well for industries with strict privacy and compliance requirements, including AI, financial services, healthcare, education, and gaming.
GrowthBook
- Fully self-hosted, air-gapped option for data residency requirements
- Meets strict privacy compliance requirements GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, SOC 2 Type II certified
- No end-user PII required. Your data stays in your data warehouse
- Open-source code is publicly available for security review on GitHub
Salesforce MC Personalization
- Cloud-hosted and managed by Salesforce
- Customer data flows through Salesforce infrastructure
- No self-hosted deployment option
AI-Ready & Future-Proof
GrowthBook gives teams building AI products the control they need to test and optimize features for better engagement and outcomes.
GrowthBook
- 3 of the 5 leading AI companies use GrowthBook to optimize their chatbots and APIs
- Design highly customized metrics to measure engagement, usage and outcomes
- Tune AI responses per use case with very targeted experiments
- MCP integration for natural language access to GrowthBook directly in IDE Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code
Salesforce MC Personalization
- AI-driven decisioning is opaque and difficult to interpret
- Hard to validate whether personalization is actually working
- Salesforce Personalization with AI is a separate product
Cost of Ownership
GrowthBook requires fewer people and resources at 1/5th the cost of Salesforce.
GrowthBook
- Predictable per-seat pricing with unlimited experiments and unlimited traffic
- Free tier and open source options
- Enterprise self-hosting gives customers flexibility and control
- Warehouse-native architecture means you do not pay twice to capture the same data
Salesforce MC Personalization
- Not sold as a standalone product
- Expensive, enterprise pricing bundled with other Salesforce products
- No free tier
- The complexity of the product requires a full team to support
What do GrowthBook users say?
"GrowthBook has changed the way we think about experiments... It allowed us to uplevel our code, speed up decision-making, and focus on what we do best."
Diego Accame, Upstart
“Their support is outstanding.”
“Front-end developers can now run experiments without backend modifications, cutting setup time from days to hours.”
Alex Kalish, Dropbox
FAQs
How does pricing and cost of ownership compare between GrowthBook and Salesforce MC Personalization?
GrowthBook is typically simpler and more predictable to scale. GrowthBook uses per-seat pricing with a free tier, while Salesforce MC Personalization is bundled into enterprise Salesforce licenses and often requires a dedicated team.
Can Salesforce MC Personalization support rigorous, trustworthy experimentation?
No. Salesforce MC Personalization supports basic testing but does not clearly document how experiment results are calculated. GrowthBook exposes SQL and documents its experimentation statistics so results can be audited and trusted.
Who is GrowthBook best for compared to Salesforce MC Personalization?
GrowthBook is best for product and engineering teams running feature experiments. Salesforce MC Personalization is best for marketing teams focused on campaigns and targeted experiences that rely on the Salesforce CDP.
Why do companies choose GrowthBook over Salesforce MC Personalization for experimentation and A/B testing?
Companies choose GrowthBook for faster, more transparent experimentation. GrowthBook provides clear statistical analysis with lower complexity than a marketing personalization platform.
What is the main difference between GrowthBook and Salesforce MC Personalization?
GrowthBook is built for product experimentation, while Salesforce MC Personalization is built for marketing-led personalization. GrowthBook focuses on feature testing using your own data, while Salesforce centers on campaign-driven customer experiences, using the Cloud Data Platform.
