Drip Pricing: Plans, Hidden Fees & Real Costs (2026)

Email marketing costs can change quickly as subscriber lists grow and feature needs expand.

This review takes a closer look at Drip’s pricing technique, explaining how its pricing plans are structured (beyond the advertised base price), what’s included at each level, and where additional fees may affect the final product’s price.

It’s designed to help ecommerce businesses, marketers, and online sellers understand Drip’s trial terms, subscriber-based billing, and applicable taxes. 

Drip Pricing at Glance

Drip differs from many marketing platforms by using a subscriber-based pricing slider rather than fixed plans, with unlimited emails available up to 32,500 subscribers. After that threshold, monthly sending caps apply (which is admittedly a confusing pricing practice)—beginning at 390,000+ emails and increasing as subscriber count grows.

Drip Monthly Plans & Costs Reviewed

Free Trial Review

While Drip doesn’t offer a free-forever plan, it does provide a 14-day free trial so you can test the platform before making any payments. The trial supports up to 2,500 contacts and 100 email sends, with the trial ending as soon as the limit is reached, nudging you to upgrade to a starter plan. 

During the trial, you can use core Drip workflows and set up actions like connecting your store, importing customer data, and building automations to see how it fits your ecommerce lifecycle campaigns. The main limitation is the short evaluation window—after two weeks, you’ll need to begin the plan-buying process to continue.

Drip’s free trial is best for ecommerce-focused teams and marketers who want to evaluate advanced automation before committing to a paid plan. It suits users who already have a store, an existing contact list, and a clear use case within a short timeframe. 

Headline Pricing ($39/month)

At $39 monthly (lowest price available) for up to 2,500 subscribers, you get everything Drip offers. Visual workflow builder, behavioral triggers, revenue tracking—none of that “upgrade for advanced features” stuff you see elsewhere.

The unlimited email sends are nice for businesses that want to stay in touch without counting messages. Advanced segmentation based on what people bought, what they browsed, how they engage with your emails.

Even at this entry level, you’re getting features other ecommerce email platforms save for higher tiers. Revenue attribution, product recommendations, cart abandonment workflows. Though small business pricing of $39 versus free alternatives means you’re betting the ecommerce focus is worth it.

Growth Pricing ($99-$154/month)

As your list grows to 6,000 or 10,000 people, you’re looking at $89-$154 monthly. Features stay the same — Drip doesn’t play games with consumer perceptions and locking features behind paywalls.

At this price range, the value proposition gets clearer for ecommerce businesses. If Drip’s automation is actually generating extra revenue through better targeting and recovery campaigns, the math works. The revenue tracking helps you see this directly.

The smooth scaling is refreshing — no sudden jumps or being forced to upgrade for features you need. But compared to alternatives offering similar automation for less, the email marketing costs add up quickly.

Advanced Pricing (Custom)

Lists over 180,000 subscribers move to custom pricing. You’re probably looking at significant monthly costs, but you’re also dealing with the complexity of large-scale ecommerce operations.

Enterprise gets you dedicated support, advanced onboarding, maybe custom integrations. But the core platform stays the same — Drip doesn’t create fake “enterprise” versions of features everyone should have.

Most businesses at this scale aren’t comparing basic email tools anymore. They’re weighing Drip against other enterprise ecommerce platforms, and the decision comes down to ROI and fit.

Drip Hidden Fees & Extra Costs

I was honestly a bit surprised by how upfront Drip is with its pricing structure. There are very few hidden charges—most features are clearly included based on subscriber count, and the limits are easy to spot before you commit. Compared to many ecommerce-focused platforms, Drip does a solid job of setting expectations without sneaky add-ons or hidden fees.

That said, there are still a couple of constraints to be aware of. Chat-based customer support is only available starting from the $99/month plan, which can feel restrictive for smaller teams needing that assistance at hand. And if you’re sitting around 32.5k subscribers and want to send more than 12 bulk campaigns per month, you can run into sending limits—especially if your strategy leans heavily on broadcast emails.

Credit where credit is due, some marketing firms advertise a low base price, then layer on extra costs for things like removing branding, unlocking automation, or accessing core features. Drip takes a different approach—it avoids partitioned pricing and includes its main functionality upfront, rather than charging separately for every add-on.

Drip Monthly Pricing by Subscriber Count

Drip Transactional Emails Pricing

Drip handles transactional emails through the same platform as marketing emails, which is actually convenient. Order confirmations, shipping updates, password resets — everything flows through one system using your subscriber count and unlimited sending.

This integrated approach means no separate services are needed, and everything shows up in unified analytics. Your transactional emails get the same deliverability infrastructure and can include dynamic content like marketing emails.

The downside? No separate, cheaper pricing for purely transactional needs. If you only want order confirmations and shipping notifications, you’re paying the full Drip price even though you’re not using the marketing stuff.

Drip SMS Pricing & Costs

*The number of allotted SMS messages within your tier represents the amount of SMS messages you can send to your subscribers before you move up a tier.

Drip still maintains SMS documentation and an SMS feature set, but SMS marketing is not available to new users. In other words, only accounts that previously enabled SMS can continue using it, and new accounts cannot activate SMS at this time. 

For eligible accounts, Drip’s documentation explains that SMS can be activated through the in-app SMS setup flow and requires the Support All People feature to be enabled. SMS pricing is tiered, starting at $39 per month, with exact tiers outlined in the table above. 

In addition, Drip’s SMS functionality is US-only, meaning it isn’t available to businesses operating outside the United States. In practical terms, if SMS is a core requirement and you’re based outside the US—Drip shouldn’t be your first option. Teams that need email and SMS together, or global SMS coverage, should consider alternatives such as Sender, which offers SMS marketing worldwide.

Drip vs Competitors: Which Costs Less?

Drip vs Sender

When comparing Drip and Sender, the key difference comes down to complexity versus accessibility. Drip is designed for ecommerce brands that want to build detailed, behavior-driven automations tied closely to customer actions and revenue. It excels when you need granular control over lifecycle messaging.

Sender, on the other hand, is a true-to-form marketing automation tool. From an all-in-one messaging stack transactional emails, to a sophisticated email A/B testing tool, which allows up to 8 different combinations at once, there’s a lot here to make Drip feel a bit behind times.

For startups and small businesses focused on newsletters, promotions, and advanced workflows (with ready-to-go templates available to save you time), Sender offers similar core email capabilities with a much lower barrier to entry.

Drip vs Mailchimp

Mailchimp remains one of the most widely known email marketing platforms, but its pricing and feature structure often make advanced automation less accessible at lower tiers. Drip takes a more focused approach, prioritizing ecommerce workflows and event-based automation from the start.

While Mailchimp offers stronger design tools and a broader ecosystem of integrations, Drip stands out for merchants who want email campaigns to react dynamically to customer behavior. In practice, Mailchimp suits general-purpose marketing teams, whereas Drip appeals more to ecommerce operators optimizing retention and repeat purchases.

Drip vs Klaviyo

When comparing Drip and Klaviyo, both are built with ecommerce in mind, but they differ in what they prioritize. Klaviyo is known for deep ecommerce data usage and personalization, especially for brands running high-volume promotional calendars and highly targeted segments. It’s often used by teams that want granular audience targeting tied closely to store activity and customer profiles.

Drip takes a more streamlined approach, focusing heavily on lifecycle automation and behavior-based workflows without feeling as heavyweight. For smaller ecommerce teams that want robust automation with less operational complexity, Drip can be easier to manage day to day. 

Is Drip Worth The Price?

After my time with this email marketing platform, I found Drip to be best suited for ecommerce businesses that want advanced, behavior-based email automation tied to customer and revenue data. It works well for online stores using lifecycle campaigns, event triggers, and deep ecommerce integrations like Shopify and WooCommerce.

However, businesses that need full CRM tools or multichannel messaging may find Drip limiting. Platforms like ActiveCampaign or HubSpot are better fits for teams that need sales pipelines, journey mapping, or broader analytics beyond email.

Drip shines in automation depth and ecommerce logic, but its subscribers-based total price and learning curve can be a challenge when mandatory fees increase with growth. Budget-focused startups or early-stage businesses may find Sender a more accessible option for core email marketing.

Drip does not offer a free plan—only a 14-day free trial—and pricing scales by contact count, making it a better fit for ecommerce brands ready to invest early in advanced automation.

Drip Pricing FAQs