Best Customer Success Software in 2026

Gainsight is the longest-established specialist in the category and the vendor whose terminology (health scorecards, success plans, digital journeys) much of the market adopted. The company was founded in 2009 and has been led by chief executive Nick Mehta since 2013; Vista Equity Partners invested in it in 2020. Gainsight reports more than 20,000 customers across its products and more than 1,200 employees.

The company has grown by acquisition into a post-sale suite. Aptrinsic, bought in 2018, became Gainsight PX for product analytics and in-app guidance; inSided, bought in 2022, became the Gainsight CC community product; Staircase AI was acquired in 2024 and Skilljar, a customer-education platform, in 2025. The core Gainsight CS product covers Customer 360, playbooks and success plans, health scorecards, surveys, digital journeys, renewal and expansion forecasting and organisational mapping with sponsor tracking, and the company also sells Atlas, an AI renewal service, and an Agent Studio for building on the platform.

Gainsight states on its pricing page that it is a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Success Platforms. The main limitation for smaller buyers is that no prices are published: both CS editions are sold on request, and the Essentials edition is defined around 10 full users, which signals a mid-market and enterprise orientation.

Planhat began as a customer success platform and now positions itself as "a new generation of CRM" that combines sales CRM functions with post-sale account management on one data model. It can run alongside Salesforce or HubSpot with two-way synchronisation, or replace those systems outright. The company operates under the name Planhat Inc. on its current website.

Its pricing page lists CRM capabilities such as pipeline management, lead routing and scoring, email sequencing, deal rooms and forecasting next to customer-platform functions: companies and contacts, project management, automations, dashboards, metrics, documents, custom pages, audit logs and an open API. An AI agent called Pi is marketed as working across renewals, customer success, professional services and sales. Planhat states that it was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for customer success management platforms and in the 2024 IDC MarketScape for worldwide customer success applications; customers named on its home page include Intelerad, FirstUp, Fluxx and DrFirst.

The commercial model is a platform fee plus a minimum number of core users, billed annually and paid upfront in US dollars by default; EUR or GBP billing carries a conversion fee. Unlimited view users are included. The page does not show amounts, and add-ons such as an upgraded AI platform, email marketing and advanced portals are priced separately.

ChurnZero is an independent customer success platform co-founded by chief executive YouMon Tsang and chief technology officer Mark Heys; its board includes members affiliated with JMI Equity, Grotech Ventures and Baird Capital. The company now describes itself as an "AI platform and partner for customer growth".

The product is organised into four groups. Unify covers customer profiles, ChurnScore health scores, segments and a command centre; Automate covers playbooks, journeys, real-time alerts, success plans and templates; Engage covers in-app communications, WalkThroughs, success centres, NPS, CES and CSAT surveys, customer communities and learning management; and Analyze covers account and success insights and a renewal and forecast hub. ChurnZero states that it offers more than 70 native integrations.

Its AI layer includes an assistant named Kit that answers account questions and can flag churn risks, build segments and set up plays, plus AI agents for risk detection and upsell timing; an "AI CSM" and call coaching were marked as coming soon in November 2026. The in-app engagement tools distinguish ChurnZero from platforms that rely on a separate digital-adoption product. The limitation is commercial transparency: the site publishes no pricing page and directs buyers to a demo.

Totango is one of the oldest customer success platforms, with a leadership position built over "more than 15 years", according to the company. In 2024 Totango and Catalyst Software agreed to merge, and Catalyst is now sold as a Totango product. On 10 September 2026 chief executive Keith Frankel announced that Totango had become Odie, positioned as a "customer knowledge engine" for post-sales teams; existing Totango and Catalyst customers keep their contracts, pricing and products for now.

Odie captures knowledge from customer-facing teams through purpose-built agents, runs daily AI analysis of customer data and assembles it into self-updating customer narratives, which an MCP server exposes to other AI agents and tools. An optional Customer Operating System provides a guided workspace on top. The site still offers separate logins for Totango (customer success platform), Catalyst (customer growth platform) and Odie. Customers shown on the Odie site include Carta, Dynatrace, Aircall, Meltwater, Nielsen and Docebo.

Odie prices on two inputs rather than seats or tokens: curation, based on the business units, customers and employees it maintains knowledge for and how often it refreshes, and draw, based on how the knowledge is consumed. The rebrand means buyers are choosing between a mature CS platform and a new product line whose roadmap is still being defined.

Vitally is a customer success platform founded by chief executive Jamie Davidson and chief technology officer Patrick Vatterott. The company is remote-first with staff in the US and London and an office in New York. Customer stories on its site include Mixpanel, Navattic, PartnerStack, Tines, User Interviews and Zapier. It says it is used by more than 500 B2B customer success teams.

Vitally sells three plans defined by operating model rather than by feature tier: Tech-Touch for one-to-many and product-led customer success, Hybrid-Touch for mixed models and High-Touch for one-to-one account management, the last with unlimited full seats. Every plan includes all core features, unlimited automations, unlimited observer seats, single sign-on, the full integration library and unlimited docs, a collaborative document feature that Vitally uses for account plans and meeting notes. After a demo, prospects can test the product in a trial sandbox loaded with their own customer data.

The company publishes implementation statistics of its own: an average go-live of 1.9 months and an estimated return on investment within 8.63 months, both compared with industry averages it does not source. Those figures are vendor-reported. Prices are not shown; each plan uses a request-pricing form.

Service Hub is the customer service product of HubSpot, the CRM vendor. It is primarily help desk software, but its higher tiers add a customer success workspace and health scoring, which makes it a practical option for companies that already run sales and marketing on HubSpot and want post-sale account management on the same records.

Unlike most entries in this list, HubSpot publishes its prices. Service Hub has a free tier for up to two users, a Starter tier at US$20 per seat per month (US$7 when billed annually, as shown on the pricing page), Professional at US$100 per seat per month (US$90 annual) with a one-time US$1,500 onboarding fee, and Enterprise from US$150 per seat per month with a US$3,500 onboarding fee. The pricing page lists the customer success workspace and up to 50 health scores in its retention feature group; buyers should confirm the tier mapping, which in the comparison table appears to start at Professional.

The trade-off is depth. Service Hub's customer success features sit inside a ticketing product rather than a dedicated CS platform, so capabilities such as multi-product renewal forecasting, organisational mapping or in-app product walkthroughs found in specialist tools are not its focus.

ClientSuccess is a customer success platform aimed at SaaS companies with roughly US$5 million to US$500 million in annual recurring revenue, according to its own pricing page. It sells three plans, Startup, Growth and Enterprise, and is unusual in publishing the limits of each: Startup covers up to 500 customers and 10 full licences, Growth up to 5,000 customers and 50 licences, and Enterprise is unlimited.

All plans include a Client 360 dashboard, the integration library, playbooks, health scoring and automations; the number of tracked customer goals rises from one per customer on Startup to three on Growth, and custom dashboards and a customer portal are add-ons on Growth and included on Enterprise. Further add-ons include meeting intelligence, automation and AI, and onboarding portals. ClientSuccess announced the acquisition of Product Signals, a product-feedback tool, on the same page.

Prices themselves are not shown. The company says annual contracts typically receive 15–20% off month-to-month rates, there are no setup or implementation fees, typical implementation takes four to six weeks (eight to twelve for large enterprises), and it describes itself as "typically 30-50% less expensive" than Gainsight, a claim it does not substantiate. There is no self-serve trial; a proof of concept on the buyer's data is offered instead.

Velaris describes itself as an AI-native customer success platform for mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS teams, and it states that it was placed as a Visionary in Gartner's 2025 Magic Quadrant for the category. Rather than tiered plans, it sells a single licence covering five users with unlimited viewers, extended through add-ons.

The licence is organised into four verbs. View covers accounts, contacts and organisations, a Customer 360, three custom objects and an AI account summary; Analyze covers health scores, surveys, reporting dashboards, AI conversation analysis and AI sentiment scores; Orchestrate covers automations and email campaigns; and Execute covers playbooks, success plans and a task manager. Two complementary products are sold alongside: a customer portal for shared onboarding projects and tasks, and Velaris Support, a ticketing and shared-inbox tool with an embedded chat window and an AI support agent.

That combination lets a smaller post-sale team run onboarding, support and account management in one vendor, which few specialist CS platforms offer. The company shows SOC 2, ISMS and GDPR badges. Its limitations are that no price is published and that it is a newer, smaller vendor than the incumbents in this list.

Custify is a customer success platform operated by Custify SRL, a European company that hosts customer data in data centres in Germany. It states compliance with GDPR and ISO 27001 certification, and displays an AICPA SOC 2 badge, which matters to buyers with European data-residency requirements.

The feature set covers the standard CS workflow: a configurable Customer 360 view, segmentation by any metric, lifecycle tracking, health scores, custom alerts by Slack, e-mail or in-app notification, tasks triggered by customer actions, CSM-entered health ratings, automation and playbooks, surveys, a customer portal, dashboards and calculated metrics. CustifyAI adds churn-risk analysis, playbook generation and summaries.

Custify's onboarding is a concierge service, a guided implementation that the company describes as taking four weeks, and it charges no setup fees. It also offers to build a requested integration free of charge if the integration suits its wider customer base. The pricing page reviewed in November 2026 did not display plan amounts, so buyers need to request a quote. Support is in-app and by e-mail, and the company reports a 98% NPS for its own support team.

Catalyst was a New York-based customer success platform popular with venture-backed software companies. In 2024 Catalyst Software and Totango decided to merge, and the Catalyst site now states that "Catalyst is now a Totango product" and redirects buyers to a Totango platform page. Following the September 2026 rename of Totango to Odie, Catalyst remains available as the "customer growth platform" with its own login, and legacy customers keep their contracts, pricing and products.

The Catalyst site lists logos including Yext, Gusto, Canva, Braze and Fivetran under "leading technology companies" without describing them as current customers. It also runs the Catalyst Coaching Corner, a programme of events and a job board for CS leaders and operations staff.

Catalyst is included because it still has an installed base and continues to be supported. For a new purchase, however, its future depends on the combined company's roadmap: the parent's announcement describes Odie as the strategic product and states only that legacy products continue "for now". Feature and pricing details are no longer published on the Catalyst site, and buyers should obtain written commitments on support and migration before signing.

SmartKarrot sells customer success and account management software built around Customer 360, playbooks, health scores, an early-warning system, touchpoint tracking, task management, segmentation and product analytics. Its more recent modules include SmartPlaybooks, SmartKonversations call intelligence, SmartAssist, SmartInsights and SmartOps, which it describes as advanced AI trend analysis.

SmartKarrot is one of few vendors in the category to publish a price. Its Basic plan is listed from US$15,000 per year, marked as a special discounted price, for five users, one SaaS product and two third-party integrations (CRM and e-mail/calendar) with e-mail support. Growth (10 users), Pro (25 users, three products) and Enterprise (custom) are sold through sales, adding a dedicated CSM and further integrations such as financial and ticketing systems. The page notes that plans can be user-based or outcome-based.

The per-product limit is a distinctive constraint: companies with several SaaS products must move to Pro or Enterprise. SmartKarrot shows SOC 2 and GDPR badges and publishes API documentation and an ROI calculator. The company does not state its headquarters or size on the pages reviewed.

Akita is a lightweight customer success platform aimed at small and growing teams, and it has the lowest published entry price in this list. Its Small Teams plan costs US$49 per month with two integrations, two full-access users and four read-only users; Growing Teams costs US$99 per month with four integrations, four full users, eight read-only users and full API access. Extra integrations or full users are US$29 per month each, and annual prepayment carries a 20% discount.

Plans are month-to-month with no setup or cancellation fees. The Enterprise plan, shown at US$499 per month with a custom quote, adds a dedicated success engineer, onboarding sessions, end-user seminars and custom integration development, and removes the caps of up to 10,000 accounts and contacts on Small Teams and 100,000 on Growing Teams.

Core features include account and contact segments, custom dashboards, task management, a calendar view, tags, e-mail alerts, metric tracking, custom attributes, advanced search and a single customer view, with integrations including Segment and a JavaScript SDK. Support runs Monday to Friday, 9am–9pm GMT, and the interface is available in English and Swedish. The pricing page is inconsistent about trials, advertising a 14-day free trial while its FAQ answers "no".