8 best Drift alternatives for sales and support chat in 2026

Drift is being sunset: on 5 March 2026 Salesloft, which owns Drift, announced its gradual sunset and began referring existing customers to 1mind, and as of October 2026 no shutdown date has been published. Robylon, an AI agent that takes action, covers both of Drift’s jobs, qualifying and routing inbound leads and answering customers, across chat, voice, WhatsApp and email. For Salesforce-centred pipeline with a purpose-built AI SDR, look at 1mind, Salesloft’s named successor, and Qualified. HubSpot Service Hub and Salesforce Agentforce suit teams already on those CRMs, and Fin, Tidio and Text (formerly LiveChat) suit support-led websites.

Teams running or evaluating Drift now look elsewhere because the product is winding down, because of the August 2025 security incident, and because many used its widget to answer customers, a job it was not built for. Every tool below is judged on whether its AI takes the action a conversation needs, whether every channel runs from one setup, and whether it fits the CRM and stack you already run. Teams whose whole Drift use was Salesforce-centred pipeline with live demos should shortlist 1mind and Qualified.

Drift alternatives at a glance

Prices checked October 2026 on each vendor's pricing page. G2 ratings read October 2026, with the review count in brackets.

Robylon publishes this page and ranks itself first; every tool on the list, Robylon included, gets the same “Where it falls short” line. Ratings from fewer than 20 reviews, 1mind’s 7 and Text’s 12, say little on their own.

What Drift does

Drift is a conversational marketing tool for B2B sales and marketing teams, owned by Salesloft since February 2024. Its chatbots run playbooks on the website that qualify visitors, answer questions, book meetings on reps’ calendars and route conversations to sales reps, with Drift Email and Fastlane (form to chat and meeting booking) alongside. Drift syncs contacts and conversation tasks to Salesforce and marketing automation, and sends chat signals into Salesloft Rhythm. Drift publishes no prices: it was sold through sales on named plans (Premium, Advanced and Enterprise in its onboarding terms), with no free plan or trial. It is a sales chat tool, not a support helpdesk, and Salesloft is now sunsetting it.

Drift status in 2026

The dated events, from Salesloft’s own pages:

• February 2024: Salesloft acquired Drift (Salesloft’s summer 2024 update).
• 8 to 18 August 2025: a threat actor used Drift OAuth credentials to take data from customers’ Salesforce instances through the Drift and Salesforce integration.
• 5 to 16 September 2025: Drift was offline, and Salesloft told customers to treat all Drift integrations and related data as potentially compromised (Salesloft trust center).
• 3 December 2025: Clari and Salesloft completed their merger (Salesloft newsroom).
• 5 March 2026: Clari + Salesloft announced a partnership with 1mind and the gradual sunset of Drift, and refers existing Drift customers to 1mind under an exclusive agreement (partnership release).
• 8 October 2026: drift.com redirects to Salesloft’s chat agents page, which says Salesloft has transitioned from Drift to 1mind, while Drift still appears on the Salesloft status page.

Salesloft gives no end-of-life, end-of-sale or end-of-support date. Drift has not shut down, but Salesloft offers no signup, trial or price to new buyers.

Why teams look beyond Drift

Gradual sunset, no end date

Salesloft’s 5 March 2026 release says “gradual sunset” and gives no shutdown date, so a team on Drift cannot plan a migration around a deadline.

Salesloft points customers to 1mind

Salesloft refers Drift customers to 1mind under an exclusive agreement. Neither company publishes a migration offer, price or timeline: 1mind’s successor announcement leaves the commercial terms to sales.

August 2025 security incident

Mandiant traced the August 2025 intrusion back to 22 March 2025, starting with Salesloft’s GitHub account. Any replacement will also hold tokens to the CRM, so security review is part of the switch.

No published prices or plans

drift.com’s pricing page redirects to a Salesloft page with no Drift prices. Budgeting a renewal, or comparing Drift’s cost with a replacement, means asking sales.

Sales chat, not a support inbox

Drift is a sales and marketing chat tool: it does not run inside helpdesks, and Salesloft describes no ticketing or support inbox for it. Teams that also used its widget to answer existing customers ran support somewhere else.

Two jobs Drift did

Drift did two jobs on the same website widget. Some tools do one; Robylon, HubSpot Service Hub and Salesforce Agentforce do both.

• Pipeline: qualify visitors, book meetings, route buyers to reps. The job Drift was built for. The specialists are purpose-built AI SDRs: 1mind, Salesloft’s named successor; Qualified, whose Piper agent is built on the Salesforce Platform; HubSpot Service Hub, whose customer agent qualifies leads and books meetings on HubSpot’s CRM; and Salesforce Agentforce, which Salesforce says qualifies prospects and hands them to sellers, and into which it plans to fold Qualified. Robylon qualifies, scores and routes leads and books meetings on the same agent that handles support. The lead generation playbook covers how to design qualification flows for any of them.
• Website customer chat: answer customers and resolve support questions. Order status, billing, account changes and how-to questions from people who already buy from you. The replacements are AI customer support tools: Robylon, which answers and acts across chat, voice, WhatsApp and email; Fin, on the Intercom messenger; and the live chat tools Tidio and Text (formerly LiveChat).

How we compared the tools

We read each vendor’s pricing page, product pages, docs and trust page on 7 and 8 October 2026, and each tool’s G2 page the same days; for Drift, Salesloft’s newsroom, trust center, status page and Drift’s developer docs. We did not run hands-on tests for this page.

We compared them on what the AI agent can resolve, channels covered, where each runs, billing model, setup effort, and how each works for support agents and team leads, plus how each pipeline tool qualifies buyers and connects to Salesforce and HubSpot.

The 8 best Drift alternatives

1. Robylon

Best for: teams that want one AI agent for both of Drift’s jobs, qualifying and routing inbound leads on the website and answering customers, across chat, voice, WhatsApp and email, with 32 integrations including HubSpot and Salesforce.

What it is for: Robylon is an AI customer support platform that resolves tickets across email, chat, voice and WhatsApp. It works standalone or alongside an existing helpdesk. It takes the action a ticket needs: agents read the systems the answer lives in, act through tools built from your APIs and connected apps, and hand anything they cannot finish to a person with the checking already done. Every channel runs from one setup. And it fits the stack you already run, CRM included. On consumer pre-sales chat, Robylon’s agents helped HealthifyMe grow conversions by 40% by recommending a plan and booking a free coach call.

What the AI does:

• A triage agent routes each conversation to the sub-agent for that topic, so order, billing and account questions each follow their own instructions.
• Agents call tools built from your APIs and from 32 pre-built integrations, among them Shopify, HubSpot and Salesforce. The HubSpot integration looks up contacts, logs activity and updates deals; the Salesforce integration looks up accounts and updates cases.
• For sales, agents open conversations on pricing, demo and comparison pages, qualify leads in real time with BANT, MEDDIC or your own framework, score them, route sales-ready opportunities to the right SDR or AE, book meetings and update the CRM. They follow up abandoned forms and missed calls over email, WhatsApp or SMS.
• Proactive messages appear above the chat launcher on chosen pages and start the conversation when a visitor clicks.
• Anything the agent cannot finish goes to a person with the conversation, intent and checks attached, and evaluations score conversations against your own criteria.

Channels: email, website and in-app chat, voice, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, SMS through Twilio, YouTube comments, and reviews on Google Play, the App Store and Google My Business, all on the channels page, in over 40 languages. Robylon runs standalone with its own inbox and optional human seats, or inside Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Salesforce, Vtiger and Gorgias tickets and inside Intercom, Freshchat, SalesIQ and Zendesk messaging chat; inside Gorgias it covers email and chat. WhatsApp and email start on the Pro plan; voice phone calls and the Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, Intercom, Freshchat and Gorgias integrations start on Business. The human team works in a unified inbox with tickets, SLAs and queues.

Pricing: by AI credits rather than seats or meetings (see pricing). The Starter plan is free with 300 credits a month (about 40 conversations), paid plans start at $25 a month for 500 credits, Business starts at $180 a month, and yearly billing takes 10% off. Seats for a human team are optional, at $19 (Basic), $49 (Advanced) or $89 (Expert) per seat a month. G2 rating: 5.0 from 42 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: Robylon’s pages describe no live product demos inside the conversation and no agent that joins video calls, which 1mind offers, and Robylon is not built on the Salesforce Platform, as Qualified is. Voice phone calls start on the Business plan at $180 a month, and Robylon publishes no per-minute voice price. Credits per conversation vary with the AI model chosen, so the bill is harder to forecast than a fixed per-resolution price.

Where Drift does better:

• Salesforce and marketing sync: Drift creates and syncs contacts and conversation tasks in Salesforce and marketing automation, including Pardot and Marketo. Robylon’s Salesforce integration looks up accounts and updates cases.
• Salesloft signals: Drift sends page views, video views and chatbot conversations into Salesloft Rhythm as prioritised seller actions. Salesloft is not among Robylon’s pre-built integrations.
• Sales tools for reps: Drift Email, Fastlane and video and calendar features for reps sit in one product.
• Review volume: 1,255 G2 reviews for Drift against Robylon’s 42.

Pick it if: you want one AI agent to qualify and route inbound leads and answer existing customers on the website, by email, on the phone and on WhatsApp. Choose 1mind or Qualified if your Drift use was Salesforce-centred pipeline with live product demos.

2. 1mind: best for Drift’s named successor

Best for: mid-market and enterprise B2B revenue teams that want an AI agent to qualify inbound buyers, run live product demos and book meetings, on the path Salesloft recommends.

1mind gives each customer its own named “Superhuman”, an AI agent with a face, a voice and a text mode. It answers product, technical and pricing questions from your knowledge base, runs an interactive demo inside your live web app with an on-screen cursor, qualifies intent, and books meetings or hands off to a rep in real time. After every conversation it writes qualification back to the CRM and writes buyer signals into Salesloft Cadence and Clari forecasts. Ride-Along, in early access since 19 May 2026, joins Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet calls as a named AI sales engineer.

What the AI does: answers, demos, qualifies, books meetings and writes to Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics or Pipedrive, with live lookups through MCP servers; no plan-by-plan feature split is published.

Channels: the website (face, voice and text), an in-product guide, live video calls on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, and digital deal rooms. 1mind’s pages list no phone line, WhatsApp or SMS, and do not confirm email as a channel.

Pricing: quote only; 1mind publishes no prices, and buyers start by talking to Mindy, 1mind’s own Superhuman, or requesting a demo (1mind contact). Ride-Along is priced flat per session on 12-month contracts. G2: 4.9 from 7 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: there is no published price, trial or Drift migration offer, and 1mind’s own blog says it is not built for high-volume transactional support and should be paired with a ticketing tool. Data is processed in the United States, with no EU hosting option published.

Pick it if: you used Drift for pipeline, run Salesloft or Clari, and want the successor Salesloft refers Drift customers to.

3. Qualified: best for Salesforce pipeline

Best for: mid-market and large B2B companies, especially in tech and SaaS, whose marketing teams run on Salesforce and want an AI SDR to turn inbound website and email leads into pipeline.

Qualified sells Piper, an AI SDR agent built natively on the Salesforce Platform. Piper identifies website visitors, answers questions over text chat, voice and video, qualifies buyers against your criteria, deflects unqualified ones, books meetings on the assigned rep’s calendar and routes buyers to their rep. Piper Email follows up on inbound leads, and Piper Workflows create leads in Salesforce, change lead status and add people to campaigns. Salesforce completed its acquisition of Qualified on 1 April 2026 and says it will fold Qualified into Agentforce (Salesforce newsroom).

What the AI does: qualifies, books meetings and creates and updates Salesforce leads; live handoff to a rep is listed from the Enterprise plan.

Channels: website chat, voice and video on the website, and email through Piper Email; Slack for internal notifications.

Pricing: quote only on all three plans. Premier includes 1 SDR agent profile, 250,000 monthly web sessions and 2,500 monthly active email contacts; Enterprise raises those to 2 million and 10,000; Ultimate to 5 million and 24,000 (Qualified pricing). G2: 4.9 from 1,560 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: Salesforce is the only CRM on its integrations page, and Qualified does not say whether it works without Salesforce CRM. Data is stored in AWS US-East with no EU storage option, and there is no support inbox.

Pick it if: you used Drift for pipeline, your CRM is Salesforce, and you want the closest like-for-like AI SDR.

4. HubSpot Service Hub: best inside HubSpot

Best for: teams already on HubSpot’s CRM that want one AI agent to qualify inbound leads, book meetings and answer support questions on the same customer record.

HubSpot’s free tools include rule-based chatbots that create tickets, qualify leads and book meetings, for up to two users, which covers the simplest Drift playbooks at no cost. The customer agent, on Service Hub Professional and Enterprise, answers from your knowledge base, website pages and files, and runs up to 20 configured actions: enrol a visitor in a workflow, update a CRM object, book a meeting, qualify a lead, or call an external app through a custom API request.

What the AI does: answers and acts on HubSpot’s CRM; voice is a public beta for inbound calls. A lead marked qualified, partially qualified or not qualified is billed as a resolution, according to HubSpot’s knowledge base.

Channels: email, live chat, forms, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp (Professional and Enterprise) and calling; SMS through a Twilio add-on in beta.

Pricing: the customer agent costs $0.50 per resolved conversation in HubSpot Credits; Professional includes 3,000 credits a month (about 60 resolutions) and costs $90 per seat a month billed annually, or $100 paid monthly on an annual commitment, plus a one-time onboarding fee (HubSpot pricing). G2: 4.4 from 3,018 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: the customer agent needs Professional or Enterprise, runs only in HubSpot’s own inbox, and shares included credits with every other HubSpot AI feature. The HubSpot chatbot alternatives guide covers the tools teams compare it with.

Pick it if: HubSpot is your CRM and you want lead qualification, meetings and support on one record.

5. Fin: best for SaaS support chat

Best for: SaaS and product teams that want a messenger, help center and AI agent for support, with sales qualification on the same messenger.

Intercom is a helpdesk built around a messenger for websites and apps. Its maker renamed itself Fin on 12 May 2026, and Salesforce completed its acquisition of Fin on 10 September 2026, so Fin, Agentforce and Qualified now share a parent company. Fin AI Agent answers from your knowledge sources and takes actions through Procedures, plain-language instructions that call REST APIs and MCP connectors. Fin’s Sales role qualifies leads and needs an Intercom plan. Fin can also run inside Salesforce Service Cloud, HubSpot, Freshdesk and Freshchat.

What the AI does: answers, takes actions through Procedures and qualifies sales leads, in more than 45 languages for chat and email; nothing is billed when the customer asks for a person.

Channels: messenger chat on web, iOS and Android, email, WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack and Discord; Fin Voice for select customers through sales.

Pricing: Fin costs $0.99 per outcome and $9.99 per sales qualification (Fin pricing). Intercom Advanced seats cost $85 a month billed annually or $99 monthly (Intercom pricing). G2: 4.5 from 3,918 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: every human teammate on the Intercom helpdesk needs a seat from $85 a month billed annually, Fin for Sales needs an Intercom plan rather than another helpdesk, and Fin Voice has no published price.

Pick it if: your product runs on an in-app messenger and you want support and light lead qualification in one tool.

6. Salesforce Agentforce: best for Salesforce orgs

Best for: mid-market and enterprise teams that run Salesforce and want both service and sales agents inside the CRM.

For service, Agentforce answers from Salesforce Knowledge and Data 360 and acts through Flows, Apex, prompts and MuleSoft API connectors; Casey, the help agent, schedules appointments, manages orders and escalates to a rep with full context. For sales, Salesforce says Agentforce engages and qualifies prospects across web, email and voice, schedules meetings and hands qualified prospects to sellers (Agentforce for sales).

What the AI does: answers and takes actions inside Salesforce and connected systems; Agentforce Voice updates records and creates cases on calls, in English (US, UK and Australia) as of October 2026.

Channels: web chat, in-app, help sites and portals, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages for Business, LINE and voice.

Pricing: $2 per conversation, $2 per resolution for Casey, or Flex Credits at $500 per 100,000 credits. Service Cloud Core, the first edition that sells Agentforce for Service, costs $195 per user a month billed annually (Agentforce pricing). G2: 4.3 from 1,696 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: it runs inside Salesforce only, chat handovers need Contact Center Digital at $75 per user a month on top of the Core seat, and Salesforce’s pages list no email channel for the customer-facing service agent as of October 2026.

Pick it if: Salesforce is your system of record and you want the CRM vendor’s own agents.

7. Tidio: best for small websites

Best for: small businesses and online stores that want low-cost live chat and an AI agent, with no sales team to route buyers to.

Tidio runs live chat, email tickets, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp from one panel, with rule-based Flows and the Lyro AI agent. Lyro answers from your FAQs, website and files and calls external APIs through Actions (3 on the Core plan, up to 10 on Plus). Tidio integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Zoho CRM. The Tidio alternatives guide covers the tools teams compare it with.

What the AI does: Lyro answers and calls APIs through Actions, in 48 languages.

Channels: live chat widget, email tickets, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, video calls in the widget and a chat page.

Pricing: the Free plan covers 50 conversations a month for up to 10 seats; Starter costs $29 a month for 100 conversations, and Lyro costs from $39 a month for 50 Lyro conversations (Tidio pricing). G2: 4.6 from 1,962 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: Lyro is billed for every conversation it replies to, resolved or not; self-serve plans stop at 10 seats; and Tidio’s docs list no phone, voice or SMS channel as of October 2026.

Pick it if: you used Drift as a website chat box and want a free or low-cost replacement.

8. Text (formerly LiveChat): best for ecommerce

Best for: online stores, Shopify above all, that want live chat, email tickets and an AI agent that sells as well as answers.

Text is LiveChat’s successor from the same company, Text S.A.; new sign-ups at livechat.com get Text plans. Text AI Agent is on every plan: it answers from website pages, help content and files, creates tickets, hands over to a person and shares discount codes. Up to 10 Custom Skills per agent call outside systems through webhooks and APIs, for order lookups, CRM updates and stock checks. The LiveChat alternatives guide covers the tools teams compare it with.

What the AI does: answers, sells and acts through Custom Skills, in 46 languages; with Shopify it recommends products and adds items to the cart in the chat.

Channels: website and in-app chat widget, a chat page, email forwarded into tickets, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, SMS through your own Twilio account, and a Shopify checkout chat widget.

Pricing: Essential costs $19 per user a month billed annually or $25 monthly, with 10 AI resolutions a month; Growth costs $79 or $99, with 200; extra resolutions cost $49.50 per package of 50 (Text pricing). G2: 4.1 from 12 reviews (G2, October 2026).

Where it falls short: there is no free plan, only a 14-day trial; its pre-built integrations are commerce platforms, so CRM updates are built as Custom Skills; and HIPAA is listed as coming soon.

Pick it if: you sell online and want the chat agent to recommend products and build carts as well as answer.

Salesforce and HubSpot connections

Most Drift customers ran it beside Salesforce or HubSpot. What each tool’s own pages say, as of October 2026:

Alternatives by situation

What to decide before switching

Actions versus answers

Split last quarter’s Drift conversations into buyers and customers. For buyers, the action is in the CRM and the calendar (create the lead, book the meeting), which 1mind, Qualified, HubSpot and Agentforce do. For customers, it is where the answer lives (look up the order, change the plan), which Robylon, Fin and Agentforce do; Tidio’s Lyro and Text’s AI Agent call the APIs you configure.

Channels your customers use

Drift lived on the website and in email. 1mind adds video calls, and Qualified adds voice and video on the website. Customers reach support on more channels: Robylon runs chat, email, voice and WhatsApp from one setup, with voice phone calls from the Business plan; Fin sells Fin Voice through sales; Tidio and Text list no AI phone channel.

Where your team works

Decide where sales reps and support agents will reply. 1mind and Qualified send buyers to reps and write to the CRM, with no support inbox. HubSpot and Agentforce keep both teams in the CRM. Robylon routes sales-ready leads to reps, gives support agents an inbox with tickets and queues, or runs inside Salesforce, Zendesk, Freshdesk and six other helpdesks.

Pricing at your volume

1mind, Qualified and Drift are quote only, so the comparison uses the standard support scenario. On published prices for 3,000 chat and email conversations a month, 60% resolved by the AI (1,800 resolutions), 3 human agents and monthly billing:

Robylon’s figure is 3,000 conversations at about 7.5 credits each: the Business 10,000-credit tier at $300 plus 13 extra 1,000-credit bundles at $25, and 3 Basic seats at $19. HubSpot’s figure uses $100 Professional seats, paid monthly on an annual commitment, and leaves out the onboarding fee. Tidio’s packs stop at 1,000 Lyro conversations, so its figure is an extrapolation at $0.70 a conversation. Salesforce Agentforce sells Service Cloud Core yearly only: on yearly billing its cheapest option, Casey with Core and Contact Center Digital seats, comes to $4,410.00 a month, against $652.00 for Robylon. 1mind, Qualified and Drift are quote only; Qualified sizes its plans by web sessions and email contacts rather than conversations.

When to stay on Drift

• Your Drift contract runs for months yet, and Salesloft has published no end date, so nothing forces a move before renewal.
• Your sales team works in Salesloft and relies on Drift’s chat signals arriving in Rhythm as seller actions.
• Your playbooks and routing work, and you would rather move once, to 1mind, when Salesloft sets the timeline.

What drives a switch is the sunset itself: a product with no end date is a risk to the pipeline that depends on it.

When Robylon is the wrong pick

• Your Drift use was Salesforce-centred pipeline with live demos. 1mind runs live product demos inside the conversation and joins Zoom, Teams and Meet calls; Qualified’s Piper is built natively on the Salesforce Platform and owned by Salesforce. Robylon’s pages describe neither live demos nor video calls.
• You run Salesloft or Clari. 1mind writes signals into Salesloft Cadence and Clari forecasts, and Salesloft refers Drift customers to it.
• HubSpot is your CRM and you want one vendor. HubSpot Service Hub’s customer agent qualifies leads, books meetings and answers support questions on HubSpot’s own records, at $0.50 per resolution.
• You only need free live chat. Tidio’s Free plan covers 50 conversations a month for up to 10 seats; Robylon’s free Starter plan is chat only, with about 40 conversations a month.

Moving off Drift

1. Confirm your Drift contract dates and ask Salesloft in writing which support and integrations it will keep running, since no end date is published.
2. Export conversations, contacts, meetings and playbook logic. Drift’s developer docs describe a public REST API and webhooks, with APIs for meetings and playbooks.
3. Map each playbook to its job: qualification, routing and meeting booking, or questions from existing customers. One agent can take both, or two tools can split them.
4. Baseline meetings booked and pipeline created, then rebuild qualification criteria, routing and meeting booking.
5. Reconnect Salesforce or HubSpot with new OAuth credentials and the narrowest scopes each tool needs, then map fields and lead sources.
6. Build the top support intents and test them in bulk against past conversations, with bulk knowledge base testing or the new tool’s equivalent.
7. Install the new chat widget on a subset of pages while Drift handles the rest, then compare against the baseline.
8. Remove the Drift script from every page and revoke Drift’s connected apps and tokens in Salesforce, Slack, Pardot, HubSpot, Marketo and Zapier.

Choosing a Drift alternative

Drift defined conversational marketing: chatbots that qualified website visitors and put meetings on reps’ calendars. For pipeline, its natural successors are 1mind, which Salesloft recommends, and Qualified, now part of Salesforce, with HubSpot Service Hub and Salesforce Agentforce for teams that want their CRM vendor’s own agents.

Move when the sunset, the security review or a renewal makes waiting the bigger risk. For one agent that qualifies and routes inbound leads and answers customers, Robylon takes the action a conversation needs, runs chat, email, voice and WhatsApp from one setup and fits the stack you already run, inside Salesforce or alongside HubSpot, and its Starter plan is free to try.