Drift

What is drift.com

drift.com is the web domain for Drift, a conversational marketing and sales platform that helps B2B companies capture, qualify, and route website leads through live chat, chatbots, account-based playbooks, and meeting scheduling. Drift focuses on using real-time conversations and automation to reduce friction between anonymous visitors and revenue teams, combining chat, calendar booking, and conversational intelligence in a single platform.

Drift positions itself for mid-market and enterprise sales and marketing organizations that need to accelerate pipeline generation, reduce lead response times, and coordinate account-based teams. Common buyers include demand generation managers, sales operations, sales development, and customer success leaders who need to turn anonymous traffic into meetings and track outcomes back to the CRM.

The product mix includes hosted chat widgets for websites, bot flows for qualification and routing, conversation management for agents, playbooks for account-based outreach, meeting scheduling that syncs with calendars, and analytics for pipeline attribution. Drift also emphasizes integrations with CRM and marketing automation systems to ensure conversational data is actionable for revenue teams.

Drift features

What does drift.com do?

Drift provides tools to start, qualify, and convert conversations with website visitors and account contacts. Core capabilities include live chat, conversational AI and bots, routing rules, and one-click meeting scheduling that surfaces available sales reps. The platform captures visitor context (company, pages visited, past conversations) and can automatically route high-value accounts to specific sales teams.

Drift supports conversation qualification through configurable bot question flows, which let you collect intent, segment leads (for example by ARR, industry, or buying stage), and trigger different actions such as hand-off to a human rep, sending a calendar link, or creating a lead in a CRM. The bots can be customized with conditional logic and dynamic fields to match account-based playbooks.

Conversation routing and inbox features let sales and support teams manage real-time and asynchronous chats, assign ownership, and see conversation history. Drift includes playbooks and canned responses for common scenarios, SLA and priority rules, and team collaboration features to hand off conversations and escalate to specialists.

Key analytics and reporting features include conversion funnels, chat and bot performance, meeting outcomes, pipeline attribution, and reports that show which campaigns and pages generate the highest-quality conversations. These reports connect chat outcomes to revenue when linked to a CRM.

Security and admin features include role-based access control, SSO integration, audit logs, data export, and enterprise compliance options that are typically available on higher-tier plans.

Drift pricing

Drift offers these pricing plans:

• Free Plan: $0/month with limited chat, basic bot flows, and meeting scheduling for small teams
• Starter: $400/month (approximate entry commercial tier; billed annually in many cases) with additional bot logic, routing, and integrations
• Professional: $1,250/month (estimated mid-market package) with advanced playbooks, reporting, and higher service levels
• Enterprise: $3,000+/month (custom pricing) with enterprise security, SLA, dedicated support, and custom onboarding

Drift’s public website highlights a free tier and emphasizes custom commercial packages for revenue teams; detailed commercial pricing is commonly provided via sales quote. Check Drift's current pricing tiers for the latest rates and enterprise options.

How much is drift.com per month

Drift starts at $400/month for entry-level commercial plans when an organization needs advanced routing, playbooks, and integrations beyond the free tier. Many growing sales and marketing teams buy the Starter or Professional packages to get expanded bot capabilities, team inboxes, and fuller analytics.

How much is drift.com per year

Drift costs approximately $4,800/year for a typical entry-level paid plan if the vendor’s published monthly estimate ($400/month) is billed annually. Mid-market and enterprise contracts commonly run into multiple tens of thousands of dollars per year depending on seat counts, volume, and custom requirements.

How much is drift.com in general

Drift pricing ranges from $0 (free) to $3,000+/month. Free options cover basic chat and scheduling for very small teams; commercial packages are quote-based and scale by functionality, the number of seats, and enterprise requirements such as SSO, advanced security, and dedicated support.

What is Drift used for

Drift is used to convert website visitors into meetings and pipeline by enabling real-time conversational experiences. Teams use Drift to shorten time-to-contact, qualify inbound leads automatically, and route high-value accounts to the right sales representative using account-based logic.

Marketing teams use Drift to capture intent signals and follow up with targeted campaigns based on conversation outcomes. Sales development teams use the platform to immediately engage inbound inquiries and schedule product demos or discovery calls, reducing lead leakage and increasing conversion rates.

Customer success and support teams use Drift for in-product support and onboarding questions that benefit from fast responses. Drift’s conversational approach can replace or complement traditional web forms and ticketing for front-line customer contact, improving user experience and reducing churn.

Operationally, Drift is used to attribute conversations to revenue by integrating with CRMs and marketing stacks, which helps measure ROI of campaigns and pages that drive high-quality inbound conversations.

Pros and cons of Drift

Pros:

• Real-time qualification and routing reduces response time and increases meeting conversion rates
• Strong account-based playbooks let teams prioritize known target accounts and personalize conversations
• Built-in meeting scheduling and CRM integrations streamline booking and pipeline creation
• Conversation analytics and attribution help link chat activity to revenue outcomes

Cons:

• Commercial pricing is typically quote-based and can be expensive for smaller teams
• Customization and advanced features often require implementation support and onboarding time
• Organizations that rely on asynchronous support or non-conversational workflows may not use the platform to its full potential
• Integrations and enterprise features may be limited to higher-tier plans, requiring careful planning for data and security needs

Drift free trial

Drift provides a Free Plan that allows teams to deploy a basic chat widget, use limited bot flows, and enable meeting scheduling at no cost. The free tier is designed for individuals or small teams to evaluate conversational capture and scheduling without immediate commercial investment.

For paid tiers, Drift typically offers demos and guided trials through the sales team; enterprise buyers often receive pilot programs or proof-of-concept deployments to validate workflows before committing to multi-year contracts. These pilot engagements are useful for testing routing, CRM sync, and playbook logic at scale.

If you want to test Drift in a controlled environment, use the free plan to implement basic chat and scheduling, then request a commercial trial or a pilot from Drift’s sales engineers to validate advanced automation and reporting.

Is drift.com free

Yes, Drift offers a Free Plan that includes basic chat and meeting scheduling for small teams or initial evaluation. The free tier is limited in bot complexity, reporting, and integrations compared with paid plans, but it is sufficient for testing conversational capture and booking flows on a website.

Drift API

Drift provides developer-facing APIs, webhooks, and SDKs for integrating conversational data with other systems. The APIs allow programmatic access to conversations, contacts, and events so teams can sync conversation transcripts to CRMs, enrich contact records, and trigger downstream automation.

Common API capabilities include creating and updating contacts, retrieving conversation transcripts, listening to conversation events via webhooks, and programmatic control of bots and playbooks in some implementations. Drift also exposes endpoint(s) for reporting and analytics exports in many accounts.

For developers, Drift maintains documentation and guides for authentication, rate limits, and example use cases. Review the Drift developer documentation and API reference for the most current endpoints, authentication methods, and SDKs.

10 Drift alternatives

• Intercom — A conversational platform with chat, product tours, and help center features focused on product-led growth
• HubSpot — Includes chat, CRM, and marketing automation that tightly integrates conversational tools with full-funnel marketing
• Zendesk — Omnichannel support platform with chat and help desk workflows suited to customer service teams
• LiveChat — Lightweight live chat tool focused on simplicity and fast deployment for customer support teams
• Olark — Simple live chat with basic automation and reporting for small businesses
• Salesforce LiveMessage — Enterprise-grade messaging integrated with Salesforce Service Cloud
• Qualified — Account-based chat and conversational marketing tool that integrates deeply with Salesforce
• Drift (self) — (included for parity; see product documentation and native features for direct comparison)
• Tidio — Chat and chatbot platform aimed at small and mid-sized e-commerce sites
• ManyChat — Conversational marketing focused on messaging platforms and marketing automation

Paid alternatives to Drift

• Intercom — Paid plans include advanced automation, product messaging, and user targeting for product and growth teams
• HubSpot — Paid Service Hub and Sales Hub include chat, CRM, automation, and reporting across marketing and sales
• Zendesk — Paid tiers provide omnichannel routing, SLA management, and enterprise support features
• Qualified — Paid account-based solution tailored for Salesforce-centric B2B teams with robust routing
• Salesforce LiveMessage — Enterprise-level messaging built into the Salesforce ecosystem for service and sales

Open source alternatives to Drift

• Rocket.Chat — Open source chat platform that can be self-hosted and extended with bots and integrations
• Mattermost — Open source messaging platform for internal collaboration that can be adapted for customer-facing chat
• Botpress — Open source conversational AI and chatbot builder that allows full customization of bot flows and hosting
• Rasa — Open source conversational AI framework focused on custom NLU and dialogue management for chatbots
• Chaskiq — Open source live chat and messaging with some marketing automation capabilities

Frequently asked questions about Drift

What is Drift used for?

Drift is used for conversational marketing and sales to convert website visitors into qualified leads and meetings. Organizations use it to run live chat, automated bot flows, meeting scheduling, and account-based routing so sales and marketing teams can accelerate pipeline and reduce lead response time.

Does Drift integrate with Salesforce?

Yes, Drift integrates with Salesforce. The integration syncs conversations, contacts, and meeting outcomes to Salesforce records so revenue teams can attribute pipeline and automate follow-up inside their CRM.

How much does Drift cost per user?

Drift starts at approximately $400/month for entry-level commercial plans (billed annually in many cases), though exact per-user or per-seat pricing is typically provided after a sales consultation. Enterprise pricing is quote-based and varies widely by requirements.

Is there a free version of Drift?

Yes, Drift offers a Free Plan. The free tier provides basic chat, limited bot flows, and meeting scheduling for small teams or evaluation, while paid plans add advanced automation, analytics, and enterprise features.

Can Drift be used for account-based marketing (ABM)?

Yes, Drift supports account-based marketing through playbooks and targeted routing. Teams can prioritize and personalize conversations for named accounts, route high-value visitors to dedicated reps, and automate account-specific playbooks to increase engagement with target accounts.

Does Drift offer a public API?

Yes, Drift offers APIs and webhooks for integrations. Developers can retrieve conversations, sync contacts, listen to events, and push or pull data to and from Drift using the platform’s developer documentation and API reference.

Can I schedule meetings directly through Drift?

Yes, Drift includes built-in meeting scheduling. Visitors can book available time slots with reps directly from the chat widget, with calendar sync to major calendar providers and optional routing to the correct salesperson.

How secure is Drift for enterprise use?

Drift provides enterprise-grade security features on higher-tier plans. These typically include SSO, role-based access, audit logs, data encryption, and contractual controls for compliance; specific certifications and controls should be confirmed with Drift’s security documentation.

Can Drift replace traditional forms on my website?

Yes, Drift is often used to replace or augment web forms. Conversational capture provides a more interactive experience, reduces friction, and enables immediate qualification and routing, which can improve conversion and speed up follow-up.

What training and onboarding does Drift provide?

Drift offers guided onboarding and support for paid plans. Commercial customers commonly receive implementation support, onboarding sessions, playbook setup help, and access to knowledge base materials and training resources to accelerate time to value.

### Drift careers

Drift recruits across product, engineering, sales, marketing, and customer success teams, with roles that support both product innovation and enterprise customer delivery. Job openings and culture details are usually posted on Drift’s careers page and on major job platforms.

Recruiting priorities often focus on candidates with experience in SaaS, conversational AI, revenue operations, and enterprise implementations. Drift emphasizes cross-functional collaboration because product, marketing, and customer success teams work together on onboarding and playbook optimization.

Interested applicants should review role descriptions carefully and prepare examples of prior work with conversational systems, B2B sales processes, or integrations with CRMs. You can find current open roles and application guidance on Drift’s careers site.

Drift affiliate

Drift runs partner and referral programs that reward agencies, consultants, and technology partners who refer customers or deliver Drift implementations. Partner tiers typically include referral commissions, joint-marketing benefits, and access to partner enablement resources.

Agencies and consultants often join partner programs to offer Drift implementation, bot design, and revenue process consulting. If you’re building an integration or consulting offering, contact Drift’s partner team for program details and qualification criteria.

Where to find Drift reviews

You can find user reviews and ratings for Drift on major software review sites such as G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra where buyers share experiences about implementation, ROI, and product gaps. These sites provide balanced perspectives from companies of different sizes and use cases.

For technical evaluations, look for case studies and customer references that detail outcomes like meeting conversion uplift, reduced response times, and pipeline attribution. Drift’s own site also publishes customer success stories that highlight specific revenue and operational impacts.

Research notes

• Sourced general product knowledge about Drift’s focus on conversational marketing, chatbots, meeting scheduling, and account-based playbooks.
• Pricing is often custom/quote-based; public resources emphasize a free tier and enterprise plans. Provided estimated entry/mid/enterprise price points and linked to Drift’s official pricing page for validation: https://www.drift.com/pricing
• Developer and API information referenced to Drift’s developer documentation: https://devdocs.drift.com/
• Alternatives selected from common competitors in the conversational marketing and live chat space (Intercom, HubSpot, Zendesk, Qualified).
• Security and feature statements are general best-practice descriptions for enterprise conversational platforms; buyers should confirm specific compliance certifications and contract terms with Drift sales or documentation.