Why Go with Drift vs Intercom?

FIRST, WE’D JUST LIKE TO GIVE A QUICK NOD TO THE TEAM AT INTERCOM.

They’ve built a great product to help businesses. And if you’re here because you’re evaluating Drift vs. Intercom, or looking for Intercom alternatives, then you’re already doing the right thing by finding a product that will help you have more conversations with your customers.

So what’s the difference between Drift and Intercom?

Sure there are features and product stuff that’s different between the two companies (which we get into further down this page if you’re interested), the biggest difference is our DNA.

The founding team at Intercom initially built software for developers and designers, while the founding team at Drift has been building sales and marketing software for the last decade and most recently helped build one of the best marketing automation platforms in the world during their time at HubSpot.

So, long story short: if you’re in sales or marketing and looking for a platform built to help you accelerate pipeline, book more sales meetings, and close deals faster – all while delivering an exceptional customer experience – then you’re in the right place. We created Drift and the Revenue Acceleration category for you.

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We needed to integrate our CRM system, which was Salesforce. We looked at trying to do that with Intercom, and it didn't look like Intercom was going to do the job for us. So that was one of the reasons why we turned to Drift — because automation, routing, and integration couldn't be achieved otherwise.

CRAIG PANIGIRIS

Marketing Director at Skedulo

P.S. NEED MORE CONVINCING?

We totally get it. So the rest of this page is for you. We sat down with a few of our top sales reps and our best customer success managers to help write this page and asked each of them:

“Hey if you had to put a page up on our website breaking down the top reasons why people pick Drift vs. Intercom, what would you say?”

They gave us a handful of clear answers that should help you.

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DRIFT HELPS YOU START CONVERSATIONS, NOT AVOID THEM

We built the category of Revenue Acceleration. And (spoiler alert) here’s the #1 rule: Use real-time, personalized conversations with your buyers and customers to accelerate revenue.

Because we know from working with thousands of sales and marketing teams that conversations are the fastest path to revenue. Intercom, however, was actually built to help you avoid conversations. That’s what support chat is supposed to do because it saves your company money. So if you’re hoping to accelerate your revenue, you need Drift.

What's Revenue Acceleration?

DEEP TWO-WAY INTEGRATIONS WITH SALESFORCE, MARKETO, PARDOT, ELOQUA & OUTREACH

Because Drift is built for sales & marketing people, we understand the modern tech stack and built integrations that go beyond just syncing data. With Drift, you can use data from Salesforce, Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua & Outreach to send personalized messages to people when they visit your website, whether they’re an open opportunity in Salesforce or coming to your website for the very first time.

And we go one step further. We sync data from Drift back to those tools, so you can have a full picture of a customer or prospect’s engagement. This makes all of your marketing and sales activities smarter and more effective, so you can see higher ROI even beyond Drift.

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Live Chat

DON’T GET PENALIZED FOR SUCCESS; GET UNLIMITED CONTACTS

Drift gives you unlimited contacts. We want you to focus on having great conversations and growing your business, not worrying about your bill each month and doing crazy things to try and delete contacts like you have to do with Intercom. Intercom’s pricing is set up to penalize you for growing: the more contacts you add, the more you pay them. Yikes. Our pricing is dead simple: you’ll know exactly what your bill will be every month and we won’t penalize you for actually doing your job to generate more revenue. We’ve got your back…go out there and engage your customers!

Learn Why

INDUSTRY-LEADING TARGETING AND PERSONALIZATION

Every company can say “send the right message to the right person at the right time.” But with Drift you can take things a step further than Intercom and send the right message to even an anonymous website visitor and greet them with a welcome message based on their company name, industry, and technology they are using (even if it’s the first time they visit your website).

And then there’s Drift Audiences, the only solution that brings together data from across your sales and marketing tech stack to make it actionable. Drift Audiences identifies and reveals who is on your website, and makes it easy to deliver hyper-targeted experiences based on firmographics, demographics, behavioral data, intent, and your target account lists.

Learn More About Drift Audiences

IMPROVE SALES PRODUCTIVITY

As the leading Revenue Acceleration Platform, Drift’s impact goes beyond marketing – it helps sales teams be more effective, too. Enter Drift Prospector. It helps your sales team accelerate revenue by automatically prioritizing their target accounts, centralizing insight on behavior across the buying committee, and giving them direct access to follow up — all from a single interface. And that leads to more revenue, shorter sales cycles, and higher sales productivity.

Crush Quotas

REPORTING BUILT FOR SALES & MARKETING

One of the limitations of Intercom not being built specifically for sales and marketing people is their reporting. Yes, Intercom has A/B testing for email, but it’s tough to compare bots to understand which one is performing better (and you don’t always know where people fall off in your funnel). With Conversation Analysis, you can use it to identify a drop off in conversations, know what your site visitors are asking for so you can create relevant content, and define what a good conversation looks like so you can improve tactics across your sales team and book more meetings.

Proven ROI for Teams

INDUSTRY-LEADING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Grow your revenue without growing your team. With Drift Automation, you can engage every customer on your site in seconds, at any time, day or night. Using conversational AI, Drift answers your website visitors’ questions accurately, gets answers to your qualifying questions, points buyers to relevant content, and even steers them gently toward the outcomes you want – whether that’s reading a piece of content, attending a webinar, speaking to your support team, or scheduling a sales meeting. It’s like cloning your best SDRs, no headcount needed.

AI... for humans!

LEARN WHY 5,000+ CUSTOMERS LOVE DRIFT

WE CREATED DRIFT AND THE REVENUE ACCELERATION CATEGORY FOR YOU.

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