Drift

The OG of Conversational Marketing

Drift essentially invented the conversational marketing category back in 2015. David Cancel and Elias Torres built it on a simple insight: B2B buyers hate filling out forms. They'd rather chat. That bet paid off. By 2023, Drift was processing billions of conversations for thousands of B2B companies. Then Vista Equity-backed Salesloft bought it in February 2024 for a reported $100M+ and merged it into their sales engagement platform.

How Drift Works in Practice

The core product drops an AI chatbot on your website that qualifies visitors in real time. It asks the right questions, routes hot leads to sales reps instantly, and books meetings directly on their calendars. The AI has gotten smarter over the years — it pulls in firmographic data from Clearbit/6sense to personalize conversations based on company size, industry, and buying signals. The account-based targeting lets you show different experiences to target accounts vs. random visitors.

The Salesloft Integration Effect

Since the acquisition, Drift now feeds directly into Salesloft's cadences and workflows. A website conversation can trigger an email sequence, update a CRM record, and alert a sales rep simultaneously. If you're already a Salesloft customer, adding Drift creates a tighter loop between marketing and sales. If you're not, you're essentially buying into the full Salesloft ecosystem, which might be more than you need.

Pricing Reality Check

Drift doesn't publish prices anymore. Based on customer reports, expect $2,500/month minimum for a meaningful deployment. Enterprise deals run $5,000-10,000+/month depending on traffic volume and features. There's no free tier, no self-serve signup. You'll talk to sales, go through a demo, and negotiate. Implementation typically takes 4-8 weeks with professional services. This isn't a tool you trial over a weekend.

The Honest Downside

The Salesloft acquisition created uncertainty. Some features got deprecated, the roadmap shifted, and long-time customers faced forced migrations. The product itself is still solid for large B2B teams, but it's lost some of the agile startup energy that made it special. Smaller companies with under $10M ARR will find the ROI hard to justify. The AI is good but not magical — you still need humans monitoring conversations and refining playbooks weekly.