9 Best Sales Engagement Tools in 2026 (and the One Company That Owns Two of Them)

The best sales engagement tools in 2026 are harder to shortlist than they were a year ago, and not because of features. Nine products are worth evaluating and only eight companies stand behind them, because Clari owns two of the nine. Five of the nine publish no price at all. Two changed their top-line self-description in the last twelve months, and one changed its domain. This guide checks all nine against what a sales motion actually has to cover and groups them by what each product was attached to before it called itself a platform.

Start with the ownership fact, because it changes a shortlist more than any feature comparison will. Clari acquired Groove in 2023 and still sells it in its own product navigation as "Groove by Clari." Clari's merger with Salesloft closed on December 3, 2025, with Steve Cox as chief executive of the combined company, and Clari's April 14, 2026 release is signed "Clari + Salesloft." Salesloft's homepage and pricing page mention Clari nowhere.

So a buyer who puts Groove and Salesloft on the same evaluation grid, as most comparison posts still do, is running a bake-off between two products from one counterparty. Nobody is hiding it. It is just easy to miss when both sites still read like independent companies.

The short version

• Nine tools, eight companies. Clari owns Groove and Salesloft, and sells both as separate sales engagement products with separate price lists.
• Three of the nine publish a rate card: Apollo, Klenty, and Intempt. Outreach, Salesloft, Gong, Groove, and VanillaSoft publish no dollar figures.
• Reply.io could not be verified. Its pages return an HTTP 403 to automated requests, so nothing about it here was checked the way the rest was.
• outreach.io now 301-redirects to outreach.ai. The homepage leads with "Agentic AI Platform for Revenue Teams."
• Outreach's tiers were renamed Amplify Essentials, Core, Plus, and Pro, and each one is described by an AI credit allocation from 10,000 to 100,000 rather than a price.
• Gong Engage is still called Gong Engage. Gong the company calls itself a Revenue AI OS, and its pricing page states licenses are per user plus a platform fee based on the number of users supported.
• Apollo dropped its Organization tier. The current published plans are Free, Basic at $49 a month, Professional at $99 a month, and Enterprise on request.
• Apollo's Unlimited plans are capped by a Fair Use Policy: 10,000 credits per month for non-paying accounts, and for paying accounts the lesser of dollars paid divided by $0.025 or one million credits a year.
• "Sales engagement tools" returns 210 monthly US searches at a $266.72 CPC. "Apollo io" returns 33,100 at $8.75. Brand demand is 150 times the category demand and costs a thirtieth as much.
• VanillaSoft is a phone-first queue dialer with a Fundraising bundle and no agent claim on its homepage. Included here, flagged as a different purchase.

Nine tools, eight companies: the ownership map

This is the table to check before any feature grid. Column two is who you are actually contracting with. Column three is what the vendor's own site called itself in July 2026, which in three cases is no longer "sales engagement" at all. Column four is the only column that cannot be written aspirationally, because a rate card has to bill correctly.

Two things fall out of reading columns two and four together. One company appears twice, which means a shortlist of five vendors may really be a shortlist of four. And the three largest names in the category by brand search volume are the three that publish nothing, which is not a coincidence: opacity is a function of deal size, not of secrecy.

The category name costs $266 a click and gets 210 searches

Search demand in this category is almost entirely brand demand, and the few people who search the category name are worth an extraordinary amount. Pulled from DataForSEO for the United States in July 2026, the pattern is stark: category-shopping queries are tiny and expensive, brand queries are enormous and cheap.

The $266.72 figure on 210 searches is the interesting one. A click that expensive on a term that small means the people typing it are late-stage buyers with real budget, and every vendor in the category knows it. It also explains why so few of them publish prices: at those acquisition costs, the sales conversation is the product's first real feature. The full breakdown of how GTM tools meter their pricing covers what happens once you get the quote.

Group 1: the sequencers that renamed themselves

Both tools in this group started as multi-step cadence engines and both have moved their top-line description away from sales engagement entirely. Neither publishes a price. Both are the correct answer for a team that needs deep sequence logic, conditional branching, and admin controls across dozens of reps, and both will cost more than the rest of this list.

1. Outreach

Outreach changed its domain. outreach.io now returns a 301 permanent redirect to outreach.ai, and the homepage there leads with "Agentic AI Platform for Revenue Teams" over the line "You didn't hire enough sellers. Now you don't have to." The named surfaces are Outreach MCP, Outreach Omni as a universal conversational agent, Agent Studio, Knowledge, a Meeting Prep Agent, and an AI Topics Explorer.

• Tiers were renamed Amplify Essentials, Amplify Core, Amplify Plus, and Amplify Pro.
• Each tier is described by an AI credit allocation, from 10,000 up to 100,000 credits, with no dollar figure next to any of them.
• The pricing page states "Per user pricing. No platform fees. Support included," which is a direct shot at Gong's platform fee.
• Prospecting, deal management, forecasting, coaching, and account expansion all sit inside the one platform now, not as separate SKUs.

The credit allocation is the change worth negotiating on. When a tier is defined by 10,000 credits instead of a feature list, the question stops being what the platform can do and becomes how many agent actions your team burns in a month, which almost nobody can estimate before they start. Ask for the credit consumption of a single sequenced account, end to end, before signing. The rest of the field is laid out tool by tool in our Outreach.io alternatives guide, and the daily SDR task queue workflow shows what the same prioritization looks like as a rep's actual morning list.

2. Salesloft

Salesloft's homepage now reads "The Predictive Revenue System" with the tagline "Create. Convert. Close." The navigation lists Cadence, Rhythm, Conversation Intelligence, Deals, Analytics, Forecast, Chat Agents, and an Enterprise Data Platform. Cadence is the sales engagement product. Rhythm is the prioritization layer on top of it.

• Owned by Clari. The merger closed December 3, 2025, with Steve Cox as CEO of the combined company.
• Neither the homepage nor the pricing page mentions Clari anywhere.
• Pricing is quote-only. The page says "Packages designed for results" and directs pricing questions to sales.
• Third-party posts quoting $125 to $165 per user are quoting estimates, not a published rate.
• Clari's April 14, 2026 release is signed "Clari + Salesloft," and Steve Cox's title on it is Chief Executive Officer, Clari + Salesloft.

The practical consequence of the merger is that pre-2026 reviews of Salesloft describe a different company, and that Groove is now a sibling product rather than a competitor. If both are on your list, ask one question in the first call: which of the two is the strategic product, and what happens to the other one's roadmap. Our Salesloft alternatives guide covers the switching case, the merger's effect on the wider pipeline category covers how Gartner ended up placing the two halves of one company in two different quadrants, and the free AI sales email generator is a fast way to compare draft quality before you commit to either.

Group 2: sales engagement attached to something else

The three tools here did not start as sequencers. Gong started as a call recorder, Groove started as a Salesforce-native activity capture layer, and Apollo started as a contact database. Each added engagement outward from that origin, and the origin still predicts what the product is genuinely good at and where it thins out.

This is the group where the category label is most misleading, because all three will pass a feature checklist for sales engagement while being bought for something else entirely.

3. Gong Engage

Gong Engage is still the correct product name, which is worth confirming because Gong the company no longer leads with conversation intelligence or sales engagement. It calls itself the "#1 AI OS for Revenue Teams" and uses "Revenue AI OS" throughout. Engage sits in the navigation next to Gong Forecast, Gong Enable, Gong Agents, Gong Revenue Graph, and Gong Collective.

• Engage's own page describes it as the only sales engagement solution that turns customer conversations into personalized outreach and next-best action.
• The parts are AI Composer for drafting from real calls, Flows, AI Tasker, a dialer, Gong Anywhere, and analytics.
• The pricing page publishes no dollar figures. Licenses are priced per user, and there is a platform fee based on the number of users supported.
• The pricing form routes by team size: 1 to 50, 51 to 1,000, 1,001 to 9,999, and 10,000 or more users.

The honest case for Engage is the one thing no pure sequencer can match: the emails are drafted from what was actually said on the call, because the recorder and the sequencer are the same product. The honest case against it is the platform fee, which turns Engage into an add-on economics problem rather than a standalone purchase. If you are not already buying Gong for call analysis, you are not the buyer for Engage. Our conversation intelligence breakdown works through what Gong's repositioning did to that category.

4. Groove by Clari

Groove is Clari's sales engagement product, branded "Groove by Clari" on its own page and filed in Clari's navigation under sales engagement and prospecting, next to Revenue AI Agents, Capture, Inspect, Align, Copilot, Forecast, and Guide. Clari itself sells as "The Predictive Revenue System" and enterprise revenue orchestration.

• Acquired by Clari in 2023 and still actively sold, not renamed or absorbed.
• Built around Gmail, calendar, and CRM integration so reps stop switching apps, with Salesforce as the anchor.
• Ships automated campaigns, playbooks, agent-drafted email, and activity capture.
• The page cites Tenable at 30 percent higher rep productivity, and PopularPays cutting lead response from two days to five minutes with 54 percent more booked meetings.
• No published pricing.

Groove is the strongest option on this list for a Salesforce-first org that wants engagement, activity capture, and forecasting from one vendor, and it is the weakest option for anyone who is not on Salesforce. The awkward part is structural rather than technical: Clari now owns two competing sales engagement products, and the search data suggests which one has the momentum. "Groove sales engagement" returns 40 monthly searches. "Salesloft" returns 22,200.

5. Apollo.io

Apollo leads with "The AI sales platform for smarter, faster revenue growth" and organizes itself around Outbound, Inbound, Data Enrichment, and Deal Execution, plus Apollo Data, an AI Assistant, Apollo MCP, workflow automation, and a Chrome extension. Notably it names no agents, which after reading Outreach and Klenty is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight.

• Published plans are Free at $0, Basic at $49 a month, Professional at $99 a month, and Enterprise on request.
• The Organization tier that older comparisons cite is gone. Anything quoting $119 or $149 for Apollo is out of date.
• The free tier is now called Starter and Apollo describes it as free forever, available indefinitely after a trial ends.
• Unlimited plans are governed by a Fair Use Policy: 10,000 credits per account per month for non-paying accounts, and for paying accounts the lesser of dollars paid divided by $0.025 or one million credits per account per year.
• A record selection limit caps how many leads can be selected in one action, which is what stops bulk export.

Read the Fair Use Policy carefully, because it is the part that decides whether Apollo is cheap for you. "Unlimited" here means metered with a generous ceiling, and the ceiling is expressed as a credit budget derived from what you paid. That is a reasonable design, and it is the opposite of what the word suggests. Apollo remains the best value on this list for a team that needs data and sequencing from one vendor, which is also where it collides with Clay's enrichment model.

Group 3: the ones that still publish a price

Two tools here sit in the price band where a rate card is a competitive weapon rather than a liability. One of them publishes clearly. The other one could not be verified at all, and this guide says so instead of copying a number from somewhere else.

6. Klenty

Klenty still calls itself a sales engagement platform, with no rebrand and no repositioning, and it publishes real numbers. Channels are email, phone through a built-in dialer, SMS, and social. The agent surfaces are named: Agentic Cadences that build a cadence per account, Action AI that generates next actions after a conversation, AI Account Research, an AI Call Coaching Suite, Connect AI for connect rates, and AI Adaptive Roleplays.

• Starter at $50 a month, Growth at $70 per user per month, and Plus at $99 per user per month on annual billing.
• Monthly billing is available, with up to 20 percent savings for paying annually.
• Free trial is 14 days with full feature access, capped at 200 emails to prospects, no credit card required.
• The whole team can join the trial at once with no seat limit during it.

Klenty is the clearest buy in the category for a five-to-30-rep team that wants multi-channel cadence with a dialer and does not want a procurement cycle. The honest limit is depth of admin and reporting against Outreach or Salesloft at scale, and the fact that a 480-search brand footprint means fewer peers to ask about it.

7. Reply.io

Reply.io could not be verified for this guide. Its homepage, pricing page, and product pages all return an HTTP 403 to automated requests, so no claim about its current plans, prices, channels, or agent naming was checked the way every other entry here was. That is worth stating plainly rather than filling the gap with a figure copied from a comparison blog.

• Brand demand is real: "reply io" returns 720 monthly US searches at a $10.20 CPC.
• A human browser reaches the site fine. The block applies to automated requests, so this is not an accusation of hidden pricing.
• Any price you see quoted for Reply.io, including in our own earlier posts, should be confirmed on reply.io directly before it goes in a budget.

Reply belongs on a shortlist for lean teams running email and LinkedIn outbound with an agent handling research and replies, and that positioning has been stable for years. Treat the specifics as unverified until you open the pricing page yourself. Both our Outreach.io alternatives guide and our Salesloft alternatives guide cover Reply in more depth, with the same caveat applied.

Group 4: a different purchase wearing the same label

One tool on this list uses the category label accurately and still belongs to a different market. It earns its place here because it keeps showing up on sales engagement shortlists, and the fastest way to save a buyer three weeks is to explain why it usually should not be on theirs.

8. VanillaSoft

VanillaSoft calls itself "the only all-in-one sales engagement platform with built-in lead management and auto dialer," and the mechanic underneath is queue-based lead routing: the system decides the next-best record and puts the rep on the phone. Email and SMS exist as supporting channels. The homepage makes no AI or agent claim at all, and the only "agents" it mentions are human reps.

• Bundles are Core, Advantage with SmartCaller, Enterprise, Fundraising, and Custom.
• Every bundle includes the first five user seats plus setup, support, and updates. Seats are not sold individually.
• No published dollar figures. Pricing is quote-only through a demo request.
• A dedicated Fundraising bundle for nonprofit calling teams, which no other vendor on this list offers.
• Brand search is 3,600 a month at a $2.97 CPC, more than Klenty and Reply combined and at a third of their cost per click.

The reason it stays on the list with a caveat instead of getting dropped: the buyer is real and underserved. High-volume outbound calling, inside sales, and fundraising teams need routing and dialing more than they need cadence design, and VanillaSoft is built for exactly that. The reason it is not a substitute for the other eight: nothing about queue-based dialing solves a multi-touch email and social sequence, and no agent tooling is on offer if that is what you came for.

Group 5: agentic GTM

The eight tools above all own the touches and read the customer record from somewhere else. An agentic GTM platform owns the profile itself, so the page visit, the sequence, the call, the deal, and the closed dollar all land on one record instead of five. That is a different purchase, and it only pays off when more than one function needs the same context.

This matters in sales engagement specifically because the handoffs are where the motion leaks. Clay enriches. Outreach sequences. Gong records. Apollo dials. Five tools, zero connection from intent to close, and every seam between them is a place a reply goes unanswered.

9. Intempt

Intempt is the agentic GTM platform, and in this comparison that means find, enrich, sequence, call, close, and attribute run on one profile rather than across five contracts. The SDR handles top of funnel, the Account Executive handles the work between meetings, and the GTM Engineer wires the plumbing. You take the meetings and approve the work before it ships. The free quote generator is the fastest way to see output quality on a real deal before running a migration, and it needs a free-plan signup.

• One profile with identity resolution across web, product, Stripe, and HubSpot, so a rep sees campaign engagement and page visits before the first call.
• Multi-channel cadences across email, SMS, LinkedIn, and voice in one sequence, triggered by behavior rather than a list import.
• Native call recording, transcription, and summaries that write back to the deal, so no separate recorder subscription is required.
• Accounts, deals, contacts, and tasks live in the platform, with health scores maintained from engagement rather than from a rep's guess.
• Seven agents in total across the four products, each proposing work you review. Blu is where you direct them.

Pricing

• Free: $0, with usage limits at 100,000 events, 10,000 emails, 1,000 SMS, and 1,000 push, plus 15 weekly credits and 75 bonus credits on signup.
• Professional: $24 per seat per month, or $19.20 on annual billing. 250 credits per seat per month.
• Organization: $49 per seat per month, or $39.20 annual. 600 credits per seat per month, pooled across the team.
• Enterprise: $99 per seat per month, or $79.20 annual. 1,500 credits per seat, plus SSO, SCIM, audit logs, and data residency.
• Seats are the accountable humans. Credits are the agent work those seats spend, which is why the number is published rather than quoted.

The honest limits

Intempt is the wrong buy for a 200-rep org that needs Outreach's admin depth and has the procurement team to run that cycle. It is the wrong buy for a Salesforce-first enterprise where Groove's native capture is the actual requirement. It is the wrong buy for a fundraising phone room, where VanillaSoft's routing is the product. And it is the wrong buy for a team that already owns Gong and wants drafting from call content, because Engage does that better by construction. The design target is a one-to-10-person revenue team that would otherwise reconcile a sequencer, a recorder, and a CRM by hand, which is the same argument as running GTM without hiring for every role.

Decision cheatsheet

Match the group to what you are actually buying, then pick inside it. Picking across groups on price is the most reliable way to end up with a tool that works exactly as advertised and still cannot do the job.

What this list does not claim

1. 1Not that Clari owning Groove and Salesloft is a problem. It is a fact that changes a negotiation, and both products are still sold and supported. The point is that a bake-off between them is not a bake-off.
2. 2Not that quote-only pricing is dishonest. At a $266.72 cost per click on the category term, a sales conversation is a rational default. It does mean every third-party price you read for Outreach, Salesloft, Gong, Groove, or VanillaSoft is somebody's estimate.
3. 3Not that Apollo's Fair Use Policy is a trap. It is published on the pricing page in plain language. It does mean "Unlimited" is a plan name rather than a description.
4. 4Not that VanillaSoft is a worse product. It is a different product, and it is likely the best one on this list for a fundraising phone room.
5. 5Not that Reply.io is hiding anything. A human browser reads its site fine. The 403 to automated requests means this guide could not verify it, which is a limit on the guide, not a verdict on the tool.
6. 6Not that these prices or product names will hold. Two vendors changed their top-line description in the last year, one changed its domain, one dropped a pricing tier, and one merged into its parent. Every figure here is dated July 2026 on purpose.

There is a 30-minute version of this whole evaluation. Write down every handoff between the first signal and the closed deal, count them, then ask each vendor which of those handoffs it owns both sides of. Then ask who owns the vendor. Those two questions will separate this field faster than any feature grid, because the best sales engagement tools are the ones whose ownership boundary matches your handoff map, and Intempt is built for teams who would rather have no handoffs at all.