Drift Is Being Sunset: 10 Alternatives and What They Cost

2026-01-25 · Wallu Team · 11 min read · Comparison

Clari + Salesloft announced Drift’s gradual sunset on 5 March 2026, and drift.com/pricing now publishes no price at all. Ten replacements, every figure read from the vendor’s own page in both billing cycles.

Table of Contents

• Is Drift really being sunset?
• What does Drift cost in 2026?
• First, decide what you actually used Drift for
• The alternatives at a glance, with both billing cycles
• The headline price is usually annual-only
• The alternatives, one by one
• What a three-agent bill actually looks like
• Where Wallu is the wrong choice
• Sources and read dates
• Frequently asked questions

Short answer: Drift is being sunset. On 5 March 2026 Clari + Salesloft announced "the gradual sunset of its Drift conversational marketing solution" and an exclusive agreement to refer existing Drift clients to 1mind as the successor. No end-of-life date has been published. As of 3 September 2026, drift.com/pricing serves a redirect and publishes no price at all, so every article quoting you a current Drift rate is quoting a third party rather than Drift. What you should replace it with depends entirely on whether you used Drift to generate pipeline or to answer customers — those are two different products and two different budgets. If it was to answer customers, the cheapest credible replacements start at $4.99/month flat (Wallu), $0 forever (Tawk.to), or $23 per agent/month month-to-month (Freshdesk).

A note on the prices in this article. Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 3 September 2026, and each is given in both billing cycles — month-to-month and billed-annually — because most of these pages load with the annual toggle already selected, and quoting the number as it appears understates the real monthly cost by 20–30%. Where a vendor publishes no price, this article says so instead of estimating.

Is Drift really being sunset?

Yes, and the primary source is short. The Clari + Salesloft newsroom post dated 5 March 2026 states:

> "As part of this strategic partnership, Clari + Salesloft is announcing the gradual sunset of its Drift conversational marketing solution."

And:

> "Under an exclusive agreement with 1mind, Clari + Salesloft will refer existing Drift clients to 1mind as the successor to ensure a seamless transition."

Two details in that wording matter, and most coverage skips both.

There is no end-of-life date. The word is "gradual". No shutdown date, no feature-freeze date, and no published policy on what happens at renewal. If you read a page that tells you Drift goes dark on a specific day, ask where that came from — it did not come from Salesloft.

Nobody has said Drift is closed to new customers either. It is strongly implied, since there is no pricing page and no self-serve signup, but it is not published policy, so this article will not assert it. The checkable version is narrower and more useful: there is no published price and no way to buy Drift without talking to a salesperson.

If you administer Drift today, you are not behind. The product still logs in, and no published deadline forces your hand this quarter. But the budget conversation is coming, and it is better had on your own schedule than during a renewal.

What does Drift cost in 2026?

Nothing is published. That is the entire answer, and it is the fact almost no article on this topic states plainly.

There are no tier names, no figures, no currency and no seat rate obtainable from any Drift, Salesloft or 1mind property. Every vendor in that chain — including the named successor — is quote-only.

About the numbers you have seen elsewhere. Four- and five-figure monthly rates for Drift circulate widely across comparison sites. None of them can be obtained from a Drift or Salesloft page today; they come from third-party blogs, review-site profiles and archived marketplace listings. This article deliberately prints none of them, not even to disown them — a figure printed next to a vendor's name survives being quoted out of context, and the disclaimer attached to it does not. If you need a historical figure for a business case, take it from your own signed order form — that is the only Drift number you can defend in a budget meeting.

What is fair to say about the shape of the old contract, as background rather than a rate: Drift sold annual contracts negotiated with a salesperson, priced by seats with playbook count and traffic volume driving the tier, always behind a "talk to sales" gate. Nothing about it was ever self-serve, which is exactly why there is no list price to retire now.

First, decide what you actually used Drift for

This is the step that decides your budget, and skipping it is why so many Drift migrations end up overpaying.

Drift was sold as conversational marketing: a chat widget whose job was to qualify website visitors, book meetings onto sales calendars, and route named accounts to the right rep. Its value was measured in pipeline.

Most tools described as "Drift alternatives" are customer support tools. Their job is to answer questions, deflect tickets and hand off to a human. Their value is measured in resolved conversations.

Those are different products.

• If Drift was a pipeline tool for you — ABM routing, meeting booking, sales-rep handoff, revenue attribution — then the honest answer is that the replacements are 1mind (the named successor), Qualified, or Intercom with its outbound add-ons. All are quote-only or add-on-heavy, and none of them is cheap. A $4.99 support tool will not replace a pipeline engine, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.
• If Drift was really just how customers reached you — a chat widget that answered questions and escalated the hard ones — then you have been paying enterprise conversational-marketing prices for support tooling, and the rest of this article is the cheaper list.

Be honest about which one you were. Look at what your team actually did in Drift last month: booked meetings, or answered questions.

The alternatives at a glance, with both billing cycles

Entry pricing only. Every figure read from the vendor's own pricing page on 3 September 2026. The billing unit matters more than the headline number, so it has its own column — a per-seat tool and a flat-rate tool are not directly comparable.

Two things worth reading twice. Tawk.to is genuinely free — not a trial, not a starter tier — with no cap on agents, chat volume or sites; its AI Assist is a separate add-on from $29/month. And Crisp does not meter conversations at all, which makes it the closest structural match to flat-rate billing on this list.

The headline price is usually annual-only

Seven of the vendors above advertise a number you can only get by committing to a year. This is the single most common error in published comparisons of these tools, and it is worth understanding before you build a budget.

Both Intercom and Zendesk load their pricing pages with the annual toggle already selected. Intercom's Essential card renders $29 per seat/mo; the month-to-month rate is $39, which Intercom's own help centre states in plain text. Zendesk's Suite Team card renders $55 agent/month paid yearly; month-to-month is $69. Freshworks marks its own unit strings /agent/month, billed annually versus billed monthly — $19 against $23 on Growth. Tidio renders $24.17 where the monthly rate is $29, and its Lyro AI add-on renders $32.50 against $39 monthly. ManyChat renders $29 for Pro where month-to-month is $39.

The discount is also not uniform across a vendor's own tiers, which trips up spreadsheet models. Intercom's annual saving is 26% on Essential ($39 → $29) but only 5% on Expert ($139 → $132). Several add-ons carry no annual discount at all: Intercom's Fin stays at $0.99 per outcome and its Pro add-on at $99/month on either cycle, and Zendesk's Copilot is $50 per agent/month whichever cycle you pick.

One caveat we will flag rather than bury: at read time Intercom was running a live A/B test on Essential showing a struck-through $29 next to $19, under a "New customer offer" banner. Visitors in that variant see lower numbers. We publish the standard $39 / $29 as list price and treat the rest as a promotion that may not be offered to you.

The alternatives, one by one

Tawk.to — $0. The only genuinely free option here, and it is free in the way people wish other tools were: unlimited agents, unlimited chats, unlimited sites, forever. The catch is that AI is not included — AI Assist starts at $29/month per property, removing their branding is another $29/month, and their human chat agents are billed hourly. If your Drift usage was "we wanted a chat box on the site", start here and stop reading.

ManyChat — $17/mo month-to-month, $14/mo billed annually. Priced per Active Contact rather than per seat, which suits marketing-shaped work. Important limitation for a Drift replacement: there is no AI at all below the Pro plan at $39/mo month-to-month ($29 annually). Essential is automation, not an AI agent.

Freshdesk — $23/agent/mo month-to-month, $19 annually. The most conventional helpdesk on the list, and the AI economics are unusually generous at low volume: Freddy AI Agent includes the first 500 sessions, then charges $49 per 100 sessions. That works out to $0.49 a session beyond the included block — our arithmetic from their published rate, and one of the cheaper metered AI rates in this comparison. Only three plans are published — Growth, Pro and Enterprise.

Freshchat — $23/agent/mo month-to-month, $19 annually, with a real free plan for up to 10 agents. The chat-first sibling of Freshdesk. That free tier is a genuine option for a small team, though the Freddy AI Agent is not included on it.

Zendesk — $25/agent/mo month-to-month for ticketing-only Support Team, $19 annually. The full Suite starts at $69 month-to-month ($55 annually). Its AI unit is the Automated Resolution, and each plan includes a small allowance — 5 per agent/month on Support Team and Suite Team, 10 on Suite Professional. Beyond the allowance, Zendesk does not publish an overage rate; the page offers fixed-volume packages or a pay-as-you-go option. That is a real forecasting problem if AI volume is your main cost.

Tidio — $29/mo month-to-month, $24.17 annually. Billed per *billable conversation*, defined by Tidio as any live chat, email or social message handled by a human agent. The thing to know is that the AI you are shopping for is a separate purchase: the Lyro AI Agent starts at $39/mo month-to-month ($32.50 annually) for 50 AI conversations. The free plan's 50 Lyro conversations are a one-time lifetime grant, not monthly.

Intercom — $39/seat/mo month-to-month, $29 annually. The best-built product on this list and the strongest AI agent. Fin is included in every plan but billed at $0.99 per outcome from the first one, with a minimum monthly commitment. Fin can also run standalone on a helpdesk you already own, with no seats required — genuinely useful if you are keeping your ticketing system. Lite seats for internal collaborators are free: 20 on Advanced, 50 on Expert.

Chatbase — $40/mo month-to-month, $32 annually. A build-your-own AI agent rather than a support desk, metered in message credits. Hobby includes 700 credits and one agent; extra agents are $25/month each and removing branding is $99/month.

Gorgias — $40/mo with the AI Agent on ($10 helpdesk alone), Starter tier. Priced per billable *ticket*, not per seat, which is unusual and good if you have many agents and few tickets. Built for e-commerce, Shopify-heavy. The AI Agent toggle is on by default when the pricing page loads, so the number you first see already includes it.

Crisp — $45/mo flat, Mini tier. Structurally the closest thing here to flat-rate billing: per workspace, not per seat, and conversations are not metered at all. AI arrives as included credits rather than a separate add-on — $5 of credits on Mini, which Crisp estimates at around 90 automated conversations. The free tier gives you 2 seats forever.

Wallu — $4.99/mo flat month-to-month, $3.99 billed annually. Flat per workspace with no per-seat and no per-conversation charge. The entry plan includes 350 AI replies a month across eight channels — Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack, email and the web widget — with knowledge-base-only mode and human handover. Plans step up at $9.99, $19, $49 and $149 for larger reply volumes. WooCommerce support is on the Pro plan, not the entry plan.

What a three-agent bill actually looks like

Seat-priced tools are cheap to evaluate and expensive to staff. Here is the same small team, three agents, month-to-month, before any AI usage:

Add AI and the ordering can change again, because the meters are not comparable: Intercom charges $0.99 per resolved outcome, Freshworks $49 per 100 sessions (our arithmetic: $0.49 each), Gorgias bundles $30 of AI Agent into Starter for 30 interactions (our arithmetic: about $1.00 each, and Gorgias' own comparison table quotes $0.90 on Pro and $0.85 on Advanced), and Zendesk publishes no overage rate at all. A tool with a cheap seat and an expensive meter can cost more than a tool with an expensive seat and an included allowance.

Where Wallu is the wrong choice

Stated plainly, because a comparison that never concedes anything is not worth reading.

• There is no free tier. Tawk.to is free forever, and Crisp, Tidio, Freshchat, ManyChat and Chatbase all have real free plans. Wallu has a 7-day trial on Mini and nothing else. If your budget is genuinely zero, Tawk.to is the honest recommendation.
• It is not a pipeline tool. If you used Drift to route named accounts to sales reps, book meetings onto calendars and attribute revenue, Wallu does not do that job. Look at 1mind, Qualified or Intercom instead.
• No Shopify app listing. Gorgias is purpose-built for Shopify stores and Crisp ships Shopify, WooCommerce and Prestashop integrations on its free tier. Wallu's WooCommerce support is on the Pro plan, and there is no Shopify App Store listing.
• No voice contact centre, no workforce management, no multibrand help centre. Zendesk sells all three. If support is structured ticket work at real scale, that machinery is worth paying for.
• Smaller ecosystem. Intercom and Zendesk have marketplaces, partner networks and a decade of integrations. We do not.

Sources and read dates

Every price in this article was read from the vendor's own pricing page. No figure here comes from a review site, a marketplace listing or another comparison article.

Primary source for the sunset: the Clari + Salesloft newsroom post of 5 March 2026 announcing the 1mind partnership.

Frequently asked questions

Is Drift shutting down?

It is being sunset gradually. Clari + Salesloft announced "the gradual sunset of its Drift conversational marketing solution" on 5 March 2026 and will refer existing Drift clients to 1mind. No shutdown date has been published, and the product still logs in.

When is Drift's end of life?

No end-of-life date has been announced. The word used in the announcement is "gradual". Any specific date you see quoted did not come from Salesloft.

What is replacing Drift?

1mind, under an exclusive referral agreement with Clari + Salesloft. 1mind publishes no pricing — 1mind.com/pricing returns a 404 as of 3 September 2026.

How much does Drift cost in 2026?

No price is published anywhere on a Drift, Salesloft or 1mind property. drift.com/pricing redirects and shows no figures. Any current Drift rate you find is a third-party estimate.

Should I take the 1mind referral?

It is worth a conversation if you used Drift for pipeline generation — that is the job 1mind is being positioned to do. If you used Drift mainly as a chat widget that answered customer questions, the referral routes you toward an enterprise sales motion for a problem that cheaper support tooling solves.

What is the cheapest Drift alternative?

Tawk.to at $0, if you do not need AI included. Among tools with AI in the plan, Wallu is $4.99/month month-to-month ($3.99 billed annually), flat, with no per-seat or per-conversation charge.

Is there a free Drift alternative?

Yes. Tawk.to's entire platform is free forever with unlimited agents and chat volume. Freshchat has a free plan for up to 10 agents, Crisp a free 2-seat workspace, and Tidio, ManyChat and Chatbase all have free tiers with volume caps.

Do I have to migrate off Drift right now?

No. There is no published deadline. But there is also no published price, no self-serve purchase path, and an announced sunset — so plan the move on your own timetable rather than during a renewal negotiation.

Why do Drift alternative comparisons disagree about prices?

Mostly because these pricing pages load with the annual toggle preselected, and most articles quote the page as it appears. Intercom shows $29 where month-to-month is $39; Zendesk shows $55 where month-to-month is $69; Tidio shows $24.17 where monthly is $29. Every figure in this article is given in both cycles for that reason.