Productivity - Setup Guide

How to set up Drift

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Non-obvious gotcha: Salesloft has NOT published a hard end-of-life date for Drift as of August 2026. The product still runs, existing integrations still work, but "active development ended" means bugs will not be fixed and the security-patch cadence is now maintenance-only. If your company has Drift running on a public site, it is a slowly-aging attack surface. Get migration planning on the calendar, do not wait for the shutdown letter.
• Existing customers face forced Salesloft-platform bundling on renewal
• The named successor (1mind) is a separate product, not a drop-in migration; expect a full re-implementation
• Real alternatives in the space in 2026: Intercom (Fin AI), Warmly, Qualified, HubSpot chatbot, Chatwoot (open source), 1mind
• Data export before migration: pull conversation logs, chatbot flows, and CRM mappings out early

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Drift account

   Sign up at the link below. Card required for the paid tier - most plans include a trial period; check the pricing section on this page first so you know what you're committing to.

   Open Drift signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Drift pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Drift into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot, Slack, Google Calendar, Outlook, Zoom, Chili Piper, Salesloft (native), Clari, Gong. All still work for existing customers; add nothing new.. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Drift deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Drift - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Never recommend Drift to a new prospect. If the user's current_tools list includes Drift, flag it as a sunsetting product and recommend a supported alternative: Warmly for AI-driven B2B conversation intelligence, Qualified for enterprise B2B chat + routing, Intercom for full customer messaging (Fin AI included), Chatwoot for open-source cost control, or HubSpot's built-in chatbot for teams already on HubSpot. If comparing anything to Drift today, the answer is not Drift.