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A Drift alternative that runs inside WordPress
Drift is a hosted chat service. Sales Igniter Chat is a WordPress plugin: your team answers from wp-admin, the AI agent answers from your own pages, and every conversation stays in your own database.
Drift facts from Drift’s own pages ยท Sources
Salesloft is retiring Drift on 31 January 2027. Access ends then, or at the end of your contract if that comes first, and the Drift chat widget, Drift Email and the Drift API stop working. Salesloft recommends 1Mind for chat and allGood for Drift Email.
What Drift does well
Drift is Salesloft’s conversational marketing product: website chat for B2B sales teams. Salesloft is retiring it.
- Website chats feed buyer signals into Salesloft, so sellers can act on them.
- Until the retirement date, Salesloft keeps your service level and support unchanged.
- Your Drift data can be exported on request through your account manager or support.
Who it suits
Teams already on Drift through Salesloft, until it retires. Salesloft’s own chat page now says it has "transitioned from Drift to 1mind".
Where Sales Igniter Chat is different: an AI chatbot for your website
- Inside WordPress. A plugin, not a separate service: the inbox opens from wp-admin, and operators are WordPress users.
- Your own database. Conversations, people, email replies and the AI’s index are stored in your WordPress database.
- The AI answers from your own pages, docs and products, shows its sources, and quotes prices only from your store.
- Orders beside the chat. WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads purchases, licences and renewals, read live.
- Email follow-up. A reply the visitor missed goes out by email; their answer lands back in the same chat.
- No per-seat fees, and the AI is billed by your own provider at its token price.
Drift and Sales Igniter Chat, side by side
| Feature | Drift | Sales Igniter Chat |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | A hosted chat widget added to your site as a script; it stops working when Drift retires | A WordPress plugin. The inbox is in wp-admin, in its own full-screen tab |
| Where conversations are stored | Salesloft’s servers. For contracts that run past the retirement, data is kept offline until 30 April 2027 for export requests, then deleted | Your WordPress database (conversations, people, email replies and the AI’s index) |
| How the AI agent is billed | Not published: Salesloft prices Drift through its sales team | Your own AI key, at the provider’s token price, with a monthly budget. No per-chat fee from us |
| WooCommerce and EDD orders beside the chat | Not listed on Salesloft’s Drift pages | Yes: WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads orders, licences and subscriptions, read live |
| Live visitors on a map | Not listed on Salesloft’s Drift pages | Yes, on a map shipped with the plugin (no map service; nothing leaves your site) |
| Email follow-up in the same conversation | Drift Email stops when Drift retires; Salesloft recommends allGood instead | Yes: unread replies go out by email, and email replies come back into the same chat |
| Pricing per seat (operator) | Not published: Salesloft prices Drift through its sales team | No per-seat fees: add every operator as a WordPress user |
What it costs each month
Licence plus AI, for one site. Sales Igniter Chat includes every operator; Drift is priced here for one operator.
| AI chats a month | 500 | 2,000 | 10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Igniter Chat, first year$99 licence ($8.25 a month) + AI on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash with your own key | $10.32 | $16.51 | $49.56 |
| Sales Igniter Chat, from the second year$59 a year ($4.92 a month) + the same AI | $6.98 | $13.18 | $46.23 |
| DriftNo published price | Not published. Salesloft prices Drift through its sales team, and it is being retired, so there is no list price to compare. | ||
| You save with Sales Igniter ChatDrift minus Sales Igniter Chat at the first-year price ($99); from the second year ($59) you save $3 a month more | No public price; Salesloft retires Drift on 31 January 2027 | ||
Our figures: 3 AI replies per chat, about 3,450 tokens in and 285 out per reply (measured on our own site; a small sample), at DeepSeek V4.1 Flash’s list price of $0.30 per million tokens in and $1.20 out. Change the numbers in the cost calculator.
Switching from Drift
Most of it is settings in one place. Your earlier Drift conversations stay in Drift; new ones start in Sales Igniter Chat.
- 1
Install the plugin
Upload Sales Igniter Chat under Plugins, activate it, and enter your licence key. The chat bubble shows straight away.
- 2
Set up the widget
Your colours, greeting and reply time line under Widget, with a live preview. Set office hours and who answers first under Routing and hours.
- 3
Switch on the AI agent
Add your own AI key, choose what the AI may read (help docs, pages, products) and click Re-index now. Ask it questions with Try it first.
- 4
Connect email
Add a mailbox under Settings, Email, so replies a visitor missed go out by email and their answers come back into the chat.
- 5
Invite your team
Give everyone who answers chats the Chat operator role. Each one turns on notifications for their phone and browser.
- 6
Remove Drift
Take Drift’s chat code or plugin off your site, so visitors see one chat bubble.
Questions about Drift alternatives
Can I import my Drift conversations?
No. Sales Igniter Chat doesn’t list an importer for other chat services. Keep Drift for your history, and new conversations start in Sales Igniter Chat.
Where are my conversations stored?
In your own WordPress database, in the plugin’s own tables. When the AI answers, the conversation goes to the AI provider you chose; by default only to hosts that keep no data, and with emails and phone numbers hidden.
Does it work without the AI agent?
Yes. Without an AI key, chats go to the people who are online, and to email when nobody is.
What does the AI cost?
You pay your AI provider directly, at their token price, with no per-chat fee from us. On our own site an AI chat has cost about $0.0019. A monthly budget (US$20 by default) stops AI answers when it’s reached.
How much is Sales Igniter Chat?
US$99 for one site for the first year, then US$59 a year; US$299 for 10 sites, then US$149 a year. Support and updates renew automatically each year and you can cancel at any time. Every operator is included: no per-seat fees. The AI is billed separately by your own AI provider.
Sources
Drift facts come only from Drift’s own pages, listed here; Sales Igniter Chat facts from its documentation. Prices are list prices in US$, billed monthly unless marked otherwise.
Try Sales Igniter Chat next to Drift
Put the chat on your own WordPress site and see the inbox, the AI agent and the widget answer your visitors.
