Drift was sunset in March 2026, after Salesloft folded it into its own platform. If you are here, you are probably holding a chat widget that stopped being a product and a renewal that is not coming.
Here is the honest part most “alternatives” lists skip: Drift was two tools wearing one widget. Some teams ran it as a sales machine, booking meetings and qualifying leads. Others mostly used it to answer visitor questions and catch the ones it could not. Those two jobs have different successors, and picking from the wrong column is how you end up migrating twice.
If Drift was your sales machine
You want conversational marketing: visitor identification, routing, meeting booking, ABM plays.
Salesloft is the default path. Drift's capabilities were absorbed into the Salesloft platform, so if your revenue team already lives there, the migration conversation has probably already happened.
Qualified is the closest standalone successor, built around the same book-meetings-from-the-website motion, deeply tied to Salesforce. If your pipeline runs on Salesforce, start here.
Expertise AI (formerly Chatsimple) pivoted into exactly this space: pre-built GTM plays for revenue teams, with its own Drift-alternative pitch. Sales-led at the top end.
Intercom covers the widest ground: live chat, its Fin AI agent, and sales routing in one platform, priced per seat ($29+/seat) plus $0.99 for each AI-resolved outcome.
If Drift was mostly answering questions
Then what you actually need is not conversational marketing at all. You need support chat that answers from your own content, hands off to a human when it should, and does not lose the conversation when nobody is watching.
Tidio is a strong SMB pick: live chat plus its Lyro AI (from about $24 + $32.50 a month), with a free plan. Its AI is metered per conversation on top.
Chatbase ($32 a month) is the category benchmark for a train-on-your-content bot, if a widget alone is enough.
Retily ($0, $39, or $79 a month, flat) is what we build, so weigh this recommendation accordingly: an AI agent trained on your website that answers grounded questions, plus the helpdesk behind it: email, tickets, live chat, and a knowledge base in one system. When the AI cannot answer, it says so and opens a ticket instead of guessing. There is a free plan with 200 AI answers a month, and you can see it working on your own site before you sign up, without an account.
What to check before you choose, whoever you choose
- 1
What happens at handoff. Drift's value was never the bot alone; it was what happened when a human needed to step in. Ask each vendor to show you the handoff, not describe it.
- 2
How the AI is billed. Several platforms in this space now charge per AI resolution (up to about a dollar each). Flat-priced alternatives exist. Know which model you are signing.
- 3
Where your transcripts go. You are migrating conversation history and trained content. Ask about export before you ask about import.
- 4
Whether the price band fits. Drift was sales-led and premium. Most of the tools above are one tenth of that spend; do not let the old budget anchor the new one.
Prices checked on each vendor's public pricing page on the date above. If you find one that has changed, tell us and we will fix it.