Kevin JohnsonDrift is a software company based in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 2015 by David Cancel and Elias Torres. Its cloud platform offers conversational marketing and services to help businesses convey the right message to the appropriate target audience at the right time and place.
In Oct 2022, Drift expanded its offering to include conversational sales. Companies can access all three packages with chat, email, video, and AI to personalize each experience along the customer journey. Drift has around 734 employees and helps more than 5,000 business clients deliver a more human and enjoyable experience. [1]
Drift offers conversational marketing, sales, and service in a single platform. It allows businesses to build robust pipelines, personalize experiences, boost revenues, and attract lifelong customers.
In 2021, the platform enabled over 41 million conversations and drove more than $8 billion into users’ pipelines. It gives sellers a 360º view using AI-powered engagement score, real-time sales dashboard, and mobile app parity.
In Sep 2022, Drift was recognized as a Leader in the Forrester New Wave: Conversation Automation solutions. However, the company faces stiff competition from Intercom, Zendesk, Zoho, Salesforce, Qualified, Freshchat, and Birdeye. [2]
Here is an in-depth analysis of Drift’s top 15 competitors and alternatives:
1. Intercom, Inc.
Year founded: 2011
Headquarter: San Francisco, California
Intercom is a software company specializing in customer communications. Businesses send over 500 million messages per month via their platform and interact with more than 600 million monthly active end users. In 2022, Intercom had around 1,013 employees and served over 25,000 global organizations.
Intercom and Drift help businesses build personalized relationships with website visitors via messenger-based tools. In Oct 2022, Intercom updated its Messenger solution to deliver the best user experience and handle more business-critical actions.
The company also introduced messenger-first tickets to allow businesses to funnel complex support requests via its platform. These updates increase Intercom’s competitive advantage over Drift. [3]
2. Zendesk Support Suite
Year founded: 2007
Headquarter: San Francisco, California
Zendesk is a SaaS company that offers cloud-based customer support, sales, and IT service management software solutions. In 2022, the company had around 5,860 employees and over $1 billion in revenue. However, Zendesk plans to lay off nearly 5% of its workforce, or about 300 workers. [4]
Zendesk offers a customer experience platform that helps businesses migrate their customer service online. It connects more than 100,000 brands with hundreds of millions of customers.
In Nov 2022, Zendesk went private after being acquired for $10 billion by a team led by Permira and Hellman & Friedman Advisors. Zendesk is one of the best alternatives to Drift. [5]
3. Zoho Desk
Year founded: 1996
Headquarter: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Zoho is a global tech company that offers Zoho Desk, the anchor application in its customer service platform. It helps SMBs and customer service teams evolve with the ever-changing customer needs and business expectations.
Zoho Desk achieved 45% year-over-year revenue growth in the past five years. The platform now serves over 100,000 businesses globally.
Zoho Desk and Drift streamline customer service. Zoho also offers Blended Conversations and an Instant Messaging Framework linked with WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, Messenger, and Instagram to allow organizations to integrate their messaging services with Zoho Desk.
In Dec 2022, Zoho launched new tools for Zoho Desk to help customer service agents deliver higher-value customer experiences (CX). Zoho Desk is one of the top alternatives to Drift for small and micro businesses. [6]
4. Salesforce Service Cloud
Year founded: 2009
Headquarter: San Francisco, California
Service Cloud is a contact center solution offered by SaaS giant Salesforce. The platform supports WhatsApp, Google Apps, and other communication channels. In 2022, Salesforce employed more than 73,000 people.
Salesforce Service Cloud offers customizable packages with online support and dovetails with Slack, MuleSoft, and other Salesforce utilities.
The package pricing ranges from $25/user/month to $300/user/month, allowing businesses of all sizes to use its platform. Small businesses can sign up for the most affordable Salesforce Service Cloud packages to access omnichannel routing and web chat functionality. Salesforce is a formidable Drift competitor. [7]
5. Qualified
Year founded: 2018
Headquarter: San Francisco, California
Qualified is a leading conversational sales and marketing platform for Salesforce users. Buyers and sellers can connect their websites with Salesforce data to identify intent and facilitate real-time sales conversations.
In Apr 2022, Qualified raised $95 million in a Series C funding round. The company will use the raised amount to build its technology and expand its business. [8]
At its core, Qualified is a pipeline generation platform designed for Salesforce users, whereas Drift isn’t platform-defined. Qualified serves innovative firms such as Autodesk, Fujitsu, GE Healthcare, GrubHub, Matterport, Netskope, Recurly, Talend, and Vonage.
By mid-2022, Qualified’s revenue was up 400% year on year, making it a fast-growing Drift competitor.
6. Freshchat
Year founded: 2010
Headquarter: San Mateo, California
Freshchat is a messaging solution offered by Freshworks, a software company with several business products. Its features include live chat, email campaigns, and chatbot add-ons.
In 2022, Freshworks had more than 58,000 customers, including Bridgestone, ITV, Chargebee, DeliveryHero, Klarna, Multichoice, TaylorMade, and Vice Media.
Both Freshchat and Drift offer messaging solutions, but Freshchat’s chatbot is not ideal for cash-strapped SMBs due to its high price.
In Jul 2022, Freshworks added Freshchat AI bot-assisted conversational messaging to its Unified Customer Record (UCR) architecture. It joins Freshmarketer and Freshsales on the Freshworks platform. The three solutions equip agents with complete customer context across support, sales, and marketing teams. Freshchat is one of the best Drift alternatives for live chat. [9]
7. Birdeye
Year founded: 2012
Headquarter: Palo Alto, California
Birdeye is an all-in-one reputation and customer experience platform. Over 80,000 businesses and brands use the platform to manage customer interactions in today’s digital-first world.
In Mar 2022, Birdeye closed a $60 million Series C funding round led by Accel-KKR. The company will use the raised amount to develop a full suite of customer communication solutions. [10]
Unlike Drift, Birdeye focuses only on local businesses and brands. Birdeye users can access reviews, referrals, messaging, web chat, surveys, digital payments, and AI-powered insights in a single platform.
However, like Drift, Birdeye offers an all-in-one experience marketing platform to help multi-location businesses deliver the best experiences throughout the customer journey. Birdeye is one of the top Drift alternatives.
8. Appian Low-Code Platform
Year founded: 1999
Headquarter: McLean, Virginia
Appian is a cloud computing and enterprise software company. It offers the Appian Low-Code Platform to help businesses accelerate the discovery, design, and automation of mission-critical processes.
In Apr 2022, Appian was recognized as Gartner’s Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Enterprise Low-Code Applications Platform (LCAP). [11]
Appian’s unified low-code platform combines several capabilities, including process mining, workflow, and automation. According to Gartner Peer Insights, Appian was the only company to receive the distinction across the four categories. Apian Low-Code Platform is a worthy Drift competitor across the board.
9. Freshdesk
Year founded: 2010
Headquarter: San Mateo, California
Freshdesk is a customer service solution offered by Freshworks Inc. It is part of Freshworks’ comprehensive product portfolio, including Freshchat, Freshsales, and Freshmarketer. In 2022, over 58,000 business customers used Freshworks’ solutions.
The main competitive advantage for Freshdesk over Drift is its integration with Freshworks’ solutions, but it also offers robust features that rival Drift.
In Nov 2022, Freshworks infused artificial intelligence (AI) across its CRM and customer experience solutions. This infusion delivered AI-driven customer support powered by Freshdesk, including Auto Triage and integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams, making Freshdesk one of the best alternatives to Drift for customer service. [12]
10. Tidio
Year founded: 2013
Headquarter: Szczecin, Poland
Tidio is a multifunctional customer service platform that enables businesses to offer world-class customer support and generate more leads and sales. It’s an all-in-one CX solution with live chat, chatbots, and multichannel communication. In May 2022, Tidio raised $25 million in a Series B round. [13]
Tidio displays a list of visitors on users’ websites, allowing site owners to interact with them in real-time via live chat or automatically via chatbot. Over 23,000 businesses pay for Tidio and automate more than 86,000 conversations per month.
According to CEO Gołas, Tidio recorded 7.7x revenue growth for the last three years. The platform integrates with third-party services, including emails, Facebook, Instagram, WordPress, and Shopify, making it a worthy alternative to Drift.
11. MobileMonkey
Year founded: 2017
Headquarter: Boston, Massachusetts
MobileMonkey is an omnichat platform with messenger sequencing, live chat, AI, and user interfacing. It connects customers with businesses or site owners in real time via web chats, text, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The main advantage of MobileMonkey is its omnichat technology that allows users to automate communication on multiple messaging apps. Businesses can use Chatbot Builder to create chatbots from scratch or customizable templates.
According to G2, MobileMonkey has a 4.9 out of 5-star rating. MobileMonkey is a user-friendly alternative to Drift. [14]
12. Ada Support
Year founded: 2016
Headquarter: Toronto, Canada
Ada is a Canadian automated brand interaction company that connects brands and customers. In Feb 2022, Ada Support was named to G2’s 2022 Best Software Awards and was ranked 2nd on the Top 50 Analytics and AI Products list. [15]
Ada Support offers personalized customer support at scale, enabling better brand-customer interactions. Its AI-powered chatbot allows support teams to solve over 80% of inquiries. Like Drift, Ada Support automates interactions and delivers the best experiences to every customer and employee.
Innovative brands like Facebook, Zoom, and Square use their platform to bridge the gap between their businesses and customers. Ada Support is one of the best alternatives to Drift for brand interactions.
13. Landbot
Year founded: 2017
Headquarter: Barcelona, Spain
Landbot is a no-code communication automation platform. It allows businesses to develop conversational assistants or chatbots for websites, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. In 2021, Landbot raised $8 million in a Series A funding round. [16]
The main competitive advantage of Landbot is its drag-and-drop chatbot builder. This tool helps IT teams design immersive web page experiences with gifs and visual elements to capture end users’ attention.
As of Jan 2021, Landbot had around 2,200 paying customers and 50,000 users with free and paid accounts. The company also acquired Morph.AI recently to convert social, website, and ad traffic into leads and expand its presence in the Asian market, making Landbot a fast-growing Drift competitor.
14. Aivo
Year founded: 2012
Headquarter: Cordoba, Argentina
Aivo is a customer communications platform that uses AI and omnichannel solutions to solve businesses’ customer service and sales growth issues. Since its founding, Aivo has served more than 200 clients and enabled over 150 million user conversations.
Aivo specializes in AI-powered automated conversational journeys. In Nov 2022, the company launched its Video Conversational AI solution developed with Synthesia.
It is the world’s largest AI video generation platform that allows companies to interact with customers via a video chat with a virtual hyper-realistic AI-generated avatar. This solution increases Aivo’s competitive advantage over Drift. [17]
15. ServiceBell
Year founded: 2020
Headquarter: New York, New York
competitive advantage
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