Demandbase vs. 6sense: Which should you choose?

About Demandbase

Demandbase tackles ABM by layering first-party data — think website engagement — with third-party intent signals. The goal? Help B2B companies identify and target high-value accounts through coordinated campaigns across ads, email, and sales outreach. It includes native advertising capabilities for account-based ads, website personalization tools, and deep CRM integration. Essentially, it functions as an ABM layer that sits on top of your existing sales and marketing stack.

About 6sense

6sense tracks anonymous buying signals and third-party intent data to predict where accounts are in their buying journey using AI. Then it integrates with CRMs and marketing platforms to coordinate outreach campaigns. The platform combines predictive analytics with campaign execution tools — automatically updating account segments and priorities based on behavior changes. However, it requires significant setup time and investment to use effectively.

What do users say?

Demandbase users appreciate the platform as a comprehensive ABM solution that effectively supports account-based marketing strategies. Users consistently highlight its accurate account identification capabilities, superior account-based advertising DSP, and valuable account intelligence features. These help with sales-marketing alignment, lead prioritization, and targeted messaging. While some users express skepticism about the broader ABM industry's ROI claims and question the reliability of intent data, supporters emphasize Demandbase's robust integrations, helpful customer support team, and practical functionality for identifying website visitors and executing targeted outreach campaigns.

6sense gets mixed reviews across sales teams — many find the platform promising initially but ultimately unreliable. Multiple reviewers describe 6sense's intent data and reporting as inaccurate or "snake oil." Many prospects contacted through the platform claim they have no knowledge of the activities 6sense claims to track. While some users find it helpful for account prioritization when used internally rather than mentioned directly to prospects, others report their companies have abandoned 6sense entirely due to poor data quality and unreliable performance.

Comparison

Demandbase

• Demandbase offers a comprehensive end-to-end ABM platform that combines first-party and third-party data with strong account-based advertising and web personalization capabilities. The platform provides extensive integrations with CRM and marketing automation systems — plus native ad serving functionality that competitors typically lack.

• However, Demandbase comes with enterprise-level pricing that can be cost-prohibitive for smaller teams. It requires significant time investment to master its complex feature set. The platform experiences occasional bugs and UI issues, while its contact database is less comprehensive than dedicated contact data providers.

6sense

• 6sense excels at predictive analytics through its Revenue AI engine, which identifies account buying stages and timing to give sales teams strategic advantages. The platform provides strong sales-marketing alignment features with comprehensive ABM capabilities that help teams coordinate efforts on high-priority accounts.

• The platform is expensive and complex to implement — often requiring significant setup time and ongoing tuning that smaller teams may find overwhelming. 6sense has notable limitations in contact data coverage and experiences data refresh delays that impact real-time responsiveness.

Choose Demandbase if you're a large enterprise with substantial ABM budgets who need a complete platform for account-based advertising, web personalization, and multi-channel campaign orchestration. Its native advertising capabilities and comprehensive account intelligence make it ideal for organizations in tech, finance, or manufacturing with complex, high-value sales cycles.

Go with 6sense if you're an enterprise or high-growth mid-market company that prioritizes predictive analytics and sales-marketing alignment — particularly if you have defined target account lists and long sales cycles where timing intelligence provides competitive advantage.

Neither platform excels at contact-based marketing. Both focus primarily on account-level intelligence rather than comprehensive individual contact databases. This limitation hits hard because many B2B marketing strategies require robust contact data for personalized outreach, lead nurturing, and individual-level campaign targeting. Organizations using either platform often need to supplement with dedicated contact databases like ZoomInfo to execute comprehensive marketing campaigns that blend account-based and contact-based approaches.

Do you need account-based marketing, or something else?

Here's the revelation that's flipping ABM on its head: your funnel isn't about anonymous accounts. It's about the decision-makers and influencers within those accounts.

That's what makes contact-based marketing (CBM) a breakthrough. Instead of focusing on broad account intent signals, contact-based marketing pinpoints the EXACT people engaging with your content in real-time — even when they don't convert.

How does this solve the traditional tension of intent-based marketing? It clears up the ambiguity.

With contact-level data, you can reveal high-priority leads by identifying the individuals behind key touchpoints. Deliver hyper-targeted ads based on specific contact behaviors. Bridge the gap between marketing and sales alignment with actionable, lead-level insights.