Drift Review

Drift
Product:
Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
Drift
Drift
2015
Boston, MA
Ownership:
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
Private
50,000+
Cloud
Yes

Drift At A Glance

Good: Chatbot that collects and qualifies leads, improved team collaboration, integration with marketing automation software.
Bad: Free plan only has basic features, paid plans can get expensive.
Bottom Line: A live chat solution that enables sales teams to engage with their prospects in real time.

Product Overview

Drift offers a live chat software, a email marketing solution and a video communication tool. This review focuses on its live chat solution.

The Drift live chat platform allows companies to create a better buying experience for their website visitors by engaging them right away. Instead of a web form, a chatbot is deployed on the website and asks the visitor about their interests and other qualifying questions. Once a lead is qualified, the chatbot then automatically passes it on to the sales team for follow up. The chatbot can also engage with visitors even when users are offline.

Drift has numerous benefits, including:

  • Improved engagement with prospects/customers
  • A streamlined sales cycle
  • Self-service contact for customers with less critical issues
  • Integration with marketing automation software and other third-party systems

Drift offers a free plan that supports up to 100 contacts and includes a single chat seat, basic chat features, a welcome email message, email signatures, basic reporting and integration with calendar, Slack, Vidyard and Google Analytics.

In addition, there are four paid plans. Specific pricing for each plan can be found in our Pricing section below.

Standard – The Standard plan includes all of the features of the free plan, plus unlimited contacts, saved replies, live view, data enrichment, proactive messaging, round robin routing, the ability to add a calendar in a chat, and integration with help desk and knowledge base solutions.

Pro – The Pro plan has all of the features of the Standard plan, plus chat-only permissions, custom branding, landing pages, CRM routing, automated booking, integration to additional applications (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce, Zendesk, LinkedIn Sales Navigator), revenue reporting and conversational analytics.

Premium – The Premium plan includes all of the features of the Pro plan, plus single sign-on, Drift Intel, chat to call for 10 hours per seat, personalized playbooks, team routing, firmographic routing and integration with Marketo, Pardot, and Eloqua.

Enterprise – The Enterprise plan includes all of the features of the other plans, plus multiple workspaces, workspace routing and extended reporting integration.

Features

Drift has a drag-and-drop Bot Builder that allows users to easily set up a chatbot within minutes. They can create a targeted conversation flow with routing rules for passing on qualified leads. Once it’s deployed, the chatbot pops up on the applicable pages of the website and engages in live conversations with visitors.

There’s also an account-based marketing (ABM) feature where sales reps can engage with clients in real time. Once the client lands on the site, the chatbot sends a personalized welcome message and then automatically routes them to the correct sales rep. Plus, reps can receive alerts when a client is browsing their sites. Since Drift integrates with Google and Outlook calendars, the chatbot can also book meetings.

The software has additional features, such as the ability to create multiple inboxes, add internal notes on each conversations and write saved replies for frequently asked questions. What’s more, the live view feature lets users see who’s currently on their website, so they can proactively chat with them. There’s also a conversational rating feature where visitors can offer feedback about their chat experience. Finally, the conversational analytics feature provides insights like response times to a conversation.