Adobe Experience Cloud is built for enterprise marketers who need a unified profile across paid media, owned channels, and creative. Pact is built for revenue teams who need the marketing surface, the CRM, the consent ledger, and the audit trail to share one database — so the same row your CDP segments on is the same row the AE works.
Adobe Experience Cloud is best at
The most ambitious enterprise customer-data + cross-channel orchestration platform — Adobe Experience Platform / Real-Time CDP / Journey Optimizer / Customer Journey Analytics, with the deepest creative-tools integration in the market.
Pact's wedge
One operational substrate where consent, identity, journeys, and the deal record live in the same database — versus a five-product Adobe stack with a separate identity graph, a separate CDP, and a separate consent layer.
Capability comparison
| Capability | Adobe Experience Cloud | Pact |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-product data model | Adobe Experience Platform unifies a profile across Real-Time CDP + Journey Optimizer + CJA + Target — but the CRM record (typically Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics) lives outside and reconciles via AEP source connectors on a schedule. | One row is the profile, the deal record, the consent identity, and the audit subject. There's no AEP-to-CRM reconciliation because there's no second system. |
| Real-time cross-channel orchestration | Journey Optimizer + Real-Time CDP are the category's deepest cross-channel orchestrator — paid media, push, email, in-product, and creative variants triggered from one profile. | Journeys cover email, in-product, push, and webhooks. We don't ship Adobe's paid-media + DSP integration tail — if your spend through Adobe Advertising Cloud is a load-bearing channel, Adobe is the right tool for that piece. |
| Identity stitching | AEP Identity Service is the strongest identity-graph product on the market; deterministic + probabilistic stitching across owned + paid surfaces is its core value. | Identity stitching across owned channels (web, email, in-product, calendar, CRM forms) is first-class. Paid-media stitching depends on partner CDPs we plug into. We won't pretend we match AEP Identity on the paid-side tail. |
| Consent + GDPR / CCPA / DSARs | Adobe Experience Platform Privacy Service ships consent for AEP-resident profiles; cross-system DSARs (AEP + Marketo + Salesforce + warehouse) require a multi-tenant evidence pull at audit time. | Consent center is a first-class surface with an immutable, exportable ledger. DSAR evidence is a one-click tenant-scoped NDJSON export across every surface in the platform — because every surface lives in one DB. |
| Time to live | 6-12 months median for an AEP rollout that includes Real-Time CDP + Journey Optimizer + CJA. Implementation partner cost typically matches or exceeds first-year license. | Under an hour for a tenant. SCIM + SSO are toggles. The deepest configuration on day-one is the workflow builder; no DSL. |
| Cost transparency | Adobe Experience Platform pricing is opaque, deal-by-deal, with significant variation on usage (profile count, computed attributes, query volume). Total stack typically lands seven figures for mid-market. | Per-seat with contacts-included floor. The /pricing calculator drags in vendor list prices and shows the order-of-magnitude story for your team's shape — no procurement call required. |
| Creative / DAM integration | Best-in-class. AEM Sites + Assets + Express, native to the Creative Cloud workflow your design team already uses. Genuinely a moat. | We don't ship a creative or DAM surface. If your marketing org owns Creative Cloud and treats DAM as a load-bearing tier, Adobe is the right tool there. |
The takeaway
AEC's wedge is the unified profile across paid media + creative + owned channels. Pact's wedge is the unified profile across CRM + consent + journeys + audit. Different jobs; the question is what your revenue team's day-to-day workload is.
AEP Identity is the better identity graph. The Pact bet is that for mid-market revenue teams, the daily cost of operating a five-system Adobe stack outweighs the identity-graph upside vs. a one-tenant substrate where the marketing event and the deal record are the same row.
Pulling DSAR evidence across AEP + Marketo + Salesforce + warehouse is a 30-60 day project. Pact ships it as a tenant-scoped NDJSON export because everything that touches the contact lives in the same DB, the same audit table, the same tenant boundary.
Where Adobe Experience Cloud wins
Honest about where Adobe Experience Cloud is the better choice. If your shape matches one of these, we'll be the first to recommend you stay.
Compare against another stack
The /pricing calculator drags in vendor list prices and shows the order-of-magnitude story for your team's shape — no procurement call required.
Last reviewed: 2026-06-15
American English · concessions backed by shipped functionality
Closes DP-014