European Alternatives to Drift: Conversational Sales & Marketing
Replace Drift with European conversational marketing platforms that capture leads, qualify prospects, and book meetings—all while keeping your data under EU law.
Written by Kevin Christensen
•7 min read
Drift pioneered the category of conversational marketing—using chatbots and live chat to turn anonymous website visitors into qualified pipeline. Acquired by Salesloft in 2024, Drift's core promise was simple: replace static forms with real-time conversations that capture leads, qualify prospects, and book meetings instantly.
But Drift is a US company, now part of Salesloft's American sales engagement ecosystem. Every visitor interaction, every lead captured, every conversation transcript flows through US-controlled infrastructure subject to the CLOUD Act and FISA 702. For European businesses running Drift on their websites, this means your prospects' data—company information, contact details, browsing behavior, conversation content—is legally accessible to US authorities.
European platforms now offer the same conversational sales approach: intelligent chatbots that qualify visitors, route hot leads to sales reps in real time, and book meetings automatically. Here are the best options for replacing Drift with a GDPR-compliant alternative.
Top European Alternatives to Drift
These platforms specialise in converting website visitors into customers through intelligent conversations. All operate under European jurisdiction with genuine GDPR compliance.
Why Drift Creates Compliance Risk
Drift's role in your sales funnel makes its compliance issues particularly sensitive.
The Data Drift Captures
Drift sits at the top of your sales funnel, capturing data from prospects who haven't yet become customers. A typical Drift installation collects:
- Visitor IP addresses and geolocation
- Company identification through reverse IP lookup
- Browsing behavior and page history
- Conversation transcripts with personal details
- Email addresses and phone numbers from qualification flows
- Meeting bookings and calendar data
- CRM integration data synced both ways
This is prospect intelligence—data about people who are evaluating your product and sharing information in confidence.
The Salesloft Acquisition Factor
Drift's acquisition by Salesloft in 2024 merged it into a larger US sales engagement platform. Your Drift data now sits within a broader American sales technology ecosystem. This increases the surface area of potential data exposure and adds complexity to understanding where your prospects' data flows within the combined entity.
GDPR Consent Complications
Drift's conversational model often captures data through natural conversation rather than explicit form submissions. Under GDPR, this raises questions about informed consent, data minimisation, and purpose limitation. European alternatives are built with these requirements in mind from the start, offering clearer consent flows and data handling practices.
Pricing After Acquisition
Drift's pricing was already enterprise-focused, often prohibitively expensive for SMBs. Post-acquisition, pricing uncertainty increases. European alternatives generally offer more accessible entry points and predictable costs, making sophisticated conversational marketing available to businesses of all sizes.
Feature Comparison: Drift vs European Alternatives
Visitor Identification and Targeting
Drift: IP-based company identification, behavioral triggers, account-based targeting. Deep intent data integration.
European Alternatives: Giosg provides sophisticated visitor targeting with behavioral triggers and intent detection. LiveChat offers visitor tracking and targeted messaging. Crisp includes visitor identification with proactive engagement rules. All operate within GDPR's consent framework.
Chatbot Qualification
Drift: Custom bot playbooks for lead qualification, meeting booking, and routing. Conversation-driven qualification flows.
European Alternatives: Giosg's AI agents qualify leads and route conversations based on intent. LiveChat's chatbots handle qualification and meeting scheduling. Crisp's bots run qualification playbooks similar to Drift's. Smartsupp's AI assistant qualifies e-commerce shoppers based on browsing patterns.
Meeting Booking
Drift: Integrated calendar booking within chat conversations. Round-robin routing to sales reps.
European Alternatives: LiveChat integrates with calendar tools for in-chat booking. Giosg supports meeting scheduling as part of its conversion flows. Most European alternatives connect to scheduling tools like Cal.com or Calendly through integrations.
Sales Routing
Drift: Account-based routing, territory-based assignment, VIP visitor prioritisation.
European Alternatives: Giosg and LiveChat both offer intelligent routing based on visitor attributes, page visited, and conversation context. Trengo (covered in our European alternatives to Intercom guide) provides advanced routing across all channels.
Conversational Landing Pages
Drift: Dedicated conversational landing pages that replace traditional forms.
European Alternatives: Giosg's interactive forms and visual engagement tools serve a similar purpose, offering richer interactive content than text-only chat. Oct8ne's visual co-viewing creates an immersive product exploration experience that goes beyond what Drift offers.
Analytics and Reporting
Drift: Conversation analytics, pipeline attribution, revenue reporting.
European Alternatives: LiveChat provides detailed conversation analytics and sales tracking. Giosg offers conversion analytics and ROI reporting. All platforms provide the data needed to measure conversational marketing effectiveness.
Migration Considerations
Moving from Drift to a European alternative requires rethinking your conversational strategy, not just swapping tools.
Audit Your Playbooks
Before migrating, document every Drift playbook:
- Which pages trigger which bots
- Qualification questions and routing logic
- Meeting booking flows
- Fallback and offline behavior
This documentation becomes your migration blueprint.
Rebuild Qualification Flows
Recreate your qualification logic in the new platform. Most European tools offer visual bot builders that make this straightforward. Start with your highest-converting playbooks first to maintain pipeline while you migrate the rest.
CRM Integration
Drift's value comes partly from its CRM integration—syncing qualified leads and conversation data. Verify that your European alternative integrates with your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, etc.) and map the data fields carefully to avoid pipeline disruption.
Measure Before and After
Establish baseline metrics before migrating:
- Chat engagement rate
- Lead capture rate
- Meeting booking rate
- Chat-to-pipeline conversion
Compare these against the new platform's performance to validate the switch.
The Broader Compliance Picture
Conversational sales tools sit at a critical point in your revenue infrastructure. If you're evaluating Drift alternatives, consider the adjacent tools:
- Customer messaging: European alternatives to Intercom for post-sale customer engagement
- Help desk: European alternatives to Zendesk for support ticket management
- Team messaging: European alternatives to Slack for internal sales team coordination
- Video meetings: European alternatives to Microsoft Teams for sales calls and demos
A sovereign sales stack means European tools from first touch to closed deal.
Making the Switch
Drift proved that conversations convert better than forms. That insight remains valid—but the implementation doesn't require a US company processing your prospects' data.
European conversational marketing platforms now offer the same intelligent engagement: chatbots that qualify visitors, real-time routing to sales reps, automated meeting booking, and CRM integration. The difference is where your data lives and who can legally access it.
For European businesses, every prospect interaction captured through Drift represents data subject to US surveillance laws. Your future customers deserve better. They deserve conversations protected by European privacy law, handled by companies accountable to European regulators, stored on European infrastructure.
The alternatives are ready. Your prospects' data sovereignty shouldn't wait.
Browse our complete directory of European live chat software to find the right conversational sales platform for your organisation.
