The top 7 marketing automation platforms in 2026

Marketing automation platforms are essential tools for coordinating customer messaging across multiple channels, using workflows triggered by user behavior and preferences. These platforms enable collaboration between marketing, product, and engineering teams, allowing them to deploy messaging features efficiently without developing infrastructure from scratch. The right platform choice significantly impacts the agility and scalability of a team's notification system. This guide evaluates seven leading marketing automation platforms, including Knock, Braze, Customer.io, Iterable, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, and Klaviyo, each catering to different organizational needs and goals. Knock, for instance, offers developer-grade infrastructure and cross-functional collaboration, ideal for B2B SaaS companies, while Braze focuses on mobile-first engagement for large marketing teams. Each platform has unique strengths, such as Klaviyo's revenue attribution for e-commerce businesses, or HubSpot's integrated ecosystem for marketing, sales, and CRM. Evaluating a platform involves assessing developer experience, cross-functional collaboration, channel coverage, scalability, reliability, and pricing transparency. Knock is highlighted for its robust developer tools and collaboration capabilities, while Braze and Customer.io cater to specific user segments with their tailored features.