7 Best and Affordable Customer Engagement Tools to Look For

Customer engagement has grown to be a key aspect in retaining customers, and at the center of it all are customer engagement tools. 

With the customer acquisition costs increasing by 40%, retaining customers has become more crucial than ever. Through proper engagement you can keep your customers happy and satisfied. And satisfied customers have no reason to switch brands.

Keeping this in mind, we have collated a list of seven affordable customer engagement tools with the starting price under $50. We will be discussing each tool separately, going through how they help with engagement, their customer reviews, integrations and more. 

Here are some jump links you can use to reach the section you are seeking. 

• Selection criteria of the tools
• 7 Affordable customer engagement tools
• How to choose the right tool? 

We know time is of the essence, so here is a quick overview of the affordable tools.

A Quick Overview of the Best Customer Engagement Tools

Before jumping into the list we prepared, here’s a quick overview of the tools we collated. 

Selection Criteria for Customer Engagement Tools

Though we have given importance to cost-effectiveness, that alone wouldn’t make a tool worthy. Therefore, we have considered the following factors into consideration while handpicking the tools for the listicle. 

Have a look at them!

Suggested Read: 11 Key customer engagement metrics to keep track of.

Top 7 Affordable Customer Engagement Tools

Now that we have cleared out how we chose the tools, let’s dive into each of them in detail. 

1. SurveySparrow

G2 Rating: 4.4 (1900+ reviews)

Best for: Customer feedback collection and analysis

Starting Price: $19 per month (billed annually)

SurveySparrow, while a survey tool, can be a great platform to help engage with your customers or clients. It allows you to automate feedback surveys at crucial touchpoints, engaging and understanding them at the same time.

Its advanced AI analytics can unearth precise customer sentiments and hidden behavioral patterns among your customers. Leveraging these, you can optimize or implement tailored engagement strategies.

Furthermore, its omnichannel distribution and reputation management can come in handy. You can reach out to where your customers are and engage with them there.

Key Integrations: Salesforce, PowerBI, Productboard, Google Sheets, GA4, HubSpot.

Features that Help With Customer Engagement

• Customizable conversational surveys and forms
• Real-time feedback management
• Multichannel distribution (over 10 channels including WhatsApp)
• Multilingual support
• Reputation management
• Customer satisfaction metrics

What Customers Say About SurveySparrow

"I appreciate the ease of use and the design of the surveys. The forms are responsive, they look good on many devices. So many solutions on the market have very outdated graphic design, so that's something really unique - and it increases the response rate." - G2 Profile.

The tool offers a free forever plan and a 14-day free trial as well. So, if you are interested in understanding how it can help with engaging your customers or users, sign up to have a look.

2. Mixpanel

G2 Rating: 4.6 (1000+ reviews)

Best for: Customer journey analytics

Starting Price: $28 per month (billed annually)

Mixpanel is a user engagement tool that has a specific focus on product analytics. As a result, it's ideal for those who want to improve their product experience. One key feature that helps with customer engagement is event tracking.

It monitors user interactions within a product in real-time, allowing you to clearly understand how they interact.

Another feature that helps with user engagement is funnel analysis. It helps you understand how the users are progressing down the sales funnel. you can find areas where users are leaving or experiencing friction, and optimize them for better engagement and experience.

Key Integrations: Google Cloud, Productboard, Convert, CallRail, MailModo.

Features that Help With Customer Engagement

• Cohort analysis
• User retention metrics
• Retrospective data analysis
• A/B testing
• Real-time analytics

What Customers Say About Mixpanel

"I find Mixpanel a very intuitive and scalable product experience. It can be used as simply or as complex as the use case sees fit. This makes it a relatively low barrier for usage." - G2 Profile.

3. Twilio

G2 Rating: 4.2 (400+ reviews)

Best for: Push notifications

Starting Price: Pay for only what you use

Twilio offers a customer engagement platform that offers a range of push notifications. This includes everything from SMS and voice to Voice and Web push notifications. This omnichannel reach allows you to interact with customers on their preferred channels.

The tool also allows for the personalization of customer interactions on a high. This is done by using real-time data and AI-driven insights. Its automation feature can further help you reach out with tailored messages at the right time.

All of these, coupled with the fact that it charges only for what we use, make it a more attractive tool to use. 

Key Integrations: Segment, SendGrid, Zendesk, Zapier.

Features that Help With Customer Engagement

• Data analytics and reporting
• HIPAA Compliance
• LiveSimulcasting
• Custom video player

What Customers Say About Twilio

"We use Twilio for automated WhatsApp notifications that send both prescriptions and medical orders to patients and scheduled appointment reports to doctors from our cloud telehealth platform." - G2 Profile. 

Suggested Read: Top HIPAA Compliant Survey Tools.

4. Productboard

G2 Rating: 4.3 (100+ reviews)

Best for: Product user engagement & roadmapping 

Starting Price: $19 per maker per month (billed annually)

Productboard is actually a product management platform. However, this platform can help you engage with customers throughout the product cycle. It allows you to create a product portal where you can engage your users or customers with product updates, planned features, and so on.

You can also collect feedback from users, learning more about what they are looking for and their expectations. As the saying goes, the more you know about the users, the more you will be able to provide for them.

Key Integrations: Zendesk, Intercom, Microsoft Teams, Zapier, Slack.

Features that Help With Customer Engagement

• Customer journey analytics
• Community forums
• Project monitoring
• Customer workflows
• Prioritization and roadmapping

What Customers Say About Productboard

"The feature of Productboard that I love is how it consolidates customer insights and how it assists us in making the right decisions regarding prioritizing features. It is easy to navigate, and this makes the arrangement of our tasks rather easy to manage." - G2 Profile.

5. Help Scout

G2 Rating: 4.0 (10+ reviews)

Best for: Monitoring customer communication

Starting Price: $22 per user per month (billed annually)

Help Scout provides a suite of tools that helps build stronger relationships with customers. As a result, it's considered an excellent customer engagement platform.

The key feature that supports this claim is the centralization of customer communication. You can manage all customer communication, irrespective of channels, from a single platform.

Your support team will have ready access to past and new communication and can create detailed customer profiles. This way, they will be able to provide the customer with contextual support and personalized experience.

Key Integrations: Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Slack.

Features that Help With Customer Engagement

• Proactive engagement
• Customer feedback collection
• Self-service support
• AI drafts

What Customers Say About Help Scout

"I liked that I could do some automation with the routing of the tickets, and that really helped with the workflow. I also liked that I could automate the waiting for customer process, and if they didn't answer in a set time, we would close the ticket automatically." - G2 Profile.

6. Drip

G2 Rating: 4.2 (400+ reviews)

Best for: Email marketing automation

Starting Price: $39 per month (billed annually)

Drip is an email marketing automation tool. Since emails are one of the best ways to engage and foster customer relationships, this can be considered a good client engagement tool.

It excels in customer segmentation, allowing you to categorize audiences based on their behavior and preferences. As a result, you can run targeted campaigns that actually resonate with customer groups.

As for its automation capabilities, you can create a custom workflow for each customer group. And through automation, you can engage them with the most relevant and useful content.

Key Integrations: Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, Zapier, ActiveCampaign.

Features that Help With Customer Engagement

• Multichannel communication
• Behavioral triggers
• A/B testing
• Lead nurturing

What Customers Say About Drip

"I really like drip because it helps you create customized journeys for all your subscribers based on what they're really looking for without any huddle, super easy to use." - G2 Profile.

7. PushWoosh

G2 Rating: 4.3 (30+ reviews)

Best for: Omnichannel messaging

Starting Price: $49 per month (billed annually)

PushWoosh is a dedicated customer engagement tool you can use. It makes it easier for you to communicate and interact with users across platforms. The key feature that helps with this is omnichannel messaging.

The feature allows you to connect with the target audience through in-app, SMS, email, and WhatsApp. Thus, you can reach out to the customers through their preferred channels.

Another feature that helps with customer engagement is advanced segmentation. You can segment and categorize the customers based on their behavior. This way, you can send out more tailored and personalized messages to specific customer groups.

Key Integrations: Amplitude, AppsFlyer, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Segment, Marketo.

Features that Help With Customer Engagement

• Customer journey builder
• In-app messaging
• Mobile and web push
• Automation and triggered messaging

What Customers Say About Pushwoosh

"Pushwoosh is one of the easiest to use and implement Omni channel customer engagement platforms for campaigns and driving engagement. As compared to other market players, it has the best user interface." - G2 Profile.

How to Choose the Right Customer Engagement Tool?

A common step when choosing anything is deciding on your objective. Ask yourselves what do you want to achieve with the tool. Only, we repeat, only after that should you move to shortlist the tool. 

Once that’s decided, research and understand the features that is required fulfill the objective. For example, if you want to reach a global audience across channels, you will need a tool that supports both multilingual and multichannel distribution features. 

Find out the key features the tool must have and use them to shortlist potential tools. 

Now, the tools you shortlisted will be either of the one - free version, trial, or a demo. If it's a demo, connect with them and get the lay of the tool. If it’s the latter, sign up and test the tool for yourself. 

Depending on the usability and performance, further trim down the list of tools you shortlisted. 

As a final face off - look at which of the tools is affordable. That will be your ideal tool for fostering customer engagement. 

You can start the process with the list we provided. Use the following given form to try out SurveySparrow. They provide a free forever plan and a 14-day free trial as well. So, don’t shy away from trying it out.