Migrating from Drift, now Salesloft Chat, to Crisp? This guide helps you rebuild visitor engagement, qualification, routing, and follow-up inside Crisp.

Drift is often used to engage website visitors, qualify leads, and move conversations toward pipeline. Crisp supports those goals too, but brings them into a broader conversation platform where Inbox, contacts, campaigns, workflows, knowledge, and Hugo work together.

This migration guide covers:

• Moving from buyer engagement to a unified conversation platform → what changes conceptually
• How Drift maps to Crisp → the main feature equivalents
• How AI works inside Crisp → how Hugo handles engagement and handoff
• How to migrate step by step → the recommended transition order
• Where to go next → useful resources before launch

Moving from buyer engagement to a unified conversation platform

Drift is designed for conversational marketing and sales engagement. Crisp can support similar inbound and qualification use cases, but it organizes them inside a wider conversation system.

A conversation-first model

In Crisp, conversations are the shared layer for sales, support, and follow-up. The same workspace can be used to engage new visitors, qualify leads, continue sales conversations, support existing customers, and route conversations to the right team.

One place for chat, data, and follow-up

Crisp connects the chatbox, contacts, campaigns, knowledge base, workflows, and Inbox. This makes it easier to move from an initial website conversation to a follow-up action without separating the customer journey into disconnected tools.

AI is part of the same flow

Hugo, the AI Agent, can handle incoming conversations before they reach your team. That means engagement, qualification, routing, and escalation can all happen inside the same conversation flow.

Useful resource: navigate the Hugo interface.

How Drift maps to Crisp

A Drift setup does not disappear when moving to Crisp, but it does change shape. The same goals remain: engage visitors, qualify leads, route conversations, and follow up at the right time.

Conversations vs Drift Chat

Drift is centered around website chat for buyer engagement. In Crisp, website conversations live inside a broader Inbox environment where sales, support, and follow-up can continue from the same place.

This helps a lead conversation stay connected to the rest of the customer journey.

Routing and handoff

In Drift, a key part of the workflow is deciding who receives a conversation once a visitor is qualified. In Crisp, this is handled through routing, assignment, inboxes, and sub-inboxes.

Useful resource: Routing and Assign.

Workflows and Hugo vs playbooks

Drift playbooks and AI flows can be translated into workflows, Hugo routing, and assignment rules. Instead of rebuilding every playbook exactly, focus on the intent behind each flow: qualify, route, collect context, book a next step, or escalate.

Useful resources: start workflows with Hugo routing and integrate Hugo in workflows.

Lead and visitor context

Lead data in Drift can be recreated in Crisp through contacts, custom data, and segments. These values can appear in the conversation sidebar and help your team understand who the visitor is, what is known about them, and how to route the conversation.

Useful resources: segments and custom data.

Inboxes and sub-inboxes

Once a visitor is qualified or escalated, the conversation needs to land somewhere clear. Crisp uses inboxes and sub-inboxes to separate conversations by team, use case, or workflow while keeping the exchange intact.

Useful resource: create sub-inboxes.

How AI works inside Crisp

If you are coming from Drift, you are already familiar with AI handling conversations at the beginning of the journey. In Crisp, Hugo plays that role inside the same conversation system used by your team.

Hugo can act from the first visitor message

When a visitor starts a conversation, Hugo can analyze the request, use available context, answer if possible, and decide whether the conversation should continue with AI, a workflow, or a human handoff.

Start here: Getting started with Hugo AI Agent.

The Automated Inbox keeps AI-handled conversations visible

In many Crisp setups, new conversations are first processed in the Automated Inbox. Hugo can qualify, answer, or route requests before they are passed to a human operator.

Learn more: Automated Inbox: how Hugo handles conversations automatically.

AI handoff stays in the same environment

When Hugo escalates a conversation, the exchange stays inside the Inbox. Operators can review what happened, see the collected context, and continue the conversation from there.

Migration: step by step

The goal is not to copy every Drift playbook step by step. Start by rebuilding the lead engagement and qualification flow that matters most, then refine campaigns, routing, and data over time.

Step 1: Import leads and key data

Start by importing contacts captured in Drift. In Crisp, go to Contacts → Actions → Import Contact Profiles to upload your CSV and map fields such as email, name, segments, custom attributes, company, or lifecycle stage.

Useful resources: import user data, Crisp REST API, and set custom data.

Step 2: Rebuild qualification and routing

Translate your Drift playbooks into Crisp workflows and Hugo routing rules. Focus on the few questions and signals that actually decide where a visitor should go.

A good rebuild starts with:

• Qualification questions → what information you need before handoff
• Stored answers → whether the data should become custom data or a segment
• Routing decisions → which inbox, operator, or workflow should receive the conversation
• Escalation rules → when Hugo should hand over to a human

Useful resources: integrate Hugo in workflows, start workflows with Hugo routing, and routing and assignation.

Step 3: Rebuild follow-up and engagement flows

If Drift was used for follow-ups, outbound messages, or post-qualification engagement, recreate the most important flows through campaigns, workflows, and integrations with your existing tools.

Useful resource: use automated campaigns.

Step 4: Reconnect visitor identity

If your Drift setup identifies visitors across sessions, reproduce that logic with Crisp session continuity and custom user data. This helps conversations stay attached to the right person over time.

Useful resource: restore chat sessions with a token.

Step 5: Manage the transition safely

During the migration, keep the transition simple: keep Drift active while you test, start new conversations in Crisp when ready, and progressively move your team workflow. This prevents lead generation from being disrupted while your new setup is validated.

Most teams start with:

• Lead import → keep key visitor data available
• Qualification workflows → recreate the core sales handoff path
• Routing and Hugo → automate the first layer of handling
• Campaigns and follow-up → rebuild engagement after the first conversation

Ready to make the switch

Switching from Drift to Crisp does not mean giving up visitor engagement, lead qualification, or sales handoff. Those goals remain, but they move into a system that connects conversations, contacts, routing, campaigns, knowledge, and AI more directly.

Start with the workflows that generate the most value, test them with real visitor cases, and expand once the new flow is reliable.

Updated on: 03/05/2026