Best Qualified Alternatives in 2026: What the Salesforce Acquisition Means for Your Sales Stack

The Big News: In December 2025, Salesforce announced a definitive agreement to acquire Qualified — and if you're not running Salesforce as your CRM, you should probably start shopping around.

Let's be clear upfront: Qualified is an excellent product. Their AI SDR "Piper" is genuinely impressive, handling everything from website conversations to meeting booking to multi-channel follow-up. Companies like Asana, Box, and Demandbase have seen serious results with it.

But here's the thing most "alternatives" articles won't tell you: the Salesforce acquisition isn't just a logo change. It's a fundamental strategic shift that makes Qualified a worse choice for a significant chunk of the market.

Why the Salesforce Acquisition Changes Everything

Qualified was already Salesforce-native from day one. The founders are Salesforce alumni who previously sold two companies to the Salesforce ecosystem. As Jason Lemkin noted after running both Qualified and Salesforce's Agentforce simultaneously at SaaStr, the deep Salesforce integration is what makes Qualified's real-time context so powerful — the AI already knows who you are, what company you're from, and whether your colleague attended their event last year.

That's magic if you're on Salesforce. It's completely useless if you're on HubSpot, Pipedrive, or anything else.

The acquisition doubles down on this bet. Salesforce isn't buying Qualified to make it CRM-agnostic. They're buying it to accelerate Agentforce adoption and lock more customers into the Salesforce ecosystem. The writing is on the wall.

The Real Barriers to Qualified (Beyond CRM Lock-in)

Even if you are a Salesforce shop, there are a few things the marketing doesn't emphasize:

Enterprise pricing: Qualified starts at $40,000/year and commonly reaches $60-100k for full implementations. This isn't SMB-friendly, and the acquisition is unlikely to make it cheaper.

Implementation complexity: Despite being "easier than Agentforce," you still need to configure topics, ground it in Data Cloud, set up guardrails, and train the AI. SaaStr mentioned they worried about needing a "Salesforce admin to make it work." Most companies running a lean sales team don't have a dedicated Salesforce admin.

AI-first, human-second: Qualified's flagship is Piper, the AI SDR. That's great for volume and 24/7 coverage, but some buyers — especially in high-consideration B2B sales — want to talk to a human when they're ready to buy, not navigate another chatbot.

The Alternatives Landscape

Not every tool in this space does the same thing. Let me break them down by actual use case:

Human-First Live Engagement

These tools prioritize getting real humans into conversations when buyer intent is highest.

Captiwate

Best for: Teams who want human sales conversations, not AI chatbots

Captiwate takes a fundamentally different position in this market. While Qualified bet big on Piper (their AI SDR), Captiwate believes that for conversations that really matter, you need to put humans first.

The platform combines live video chat, screen sharing, visitor identification, and scheduling in one widget. The setup is simple: add a JavaScript snippet, configure your workflows, and you're live. No Forward Deployed Engineers required.

Key differences from Qualified:

• CRM flexibility: Works with HubSpot and Pipedrive, not just Salesforce
• Free tier available: Test with up to 1,000 visitors before committing
• Pricing: $999/month for the full platform vs. $3,500+/month for Qualified
• Philosophy: Human-led sales with AI support, not AI-led sales with human backup

Best for: Mid-market B2B companies who want to engage high-intent visitors with real salespeople, not bots. Particularly strong if you're on HubSpot or Pipedrive and were looking at Qualified before realizing it's Salesforce-only.

Learn more about Captiwate vs. Qualified →

Rep.ai

Best for: Teams wanting both AI and human video chat options

Rep.ai (formerly ServiceBell) offers a hybrid approach with both AI-powered video avatars and human live chat. Their "Human + AI Live Chat" product lets you detect target accounts, route them to the right rep, and engage via video, voice, or text.

Pricing: Starts at $2,000/month for the human live chat product; AI features require a custom quote.

Standout features:

• AI video avatars that can have face-to-face conversations
• Company detection and intent signals from CRM and third-party data
• Live feed showing who's on your site right now

Considerations: The AI video chat is impressive tech, but can feel uncanny for some prospects. The human live chat product is solid but priced higher than Captiwate for similar functionality.

AI SDR & Intent Platforms

These are the closest functional equivalents to Qualified — heavy on AI automation and intent data.

Warmly

Best for: Teams wanting AI-powered outbound from website signals

Warmly positions itself as an "AI GTM Platform That Learns Your Business." It identifies visitors, auto-engages via AI-powered chat and email, then routes qualified leads to sales.

Key features:

• Person-level de-anonymization (integrates with RB2B and Vector)
• AI Chat agents and AI Nurture agents
• Signal monitoring across first-party, second-party, and third-party data
• Buying committee identification

How it differs from Qualified: Warmly leans harder into the autonomous AI angle — less "chat widget" and more "AI that runs your inbound motion." If you want humans in the loop, you'll need to configure that intentionally.

Integrations: Works with multiple CRMs, not locked to Salesforce.

6sense

Best for: Enterprise ABM teams with budget for a full revenue intelligence platform

6sense isn't really a Qualified alternative — it's a different category. But it keeps showing up in comparisons because it also does visitor identification and intent-based engagement.

This is a full revenue intelligence platform: intent data, account scoring, predictive analytics, advertising, and AI agents. If your marketing team has a six-figure budget and wants to orchestrate multi-channel ABM campaigns, 6sense is a serious option.

Pricing: Enterprise. If you have to ask, prepare for a long sales cycle.

When to consider it: You need more than chat — you need account identification, intent scoring, programmatic advertising, and AI-powered outbound all in one platform.

When to skip it: You just want to talk to people on your website.

Live Chat & Support Tools

These tools overlap with Qualified's chat functionality but come from a customer support background.

Gist

Best for: SMBs wanting an all-in-one chat, email, and marketing platform

Gist is a "more than live chat" platform that bundles chat, chatbots, email marketing, knowledge base, and meetings into one affordable package. They position themselves as replacing 8+ separate tools.

Key features:

• GistBot for lead qualification and meeting booking
• Team inbox for collaborative customer conversations
• Marketing automation and email
• Event tracking

Pricing: Free tier available; paid plans significantly cheaper than Qualified.

Considerations: Gist is more SMB/marketing-focused. If you need enterprise-grade AI SDR capabilities or deep CRM integration, it's not the right fit. But if you want solid live chat with good automation at a reasonable price, it's worth a look.

Tidio

Best for: E-commerce and SMB customer service

Tidio comes from the customer service world, not sales. Their "Lyro AI Agent" focuses on support automation — answering questions, resolving tickets, and reducing support load.

What it does well:

• 67% resolution rate (highest they've seen in benchmarks)
• 300K+ businesses using it
• Integrations with Shopify, WordPress, Zendesk, etc.
• Resolution rate guarantee (50% or money back)

What it doesn't do: This isn't a sales tool. There's no visitor identification, no intent signals, no CRM sync for sales workflows. If you're looking for a Qualified alternative for selling, look elsewhere.

Intercom (Fin AI)

Best for: Companies wanting a premium AI agent for customer service

Intercom's Fin AI agent is legitimately impressive — they claim it "outperforms every competitor" on resolution rate and have the benchmarks to back it up. It handles voice, email, and chat with seamless handoffs to human agents.

Pricing: $0.99 per resolution (with minimum commitments), or combined with Intercom's helpdesk at $29/seat/month.

Where it fits: Fin is a customer service tool that can also qualify leads, not a sales engagement platform. If you're already on Intercom for support and want AI to handle frontline inquiries, it's excellent. If you want to identify high-intent visitors and get them to sales, you need something else.

Decision Framework: Which Alternative is Right for You?

Choose Captiwate if:

• You're on HubSpot or Pipedrive (or don't want CRM lock-in)
• You believe human conversations convert better than AI chatbots
• You want enterprise-grade features without enterprise pricing
• You need to be live in days, not weeks

Choose Warmly if:

• You want AI to autonomously handle inbound and outbound
• You need person-level de-anonymization
• You're comfortable with AI-first engagement
• Multiple CRM support matters

Choose 6sense if:

• You have enterprise budget and need a full ABM platform
• You want intent data, advertising, and AI agents in one platform
• Your marketing team will actually use the analytics

Choose Rep.ai if:

• You want the option of AI video avatars
• You're willing to pay premium for cutting-edge tech
• You want both human and AI engagement options

Choose Gist or Tidio if:

• You're an SMB with limited budget
• You need chat + support, not sales intelligence
• Simplicity matters more than advanced features

Stay with Qualified if:

• You're all-in on Salesforce and plan to stay there
• You have $40k+ budget and resources to implement
• Piper's AI SDR capabilities are worth the premium
• The Salesforce acquisition is a feature, not a bug

The Bottom Line

The Salesforce acquisition validates Qualified's approach — they built something valuable enough that the world's largest CRM company paid a reported ~$500M for it. But that acquisition also crystallizes who Qualified is (and isn't) for.

If you're running Salesforce, have enterprise budget, and want the most deeply integrated AI SDR on the market, Qualified remains a strong choice.

For everyone else — the HubSpot shops, the Pipedrive teams, the companies who want human conversations over AI chatbots, the startups who can't justify $40k/year for a chat widget — the alternatives have never been better.

The best tool isn't the one with the most features or the biggest acquisition price. It's the one that actually fits how your team sells.

Captiwate is a buyer engagement platform that combines live video, chat, scheduling, and visitor identification. Unlike Qualified, we believe the best sales conversations happen with real humans. Book a demo→