Drift n8n integrationAutomate Drift with n8n.
The Drift n8n integration puts contact management inside your workflows. The node ships with a single resource, Contact, and 5 operations that create, read, update or delete a record and pull its custom attributes. Drift has no trigger node, so another step starts the run.
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What does the Drift n8n integration actually do?
The Drift n8n integration wires the Drift contact database into workflows you already run in n8n. One node, one resource called Contact, 5 operations: create a contact, read one, update it, delete it, and pull the custom attributes attached to it. n8n carries the authentication and the field mapping, so a Drift record can be built from a form, a spreadsheet row or another tool without writing code.
Contacts created where they actually appear. Signups rarely land in Drift first. They land in a form, a webinar list, a partner file. Drop that source in a workflow, add the Drift node on contact.create, and every new line turns into a Drift contact with its email, and its name and phone when the source carries them. A Google Sheets tab filled by the sales team is enough to feed the whole thing.
A record that stays current. Phone numbers change, people switch companies, and a contact captured months ago drifts away from reality. With contact.get you read the record, with contact.update you push the corrected values back. Run it from the deal owner's update in Pipedrive and the chat side stops showing a stale name.
Cleanups that reach the end. Erasure requests, duplicates, test records from a demo week: contact.delete takes one identifier and removes one record, which makes it easy to loop over a reviewed list rather than clicking through an interface. Post the result in Slack and the person who asked for the cleanup sees it happen.
The node covers the Contact resource. Anything else in the Drift API is reachable through the HTTP Request node, which calls any endpoint of the tool and reuses the same credential through predefined authentication. That is the normal way to extend a dedicated node, not a workaround.
One thing to plan for: Drift has no trigger node in n8n. A workflow around it starts somewhere else, with a Schedule Trigger firing at a fixed interval, with an n8n Webhook called by another service, or with the trigger of another tool. If you want the wider picture on where n8n fits before building this, the n8n review goes through it.
How do you connect Drift to n8n?
- 01
Create and install the Drift app
Authentication starts on the Drift side. Create a Drift account if the team does not have one yet, then create a Drift app and install it to that Drift account. Installing the app is what generates the OAuth access token, and that token is the value n8n will ask for later. Nothing happens in n8n at this stage, so keep the token somewhere safe while you switch tabs.
- 02
Add the credential in n8n
Open the Credentials menu in n8n and pick the Drift credential. Two authentication methods are supported. The API personal access token: paste the token generated by the installed app into the Personal Access Token field. Or OAuth2: run the web flow described in Drift's authentication and scopes documentation. A credential is created once and reused by every workflow that talks to Drift.
- 03
Point the node at a contact
Add the Drift node to a workflow, select the credential from the dropdown, then choose the Contact resource and one of the 5 operations. Fields marked as required block the execution when they are empty, so any operation working on an existing record needs its Contact ID first. Values coming from an earlier step are mapped with an expression, written
{{ $json.field }}.
What can the Drift node do?
The Drift node exposes 5 operations across 1 resources. For each one: the node as you configure it in n8n, the required fields, and our field notes.
Contact
5 operationsCreate a contact
contact.createWhat you see in n8n
Notes & use cases
Adds a contact to Drift from the data flowing into the node, so the record exists on the chat side without anyone retyping it.
Key parameters
- Email: the email of the contact, required, in the
name@email.comshape shown by the placeholder; it usually comes from the previous step through an expression such as{{ $json.field }}. - Additional Fields: an optional collection holding Name and Phone, worth filling when the source already carries them.
Get custom attributes for a contact
contact.getCustomAttributesWhat you see in n8n
Notes & use cases
Drift contacts can carry custom attributes on top of the standard ones. This operation reads them and hands them to the next step. The node asks for nothing else: pick the Contact resource, pick the operation, run it. Whatever comes back is available in the item, and you read it with a generic expression like {{ $json.field }} once you have seen the shape of one execution.
Delete a contact
contact.deleteWhat you see in n8n
Notes & use cases
Takes one contact out of Drift. The operation works on a single record at a time, which fits a loop over a reviewed list far better than a bulk button would.
Key parameters
- Contact ID: the unique identifier for the contact, required. It is rarely typed by hand: it arrives from an earlier step as an expression, written
{{ $json.field }}.
Get a contact
contact.getWhat you see in n8n
Notes & use cases
Reads one Drift contact and passes it on, which is what you want before deciding anything: branch on what the record says, enrich it, or simply check that it still exists.
Key parameters
- Contact ID: the unique identifier for the contact, required. The node expects that identifier, not the person's name or address, so a workflow that only knows an email has to resolve the id first.
Update a contact
contact.updateWhat you see in n8n
Notes & use cases
Writes new values onto a contact that already exists in Drift, instead of creating a second record next to the first one.
Key parameters
- Contact ID: the unique identifier for the contact, required, since the operation needs to know which record it is editing.
- Update Fields: an optional collection with Email, Name and Phone; fill the ones you want to change.
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