Markopolo.ai: The Top CleverTap Alternative Revealed

If you’re evaluating CleverTap and exploring alternatives, it’s easy to get lost in feature lists and pricing tables. Both CleverTap and Markopolo serve modern marketing needs—but they take very different approaches. While CleverTap focuses on mobile-first engagement, Markopolo is a warehouse-native, multichannel platform built for businesses that want to coordinate web, mobile, email, messaging, and paid advertising—all from one place.

This guide breaks down the key differences, so you can make an informed decision for your business.

Executive Summary

• CleverTap: Strong for mobile-first businesses, especially in growth markets like India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Offers push notifications, in-app messaging, and WhatsApp integration. Pricing starts at $75/month for apps with small to medium user bases.
• Markopolo: Built to support the full customer journey across web, mobile, messaging apps, email, and paid advertising. Keeps your data in your own warehouse, offers outcome-based pricing, and makes omnichannel marketing simple.

If your focus is exclusively mobile, CleverTap is a solid choice. If your business engages customers across multiple channels or relies on data-driven marketing, Markopolo provides a more flexible and integrated solution.

Pricing: MAU vs. Outcome-Based

CleverTap’s MAU-Based Model

• Charges based on Monthly Active Users (MAUs) or Monthly Billable Users (MBUs)
• Includes 10,000 data points per MAU, with published overage math
• Offers 30-day free trial for apps under 100K MAUs and startup programs

The challenge: High user counts don’t always equal revenue. Paying for all MAUs can become costly if engagement is low.

Markopolo’s Outcome-Based Model

• Charges based on revenue influenced or customer journeys executed
• Costs scale with business results, not raw user counts
• Predictable ROI-aligned pricing

Example: A media app with 5 million MAUs but modest revenue may find Markopolo’s outcome-based pricing much more economical than paying for all users.

Mobile & Omnichannel Capabilities

CleverTap: Mobile-First Power

• Push notifications with rich media and deep linking
• In-app messaging and persistent app inbox
• Geofencing for location-based campaigns
• Mobile analytics, cohort analysis, and uninstall tracking

If your product is app-only, CleverTap delivers a deep mobile engagement toolkit.

Markopolo: Omnichannel Everywhere

• Mobile push, email, SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, web push
• Paid ad sync across Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat
• Unified journey orchestration across all channels

For businesses operating across web, email, apps, and paid advertising, Markopolo keeps everything connected in one platform.

WhatsApp & Conversational Messaging

• CleverTap: Basic WhatsApp support with templates, conversation tracking, and opt-in management. Often treated as an additional channel.
• Markopolo: WhatsApp and RCS are core revenue channels. Features include:
  • Compliant opt-in workflows tied to customer journeys
  • Template management and approval tracking
  • Ad retargeting based on WhatsApp engagement
  • Revenue attribution from conversational interactions

In markets like India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America—where WhatsApp drives 60–80% of customer communication—Markopolo turns messaging into measurable revenue.

Data Architecture: Platform vs. Warehouse-Native

CleverTap

• Traditional SaaS model: data lives in CleverTap’s infrastructure
• Segmentation happens inside the platform
• Challenges: duplicate data, sync delays, vendor dependency for historical data

Markopolo

• Warehouse-native: data stays in BigQuery, Snowflake, or Databricks
• Zero-copy segmentation: run campaigns directly on your source data
• Complete control and portability

If your team already uses a data warehouse for analytics, Markopolo avoids redundant pipelines and gives you full control over your data.

Paid Media Integration & Journey Orchestration

• CleverTap: Audience export for ads; paid media coordination is largely manual
• Markopolo: Native ad sync across all major platforms, integrated with customer journeys. You can:
  • Retarget non-openers
  • Suppress existing customers in acquisition campaigns
  • Create lookalike audiences from high-value segments
  • Attribute paid media conversions back to your journeys

Coordinating organic and paid campaigns in one platform reduces CAC and increases LTV.

Identity Resolution & Analytics

• CleverTap: Builds unified profiles inside its platform; cross-device stitching limited to CleverTap’s environment
• Markopolo: Leverages your existing identity infrastructure; cross-device stitching and custom identity logic without duplicating data

Analytics:

• CleverTap focuses on mobile metrics: retention curves, cohort analysis, churn prediction
• Markopolo provides cross-channel insights: revenue attribution, lift analysis, ROI for paid and organic campaigns, plus warehouse BI integration

Onboarding & Time-to-Value

• CleverTap: Mobile SDK integration, pre-built campaigns, 30-day trial for small apps
• Markopolo: One-click warehouse ingestion, pre-built omnichannel journeys, campaigns live in days

Mobile-first startups may find CleverTap easier to set up. Businesses with established data infrastructure will see faster results with Markopolo.

Who Should Choose Which?

CleverTap is right if you:

• Operate primarily as a mobile app
• Need deep mobile push and in-app messaging
• Focus on APAC growth markets
• Don’t require tight integration between organic and paid channels

Markopolo is better if you:

• Run omnichannel engagement across web, mobile, email, and ads
• Have a warehouse-first data strategy
• Prefer outcome-based pricing
• Need seamless ad retargeting integrated with journeys
• Treat WhatsApp/RCS as strategic revenue channels

The Bottom Line

CleverTap is excellent for mobile-only apps. But for most modern businesses, marketing spans multiple channels and requires integrated data. Markopolo’s Marktag, coupled with outcome-based pricing and unified journeys, makes it the platform of choice for growth-focused, data-driven organizations.

The question isn’t whether CleverTap is good at mobile—it is. The real question is whether your business needs more than mobile engagement. For omnichannel growth, Markopolo delivers flexibility, ROI, and operational efficiency.