Responsys is dying

Responsys had its moment

In the early days of email, Responsys was one of the top choices for an enterprise ESP. It offered marketers an all-in-one solution, packed with features for email, CRM, testing, dashboards, and performance tracking. For a long time, it was the safe bet — an established market leader with a name that carried weight in the C-suite.

But that moment has passed.

Even after Oracle acquired it, Responsys hasn’t kept pace with modern enterprise needs. Innovation has slowed to a crawl. Support is bare bones. Costs keep climbing. And the product itself? Complex, clunky, and painfully outdated.

To make matters worse, there are persistent industry rumors that Oracle may stop selling Responsys altogether. If that happens, current customers will be left stuck with a tool that’s no longer evolving — and no roadmap for the future.

Where Responsys falls short

Enterprise brands say the same things again and again about Responsys:

• It’s slow. Campaign setup and QA cycles take forever.
• It’s siloed. Data must be mapped and copied, which means duplicate storage, complex ETL, and endless sync jobs.
• It’s expensive. Between hidden fees, overages, and operational costs, the total cost of ownership is sky-high.
• It’s clunky. From limited APIs to a dated interface, Responsys requires specialized operators just to keep things moving.
• It’s stagnant. With little innovation and poor analyst scores, it’s clear Responsys isn’t investing in the future.

And when you ask for help? Their support team’s response is often slow, impersonal, or nonexistent. Meanwhile, your costs pile up. Teams slow down. IT drowns in tickets. And your customers notice when messages feel generic, delayed, or irrelevant.

Here’s how one VP of Marketing at a household-name brand described it:

“It’s clunky and old. You need people trained specifically in Responsys. It’s expensive. And from what we’re hearing, Oracle isn’t investing in this product anymore. They don’t have a roadmap.”

That’s not the kind of foundation you want for the future of your customer engagement.

The MessageGears path forward

If Responsys is holding you back, MessageGears gives you a way forward. We’re built specifically for enterprise senders who demand scale, agility, and direct access to their customer data. Here’s what makes us different:

• Direct data access. Connect marketing campaigns natively to Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, and more. Your data already lives in your warehouse – so why not keep it there? No data replication. No slow sync jobs. 
• Lower total cost of ownership. Axe the cost of redundant data storage. Shrink compute costs with smarter querying. And ditch your CDP licenses while you’re at it. Brands save big by eliminating unnecessary data charges, platform fees, and operational overhead when they switch to a modern, composable stack. 
• Faster campaigns. With live data access, QA cycles shrink, campaigns launch faster, and revenue hits sooner. Imagine the possibilities if you could get campaigns out the door 50%+ more efficiently.
• Unlimited personalization. Use *every* customer attribute you have to fuel stronger segmentation logic and more personalized, dynamic content. No custom field caps. No overage fees. No limitations.
• Stronger security. Warehouse-native architecture means your data always remains safe and compliant behind your brand’s secure firewall. It’s never moved or duplicated.
• Always-on service and support. We only serve enterprise brands. When you call, we pick up. Every time.
• Simple migration. Move off Responsys in weeks, not 9+ months. 

With MessageGears, you get more control, less complexity, and a cross-channel marketing platform that’s actually moving forward. 

👉 Book a demo with our enterprise email experts today.

Why migrating to MessageGears beats moving to another ESP

The “safe” choice isn’t safe anymore. Responsys may keep the lights on today, but it won’t fuel the kind of agile, data-driven marketing that enterprises need tomorrow. Most leaders already realize that finding a Responsys alternative isn’t optional — the only question is where you’ll go next. And while Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), Iterable, Attentive, Zeta, and others will all tell you they’re the natural landing spot… The reality is that migrating to another traditionally architected ESP means trading one set of problems for another.

MessageGears takes a fundamentally different approach. We’ve built a proven playbook for transitioning enterprise brands off Responsys quickly and with minimal disruption. Because our platform connects directly to your existing data warehouse, you skip the heavy lifting involved in re-mapping, re-copying, and re-storing customer data in a new silo. That’s weeks — not 9+ months — of migration time back in your pocket, not to mention what you’ll save by not racking up consulting and IT costs.

Switching to the usual alternatives typically goes something like this:

• Braze: Enterprise migration from Responsys means you’ll need a CDP just to stitch your data back together. More vendors, more complexity, more cost.
• SFMC: Implementation projects are notoriously long and expensive. Brands often spend months (and millions) just to recreate the same campaigns they already had.
• Iterable: Popular with mid-market brands, but not built for true enterprise scale. Data integrations are limited, and you’ll still be paying extra for storage and compute outside your warehouse.
• Attentive: Strong for SMS, but weak as a full-scale enterprise ESP replacement. You’ll end up piecing together multiple platforms to cover email, mobile, and cross-channel campaigns.
• Zeta: Like Responsys, Zeta relies on duplicating and managing your customer data in their system. That means more storage fees, slower syncs, and another round of data governance headaches.

With MessageGears, you avoid all that. You get faster time-to-value, lower total cost of ownership, unlimited personalization with no field caps or overage fees, and a future-proof architecture that keeps your data where it belongs – in your warehouse, behind your secure firewall. It’s not just an easier move off Responsys. It’s the smarter investment compared to switching to any other ESP.

The clear Responsys alternative for enterprise email

Oracle’s Responsys platform is done and dusted. Yeah, we said it. (Everyone was already thinking it.) Switching isn’t just about ditching a dying platform — it’s about future-proofing your customer engagement. So please don’t settle for another silo. 

Other platforms may promise to keep up, but your team deserves a warehouse-native ESP with modern architecture that’s actually built for enterprise scale. Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison with a peek into how MessageGears stacks up as the best Responsys alternative:

Simply put, Responsys is stuck in the past — and MessageGears is the alternative built for now.

Break free: MessageGears is the Responsys alternative that puts your data first

Responsys is holding you back, and it’s time to move forward. MessageGears can help you migrate quickly, personalize deeper, and run campaigns at the speed your business demands. All while saving you time and money and keeping your customer data more secure.

If the sun is really setting on Responsys, what’s your next move?