Best Agency.inc Alternatives in 2026 (After the Klaviyo Deal)

On August 5, 2026, Klaviyo announced it is acquiring the team and technology of Agency (agency.inc), an AI-native customer success company. If you run customer success or RevOps and Agency is in your stack, you probably have one question: what happens to the product I depend on? This guide answers that with a clear-eyed read of the deal, a continuity-risk framework you can run this week, and a fair comparison of alternatives — starting with Product Success, BuildBetter's conversation-grounded health and churn analytics for B2B teams. Before any of that: nobody has confirmed Agency is shutting down. This is uncertainty, not a sunset.

The News: Klaviyo Is Acquiring Agency's Team and Technology

Klaviyo (NYSE: KVYO) is acquiring the team and technology of Agency, structured as an acqui-hire rather than a purchase of the ongoing standalone business. The deal covers Agency's proprietary software and related IP.

Here are the confirmed facts as of the August 5, 2026 announcement:

• Structure: A team-and-technology acquisition — Agency's people, software, and IP — not an acquisition of the continuing standalone company.
• Leadership: Elias Torres, Agency co-founder/CEO and Drift co-founder, becomes Klaviyo's Chief Product Officer, leading the agent product line (Composer, Customer Agent) and reporting to co-CEO Andrew Bialecki.
• Timing: The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2026.
• Terms: Financial terms were not disclosed.

The announcement does not address what happens to Agency's existing standalone product or its current customers. That silence is the reason you're reading this. It's a normal thing to leave out of an acqui-hire press release, but it leaves paying customers without a clear answer on continuity.

To be precise: we do not know that Agency is shutting down. There is no confirmed product sunset. What exists is procurement risk — the gap between what the announcement says and what your renewal decision requires. That gap is manageable if you treat it as an assessment problem rather than an emergency.

Why This Creates Uncertainty for B2B Customer Success Teams

The core mismatch is market fit: Klaviyo is a B2C and ecommerce marketing CRM, while Agency served B2B customer success teams. Klaviyo reported over 167,000 customers as of early 2026, overwhelmingly ecommerce and consumer brands. Agency's buyers — CS and RevOps leaders at B2B SaaS companies — sit in a different segment entirely.

That matters because the strategic logic of the deal points inward, not outward. Agency's AI customer success agents are a strong fit for Klaviyo's own agent roadmap — Composer and Customer Agent. Torres taking the CPO seat to lead that roadmap signals where the talent and technology are headed: into Klaviyo's B2C/ecommerce agent ambitions. Continuing to serve Agency's existing B2B CS customers is a separate commitment that the announcement simply doesn't make.

Acqui-hires tend to reallocate engineering and product talent toward the acquirer's priorities. Acqui-hire style deals frequently end with the original product being deprioritized or folded into the acquirer over the following year or two — a common pattern rather than a certainty, and the reason prudent buyers apply extra scrutiny. That's a pattern, not a prophecy — but it's why prudent buyers apply extra scrutiny.

None of this is a knock on Agency or Torres. A team-and-technology acquisition by a public company is a genuinely good outcome for founders and employees. The task for buyers is narrower: figure out what it means for your renewal, your data, and your retention motion — without gloating and without panicking.

What Should You Do Right Now? A Continuity-Risk Framework

Do not panic-switch. Being acquired is not automatically a reason to churn, and a reflexive migration often costs more than staying put. Run this assessment first — a shortlist of alternatives only makes sense after you understand your actual exposure.

Step 1: Read your contract for change-of-control terms

This is the single most important first move — more important than evaluating any alternative. Look for renewal timing, auto-renewal clauses and their notice windows, termination rights, and any change-of-control provision. Change-of-control clauses in SaaS contracts sometimes grant customers specific rights when a vendor is acquired. Know what yours says before you do anything else.

Step 2: Request roadmap commitments in writing

Ask Agency and Klaviyo directly whether the standalone product will continue, and for how long. Get it in writing. Verbal reassurance during an acquisition transition carries little weight — the people giving it may be reassigned within months.

Step 3: Secure a clean data export now

Regardless of what you decide, export your data while access is guaranteed. Confirm the available formats, the completeness (conversations, health scores, account history, notes), the timeline to receive it, and whether you have API access. A complete export preserves your options and keeps historical context from getting trapped.

Step 4: Verify support SLAs

Ask whether support response times and coverage change post-acquisition. A quiet downgrade in support is a common early signal of a product entering maintenance mode.

Step 5: Map your renewal date against the Q3 2026 close

Your real runway is set by your contract, not the deal timeline. If your renewal is 14 months out, you have room to evaluate calmly. If it's next month, your decision window is defined by your auto-renewal notice period. Timing determines everything about how you proceed.

When to Stay Put (Being Acquired Isn't Always a Reason to Leave)

Many acquisitions are fine — the product continues, and sometimes it improves with more resources behind it. Switching customer success tooling has real costs: migration effort, retraining your CS team, potential loss of historical data and health-score history, and rebuilding playbooks and workflows. Those costs are easy to underestimate and expensive to eat.

Stay put if all of these are true:

• You've received written continuity commitments for the standalone product.
• Your renewal is far enough out that you're not forced into a snap decision.
• The tool still meets your needs and support hasn't degraded.

There's a reasonable middle path that most buyers should default to: keep using Agency while you evaluate alternatives in parallel, with a clean data export already in hand. That way you're neither locked in nor forced into a rushed migration. You keep your retention motion running while you calmly assess what else fits.

Reflexive switching often costs more than staying. The pragmatic default is parallel evaluation — stay operational, hold a data export, and move only if the continuity signals tell you to.

Customer acquisition costs typically run 5–7x higher than retention costs, so a gap in your churn-prevention tooling is genuinely expensive. That's an argument for continuity, not for a panicked move. Only when your assessment shows real risk — no written commitments, imminent renewal, degrading support — does an active migration become the right call.

The Best Agency.inc Alternatives in 2026

If your assessment points toward moving, here are the alternatives worth evaluating. We looked at each across the dimensions that matter for a CS/RevOps decision:

• Conversation capture: Does it ground insights in what customers actually said?
• Health scoring: How are account health signals generated?
• Churn prediction: Can it flag at-risk accounts with evidence?
• CSM workflows and playbooks: Task management, success plans, QBR tooling.
• Integrations, pricing model, and best-fit use case.

The most important fork in the decision: do you need a full CSM suite with mature playbook automation, or focused health and churn analytics grounded in customer conversations? Those are different tools for different jobs.

1. Product Success — Conversation-Grounded Health and Churn Signal

Product Success is the closest match to what made Agency distinctive: health scoring and churn prediction grounded in what customers actually said, not only in product telemetry and CRM fields. It's BuildBetter's standalone analytics surface for B2B teams — AI-powered customer health, churn prediction, and product success metrics you can adopt without a full platform rollout.

What it's best at: Product Success captures source conversations — calls, tickets, support threads — and uses them to ground its health scores. Instead of inferring account health from login counts and manually logged CRM fields, it reads the actual signal: the frustrated support thread, the champion who went quiet, the renewal hesitation voiced on a call. Agency's core differentiator was conversation-grounded churn prediction, and Product Success works from the same premise.

Deliverables, not another dashboard: It ships outputs your team acts on — accounts at risk, the evidence behind each score, and recommended follow-ups — rather than one more chart to interpret. That matters for lean teams who don't have a CS ops function to babysit a dashboard.

Who it fits: B2B teams re-evaluating spend mid-contract, teams that valued Agency's conversation-first approach, and operators who want a focused answer fast. Usage-based pricing with unlimited seats is relevant if you're rethinking per-seat costs during a vendor transition.

The ecosystem path: Product Success is part of the broader BuildBetter ecosystem. If you outgrow the standalone analytics surface, you can graduate into the full customer-led platform later without starting over.

Honest limitation: Product Success is not a full CSM workflow suite. If you need mature playbook automation, task management, success-plan tracking, and dedicated QBR tooling, look at Gainsight or Totango below.

2. Gainsight — The Enterprise CS Standard

Gainsight is the reference standard for deep, mature customer success operations. If you run a large CS org with dedicated ops resources, it's the most complete platform on this list.

• Best at: Health scores, playbooks, success plans, and QBR tooling at enterprise depth. Comprehensive workflow automation and reporting.
• Who it fits: Enterprise CS organizations with a CS ops team to configure and maintain it.
• Pricing: Enterprise, quote-based.
• Honest limitation: Heavy to implement and priced for enterprise. It's overkill for lean teams, and time-to-value is measured in months, not weeks.

3. Totango / Catalyst — Flexible Mid-Market Workflows

Totango and Catalyst have merged, combining flexible CS workflows with strong customer segmentation. The result is a platform aimed at capable mid-market teams that want configurable playbooks.

• Best at: Flexible CS workflows and segmentation — you can shape the platform to your specific success motions.
• Who it fits: Strong mid-market teams wanting configurable playbooks without full enterprise weight.
• Pricing: Tiered/quote-based.
• Honest limitation: That configuration flexibility means more setup work upfront. Expect to invest time before you see the payoff.

4. Vitally — Modern CS for Product-Led SaaS

Vitally is a fast-moving, modern CS platform popular with product-led B2B SaaS companies that want quick time-to-value.

• Best at: A clean, modern experience with fast onboarding and solid PLG-friendly health tracking.
• Who it fits: Product-led growth companies that want to be up and running quickly.
• Pricing: Subscription, seat-based tiers.
• Honest limitation: Less deep than Gainsight for complex enterprise success planning and multi-stakeholder QBR workflows.

5. Planhat — Customer Platform for CS, Data, and Revenue

Planhat positions itself as a customer platform that blends CS, data, and revenue workflows in one place, with a strong presence in Europe.

• Best at: Unifying CS, data, and revenue motions for data-driven teams.
• Who it fits: Data-driven organizations that want one platform spanning success and revenue.
• Pricing: Quote-based.
• Honest limitation: The breadth is real, but operationalizing all of it takes investment. You'll get the most from Planhat when you commit to it fully.

6. ChurnZero — Health Scores and CRM-Driven Playbooks

ChurnZero focuses on health scores, playbooks, and CRM-driven customer success workflows built around retention motions.

• Best at: Retention-focused playbooks and health scoring tightly integrated with CRM data.
• Who it fits: Subscription B2B teams whose CS motion centers on renewals and retention.
• Pricing: Quote-based.
• Honest limitation: ChurnZero was acquired by SaaS Labs in 2024. Apply the same continuity questions you'd apply to any acquired vendor — including the ones in the framework above.

7. Velaris and Custify — Lean and Lighter Options

For smaller teams that want faster setup without enterprise overhead, Velaris and Custify are worth a look.

• Velaris: A newer, AI-forward CS platform aimed at lean teams.
• Custify (and ClientSuccess): Mid-market CS tooling with lighter implementations.
• Who they fit: Smaller teams wanting quick time-to-value and less configuration burden.
• Pricing: Subscription tiers, generally more accessible.
• Honest limitation: Less proven at enterprise scale than Gainsight or Totango. Fine for lean teams; scrutinize carefully if you're planning to scale fast.

Comparison Table: Agency.inc Alternatives at a Glance

The split is clear. Gainsight and Totango/Catalyst are full CSM suites — you adopt them to run comprehensive success operations. Product Success sits on the other side: focused, conversation-grounded analytics that answer "which accounts are at risk and why" without the weight of a full platform. Match the tool to the job you actually need done.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Agency.inc shutting down after the Klaviyo acquisition?

Not that we know of. Klaviyo's August 5, 2026 announcement describes a team-and-technology acquisition and does not state that Agency's standalone product is ending. Treat this as procurement uncertainty and continuity risk — not a confirmed sunset. Request written continuity commitments before making any decision.

What happens to my data if Agency winds down?

Request a full data export now, regardless of what ultimately happens. Confirm the available formats, the completeness of the export (conversations, health scores, account history), the timeline to receive it, and whether you have API access. Having a clean export in hand preserves your options.

Should I renew my Agency contract?

It depends on your renewal timing relative to the Q3 2026 close and whether you can obtain written continuity commitments. If your renewal is far out and the product still meets your needs, you may reasonably stay while evaluating alternatives in parallel. If renewal is imminent and no commitments are forthcoming, negotiate a short-term or month-to-month extension rather than a long lock-in.

How long do I have to decide?

The deal is expected to close in Q3 2026, but your real runway is set by your contract terms and renewal date — not the deal timeline. Check your auto-renewal notice window and termination rights first; those define your decision window.

What is Klaviyo doing with Agency's technology?

Elias Torres becomes Klaviyo's Chief Product Officer, leading Klaviyo's agent product line — Composer and Customer Agent. That is a B2C/ecommerce marketing roadmap, distinct from serving Agency's existing B2B customer success buyers. The strategic fit is with Klaviyo's own agent ambitions, not necessarily with continuing Agency's standalone CS product.

What's the best alternative if I do switch?

It depends on your need. For conversation-grounded health and churn analytics that mirror what made Agency distinctive, Product Success is the closest fit. For a full CSM suite with mature playbooks and QBR tooling, Gainsight or Totango/Catalyst are the strongest options.

Bottom Line: Assess First, Then Choose

Run the continuity-risk framework before you shortlist anything. Read your contract for change-of-control and auto-renewal terms, request written roadmap commitments, secure a complete data export, verify your support SLAs, and map your renewal date against the Q3 2026 close. That assessment — not the news headline — tells you how much runway you have and whether you need to move at all.

Staying may well be the right call. Being acquired isn't automatically a reason to churn, and reflexive switching carries real migration and retraining costs. The pragmatic default for most teams is parallel evaluation: keep Agency running while you assess options, with a clean export in hand.

If you do decide to move, match the tool to the job. Need a full CSM platform with deep playbook automation? Gainsight or Totango. Need focused, conversation-grounded health and churn signal that ships evidence-backed deliverables instead of another dashboard? Consider Product Success — with a clear path into the full BuildBetter platform whenever you're ready for it.

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