Technology · head to head
Drift vs Hookdeck
Hookdeck
Developer Tools
Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks
- From
- Free
- Free plan
- Yes
The short version
- Only Hookdeck has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: Drift product is being sunset by Salesloft with successor service (1mind) recommended; Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
- They diverge on capability: Drift covers Live chat, Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Drift and Hookdeck actually diverge.
Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Drift
- Live chat
- AI chatbots
- Meeting scheduling
- Email sequences
- Visitor intelligence
- Conversation routing
- Mobile app
- Analytics dashboard
Only in Hookdeck
- Ingest and persist
- Automatic retries
- Filters and fan-out
- Transformations
- Local development CLI
- Rate limiting
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Drift
- Lead qualificationnot Hookdeck
- Meeting bookingnot Hookdeck
- Customer supportnot Hookdeck
- Account-based marketingnot Hookdeck
- Sales accelerationnot Hookdeck
Hookdeck
- A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Drift
- Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Drift
- Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Drift
- Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot Drift
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Drift
- Product is being sunset by Salesloft with successor service (1mind) recommended
- Mandatory bundling within Salesloft increases cost
- No free tier available
- Customer support and knowledge base have been deprioritized
- Limited to enterprise B2B pipeline generation focus
Hookdeck
- Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
- Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
- It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
- The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
- For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.
Pricing, plan by plan
Drift
$2500/monthNo published plan breakdown. See the Drift review.
Hookdeck
Free- DeveloperFree
- Up to ten thousand events per month
- Three-day retention
- One user
- Team$39/month
- Ten thousand events included
- Unlimited users
- Pay as you go metering above the included events
- Growth$499/month
- Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
- Thirty-day retention
- Uptime and latency SLAs
- Enterprise$undefined/year
- Negotiated event volume
- Custom retention
- Dedicated support
Which should you pick?
Choose Hookdeck if
- You need ingest and persist.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
- You also want automatic retries.
Questions people ask
- Is Drift or Hookdeck better?
- Neither clearly leads. Drift starts at $2500/month and Hookdeck at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Drift or Hookdeck?
- Hookdeck has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $2500/month for Drift and Free for Hookdeck.
- Does Drift or Hookdeck run on more platforms?
- Drift runs on Web. Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
- Can I use Hookdeck for free?
- Yes. Hookdeck has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Drift starts at $2500/month.
- What is Drift best used for?
- Drift is most often used for lead qualification, meeting booking, customer support, account-based marketing. Of those, lead qualification and meeting booking are not what Hookdeck is typically brought in for.
- What can Drift do that Hookdeck cannot?
- Drift covers Live chat, AI chatbots, Meeting scheduling, Email sequences. Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Drift: What is the current status of Drift in 2026?
On March 6, 2026, Clari and Salesloft announced the gradual sunset of Drift's conversational marketing solution, with 1mind named as its exclusive AI successor. Drift remains available but its future is limited.
SourceHookdeck: Is there a free plan?
Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.
Drift: How much does Drift cost?
Drift pricing starts around $2,500/month ($30,000/year) for Premium chat-only capabilities, with Enterprise plans exceeding $80,000/year. Drift is bundled within Salesloft and billed annually only.
SourceHookdeck: How is usage counted?
By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.
Drift: What features come with Drift Premium?
Premium plans include live chat widget, custom chatbot flows, meeting scheduling with calendar integration, basic playbooks, email sequences, and standard integrations.
SourceHookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?
Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.
Drift: Does Drift offer a free plan?
No, Drift no longer publicly advertises a free plan as of 2026. All plans require annual billing through Salesloft.
SourceHookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?
Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.
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