Drift vs. Zendesk Chat

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Drift
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Drift is presented as a human-centric, AI-powered buyer engagement platform, a platform that automatically listens, understands and learns from buyers to provide individualized and human experiences at every touchpoint of the buying journey. The platform helps businesses translate conversational data and buyer behavior into deeper customer relationships, and also modernizes the B2B website experience. According to the vendor,…N/A
Zendesk Chat
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) is a live chat tool developed by the Singaporean company also called Zopim, acquired by Zendesk in April 2014.
$11.20
per month
Pricing
DriftZendesk Chat
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Lite
$0
per user
Basic
$14
per user
Advanced
$25
per user
Premium
$55
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DriftZendesk Chat
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsThe pricing above is price per user per month. You will get a discount when you opt for annual payment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DriftZendesk Chat
Considered Both Products
Drift
Chose Drift
I like the visitor engagement with the website, and I can see the engagement is increasing day by day. Previously, it was a major issue, and we struggled a lot to improve it, but Drift did it very flawlessly.
Chose Drift
Drift supplied all we needed at this point in our business. Functionality and pricing were the key drivers in our decision to move forward with Drift.
Chose Drift
Like I mentioned earlier, looking at Drift's UI and how it handles chat requests, it may not fare well as a dedicated support-chat system like Intercom and Zopim.

Of course, their value prop is conversational marketing and lead gen through automatic bot workflows. They're …
Zendesk Chat

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DriftZendesk Chat
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Drift
9.0
1 Ratings
0% above category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Chat history and transcripts9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat reporting9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat and web analytics9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DriftZendesk Chat
Small Businesses
Smith.ai Live Website Chat
Smith.ai Live Website Chat
Score 8.9 out of 10
Gist
Gist
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DriftZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
7.7
(52 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.7
(3 ratings)
8.4
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
DriftZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
Drift
It is recommended for any company; it is a comprehensive tool for teams interested in strengthening business management and improving efficiency. It allows you to automatically schedule support with customers, thus saving a lot of time. Large companies can establish a chat and communication between potential customers, answering their questions quickly; allow you to monitor and track your leads and new leads, to make it fully functional, it has a very affordable value so that it can be used in all companies, it will not affect their economic aspects.
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Zendesk
Zendesk Chat is suited for all the support teams that provide real-time assistance. Like if someone wants to block the debit/credit card, it is a high-priority case that needs real-time assistance. Whereas issues like close my account, and invoice request doesn't need real-time assistance, where Zendesk tickets support will be perfect.
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Pros
Drift
  • Easy to implement - we were up on our site in hours.
  • Increases the volume and quality of buyer conversations - visitors get to value faster and qualify themselves by chatting in.
  • Surfaces relevant experiences and content to people faster based on targeted use cases.
  • Brings your brand to the prospect experience to stand out in the market. For example, our mascot Ollie Llama welcoming visitors on the homepage with funny llama.
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Zendesk
  • Extremely fluid chat interface allows for easy communication.
  • It can be used directly on a website page or as a widget.
  • Allows the end user to translate the chat into their own native language.
  • Notifies you with pending chats via on-screen notifications and sound effects.
Read full review
Cons
Drift
  • Whenever there have been challenges with the product, the team has always been hungry to fix the issues that we raise.
  • In-platform reporting on conversion metrics can be improved. For example, it's not possible to report on business vs non business email capture rate (currently reported by our CSM every week), and to get the most detail about meetings that have been booked, you have to export data and review in Sheets/Excel. Drift responds quickly, and they're already working on this... so by the time you read this review, the reports will probably be fully functional in the platform.
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Zendesk
  • Linking with a telephone, so the agent is only working on 1 channel at a time
  • More simplified way to create and use templates
  • Link users who may have provided us a new/different email from what we have on file for them
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Likelihood to Renew
Drift
No answers on this topic
Zendesk
Due to staffing issues, we have temporarily stopped offering chat as an available channel. We're also interested in the best ways to integrate chat with our FAQs and AI to provide quick responses, either during off-hours or prior to speaking with a live agent. I've also found that reporting is rather limited where some of the interesting and useful data made available and visible during the chat cannot be pulled post-chat; it would be great to pull a high-level report so we can analyze this data.
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Usability
Drift
The customer-facing usability is great, but managing drift from the back end can be challenging at times. This is mainly due to slow loading speeds when it comes to editing or viewing routing. Coupling this with no autosave function, changes are hard to make and can easily be lost.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Drift
The Drift team has been remarkably responsive to me. From support reps available in-app, to my account manager committed to my long-term success, to regular connections and interactions with their leadership team. They have been wholeheartedly committed to answering every question and solving every issue so that we can succeed as a team, and I can succeed as a marketer!
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Zendesk
Getting assistance and/or troubleshooting anything with Zendesk can be quite frustrating. In my years of experience with Zednesk, I have almost never found the answer to my question without going through multiple articles, ultimately getting frustrated and reaching out to our contact for more assistance. So for a consumer, the support is not as relieving as Zendesk Chat is to our customers in getting the questions answered by us.
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Alternatives Considered
Drift
I have used a few different chat platforms, the most popular one being Intercom. They both have some similarities in functionalities and features. I have had more success with Drift and the calendar link/automation. I love the fact that a prospect can easily find my calendar link and book a demo without needing to speak with me.
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Zendesk
I prefer Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) over Talkdesk, as it provides customers with written proof of their conversation and customers are able to rate the conversation once it is done. Also, it's easier to find a previous conversation in Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) than in Talkdesk.
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Return on Investment
Drift
  • Save time by allowing your inbound audience to access what they want immediately through Drift bots.
  • Reducing friction you will increase your inbound audience engagement traffic.
  • With Drift, our company has increased our qualified sales meetings booked more than 3x than when we used forms.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Positive impact - Compared to our old system, this newly updated system provides features and functionality that has increased our agent productivity and provided customer insight like we've never had before. This has resulted in fewer hold times and higher customer satisfaction.
  • Negative impact - Our reporting team still struggles with obtaining the right information from time to time with the chats. This leads to loss of productivity and more resources dedicated to reporting.
  • Positive impact - Due to Zopim's embed, we are able to more successfully place them on the appropriate self-service portals and pages, reaching a larger audience, and being more readily available to answer our client's questions. This has resulted in an increase in our self-service portal usage, driving down the phone and email support channels, which in turn reduces support costs.
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ScreenShots

Drift Screenshots

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Zendesk Chat Screenshots

Screenshot of How Zopim Chat Widget looks on the website.Screenshot of This is how the chat window looks like to your visitorsScreenshot of This is a screenshot of the visitor list.Screenshot of