Drift Alternatives for B2B Teams: What to Use Before the Chat Widget Shuts Down

The main Drift alternatives for B2B teams are 1mind (the successor Salesloft recommends), Qualified, Chili Piper, HubSpot's chatbot builder, Intercom Fin and newer AI website agents. The right one depends on the job Drift did for you: booking meetings from website chat, routing leads to reps, or answering support questions.

The deadline is real. Salesloft's Drift Sunset FAQ states that the Drift chat widget will stop functioning after January 31, 2027. This guide explains what happened, lists the tools worth a look and describes a migration plan. If you are rethinking website chat altogether, our guide to the AI agent for your B2B website covers the broader picture.

What happened to Drift?

Drift was one of the companies that popularized conversational marketing: a chat widget that qualified website visitors and put meetings on a rep's calendar. Salesloft announced its acquisition of Drift in 2024, and Drift became part of the Salesloft platform.

In August 2025, Drift made headlines for a different reason. According to Google Threat Intelligence Group, an actor tracked as UNC6395 used compromised OAuth tokens tied to the Drift application to export large volumes of data from Salesforce customer instances between August 8 and at least August 18, 2025. On August 20, Salesloft and Salesforce revoked all active Drift tokens, and Salesforce removed Drift from the AppExchange.

Then came the sunset. 1mind announced that Clari + Salesloft is sunsetting Drift and naming 1mind its exclusive AI successor. The Salesloft FAQ gives the practical dates:

• the Drift chat widget stops working after January 31, 2027;
• remaining data is stored offline through April 30, 2027, then permanently deleted on May 1, 2027;
• for chatbot functionality, Salesloft recommends 1mind; for Drift Email, it recommends allGood.

So the question is no longer whether to replace Drift, but with what and how fast.

What did Drift actually do for your team?

Before comparing tools, write down what Drift did on your site. Two companies can both "use Drift" and need completely different replacements. The usual jobs:

1. Booking meetings from chat. A visitor on the pricing page answers a few questions and books a slot with the right rep. This is the job that creates pipeline.
2. Routing. Drift sent the conversation or the meeting to the account owner, by territory or by account.
3. Qualification playbooks. Scripted flows asked company size, role or use case before offering a meeting.
4. Answering questions. Some teams used Drift's bot to answer product and pricing questions, sometimes support questions too.
5. Email and integrations. Drift Email, CRM updates and enrichment tools connected to the chat.

Look at your Drift reports for the last six months. Which playbooks actually booked meetings? Which pages started those conversations? That list is your requirements document. Most teams find that two or three playbooks did nearly all of the work.

The best Drift alternatives for B2B teams

The tools below are listed by type of need, not ranked. Each description comes from the vendor's own site, so check the details in a demo.

1mind: the successor Salesloft recommends

1mind sells AI "Superhumans": photorealistic AI sales agents that answer product questions, qualify visitors and give live demos on your website, then schedule meetings or hand the conversation to a person. Salesloft names it as the recommended solution for Drift chatbot functionality.

Good fit if you want the path Salesloft endorses and an agent that can demo the product. Ask how the migration from Drift works in practice and what the agent can do without a rep.

Qualified: AI SDR for Salesforce-centric teams

Qualified sells Piper, an AI SDR agent that engages inbound buyers on the website, in the inbox and through meeting scheduling. Its site puts Salesforce first, with integrations for HubSpot, Marketo and Eloqua.

Good fit for marketing teams that ran Drift on top of Salesforce and want the closest equivalent in scope. It is an enterprise product, so expect a sales process and an implementation project.

Chili Piper: scheduling and routing first

Chili Piper started with scheduling and routing. Form Concierge turns form fills into booked meetings with the right rep, Distro routes records to their owner, and Chat AI qualifies, routes and books from the website.

Good fit if Drift's main value was getting the meeting on the right calendar. If your forms already convert well, adding instant booking behind them may recover more meetings than a new chatbot.

HubSpot chatbot builder: the default for HubSpot users

HubSpot's chatbot builder lets you qualify leads, book meetings and answer support questions with chatbot sequences built without code. You can start free, with premium features on paid plans.

Good fit if your CRM is HubSpot and your Drift playbooks were simple question trees. The flows are rule-based, so expect to write them by hand.

Intercom Fin: support first, sales as an extension

Fin is Intercom's AI agent. It is built first for customer service, and a "Fin for Sales" offer handles inbound sales conversations.

Good fit if you used Drift for both support and sales and want one agent for the two. If your only goal is pipeline, compare it with tools designed for sales teams.

Nudge: an AI agent trained on your website

A newer category answers visitors with an AI agent instead of a scripted playbook. Nudge is one of them: its Website agent is trained on your site and your documents, answers while the visitor is reading, cites the page each answer comes from, and books the meeting in the conversation, without a form. It installs on WordPress, Webflow, Framer or Shopify, or through Google Tag Manager.

Here is the kind of exchange it is built for. A visitor on a pricing page asks: "Can I add a second region later?" The agent answers from the pricing page, links to it, then asks whether the visitor wants to talk it through with sales and offers two slots.

Good fit for teams that want to replace Drift's playbooks with answers based on their own content. If a native Salesforce integration is a hard requirement today, start with Qualified or Chili Piper.

How to choose a Drift alternative

Five questions narrow the list quickly:

• What booked your meetings? If it was a two-question playbook on the pricing page, almost any tool can rebuild it. If it was account-based routing across 40 reps, routing depth matters more than the bot.
• Which system is your source of truth? Salesforce teams have more options with deep native routing. HubSpot teams should test HubSpot's own tools first.
• Scripted flows or AI answers? Scripted playbooks are predictable but break on any question you did not plan. AI agents handle open questions, so check that every answer is grounded in your content.
• Who maintains it? A tool that needs a full-time admin is a cost. Ask who updated your Drift playbooks last year, and whether that person will own the new tool.
• What is a meeting worth? Put the number on paper before you compare prices. Our ROI calculator for website conversations helps you estimate what extra meetings from chat are worth.

Shortlist two tools, not five. Ask each vendor to rebuild your best Drift playbook during the trial.

How to migrate off Drift before January 31, 2027

The widget stops after January 31, 2027, but nobody should migrate in the last week of January. A calm plan takes six to eight weeks:

1. Export. Download conversations, contacts and reports you want to keep. After May 1, 2027, Salesloft deletes the remaining data.
2. Revoke access. Remove Drift from your CRM, email and calendar integrations, and rotate any credential Drift could reach. Google's advice after the 2025 breach was to treat every token connected to Drift as potentially compromised.
3. Rebuild the flows that worked. Start with the playbooks that booked meetings, on the pages that generated them. Leave the rest behind.
4. Run both side by side. Put the new tool on a few key pages for two to four weeks and compare conversations started and meetings booked.
5. Switch off Drift. Remove the Drift script from your site and your tag manager, then check that no page still loads it.

Tell your sales team before the switch. Reps notice quickly when meetings stop arriving the way they used to.

How Nudge handles a Drift replacement

Nudge replaces the part of Drift that talked to visitors and booked meetings, without playbooks to maintain. The Website agent is trained on your site and documents, so it answers the questions your Drift bot could not, and each answer cites the page it comes from. When the visitor is ready, it books the meeting in the conversation, without a form. If a visitor leaves and comes back without writing, the Outreach agent can follow up, and the Handoff agent prepares the meeting for the closer with what the prospect asked and the objection already raised. Installation takes a script on WordPress, Webflow, Framer or Shopify, or a tag in Google Tag Manager, so you can run it next to Drift during the transition. See how the Website agent works, or ask it a question on our site.