We Had a Partner Score Us. Here's What Came Back.
An official Paminga integration partner ran us through a 324-point marketing automation evaluation — unprompted, and unfiltered.
Merlin/Leonard is an official Paminga integration partner. As part of the RFP work they do for clients evaluating marketing automation platforms, they maintain a 324-point evaluation grid — covering everything from data governance to CRM sync to AI. They ran it against Paminga, Adobe Marketo Engage, and HubSpot Marketing Hub.
We didn't build the grid. We didn't score ourselves. This is their assessment, from their own product knowledge, shared with us unprompted.
The Numbers
The numbers
Native coverage is the number we think matters most here — it's the percentage of the 324 requirements that are actually included, out of the box, versus requiring an add-on, a dev build, or a separate tool.
| Platform | Weighted score | Native coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Paminga | 84% | 71% |
| HubSpot Marketing Hub | 68% | 38% |
| Adobe Marketo Engage | 62% | 35% |
Reading through the evaluation line by line, the gap isn't random. Both platforms miss native coverage for a specific, consistent reason — just not the same one.
Two Different Reasons
Two different reasons for the same gap
Built for developers
Across the categories where Marketo scores lowest, the same phrase keeps showing up in the evaluation: "requires custom development". YouTube milestone tracking needs custom JavaScript. Time-on-page needs custom timing logic pushed into Munchkin. Cart-abandonment tracking needs the same. Even the workflow builder itself isn’t a true visual canvas — described as "sequential flow steps... rather than a visual drag-and-drop journey canvas with loops." Several requirements go further, noting the way clients actually get the feature working is a framework built by Merlin/Leonard themselves — not something Marketo ships, but something an agency builds on top of it. None of this means Marketo can’t do these things. It means the path runs through developer time and professional services, not through the product itself.
Built by the hub
HubSpot’s gaps read differently. It’s rarely "not possible" — it’s "requires Operations Hub Professional/Enterprise", or Marketing Hub Enterprise, or custom objects being Enterprise-only. Custom behavioral events, inbound and outbound webhooks, multi-object automation, SLA-style escalation workflows — all real features, all gated behind a specific tier or a separate Hub you may not already be paying for. It’s less that HubSpot can’t, and more that HubSpot can — once you’ve upgraded.
Where It Shows Up Clearest
Where it shows up clearest
A few categories where the native-coverage gap is widest — and the evaluation's own explanation for why.
0% Marketo
Marketo retired its built-in social module. Publishing now runs through a third-party partner tool instead.
8% Marketo
Most of Marketo’s coverage here — rep alerts, CRM engagement visibility, templates — sits behind Marketo Sales Insight, a separate paid, seat-based add-on.
36% Marketo · 57% HubSpot
Deeper sync capabilities — account write-back, custom objects, per-field control — are either limited or tier-gated on both platforms.
38% Marketo · 25% HubSpot
The same gap shows up here as in the workflow builder itself — visual canvas versus flow steps, native versus tier-gated.
What That Means For Paminga
What that means for Paminga
This isn't a claim that one platform fits every team. That's not what we're building. Paminga exists because MOps teams kept running into the same wall on legacy MAPs: the feature you need is technically possible, just not without a developer, a professional-services engagement, or a tier upgrade you didn't budget for. We built Paminga natively around the workflows those teams actually have, so the ceiling most MAP contracts put on you isn't there in the first place.
The evaluation is one data point toward that — not proof that Paminga does more, but evidence that it does what MOps teams need without the same strings attached.
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