Drift Alternatives After the Sunset: 6 Options for 2026
Drift is on its way out. Clari + Salesloft, which owns it, announced a gradual sunset of the Drift conversational marketing product on March 6, 2026, and named 1mind its exclusive successor. Existing customers are being referred there. If your renewal is coming up, this is the moment to pick what replaces the chat on your site.
The quick answer: for most B2B sites, CarlyChat covers what Drift was used for: a chat trained on your own site that answers buyers’ questions, captures the lead, hands hot conversations to a rep, and syncs it all to HubSpot, Attio, or Carly CRM. It’s free to start and installs with one script tag. Pair it with Carly for booking pages and follow-up. If you’re a Salesforce shop with an enterprise budget, look at Qualified’s Piper; if you want the official handoff, 1mind.
What happened to Drift
- February 2024: Salesloft acquired Drift.
- August 2025: attackers used stolen Drift OAuth tokens to reach connected Salesforce data at many companies, and Salesforce and Salesloft revoked Drift’s tokens.
- December 2025: Salesloft’s merger with Clari closed.
- March 6, 2026: Clari + Salesloft announced the gradual sunset of Drift and a partnership naming 1mind as the exclusive AI successor, with existing clients referred to it.
No single shutdown date was published, so confirm your own end date with your account team before you plan the cutover.
Drift alternatives compared
| Free to start | Pricing | Strongest at | CRM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CarlyChat | Yes | Monthly plans | Grounded answers, lead capture, human takeover, setup by AI agent | HubSpot, Attio, Carly CRM presets; webhooks for the rest |
| 1mind | Demo | Through sales | AI “Superhumans” for pipeline, the official Drift successor | Salesloft Cadences |
| Qualified (Piper) | Demo | Through sales | Enterprise AI SDR on chat, now part of Salesforce | Salesforce |
| Intercom Fin | Trial | $9.99 per sales qualification | Teams already on Intercom | Intercom, plus integrations |
| HubSpot chat | Yes | Included in HubSpot tiers | Teams already on HubSpot | HubSpot |
| Tidio | Yes | Lyro AI from $39 a month | Smaller sites that want live chat and AI together | Integrations |
1. CarlyChat
CarlyChat is the practical Drift replacement for teams that want the chat to be good at answering, not just at grabbing an email address.
It answers from your material. Train it on your whole site, specific URLs, files, text, and exact question-and-answer pairs. Every answer in the playground shows its source, so you can see why it said what it said before a buyer does. Pin pricing, security, and integration answers as exact Q&A so sales-critical replies are never improvised.
It captures and routes the lead. Turn on lead capture, then sync verified customers, chat context, and leads to HubSpot, Attio, or Carly CRM with built-in presets, or anywhere else with signed webhooks.
A rep can take over. When a visitor asks for a person or sounds frustrated, the AI stops and your team gets an email with the conversation. A rep replies from the dashboard and the visitor sees it in the same chat within seconds.
It can act inside your site. Actions run a live lookup, an inline form, or any other safe function, so the chat can check a trial’s status or collect a qualification form instead of linking away.
Your agent can build it. CarlyChat has a remote MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. One instruction and the agent creates the bot, crawls your site, sets up lead capture and your brand color, and returns the install code. Afterward it can pull leads and read analytics to find the questions the bot still misses.
What happens after the chat. CarlyChat is part of Carly, which handles the follow-through: booking pages for the demo, a built-in CRM, and follow-up sequences from your own Gmail or Outlook that stop when the prospect replies. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so the lead can land wherever your team works.
Best for: B2B SaaS and service companies replacing Drift without a six-figure contract.
2. 1mind
The successor Clari + Salesloft named. 1mind sells AI “Superhumans,” digital teammates meant to move pipeline from first touch to close, and the partnership feeds what 1mind learns about buyers into Salesloft Cadences. The obvious choice if you’re staying on Salesloft and want the sanctioned migration path. Pricing is through sales.
3. Qualified (Piper)
Qualified’s AI SDR, Piper, holds conversations on your website, qualifies visitors, books meetings on reps’ calendars, and sends follow-up email. Salesforce completed its acquisition of Qualified on April 1, 2026, so it’s built for Salesforce-centric revenue teams. Pricing isn’t published and is quoted after a demo.
4. Intercom Fin
Intercom’s AI agent also qualifies sales conversations. Fin for Sales charges $9.99 per qualified lead, while disqualifications and self-serve routings bill at the standard $0.99, on top of Intercom’s seats. A good fit if support already runs in Intercom and you want one widget for both. See Intercom alternatives and Intercom Fin.
5. HubSpot chat
If HubSpot is your CRM, its built-in live chat and chatbots put conversations straight onto contact records with no sync to maintain. Fine for routing and simple qualification. For grounded answers trained on your docs, many teams pair HubSpot with a dedicated bot like CarlyChat, which syncs into HubSpot through its preset.
6. Tidio
A live chat widget with an AI agent, Lyro, built for smaller sites. The free plan includes 50 Lyro conversations in total; monthly AI starts at $39 for 50 conversations. More in Tidio alternatives.
How to choose a Drift replacement
- Staying on Salesloft: 1mind.
- Salesforce-first enterprise: Qualified’s Piper.
- Support already in Intercom: Fin.
- You want it live this week, grounded in your own content, syncing to HubSpot or Attio: CarlyChat.
A one-week migration from Drift
- Save what you’ll need. Copy your playbook messages and any conversation history you want to keep before access ends.
- Train the new bot. Point CarlyChat at your site and docs, and turn your best Drift playbook answers into exact Q&A pairs.
- Test the buying questions. Pricing, security, integrations, “can I talk to sales.” Check each answer’s source in the playground.
- Wire the CRM. Turn on the HubSpot or Attio preset, or a webhook, and send a test lead through.
- Swap the script. Remove Drift’s snippet, add CarlyChat’s one line, and turn on human takeover for your reps.
Common questions
Is Drift shutting down? Clari + Salesloft announced a gradual sunset of Drift on March 6, 2026, and is referring customers to 1mind. It didn’t publish one shutdown date for every account.
What is the official Drift replacement? 1mind, under an exclusive agreement with Clari + Salesloft.
What’s a cheaper Drift alternative? CarlyChat is free to start, and paid plans are billed monthly. Tidio and HubSpot’s free chat are other low-cost options.
Can an AI agent set up the replacement? With CarlyChat, yes. Connect its MCP server in Claude Code, Cursor, or ChatGPT, and ask it to create, train, and install a chatbot for your site.
Related: best AI chat widgets, Chatbase alternatives, best AI agents for sales, and how to add a chat widget to your website.
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