Drift Reviews

Drift is one of the best programs for chatting with visitors to your website.

Pros:

Very intuitive and easy to use, you don't need to be an expert to implement your communication strategy with this tool.

Cons:

However, the free version is rather limited in terms of features.

Drift is the best 'customer chat' system on the market

Comments: Once again Drift have helped to define what companies should be using chat software for. Yes, it is for 'live chat', that much is obvious. But DRIFT define their tool as helping to deliver 'conversation marketing', and that for me really helps to define how companies should be using Chat software - to start and nurture a conversation that could lead to an ongoing relationship.

Pros:

Love Drift. It is very easy to use but more importantly, it is very easy to love using. This is important in software adoption and Drift is one of the best examples I have seen of this in recent years. They've built an awesome product, which does everything you need it to - but the fact that it is fun to use DRIFT makes it an even more compelling product.

Cons:

Hard to say. Probably the fact that although the core product is free (and you get lots of awesome features), you have to upgrade to the 'fullest licence' in order to get the 'uber cool' tools such as allowing the 'chat users' to book an appointment directly into the Calendar of the chosen agent.

A time consuming disappointment.

Comments: We asked very specific questions during the sales process (no trial available - this should have been a red flag) where the salesperson misrepresented the capabilities around integration, usability etc. There was plenty of 'sure it works just like that'. We would have identified this had a trial been available. Drift is expensive, has slick marketing, so I assumed it was good. I should have quit at this point, but had our developers work around the many issues and the 'ohh you need to pay 10x for that'. Support was very lackluster. Focused on upselling features already promised on the current plan. Our developers hated it (I should have listened)... Our salespeople did not like it, the bugs it Drift manifested in a form that made our salespeople look stupid to customers. They were actively creating workarounds to avoid using it. And here I am. Drift keep charging, and the support people 'can't find my cancellation request conversation' ironically, in Drift. So, let this be a warning for managers. Drift is really great at marketing, the halo effect is strong! But walk away and save time.

Pros:

Drift is a chat tool with some rudimentary marketing automation. Drift's bot workflows are conceptually good. Email 'playbooks' are similar to a basic marketing automation platform.

Cons:

I purchased Drift against the recommendation of our developers on the promise of its segment.io integration. Drift was buggy, did not work as described with segment.io and had numerous usability problems for end-users (customers).

The best chat AI.

Comments: Using this for sales as well as support automation, and it's paid off well and works with our sites.

Pros:

The driftbots and playbooks (how their AI, automation is done). We have used this to automate sales workflows and schedule meetings and save time.

Cons:

I have no complaints that wouldn't be something out of my control - some of the rules I've set up in boys seem to be a bit too picky when leads respond with anything besides a picklist item.

Simple setup, solid results

Comments: Very satisfied with the manner in which we use it. I haven't spent much time exploring additional capabilities and advanced features, but I am eager to do so in the near future.

Pros:

It was easy to setup, and easy to understand with limited knowledge of this type of product. The product will scale with you, meaning, if you are knowledgable about all features, then they are there for you. If you're just looking for a site lead service, it does that really well also, without being overwhelming.

Cons:

The other features aren't explained well, and not sure where to look if I wanted them explained. The image that can be placed with the pop-up message is very limited in customization. For example, it cuts the top of the picture off and there's very limited functionality associated with editing it further.

Drift could be Intercom, but it isn't...

Comments: We decided to use Drift as means to provide support, but once we grow bigger than a single user, we'll have to move to a better platform.

Pros:

We use Drift as an in-app messaging platform and it's decent at that. We considered using it for marketing automation, customer engagement and on-boarding, but it doesn't cut it.

Cons:

Even as an in-app messaging platform for support, there's room for improvement. A few months ago, they removed the option to "close a conversation" (which is essentially used to close a "support ticket"). For whatever reason, they think that it should be more like Whatsapp with an endless list of conversations that you can "archive". Only conversations sometimes come back (not because of new messages), they are sorted wrong so you may miss conversations with new messages, and you don't always get real time notifications in the mobile app.

Good Conversational Marketing Tool

Comments: Whether it's worth paying for tool like this will depend on how engaged your audience is and how big your traffic volumes are. We felt that for us the tool was not worth the money. There are much cheaper alternatives on the market if you're just looking for customer support tools.

Pros:

Lots of features that are likely to appear to enterprise B2B companies like lead routing, instant meetings booker, help centre article look up.

Cons:

Had issues with bugs in various areas several times and had to contact support and wait till they were resolved. Not very straightforward how to configure the tool in the best way and debug playbooks. Documentation could be better.

Best Realtime communication chat tool

Comments: We really had good opinion on drift and we're happy to serve our customers realtime with the help of drift chat widget and qualify the leads instantly.

Pros:

We love the way how Drift chat helps our customers to get in touch instantly within our product. When customers get into issue or questions to be answered, they don't have to wait for email support, all the questions can be answered instantly within the chat. Additionally, it's easy for our teams to use mobile app to instantly attend customer chat from anywhere. We usually get lot of questions and leads from landing page and drift helped us to automate leads and push into our CRM systems. Integrating the chat widget within the application is also easy and simple.

Cons:

The web app ( dashboard ) is too slow to load initially but the chat is super fast and reliable. I wish they had android sdk to initiate conversation within the application.

kickstart conversation marketing

Comments: It has been great but i believe much more integrated approach is needed.

Pros:

started using drift for our startup after moving away from HubSpot. It has been a great learning curve for us. Some aspects I love about drift is the lead tracking and bot performance. Also leveraging drift for email and phone converation as a CRM is a big plus. Also scheduling and calendar invites make is better than calendly

Cons:

Would love if drift can be an email server as well so that we can skip email server costs. It does most of the things already just needs a sync from gmail. It is very expensive especially since you have to pay upfront for the startup plan

A Quality Product

Comments: I think it's a quality and powerful product.

Pros:

Drift is designed to help people accomplish their business goals, especially B2B business goals, which is super helpful. Other chat companies are not as in tune with B2B needs which is what sets Drift apart. They have the right features and tools for the B2B marketer.

Cons:

One setback is not being able to pull in custom cookie tracking data through the Drift form/bot. That tracking info is critical to business success.

Essential Automatiin Tool, Faster Time to Value with Inbounding

Comments: Excellent, would not have a solid inbound routing experience without a similar tool as Drift

Pros:

Conversation routing by Company HQ and State rather than just the site visitors geographic location. This is important since our sales team segments by Company HQ and Annual Revenue

Cons:

No ability to route countries other than US and Canada by state and/or territory. The entire continent of Australia can only be tagged as such in conversation routing. You have to build a playbook that asks the customer what territory they live in which creates a longer automated process for the site visitor. Also there is no option to segment by city which would be helpful for large city territories like Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco etc

A solid component in your marketing automation strategy

Comments: Overall, I think it's a great tool

Pros:

I really loved how super easy Drift is to both implement and use as chatbot tool (that does way more than that) we've rolled it out for our SDRs to be able to capture leads and respond to any presales questions quickly. and the integration with Hubspot and salesforce makes it really easy to not only capture but also to personalise our response as a part of our overall marketing automation strategy.

Cons:

- it's not cheap - the stage that you'd be importing the lead into Sales Cloud (SFDC CRM) can be tricky as the definition of stages aren't really aligned.

Live Chat Platform that suits my needs.

Comments: There has been a lot of platform development in recent years.
Newer look and better android app for example. I remember when the Drift android app had quite a lot of bugs, but now many have been fixed.
I am confident in future development and still choose Drift as my primary choice of Live Chat Platform.

Pros:

Live chat and Playbook work well, and widgets are easy to install.

Cons:

There are no problems with functionality, but in my opinion, the customization options are still not enough. I would like more widget customization options, such as the ability to add a background image to the Live Chat widget.

Best Live Chat Software On the Market

Comments: Drift is a great product that generates a lot of website leads for our business which more than pays for itself.

Pros:

Drift is an amazing tool that helps you communicate directly and seamlessly with your website visitors. It tracks a lot of information about any given person on your site so you can understand who they are before you even have a conversation with them. It also makes it easy to schedule meetings which automatically flow to your calendar.

Cons:

Sometimes Drift can be too automated and frustrate people on your website who are trying to obtain quick answers to questions and wish to speak to a human.

Great communication interaction with prospects

Comments: Extremely pleased. I'll admit that as an admin onboarding this software, it takes sometime to get familiar with the new set up of chatboxes and playbooks. Overall though, it proves to bring results to our team.

Pros:

The simplicity of scheduling phone calls. Drift also makes the chat's very personalized and fun to interact with. That feelings gives our prospects and sense of comfort when they visit our site.

Cons:

There are a few bugs such as syncing issues with our crm, or syncing issues with BDR calendars. The majority of the time, the internal team is able to fix these issues. But there have been some cases not as urgent that I've had to put aside for now.

Drift review

Comments: Overall I am very satisfied with Drift and it has been the great experience integrating this with zoominfo for lead generation

Pros:

Drift is extremely easy to configure and there is a launchpoint integration available via Marketo Engage that makes it easy to integrate and push lead gen data into Marketo

Cons:

I think Drift gets the job done and is the best live chat out there in market. I cant think of any con

Great alternative to forms

Pros:

I love the conversational nature of our Drift bots. It allows us to incorporate our brand tone of voice into interactions with web visitors, and the ability to book meetings directly within the chat really speeds up the followup process.

Cons:

It can be clunky at times to set up the playbooks, but once they're in place they're great. I've also seen a ton of incremental improvements happen throughout the time I've used it so I can see Drift is listening to customer feedback and continually evolving.

Needs work

Comments: This has the ability to be a brilliant tool, and I'm impressed by the idea behind it, but the UX on the website is all over the place. I would've rated this so much higher, if the UX was better!

Pros:

Writing about Drift video in specific - this has the ability to be a fantastic tool for generating leads, pitching more complex sales, and showcasing to your customers that you appreciate that they are busy people, and can watch your video at any point that they have some time.

Cons:

The login process to Drift video if you've already got Drift Chat set up is so clunky, and it kicks me out nearly every single time. It's a shame as I would use this tool so much more, but sometimes it just doesnt want to let me in, and even with the correct login, it just glitches and sends you back to the login screen

Easy (and free) way to add chat to your website!

Pros:

The pros over at Drift get IT! They have provided a great chat tool that is super clean, easy to use, and it just works. I run an e-commerce website and there's no doubt that having Drift in place has boosted my sales. It is a great way to capture new email addresses as well, which I have used in follow up marketing sequences, thus resulting in additional sales. Can't say enough about this software, I really enjoy it.

Cons:

Everything isn't free! But, I get it. The additional features are worth paying for, and I will be at that point on my site soon. Looking forward to it!

Makes customer interaction easy!!

Comments: I am enjoying drift as it helps my customers to directly drop in a chat whenever they have any queries, this has reduced the number of support calls I used to get before drift.

Pros:

It's ability to post internal notes that only your team members can see. It really helps during troubleshooting.

Cons:

The mobile app is a little confusing at times and it takes time in refreshing, it doesn't auto refresh and doesn't display the recent chats on it's own.

Wonderful product with interesting features

Comments: From my point of view this product is absolutely complete that ensures all my working tasks going on in a steady way. Moreover, I can easily view the status if my agents through its magnificent properties and features to accommodate all the tasks in a required time period.

Pros:

This useful tool has third party integrations that allow me to access data in a more useful way in order to get beneficial outcomes from it with less time spent. Another feature that is of my interest is the unique playbook feature of this amazing product that helps me to lessen the workload from my shoulders and enables me to have a concentration on all the important tasks.

Cons:

By getting all the unique features and functionalities I can not think of anything offensive in it that could worsen my experience on it. I failed to find anything to complain about it.

Over promise, under deliver

Comments: For a Robot feature on your website,​ they are not good at following up on their own tickets. This includes robot chat questions that they say they will get back to you. This forces you to email and they will get back to you, but then when there are more questions its radio silence. Then I pushed to get a call and there were takeaways and my contact was supposed to return my call post TWO conference calls and I had to push to get them to follow thru. The system causes duplicates, all the people coming to the site are listed as site visitor with no history.

Pros:

The ideas of what they wanted to software to do.

Cons:

They made promises that they can't live up to

Simple setup and hassle-free website chat solution

Pros:

Easy to set up and inject directly into your homepage. Can set up routes and automated conversations (albeit this process can be streamlined/cleaned up a bit)

Cons:

Software can get a little clunky - leading to significant amount of resources rendering and setting up the chat button/bubble upon website load.

Easy to use, but keep your chats organized/clean

Comments: My support team likes it! So far so good. We've been using Drift for 2 years now.

Pros:

Drift is easy to use and pretty straightforward. Installing it on your website is super easy and they provide good support. The support team is very responsive. Couple things I like : - Send chat by email when the visitor closed the window/website - Notification settings - Chat window is simple but yet effective - Support team is friendly and responsive - Pricing (we started with the free version for a year) - Auto-responder

Cons:

When you have high traffic websites like we do, it's absolutely crucial to keep your chat logs organized. Would have liked to have more flexibility on this end (different folders, important chats, etc.).

Conversational Marketing is a Great Tool

Comments: A really useful tool and a great way to interact with your customer base.

Pros:

Conversational Marketing is a great tool because it allows you to interact with your customers automatically.

Cons:

The tool is very useful there isn't much bad to say about it. The tool requires you to learn how to use it.