Drift
Conversational marketing and sales platform with AI chatbot
B2B conversational marketing platform acquired by Salesloft (Feb 2024), focusing on sales engagement and lead qualification rather than general-purpose RAG. Forrester Wave Leader (Q1 2024), $30K+/year enterprise positioning. Critical: August 2025 security breach affected 700+ organizations via OAuth token exploit.
Overall Rating
4.3
421 reviews
Features4.4
Ease of Use4.5
Support4.3
Value4.2
Performance4.3
Company Information
Founded
2015
Headquarters
Boston, MA, USA (Salesloft HQ: Atlanta, GA)
Company Size
501-1000 employees (combined with Salesloft) employees
Funding
Acquired by Salesloft Feb 2024 (both Vista Equity Partners portfolio companies). Drift valued at $1B (2021), Salesloft at ~$2.3B (2022).
Pros
- Forrester Wave Leader for Conversation Automation Solutions (Q1 2024) - analyst validation
- Pre-trained on 100M+ B2B sales/marketing conversations - domain-specific expertise
- Deep Salesforce and HubSpot native integrations for enterprise CRM workflows
- Salesloft acquisition creates unified revenue orchestration platform (Feb 2024)
- Comprehensive compliance: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001/27701, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI certified
- Robust developer access: Free API for all customers, 600 requests/minute rate limit, 20+ webhook events
- Proven customer success: 1Password (75% support deflection, 4X+ ROI), Pure Storage (4.8X meetings increase), Proofpoint (628% pipeline increase)
- 60+ pre-built topics ready day 1 with visual Playbook Builder for marketing teams
- Fast deployment: 2-hour content ingestion, 48-hour full deployment timeline
- Startup Program: Up to 75% discount for qualifying early-stage companies
- Multi-lingual support: 20+ languages via manual configuration with IETF language tags
- iOS SDK and React component package (react-driftjs) for native app integration
Cons
- NOT a RAG-as-a-Service platform - B2B conversational marketing platform fundamentally different from document-centric RAG solutions
- CRITICAL SECURITY CONCERN: August 2025 OAuth breach affected 700+ organizations with Salesforce/Google Workspace/Slack access compromised
- Drift-Salesforce integration disabled pending Mandiant investigation as of late 2025
- NO LLM model switching - locked to OpenAI GPT with no user-configurable alternatives
- NO cloud storage integrations - no Google Drive, Dropbox, or Notion knowledge syncing
- NO omnichannel messaging - no native Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, or Teams support
- Website-centric platform requiring third-party tools (Zapier, n8n) for cross-channel connectivity
- Premium pricing: $30K+/year minimum ($2,500/month Premium tier) - enterprise-first positioning
- Aging developer documentation: Last updated almost 4 years ago, broken links post-Salesloft acquisition
- NO official SDKs for Java, Ruby, Go, or PHP - only community-maintained Python SDK
- NO OpenAPI/Swagger specifications, Postman collections, or API sandbox environment
- Dashboard cannot be white-labeled - custom dashboard building via API required for full branding
- Playbooks API read-only - edits require Drift UI, cannot manage programmatically
- Steep learning curve cited in G2 reviews despite marketing to non-technical users
- Limited RAG-specific features: No bulk document uploads, YouTube transcripts, or versatile file ingestion
Best Use Cases
B2B sales and marketing teams prioritizing lead qualification over general knowledge retrieval
Enterprise organizations with deep Salesforce or HubSpot CRM integrations (mid-market to Fortune 500)
Marketing teams replacing static forms with conversational data collection and lead capture
Sales development reps (SDRs) needing intelligent routing and meeting booking automation
Account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns with real-time engagement scoring and visitor identification
Organizations with $30K+ annual budgets and 4-12 week implementation timelines
Website-focused conversational engagement vs omnichannel messaging requirements
Businesses leveraging Salesloft for revenue orchestration seeking unified platform integration
Compliance-requiring industries (healthcare, finance) with SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001 needs
Marketing operations teams comfortable with visual Playbook Builder and no-code interfaces
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