Close more deals and boost reply rates with one of the best sales engagement platforms. Our guide compares the top 7 tools to help you sell smarter.
What is sales engagement?
Sales engagement is “a process that takes place across the entire customer lifecycle and covers all buyer-seller interactions throughout the sales cycle.” It empowers sellers to be more efficient and effective by enabling personalization at scale while eliminating busywork and bottlenecks.
Sales engagement goes beyond prospecting—it’s about facilitating true engagement and building meaningful relationships with customers.
What is a sales engagement platform?
A sales engagement platform integrates with common sales tools like CRMs, email, and calendars. It includes customizable message templates, sequencing, tracking and alerts, polls and surveys, scheduling, and automation capabilities.
These platforms began as tools for SDRs but now benefit AEs, CSMs, and other customer-facing teams.
What are the benefits of a sales engagement platform?
- Time-saving: Consolidates tools in one place, automating manual tasks and eliminating the need to draft repetitive messages
- Greater personalization: Leverages prospect information to customize communications with dynamic fields, GIFs, and video messaging
- Reduced friction: Scheduling tools and surveys minimize back-and-forth and improve response rates
- Workflow automation: Rules and sequences create standardized processes for increased productivity
- Real-time tracking: Identifies who’s reading content and when for precision follow-ups
- Better data and insights: Tracks activity, engagement, and performance while syncing with your CRM
Best sales engagement platforms for sales teams
Mixmax
Mixmax is “plug ‘n’ play” and built for AEs, SDRs, and CSMs without requiring a dedicated administrator. It sits atop Gmail and integrates with Salesforce and LinkedIn, allowing reps to perform essential tasks from their inbox.
Key Features:
- Integrations with Salesforce, Google Calendar, Slack, Zoom, LinkedIn Navigator, and more
- Multi-channel sequences for personalized buyer experiences
- Autocreate synchronizes prospect data to Salesforce
- Rules enable workflow automation
- Unlimited Gmail templates and engagement insights
- Google Calendar integration and one-click meeting scheduling
- In-email polls and surveys increase responses by 20-25%
- Email tracking, reminders, and real-time alerts
- Video messaging
- Smart send optimizes email timing
Typical user: Revenue teams using Gmail and Salesforce in fast-growing companies prioritizing real engagement and personalization at scale.
Customer Reviews: Users highly rate meeting scheduling, tracking, and real-time notifications. Teams appreciate the internal chat sidebar, template sharing, calendar scheduling, and tracking features.
Pricing: $
Free trial: 14 days (also offers a free version)
Ease of Use: Easy
Ease of Setup: Easy
Support: 24/7 support via website ticket or email, with dedicated customer success manager support for advanced customers
Main drawbacks:
- Less effective for lead generation and mass outreach due to emphasis on personalization over volume
- Doesn’t allow sending from multiple email addresses due to anti-spam approach
HubSpot Sales Hub
Although primarily a CRM, Sales Hub offers engagement, automation, customization, and insights features. It integrates with HubSpot Marketing to align Sales and Marketing teams.
Key Features:
- Pipeline management and dashboards
- Email templates and tracking
- Document management and tracking
- Conversation intelligence captures call details
- In-browser call tracking and recording
- Customer data accessible in HubSpot CRM, Gmail, or Outlook
- Meeting scheduler
- Automated email series and follow-up tasks
- Live chat for website engagement
- Branded quotes with configure-price-quote tools
- Sales analytics and reporting
- Sales management playbooks
- Mobile app
Typical user: Sales and marketing teams in small and medium businesses not using Salesforce; natural choice for companies already using HubSpot products.
Customer Reviews: Users rate email marketing, lead management, and contact management highest. They appreciate the ease of learning, calendar scheduling, and customer insights from activity tracking.
Pricing: $$$
Free trial: 14 days
Ease of Use: Easy
Ease of Setup: Easy
Support: 24/7 customer support via email, chat, or phone (depending on plan)
Main drawbacks:
- High price point
- Designed for inbound rather than outbound sales
- Works best when the entire organization adopts HubSpot as their CRM, email, and activity logger
- Teams must use two email platforms: Gmail for communication and HubSpot for campaigns
- Limited email editor and interactive features compared to competitors
- May require an admin for task automation
SalesLoft
Built with prospecting in mind, SalesLoft uses insights and intelligence to facilitate meetings. Third-party integrations enable personalized outreach, performance tracking, and resource delivery. Admins can set custom roles for different team levels.
Key Features:
- Integrations with Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Cadences and workflow automation
- Sales playbooks for new recruits and personalized buyer experiences
- One-click dialer and messenger with CRM sync
- Live sales coaching during calls
- Call recording and logging
- Customizable SMS and email templates with tracking
- Calendar sync and invitation templates
- Cadence, account, individual, and conversation analytics
- Sales-meeting and deal intelligence
Typical user: Mid-market to enterprise SDRs, particularly suited for high-volume prospecting but less relevant for AEs needing personalized two-way communication.
Customer Reviews: Users highly rate email tracking and automation, calendar functions, workflow management, accessible metrics, and cadences for contacting elusive customers.
Pricing: $$$$
Free trial: No
Ease of Use: Medium
Ease of Setup: Hard
Support: Via chat or callback (additional fee)
Main drawbacks:
- Four separate packages for different sales cycle stages make it not an all-in-one solution
- Non-transparent custom pricing with high per-user costs, unsuitable for growing teams
- Salesforce integration issues including missing, duplicated, or incorrectly merged lead data
Outreach.io
Designed to optimize account-based prospecting interactions, Outreach excels at email sequences, marketing alignment, and activity tracking.
Key Features:
- Integrations with Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook, Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo
- Email, SMS, and InMail scheduling
- Customizable, persona-based sequences, workflows, and templates
- AI-driven insights into buyer sentiment, best practices, and performance
- Calendar scheduling
- Integrated dialer with audio/video recording
- Email and social activity tracking
- Deal acceleration tools
- Account engagement status and account-based playbooks
- Conversation intelligence
Typical user: Mid-market to enterprise sales teams, managers, and execs focusing on outbound sales; also suitable for large sales teams.
Customer Reviews: Users like record sharing and email tracking automation. They appreciate how Outreach identifies the right CRM contacts and accounts for targeting key personas, plus how sequences and automation facilitate mass email blasts.
Pricing: $$$$
Free trial: No
Ease of Use: Medium
Ease of Setup: Hard
Support: Via platform ticket
Main drawbacks:
- Non-transparent custom pricing; high cost and tiered support unsuitable for smaller companies
- Advanced features can be daunting for beginners with a steep learning curve
- Setup is cumbersome; some users report a disconnect between demo and reality
- Requires in-platform work rather than CRM or email
- Limited email editor compared to other tools
- Automation isn’t out-of-the-box and may require an admin
Groove
Groove is popular for companies wanting sales reps to work within Salesforce. It enables client account categorization and targeted, multi-channel campaigns based on outreach strategies for specific target companies and decision-makers.
Key Features:
- Built on Salesforce, integrates with LinkedIn
- Tracking and Salesforce sync of calendar, email, meeting, and LinkedIn activity
- Omnibar displays contact records when working with email or InMail
- Templates and flows
- Streamlined workflows and task prioritization based on real-time Salesforce data
- Task assignment and cross-department collaboration
- Auto-dialer desktop app with Salesforce history and notes
- Local presence dialing and callback functionality
- Calendar scheduling with customizable, branded links
- Analytics and reporting by flow, rep, template, and account
Typical user: Customer-facing teams working exclusively out of Salesforce in mid-market companies.
Customer Reviews: Email tracking and automation, CRM integration, and lead prioritization are highly rated. Users find it easy to learn and use; the Flow feature simplifies contacting multiple customers or prospects.
Pricing: $$$
Free trial: No (managed pilot available by request)
Ease of Use: Easy
Ease of Setup: Medium
Support: Via phone or email
Main drawbacks:
- Non-transparent custom pricing
- Limited to Salesforce (not CRM-agnostic)
- Task management can be slow and cumbersome
- Email template creator and editor can be tricky; copy-pasted templates sometimes need manual formatting
- Reporting is more limited and inflexible than competitors (no individual rep CSV exports)
XANT Playbooks
XANT Playbooks leverages AI and ML to prioritize leads through prospect scoring and enable custom plays for different campaigns, segments, and products. A leaderboard motivates reps to increase productivity.
Key Features:
- Buyer intelligence, custom rules, and propensity scores
- Buyer behavior insights and recommendations for relevant contacts
- Smart engagement and personalization recommendations
- LinkedIn, Owler, and Twitter integrations for real-time social media insights
- Auto-enrollment of accounts, leads, contacts, cases, and opportunities into successful plays
- Verified email and phone numbers
- Two-way CRM integration
- Email templates, tracking, and alerts
- Personalized multi-channel cadences
- Workflow and task automation
- Shareable calendar links
- Performance metrics and insights
Typical user: Sales teams in medium to large enterprises managing lead follow-up, prospecting cadences, and administrative task automation using data to predict buyer engagement.
Customer Reviews: Users highly rate lead prioritization, best-time-of-day scheduling, and record sharing. They appreciate intelligent features enabling greater personalization and helping busy reps handle high volume.
Pricing: $$$$
Free trial: 30 days (for companies using Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics with minimum 15 users)
Ease of Use: Easy
Ease of Setup: Medium
Support: Via in-app chat or ticket during support hours; phone for PRIME customers
Main drawbacks:
- High price point with non-transparent custom pricing
- CRM integration could be better
- Users complain of poor call quality and connectivity
- Reportedly buggy, cumbersome, or freezes at times
Yesware
Designed to improve email productivity, Yesware sits atop Gmail, Outlook, and Office 365 inboxes as a Chrome extension or Outlook add-on. It enables reps to track emails and gain insights into email performance and prospect engagement.
Key Features:
- Integrations with Zoom, MS Teams, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Outlook, and Gmail
- Email and Activity Feed instant notifications and real-time insights
- Engagement history and Meetings & Opportunities dashboards
- Multi-channel email campaigns
- Contact import from Salesforce
- Task, reminder, and follow-up automation
- Shareable in-email calendar links
- Customizable, shareable email template library
- Performance and engagement analytics including campaigns, templates, recipients, and reporting
Typical user: Sales teams in small to mid-market companies seeking insights into email tracking.
Customer Reviews: Email tracking and automation, CRM integration, and content management are highly rated. Users appreciate engagement tracking features, shareable templates, and LinkedIn integration.
Pricing: $
Free trial: 14 days
Ease of Use: Easy
Ease of Setup: Easy
Support: Via website ticket or phone during office hours (Eastern Time)
Main drawbacks:
- Fewer integrations than other tools
- Google extension reportedly slows down browsers and is buggy
- Monthly limits on tracking; counts internal emails toward limits unless instructed otherwise
- No option to include attachments or images in email template bodies with mass mailings
- Less granular insights than other tools
How do I evaluate which sales engagement software I need?
Evaluate which platform you need by asking:
- Does it integrate with your current tech stack and will teams be comfortable using it? An expensive solution that doesn’t get adopted wastes money.
- Is it scalable for all your teams? AEs often don’t use tools built for SDRs.
- Is there a free trial to test before committing?
- What customer support is available?
For larger teams (200+ SDRs), prioritize administrative features. For revenue teams (10 SDRs, 20 AEs, 15 CSMs), user adoption is key.
What’s the best sales engagement platform?
The best platform fits your team’s needs, current situation, and budget. It should be easy to implement and use with robust personalization and reporting features. It should integrate with your current tech stack and unite all tools your teams use for streamlined operations.
For fast-growing companies seeking an affordable, user-friendly platform enabling personalization at scale across the entire sales cycle, Mixmax is a strong choice.
For high-powered AI-driven features with adequate budget, XANT Playbooks is worth investigating.
Frequently asked questions about sales engagement tools
Why use a sales engagement platform?
Sales engagement platforms increase productivity and effectiveness among sales professionals, positively impacting revenue generation. They enable personalization at scale, reduce friction, improve deal-closing chances, and deliver actionable insights into what works.
Who should use a sales engagement platform?
Busy sales professionals struggling to fill pipelines, close deals, or manage manual tasks should use these platforms. Companies can implement more scalable engagement strategies enabling their teams to be more efficient.
Which is the best sales engagement platform?
Mixmax is the best sales engagement platform for fast-growing teams looking to serve the whole sales cycle.
What’s the difference between a sales engagement platform and CRM?
A CRM manages prospect and customer interaction data and relationships. A sales engagement platform automates manual processes, facilitates personalized interactions, and provides insights into relationship improvement—features CRMs don’t offer.
Does my business need a sales engagement platform?
Your business needs a sales engagement platform if you want to enhance sales workflows, ensure better data hygiene, link crucial information to save time, and empower teams to achieve better results.
