Default vs Chili Piper

Default and Chili Piper answer the same question: a prospect submits a demo request — how fast can you get them on the right rep’s calendar? They solve it from opposite ends. Chili Piper is the inbound-conversion incumbent — a routing-and-scheduling engine with the deepest edge-case rule coverage and a multi-product suite layered on top. Default is the AI-native challenger that folds enrichment and qualification into one workflow engine, so the form-fill itself is enriched and scored before it routes.

Same job, two philosophies: a deep specialist suite versus a lighter, enrichment-first workflow engine.

Where Default wins

• Enrichment is built in, not bolted on. Default runs waterfall enrichment across Clearbit, Apollo, Wiza, and People Data Labs at form submit, so a three-field form resolves to full firmographics before it routes. With Chili Piper you bring your own enrichment provider and wire it in. For teams that want short forms but still route on real firmographic data, Default removes a vendor from the stack.
• AI qualification at submit. Default infers company size, segment, and ICP fit instead of trusting a self-reported dropdown, so junk-fill drops and qualified leads route faster. Chili Piper added AI credits (45,000/year on the entry tier), but its core routing is rules-first, not inference-first.
• One workflow engine, fewer integrations to debug. Forms, enrichment, routing, and scheduling ship in every Default tier. RevOps wires one product instead of stitching together a form tool, an enrichment provider, and a scheduler.
• Lower entry floor for small teams. Default Startup is $750/month plus $45/seat; a 10-rep team lands near $14K/year. Chili Piper’s floor is a flat $15K/year whether or not you fill the 15 included seats.

Where Chili Piper wins

• Routing-rule depth. Round-robin within territory, then segment, then ABM tier, with skip-on-vacation, per-rep daily throttling, and re-route on no-answer — Chili Piper exposes rules that Default’s younger engine doesn’t all reach yet. When the routing logic itself is the bottleneck, this is the reason to pick it.
• The multi-product suite. Chili Piper’s Experiences tier ($42K/year, 30 seats) adds Form Concierge, Chat, and Handoff — a full demand-conversion surface, not just routing and scheduling. Default holds a tighter scope on purpose.
• Integration track record for Marketo, Microsoft, and Zoom shops. Chili Piper integrates Marketo, Microsoft 365, and Zoom natively with years of production hardening. Default leans toward Salesforce, HubSpot, Clay, and Apollo — the modern enrichment stack — and is lighter on the Marketo-and-Microsoft enterprise side.
• Maturity at 200+ reps. Long enterprise deployments, governance controls, and support depth. A large org replacing a router that already works weighs that track record heavily.

Pricing reality

At the small end the two diverge. Default Startup runs $750/month base plus $45/seat for routing-and-scheduling ($20/seat for scheduling-only), so a 10-seat team is about $14K/year — but Startup caps you at one workflow. Chili Piper’s Routing & Scheduling tier starts at a flat $15K/year with 15 seats included, then $45/seat beyond.

At 50 seats the two converge near $30-40K/year: the identical $45 per-seat economics dominate the bill. Default’s Growth base is custom-quoted, while Chili Piper layers 35 extra seats on its $15K floor (about $34K/year before negotiation). The gap only widens if you want the full suite — Chili Piper’s Experiences tier is $42K/year for 30 seats, whereas Default bundles forms and enrichment into its base. Default’s premium enrichment and website-intent data sit behind the custom Growth tier plus a $400/month intent add-on. Multi-year commitments cut Chili Piper 15-40% across two to four years.

Implementation effort

Default targets leads routed within a week of setup (vendor figure), helped by the single workflow engine — but the Startup tier’s one-workflow cap pushes complex orgs to custom Growth pricing as soon as they model more than one motion. Chili Piper takes longer to configure because the rule surface is larger, and the long-term cost is rule-set sprawl: teams stack territory, then segment, then tier, then ABM overrides until nobody owns the logic. Designate a single routing owner and run a quarterly rule audit either way; it bites harder on Chili Piper.

Verdict

• Pick Default when you’re building a fresh inbound stack and want enrichment plus AI qualification in the same product that routes and books; when short forms with real firmographic routing matter; when your data stack is already Clay, Apollo, and HubSpot; or when a sub-15-seat team can’t justify a flat $15K floor.
• Pick Chili Piper when routing complexity is the actual bottleneck (territory plus tier plus ABM plus edge cases); when you want the Experiences suite — forms, chat, handoff — from one vendor; when you run Marketo, Microsoft 365, and Zoom; or when you’re at 200+ reps and need the enterprise track record.
• Pick neither when your motion is a simple round-robin under about 10 reps — Calendly plus HubSpot’s native meeting routing covers it without a platform fee. If routing is the only real need and scheduling is incidental at enterprise scale, LeanData goes deeper on routing alone. RevenueHero and Qualified are the budget and Salesforce-native single-product alternatives worth a look before you commit.

Default pick: in a vacuum, start with Default. The enrichment-and-qualification bundle removes more tools, the entry floor is lower, and setup is faster on a greenfield stack. Move to Chili Piper when your routing rules outgrow Default’s engine or you need the Experiences suite — both are conditions you’ll recognize when you hit them, not guesses you make on day one.