Drift has been a leading provider of conversational marketing software, helping companies connect with their users in real-time. However, not all businesses have the same needs, and Drift sometimes falls short when it comes to flexibility.
While the platform is packed with useful features, it can miss the mark in areas like advanced customization, integration options, and cost-effectiveness. Plus, some users find it difficult to learn, and even consider it limited in its marketing automation capabilities. Because of these issues, many businesses are on the lookout for Drift’s competitors, as they can better meet their unique requirements.
In this article, we’ll share our honest opinion on the top five Drift chat alternatives that can boost your customer satisfaction and streamline your communication.
What Is Drift?
Drift is a conversational marketing platform that aims to increase customer engagement and boost ROI for businesses.
How? It lets visitors start conversations with your team through various channels, such as live chat, real-time document downloads, and demo bookings. This capability helps businesses engage with customers promptly, improving the overall customer experience.
Key features of Drift include:
- AI-powered chatbots: These engage with visitors using natural language automated messages, acting as 24/7 sales assistants.
- Visitor intelligence data: This feature helps initiate the most relevant conversations based on visitor behavior.
- Instant chat forms: Traditional website forms can be instantly transformed into interactive chat experiences.
Drift’s expensive plans start at around $2,500 per month for the Premium option, which is aimed at small businesses seeking growth through their tool’s conversational capabilities. There are also Advanced and Enterprise plans with custom pricing tailored to medium-sized and larger businesses with more complex needs.
Despite its comprehensive features, Drift has some limitations, which we will explore further. For example, the high price point and the requirement to purchase seats for the entire sales team can be a significant investment for many businesses.
Some may argue it’s not worth it when alternatives that offer similar functionalities can provide better value for your specific business needs.
Is Drift A Good Fit?
For many customers, Drift is an excellent tool. The company has built a reputation over the years for developing effective communication tools for businesses. However, it does have its shortcomings:
- Misleading and limited features: Customers have described Drift as having misleading promises, a messy interface, and limited functionalities.
- Overpromising sales team: Some users felt that the sales rep team overpromised and provided shady assurances, with the product not meeting expectations.
- Difficult setup and poor support: Many reviews highlighted the challenges in setting up Drift and the inadequate support provided during the process.
- Pricing concerns: Drift’s high pricing is not suitable for smaller businesses with tighter budgets.
- Frequent downtime: Drift has experienced several outages and periods of degraded service, affecting the reliability of its chat functions.
Looking for Drift Alternatives
Clearly, there’s a lot of scope for businesses to find alternatives that are:
- More cost-effective
- Better supported
- Easier to set up and use
- Transparent in their offerings and supportive throughout the customer journey
The Best Drift Chat Alternatives
If Drift’s limitations have left you searching for a better fit, you’re not alone. Fortunately, several Drift alternatives can meet your business’s specific needs:
1. Social Intents
Social Intents is a Drift alternative live chat software specifically designed to integrate seamlessly with popular communication tools like MS Teams, Slack, and Webex.
This integration lets companies add live chat without having to learn new tools, making it super easy for sales and marketing teams to work more efficiently.
It’s an excellent choice for a variety of roles and industries, including customer service managers, IT techs, and even universities, colleges, and small to medium businesses that offer B2B manufactured products.
Overall, it is a versatile tool that can be used across a wide range of industries, offering valuable features to streamline communication across different platforms.
Key Features
Seamless integration:
Social Intents integrates with MS Teams, Slack, and Webex, making it easy to launch live chat directly from these platforms. Additional integrations include Zapier, WordPress, Shopify, Dialogflow, BigCommerce, and Wix. This allows businesses to continue using the tools they are familiar with, saving time and money on training.
Efficient customer support:
- Proactive messaging: Engage customers before they initiate contact.
- Canned responses: Answer frequently asked questions with pre-written, automated chat messages.
- Strategic chat widgets: Place a chat window on specific pages with targeting rules.
- Live chat metrics: Analyze performance to improve your live chat strategy.
Boosting online sales:
- Real-time engagement: Engage with users at crucial moments in their customer lifecycle.
- Timely offers: Provide discounts or better deals when customers need them, boosting conversion rates.
Excellent customer support:
The Social Intents team is known for providing outstanding customer service to their users. The reviews speak for themselves:
Pricing
Social Intents offers four pricing plans:
- Starter: $49/month ($39 per month billed annually)
- Basic: $79/month ($59 per month billed annually)
- Pro: $132/month ($99 per month billed annually)
- Business: $265/month ($199 per month billed annually)
It provides great affordable pricing – with unlimited agent pricing across all plans beyond the starter tier, which allows for scalable solutions that can grow with your business.
A 14-day free trial is available for all plans.
Where Social Intents Lacks
While Social Intents excels in many areas, it may not be suitable for companies looking for an all-in-one chat and ticketing solution, as it does not have built-in ticketing capabilities. However, it can integrate with ticketing tools like Zendesk via Zapier.
2. Chatra
Chatra is a Drift alternative software designed to boost engagement with website visitors. It is particularly suited for e-commerce platforms, enabling businesses to interact with their customers in real-time, answer queries, and provide support directly from their website.
Key Features
Multi-channel dashboard: Chatra allows you to manage messages from one dashboard, integrating email, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, eliminating the need to switch between different browser tabs. These communication channels are particularly popular amongst e-commerce local businesses.
Advanced communication tools:
- Email chat transcripts: Keep records of all conversations.
- Read receipts and email open tracking: Know when your messages are read.
- File transfer and screen sharing: Improve support with easy file sharing and visual guidance.
- Visitor banning: Maintain a safe and productive chat environment.
E-commerce integrations: Chatra integrates seamlessly with e-commerce platforms such as:
- Shopify
- BigCommerce
- Ecwid
- WooCommerce
Boosting online sales:
- Visitor intelligence: Agents can see what a visitor has added to their cart and make suggestions for upgrades or complementary products. They can also offer discounts to close deals.
- Proactive engagement: A support agent can initiate chats with visitors on specific pages to offer assistance.
- Group chats: Enable multiple decision-makers, including other representatives or managers, to join the conversation.
Pricing
Chatra offers a free plan for one agent, which includes online and offline chat widgets. For even better features like chatbots and visitor intelligence, you can sign up for one of the paid plans. Pricing starts at $17 per agent per month, with plans offering additional features and integrations for higher tiers.
Where Chatra Lacks
Despite its robust features, Chatra has some limitations:
- Limited free plan: The free plan offers only basic features, with advanced functionalities locked behind paid plans.
- Scalability issues: Larger businesses may find the feature set and customization options insufficient for their complex needs.
- Integration constraints: While Chatra integrates with many e-commerce platforms, it may not offer the same level of integration flexibility as some competitors.
Ultimately, Chatra is an excellent choice for e-commerce businesses looking for a cost-effective, feature-rich live chat solution, though it may not fully meet the needs of larger enterprises or those requiring more customization and scalability.
3. Hubspot
HubSpot is a versatile live chat and CRM software, making it an excellent choice for businesses just starting with live chat or those with limited budgets.
Its free Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software includes a comprehensive set of features, which are particularly beneficial for small businesses and startups aiming to improve customer interactions and manage their communications efficiently.
Key Features
Conversational tools:
HubSpot offers three major conversational tools: live chat, email, and calling, integrated seamlessly into its CRM.
- Canned messages: Pre-written responses to save time and maintain consistency.
- Branded chatbox: Customize the chatbox to align with your brand’s look and feel.
- Chatbot builder: Create automated chatbots to handle routine queries and scale your chat operations without coding.
Conversation inbox: A universal inbox that consolidates all conversations from live chat, bots, and team email aliases, giving your sales reps, marketing, and customer service teams a single place to view, manage, and reply to messages.
Contact Activity: Track detailed interactions between a contact and your website, including page views, form submissions, and sales activities, providing context for more personalized interactions.
Email and calendar integration: Integrate seamlessly with Gmail, G Suite, Outlook, or Office 365, allowing access to email templates and contact information directly from your inbox.
Boosting customer engagement:
- Chatbots: Automate and scale web chat conversations to manage more interactions efficiently.
- Lead capture: Grow your database by capturing more leads through efficient communication tools.
- Bulk email: Send bulk email messages for free and analyze performance to optimize campaigns.
- Personalized experiences: Utilize detailed contact activity data to create more personalized customer interactions, enhancing satisfaction and loyalty.
Pricing
HubSpot CRM is free for life, offering essential features suitable for small businesses and those new to web chat. For advanced features, HubSpot offers tiered pricing plans:
- Starter Plan: $20 per month
- Professional Plan: $890 per month
- Enterprise Plan: $3,600 per month
These plans provide additional features and great integrations, allowing businesses to scale as needed.
Where HubSpot Lacks
Despite its free offerings, HubSpot has some limitations:
- Advanced features locked behind paid plans: More advanced functionalities and deeper customization options require upgrading to paid plans.
- Complex setup: Initial setup and configuration can be complex for new users.
- Learning curve: The extensive capabilities may present a steep learning curve for beginners.
HubSpot is a great starting point for businesses looking for a cost-effective alternative to Drift. While it offers many powerful tools for free, businesses needing more features and extensive customization may need to consider its paid plans.
4. Tawk.to
Tawk.to is a completely free live chat software, making it an attractive option for smaller businesses looking to implement web chat without any financial commitment. Despite being free, it offers a variety of features designed to facilitate real-time customer interactions and improve customer conversations.
Key Features
Visitor monitoring: Monitor your website visitors in real-time, allowing you to engage with them at the optimal moment.
Localized messaging: Support for over 45 languages enables you to communicate with a diverse customer base in their native languages.
Mobile accessibility: Answer chats from your mobile device using Tawk.to’s mobile apps for both Android and iOS, ensuring you never miss a chat and can provide timely responses.
Built-in knowledge base: Accelerate your chat interactions by using a built-in knowledge base to provide quick and accurate responses to customer queries.
Other services:
- Group messaging and co-browsing: Collaborate with team members and view visitor screens for better problem resolution.
- Persistent chat and shortcuts: Maintain conversation history and use canned responses for efficiency.
- Video chat and voice call (add-ons): Optional premium features to enhance communication.
Pricing
Tawk.to is entirely free for life, making it an excellent choice for businesses looking for a no-cost live chat solution. Optional premium features include removing branding for $19 per month and video + voice + screen sharing for $29 per month.
Where Tawk.to Lacks
Despite its generous free offerings, Tawk.to has some limitations that might be crucial for some businesses:
- Security concerns: As a free service, Tawk.to may not commit to high standards of security, which may be a concern for businesses handling sensitive information.
- Limited customer support: Tawk.to does not guarantee 24/7/365 support, which can be a drawback for businesses needing consistent and reliable customer service.
- Missing advanced features: Critical features such as advanced chat transcripts, message sneak peeks, and detailed reporting are not available, which can limit the effectiveness of customer messaging solutions and conversational sales strategies.
Tawk.to is a viable alternative to Drift for businesses with a limited budget. While it offers many useful features, its limitations in security, customer support, and advanced functionalities may make it less suitable for businesses with more demanding requirements.
5. Terminus
Terminus is a Drift alternative customer messaging platform designed specifically for account-based marketing (ABM). ABM focuses on targeting companies rather than individual customers, catering messages to top decision-makers with a blend of marketing efforts and sales tactics.
Key Features
Connect every campaign to a conversation: With ‘Chat From Anywhere™,’ Terminus allows you to turn any marketing touchpoint — such as ads, emails, and social media posts — into a conversation with a single click, enhancing engagement and conversion rates.
Flexible chatbot building: Terminus offers two styles of chatbot building: linear workflows (similar to Marketo) and visual workflows (similar to HubSpot), providing flexibility to suit your business needs.
Smart visitor identification and routing: Terminus Chat identifies visitors and, if they belong to an assigned account, routes them instantly to the appropriate sales representative. This feature helps build relationships with important accounts and enhances personalized engagement.
ABM capabilities:
- Playbooks: Guide prospects through the buying cycle with custom playbooks.
- Real-time engagement: Proactively engage key accounts as they visit your website using Live View.
- Integration with tech stack: Sync with tools like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Marketo for actionable insights and better customer data utilization.
Pricing
Terminus does not publicly disclose its pricing, but third-party sources estimate that plans start at approximately $500 per month for 10 seats. This pricing can be considered competitive compared to other ABM-focused solutions, although it might not align with their claim of being a fraction of the price of competitors.
Where Terminus Lacks
Despite its strengths, Terminus Chat has some areas where it may not fully meet every business need:
- Price transparency: Lack of upfront pricing details can make it difficult for potential customers to gauge affordability.
- New market entrant: As a newer player in the market, Terminus may still be evolving its feature set and customer support capabilities compared to more established competitors.
Terminus Chat is an innovative solution for businesses focused on ABM. Its features are tailored to boost engagement with top decision-makers, making it a strong alternative to Drift for ABM strategies. However, the concerns regarding its lack of transparent pricing and its status as a newer entrant in the market should be carefully considered.
Finding the Right Drift Alternative For Your Needs
Choosing the right live chat solution can highly impact your customer loyalty, engagement, and sales efforts.
While Drift is a popular option, exploring other Drift chat alternatives can provide your business with more tailored features, better pricing, and improved customer support. Social Intents, Chatra, HubSpot, Tawk.to, and Terminus all offer unique capabilities that cater to various business needs, from seamless integrations and robust e-commerce support to specialized account-based marketing features.
Social Intents is the best Drift alternative solution for those looking for a conversational marketing platform that integrates with popular tools like MS Teams, Slack, and Webex, ensuring that your team can start using live chat immediately without learning new systems.
The extensive feature set, including proactive messaging, canned responses, detailed live chat metrics, and customizable service packages is guaranteed to boost customer engagement and sales conversions. Plus, our competitive pricing makes it an affordable option for businesses of all sizes.
Get started with our free 14-day trial and start transforming your customer support today.