Customerly vs Drift: The Better Alternative for Conversational Support

Why Consider a Drift Alternative?

Drift is a recognized leader in conversational marketing and sales, offering AI-driven chat and engagement for B2B companies. Yet, as digital customer support evolves, many businesses are searching for alternatives that deliver more value, simplicity, and automation—without the prohibitive costs or complexity that can slow teams down.

Common pain points with Drift include its high price point (starting at $2,500/month for core features), limited access to its most powerful AI tools (reserved for enterprise plans), and missing features such as email marketing automation, knowledge base, and customer feedback surveys. Many teams also report a steep learning curve, notification issues, and chat management challenges that hinder day-to-day operations and time-to-value.

For modern, growth-oriented businesses, a platform that combines powerful AI, unified communications (chat, email, video), and customer feedback tools is essential for scaling support and driving customer success. Customerly emerges as a compelling Drift alternative by addressing these needs with a more complete, cost-effective, and user-friendly solution.

Switching to Customerly empowers support teams to automate up to 60% of conversations with Aura—the human-like AI assistant—while leveraging integrated surveys, help center, CRM, and marketing automation from a single platform. This not only streamlines operations but delivers measurable ROI, faster onboarding, and increased customer satisfaction at a fraction of Drift’s cost.

Platform Overview

What is Drift?

Drift is a human-centric, AI-powered buyer engagement platform designed to transform the B2B buying process. It listens, understands, and learns from buyers to deliver individualized, human experiences across every touchpoint. Drift helps businesses generate deeper customer relationships, more pipeline, and revenue by providing conversational marketing, sales, and service tools—all with scalable integrations and real-time engagement.

While Drift is best known for its live chat, chatbots, and lead generation features, its advanced AI-powered chatbots and key automation capabilities are only available on Enterprise plans. The platform excels in sales-led organizations seeking to personalize the buying journey, but often comes with a significant learning curve and high minimum investment.

What is Customerly?

Customerly is an AI-powered customer service platform built to automate support, enhance engagement, and drive retention for businesses of any size. Powered by Aura, its next-generation AI assistant, Customerly automates up to 60% of customer conversations with human-like quality. The platform unifies live chat, email marketing automation, video chat, CRM, help center, and customer feedback surveys—empowering teams to deliver exceptional experiences across the entire customer lifecycle.

Customerly stands out for its ease of setup, rapid onboarding, and robust feature set available on all paid plans—without hidden costs or enterprise-only restrictions. Teams benefit from seamless AI-human handoffs, customizable workflows, proactive NPS/CSAT surveys, and actionable analytics, all designed for maximum efficiency and business growth.

Pros and Cons

Analysis: While both platforms are praised for ease of use and useful features, Customerly is repeatedly highlighted for its responsive support and quick onboarding—critical for fast-moving teams. Drift users often cite missing features (notably, no email automation or surveys), notification reliability issues, and a steeper learning curve that can slow adoption. Customerly’s main limitation is fewer third-party integrations, but it compensates with an all-in-one platform that covers more core support needs out of the box.

Feature Comparison

Choosing the right conversational support platform means having the essential tools to automate, engage, and retain customers—without compromise. Here’s how Drift and Customerly stack up where it matters for modern support teams:

Business Value: Customerly provides advanced features like human-like AI chat, email marketing, NPS and CSAT surveys, and a help center—all available on affordable plans. Drift’s most advanced AI capabilities and automation are locked behind Enterprise pricing, and it lacks built-in email automation and feedback survey tools. This means Customerly enables you to centralize customer communication, proactively gather insights, and automate journeys without costly add-ons or complex integrations.

Pricing Analysis

Pricing can be a make-or-break factor for support teams, especially as costs scale with growth. Here’s a direct comparison of how Drift and Customerly pricing structures impact your budget and ROI:

Hidden Costs: Drift’s pricing is designed for mid-market and enterprise clients—with entry-level plans starting at $2,500/month and key AI/chatbot features only on higher tiers. Customerly offers every business access to AI-powered automation and advanced support tools from just €19/seat/month, with transparent per-seat pricing and no mandatory enterprise commitments. With Customerly, there are no surprise fees for AI conversations, unlimited contacts, or feature access as you scale.

User Ratings

Takeaway: Both platforms are highly rated, but Customerly edges ahead in meeting requirements, ease of use, and administration. Teams switching from Drift frequently praise Customerly’s fast setup and responsive customer support, enabling quicker time-to-value and less reliance on complex configurations.

Complete Feature Comparison Table

Migration Benefits

Switching from Drift to Customerly is designed to be seamless and rewarding:

By making the switch, businesses gain a more agile, cost-effective, and feature-rich support platform—empowering support, sales, and success teams to drive bottom-line results with less friction and greater flexibility.