HubSpot was named in 5 of the 6 answers when we asked ChatGPT and Gemini to recommend the best marketing automation software, more than any other product in the run. We measured this on 2026-08-03: six buyer questions, one live web search per answer, every product named and every source domain recorded. This page is built only from that run.
Three products tied for second, each named in 4 of 6 answers (67%): ActiveCampaign, Brevo, and Klaviyo. None matched HubSpot's reach, but each showed up in two-thirds of the answers, which puts them on the default shortlist an AI hands a buyer who does not name a specific tool.
A middle tier of three products landed in exactly 3 of 6 answers (50%): Customer.io, Gumloop, and Zapier. That is the interesting group, because two of them, Gumloop and Zapier, are not usually filed under "marketing automation platform" at all. We come back to why they still got named half the time.
Everything below that appeared once. Sixteen different products were named in exactly 1 of 6 answers (17%), and which single question each showed up in tells the real story of this category.
The shortlist changed a lot depending on how the question was asked
The bare query, "best marketing automation software," was the only one of the six that surfaced the enterprise old guard. Marketo, Eloqua, and Pardot were each named in that 1 of 6 answers and in none of the other five. Ask for "the best" with no other qualifier and the assistants reach for the legacy enterprise stack. Add any qualifier and those three vanish completely.
"Best free marketing automation software" pulled a different crowd. Brevo was named first in that answer, followed by a set of free-tier email tools that appeared nowhere else: MailerLite, Zoho, and Mailjet were each named in only that 1 of 6 answers. The free framing quietly swapped the category from "automation platform" to "email tool with a free plan."
"Most affordable marketing automation software" produced the shortest list of the whole run, just 4 names: Brevo (again named first), ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, and Encharge. Encharge appeared in only that 1 of 6 answers. Brevo leading both the free and the affordable answers is the clearest single pattern in the data: it is named in 4 of 6 overall, yet it never appears in the bare "best" answer. Brevo owns the price framing and nothing else.
"Marketing automation software recommendations" returned an almost entirely modern, AI-native list: Clay, Attio, Roadway AI, and Loops were each named in only that 1 of 6 answers, alongside Gumloop and Zapier. This is also the one answer that named HubSpot Marketing Hub rather than plain HubSpot. The word "recommendations" pulled a newer go-to-market stack that the word "best" never touched.
The two remaining questions added their own one-off names. "For small teams" was the only answer to name Velorum Leads (1 of 6). "What marketing automation software should I use" was the only one to name GetResponse, Omnisend, and Act-On (1 of 6 each). A name that shows up in exactly one answer and nowhere else is a fragile signal, worth noticing but not worth planning around.
The source map: community threads and roundups, not review directories
Three sites tied as the most-cited sources, each feeding all 6 of 6 answers: ventureharbour.com, zapier.com, and gumloop.com. These are roundup and comparison pages, not review directories. Reddit was next at 5 of 6 answers, and Quora appeared in 3 of 6, so community threads were a heavier input than any ratings site.
The review directories that vendors spend the most on barely registered. G2 fed exactly 1 of 6 answers, Gartner fed 2 of 6, and Capterra did not appear in a single answer. If your AI-visibility plan rests on your G2 rating, this run says that rating touched one answer out of six.
Here is the key insight. The two products that punch above their weight, Gumloop and Zapier at 3 of 6 each, are exactly the two whose own domains are top sources. Gumloop's own site (gumloop.com) fed all 6 answers, and Gumloop the product was named in 3 of them. Zapier's own site (zapier.com) fed all 6 answers, and Zapier the product was named in 3. Encharge did the same at smaller scale: encharge.io fed 3 answers, and Encharge was named in 1, the affordability one. Publishing a genuinely useful category roundup on your own domain is measurably feeding these answers.
The counter-example proves the point. Mailchimp's own domain (mailchimp.com) fed 1 answer, the "best free" one, yet Mailchimp the product was not named in any of the six answers. A cited domain is not the same as a named product, but for Gumloop and Zapier the two moved together.
What a vendor in this category would actually do
Get into these exact sources. Not "build brand," not "grow market share." The named products are the ones sitting inside ventureharbour.com, zapier.com, and gumloop.com, the Reddit threads that fed 5 of 6 answers, the email-focused roundups (emailvendorselection.com and encharge.io each fed 3), and the Quora threads that fed 3. Market share did not decide this. HubSpot's incumbency helps, but Gumloop and Zapier tied the mid-tier at 3 of 6 purely by being in the source pages, and legacy leaders Marketo, Eloqua, and Pardot were held to 1 answer each because they only surfaced on the single "best" query.
The full list, counted
HubSpot appears twice in this table on purpose. Five answers named it as plain HubSpot, and the recommendations answer named HubSpot Marketing Hub instead, so we keep both rows rather than merge them into a count the run did not produce. HubSpot Marketing Hub and Marketo are two of the sixteen names that each landed in a single answer.
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| ActiveCampaign | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Brevo | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Klaviyo | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Customer.io | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Gumloop | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Zapier | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| HubSpot Marketing Hub | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| Marketo | 1 of 6 | 17% |
Where Glotier sits in this
Nowhere, and that is correct. Glotier does not sell marketing automation software, so an AI asked for the best one should not name us, and across all 6 answers it never did. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
But running this measurement is exactly what Glotier does, pointed at your category instead of this one: the six buyer questions, the products named, and the source pages behind each answer. If you sell in this category, you can see your own version of this table under your own name. The check is free, it needs no account, and it takes about a minute.