The Salesforce Commerce Cloud stack: what retailers run alongside it

Retailers on Salesforce Commerce Cloud in these interviews tend to buy more Salesforce. About half also run Salesforce Marketing Cloud, around twice the rate at brands on other non-Shopify platforms, and Service Cloud, Data Cloud and Einstein appear several times as often. Around them sits a set of specialist retail tools — Bazaarvoice, Narvar, Wunderkind, Contentsquare, Salsify, Adyen, Bloomreach, Bluecore, Amperity. Buyers often choose the Salesforce suite expecting its products to work together. Yet several describe significant integration problems between Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud — even as others praise connections elsewhere in the Salesforce ecosystem.

What tools do Salesforce Commerce Cloud retailers commonly run together?

In these interviews, Salesforce Commerce Cloud retailers frequently pair their commerce platform with Salesforce Marketing Cloud for email and customer engagement. Some also use Service Cloud, Data Cloud or Einstein. Specialist applications include Bazaarvoice for reviews, Narvar for post-purchase experiences, Contentsquare for analytics, Salsify for product information, Adyen for payments, and Bloomreach for search and recommendations. The exact combination varies by retailer, and buyers report both successful integrations and substantial implementation work.

Why do Commerce Cloud brands buy more Salesforce?

Because the connected suite is the pitch, and buyers take it up. One brand says that, once on Commerce Cloud, “it made sense to enroll in the full suite of Salesforce products, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud.” Pricing pushes the same way — “your rate for Commerce Cloud is this, and it's onerous, but you get Service Cloud and this other one basically for free,” one buyer says. Salesforce Service Cloud is nearly four times as common at Commerce Cloud brands as on other non-Shopify platforms, and Data Cloud, bought by some to tie the clouds together and to run Agentforce, nearly four times. Buyers also name the cost: “the interconnectivity there is how they win and they keep you in the ecosystem.” See Salesforce Commerce Cloud alternatives.

Do Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud work together?

Buyers split. Some describe the pair as connected; several describe significant gaps. One says “there's a lot of nice integration between the two systems.” Others describe the opposite: “Commerce Cloud does not talk to Marketing Cloud as it stands today.” Another expected otherwise: “You would expect since it's all Salesforce, it's all plug and play, but that's very far from being the case,” attributing it to products that “because they were sort of acquisitions from Salesforce over the years, there's not really a very good integration between them.”

The rest of the suite fares better. Marketing Cloud's link to the CRM draws praise — “I think Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrates very well with Salesforce CRM” — and one buyer draws the line between the clouds that work for them and the one that does not: “Salesforce from the Commerce Cloud? Perfect. They work together fine. It's when you start adding the Marketing Cloud and you start trying to see if you can understand the customer and target the customer that it's very tedious.” When buyers raise a gap, they say the answer is often more Salesforce: “the answer usually is either they don't have that feature or you need to buy another tool on top of that.” See Klaviyo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Where do retailers replace or supplement Salesforce's native capabilities?

Retailers here do three different things with specialist tools, and only the first two take the place of a Salesforce product:

Replacement shows up clearly in search and recommendations. Einstein's commerce search and recommendations are the native option, and buyers credit the fit: “It's directly integrated into the catalog. It's part of your e-commerce platform, so it's very easy.” The complaint is reach — “It doesn't connect the data from the website to the email to the store and everything” — and several brands have replaced Einstein's search or recommendations with Bloomreach, Klevu, Constructor or Cimulate. One says of Klevu, “we were able to have this seamless plugin and get more merchandising capabilities than doing a Salesforce overall”; another says of Bloomreach, “It works well with Salesforce.”

Customer data is the other split. Amperity is about fifteen times as common at Commerce Cloud brands, often chosen instead of Salesforce's own CDP — a choice one buyer says has a cost: “we chose not to use their CDP, we chose to go with Amperity, so that gave some degrees of friction.” A brand going composable around Commerce Cloud describes the appeal: “I can just plug in one of the dozens of search vendors that are out there.”

Is there a hub, like Klaviyo in a Shopify stack?

Not in the same way. Unlike the Shopify stacks in these interviews, where many specialist apps are adopted alongside Klaviyo, Commerce Cloud stacks do not show the same concentration around one email or customer-engagement platform. About half of Commerce Cloud brands run Marketing Cloud, and most specialist tools sit beside it at about that same rate — they are adopted with Commerce Cloud, not with the email platform. The exceptions are Salesforce's own: nine in ten Data Cloud brands and four in five Service Cloud brands also run Marketing Cloud. The email layer also splits: Klaviyo is as common at Commerce Cloud brands as on other platforms, and most Commerce Cloud brands running it do not run Marketing Cloud.

Where specialist messaging tools do connect to Marketing Cloud, buyers describe it as a relay rather than a native join. One uses Wunderkind for “capturing information on the site that we feed into Salesforce Marketing Cloud to send remarketing messages”; another, sending Bluecore through Marketing Cloud, found “Salesforce was expecting real-time API calls, but Bluecore was still batching them.”

What does it take to add a tool to Commerce Cloud?

Some Salesforce-supported integrations reduce implementation work, while other connections require additional development or systems-integrator support. One buyer says “where Salesforce really scores heavily is these integration APIs which are available out of the box,” and a brand choosing Adyen for payments notes “Similar to Commerce Cloud, we no longer have to do the leg work of integrating new payment methods.” For other connections, buyers describe development work: “Even though there are cartridges available, it's not the same level of integration”; “with Commerce Cloud it requires dev work, which means hours and dollars”; and at one retailer, “Like we have SIs coming out of our eyeballs helping to do any of the work on Commerce Cloud.”

The friction shows up in the data flows too. One brand's product content still has no bridge — “it's not automated so she has to copy paste every single thing, every title, description, et cetera, into SFCC” — and another's catalog updates wait for a nightly job: “every night, it replicates. So we can't update in real time unless we get, like, a significant IT exception.” A search tool at a third brand “doesn't play well with some of, I guess, with the Salesforce environment.”

The Commerce Cloud stack, tool by tool

Each tool's lead over brands on other non-Shopify platforms, how many of the Commerce Cloud brands running it also run Marketing Cloud, and how buyers describe its connections. About half of all Commerce Cloud brands run Marketing Cloud, so a figure near that means the tool is adopted independently of it. How often tools appear together is separate from how well they connect, which is what the last column reports.

Tools named by Commerce Cloud brands in Alium's verified interviews through October 2026: how much more common each is than at brands on other non-Shopify platforms, and the share of its Commerce Cloud brands also running Salesforce Marketing Cloud (about half across all Commerce Cloud brands).

Tool	vs. other non-Shopify platforms	Also run Marketing Cloud	How buyers describe the join
Salesforce Marketing Cloud	about 2×	—	Praised for its link to the CRM and Service Cloud; several buyers describe significant problems connecting it to Commerce Cloud.
Salesforce Service Cloud	nearly 4×	about 4 in 5	Buyers mostly describe its links to Commerce Cloud and the CRM as working; one says it came nearly free with Commerce Cloud.
Salesforce Einstein	over 20×	about half	Its commerce search and recommendations are built into the catalog; buyers say they do not carry into email, and several replaced them with a specialist.
Salesforce Data Cloud	nearly 4×	about 9 in 10	Bought to connect the clouds and enable Agentforce; buyers say integrating it takes time.
Bazaarvoice	about 1½×	about half	Kept for retail syndication; buyers report its syndication link with PowerReviews has broken.
Narvar	over 2×	about half	Implemented without trouble by some; held back by one company until it settled its commerce platform.
Wunderkind	nearly 3×	under half	Captures on site and sends through Marketing Cloud or another email platform; several buyers describe integration struggles.
Contentsquare	over 2×	about 2 in 5	Used alongside testing tools; one buyer says it does not sync with Commerce Cloud.
Salsify	about 2½×	about 3 in 5	Used for retail syndication; buyers report missing or heavily configured bridges into Commerce Cloud.
Adyen	about 4×	about half	Out-of-the-box payments for most; one buyer calls it cumbersome to integrate.
Bloomreach	over 2×	about half	Praised for working with Commerce Cloud; replaces Einstein or Marketing Cloud for some.
Bluecore	nearly 3×	about 3 in 5	Often deployed through Marketing Cloud, with friction between batch and real-time sends.
Amperity	about 15×	about half	Chosen over Salesforce's own CDP; feeds Marketing Cloud and SMS tools, with friction one buyer attributes to that choice.

What happens to the stack when a brand moves to Shopify?

For some retailers, moving from Commerce Cloud to Shopify prompts a broader review of the technology stack rather than a storefront-only migration. About one in five Commerce Cloud brands here also run Shopify, often for smaller brands or other markets, and several are moving across. The changes below are particular buyers' decisions, not a required pattern. One large retailer lays out its order: “Next step in the journey is to replace Commerce Cloud with Shopify, to replace Marketing Cloud with Bloomreach.” Gorgias takes over support — “So Service Cloud will be replaced by Gorgias.” — and Data Cloud is judged unnecessary: “When you look at the data architecture that we've put in place, Data Cloud becomes a redundant component.” Some brands move payments and analytics too: “We have to migrate from Adyen to Shopify,” one says, and another that has moved says “We are only using GA4 because that's connected to Shopify.”

An open platform decision can freeze the rest. One company held back several tools — including Narvar — because of “the platform decisioning and not wanting to do integrations in multiple places.” And not every brand goes: some are moving onto Commerce Cloud, and one buyer who stayed says “So I was a big proponent of not moving to Shopify.” See Shopify vs. Salesforce Commerce Cloud and why brands replatform.

The stories behind the stack

What this means for your stack

Commerce Cloud retailers in these interviews frequently combine Salesforce products with specialist retail applications, but their stacks do not show the same concentration around a single customer-engagement platform seen among Shopify brands using Klaviyo. Buyers credit some Salesforce-provided integrations but also describe development and systems-integrator work when connecting specialist tools or other Salesforce products. Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe: before adding another Salesforce cloud, ask for the Commerce Cloud connection to be demonstrated on your own data, since that is where several buyers report problems; for each specialist tool, ask whether it connects through a cartridge or needs custom work; and if a move to Shopify is under consideration, decide it before buying tools that would have to be integrated twice, as one company did.

What this page does not show

It shows which tools Commerce Cloud brands run, not which ones they should. Tools being common together says nothing about satisfaction, and a tool appearing beside Marketing Cloud does not mean the two are connected. Commerce Cloud brands in these interviews skew larger than brands on other platforms, so part of the difference from other platforms is the kind of company, not the platform. And buyers' views of how Salesforce's clouds connect vary by when each cloud was added and how it was implemented, so a gap one buyer describes may not apply to another's setup. For the Adobe side of the enterprise stack, see the Adobe Experience Cloud stack.

Common questions