Discover the strengths and weaknesses of Intercom and Drift, two leading customer communication platforms. Find the best solution for your business in 2024.
Drift and Intercom are two popular live chat solutions that provide similar messaging and knowledge base solutions. However, they aren't completely equal. Intercom is an all-in-one tool for customer support, marketing, and sales, while Drift is a more sales-focused tool.
According to stats from Kayako, 52% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that offers live chat support. This proves that implementing a live chat tool on your website is important if you want to tap into the benefits it provides.
We decided to help you understand how Intercom stands versus Drift by comparing key features, pricing, and much more.
What is Intercom?
Intercom is a customer service platform that offers customizable live chat widgets, omnichannel support capabilities, and integrations with multiple apps.
While Intercom is primarily a support solution, it does have add-ons that offer other functionalities such as product tours.
Intercom helps you track/optimize product adoption through its add-ons and third-party integrations
Some of the features of Intercom are Help Desk, AI Chatbot, and Proactive Support — so you can keep costs low, support teams happy, and customers satisfied.
What is Drift?
Drift is known to be the revenue acceleration platform. It is another live chat solution that you can’t miss. The brand claims to be used by 50,000+ businesses who have accelerated their revenue using their customer support tool.
Like Intercom, Drift primarily promotes itself as a chatbot service provider that captures leads and accelerates sales for its customers.
Intercom vs Drift-Comparison Table
| Features | Intercom | Drift |
|---|---|---|
| Live chat | Yes | Yes |
| Access to mobile devices | Yes | Yes |
| Pre-chat & offline form | Yes | No |
| Feedback collection | No | Yes |
| Human handover | No | Yes |
| Email Marketing | Yes | Yes |
Intercom vs Drift Feature Comparison
Key Features of Intercom
- Live chat
- Pre-chat & offline form
- Access to mobile devices
- Email Marketing
- Shared inbox
- Integrates with Mailchimp, Calendly, Google analytics, Salesforce, Pipedrive
Key Features of Drift
- Live chat
- Access to mobile devices
- Human handover
- Feedback collection
- Email Marketing
- Shared inbox
- Integrates with Mailchimp, Salesforce, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign
Intercom vs Drift: Pros and Cons
Intercom Pros and Cons
Pros
- Easy to install
- Rich integration capabilities
- Great for scaling
- Automated messages
- Fully customizable
- User-friendly
Cons
- Too expensive
- Confusing pricing model
- Poor support
- Too much focus on automation features rather than human support.
Drift Pros and Cons
Pros
- Detailed analysis
- Video messaging
- User-friendly
- Chatbot
Cons
- Little customization opportunities
- High pricing
- Missing multilingual support.
Intercom vs Drift Pricing
Intercom Pricing
- Essential Plan: Starts at $39/month.
- Advanced Plan: Starts at $99/month.
- Expert Plan: Starts at $139/month.
- Proactive Support Plus: Starts at $99/month
Drift Pricing
- Premium Plan: Starts at $2500/month.
- Advanced Plan: Contact customer support.
- Enterprise Plan: Contact customer support.
Choosing between Intercom and Drift
To sum everything up, both Intercom and Drift are strikingly advanced all-in-one tools for support, marketing, and a sales cycle. Probably, the most advanced in this niche.
In addition, Drift has all those amazing sales things like calendar integration, conversational landing pages, and account-based marketing. On the other hand, Intercom offers product tours, which is also something both unique and extremely useful for SaaS businesses.
The main challenge with Intercom and Drift is their pricing. If you want to use those advanced features, be prepared to pay a couple of thousands of dollars every month.
What is Distrobird?
Distrobird allows you to manage your entire sales process in one place. It helps you handle your sequences, cloud call center, shared inbox, and form tracking. You can also double up your sales team output with fewer tools within Distrobird.
What Sets Distrobird Apart
Sales and marketing often work hand in hand with one another with the goal to convert prospects to actual customers. Most times, a successful sale is a result of various marketing efforts.
Distrobird provides tools for lead generation, lead nurturing, lead routing, and sales engagement to help you ease the entire process from the beginning to when you close out on the sales.
Distrobird offers a free plan with unlimited users and teams, allowing you to experience its value before upgrading as your business grows.
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