Drip Pricing 2026: Cost by List Size, Trial and Billing

Drip costs $39/mo for up to 2,500 people in 2026, $89/mo at 5,000 and $154/mo at 10,000, on a single plan that includes every feature. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial without a card, and no annual discount: Drip bills monthly, on the highest number of active people your account held during the previous month.

Drip is an ecommerce email and SMS platform that prices by the people it can still message, not by features or seats, so the only decision is which list-size step you land on. The steps are small near the bottom ($10 for each extra 500 people) and wider higher up ($40 or $50 per step). That makes the bill predictable month to month, but a one-month spike in the count is enough to move it.

The prices on this page come from the calculator on Drip's pricing page, read on 26 October 2026, and the billing rules from Drip's help center the same day. Whether the product earns its price against Klaviyo and Omnisend is the job of the Drip review; this page is about the invoice.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 109 email marketing tools as of 25 October 2026, and the median cheapest paid plan across the 28 that publish one is $19/mo, so Drip's entry step costs about twice the category median. Drip's own record sits on Drip on Toolradar, where it is listed as an alternative to 13 other tools; the wider counts are on the email marketing statistics page. Dupple sends MarketingShot and its other newsletters on beehiiv, not on Drip or any rival named here. MarketingShot data: this list has 35,000+ active subscribers as of November 1, 2026, with an open rate of 32%.

At a glance

Active people	Monthly price	Twelve months (our arithmetic)	Email sends	What the step adds
1 to 2,500	$39	$468	Unlimited	Every feature, up to 50 workflows
2,501 to 3,000	$49	$588	Unlimited	Same
4,501 to 5,000	$89	$1,068	Unlimited	Same
5,001 to 6,000	$99	$1,188	Unlimited	Same
9,001 to 10,000	$154	$1,848	Unlimited	Same
12,501 to 15,000	$209	$2,508	Unlimited	Same
17,501 to 20,000	$289	$3,468	Unlimited	Free migration and personalized onboarding, from 17,501 people
27,501 to 30,000	$449	$5,388	Unlimited	Last unlimited-send step
30,001 to 32,500	$489	$5,868	390,000 a month	Send cap starts: 12 times the step ceiling
45,001 to 50,000	$699	$8,388	600,000 a month	Calculator switches from "start trial" to "book a demo"
95,001 to 100,000	$1,199	$14,388	1,200,000 a month	Same
175,001 to 180,000	$1,999	$23,988	2,160,000 a month	Last printed price; above it the page says to talk to Drip

Every price is the monthly rate the calculator prints at that list size, and Drip publishes no other billing term. The year column is twelve times that rate, our arithmetic, and it only holds if the list stays inside the step for all twelve months.

How does Drip's pricing work?

Drip sells one plan, and the price is a function of two counts: active people and emails sent in the month. Up to 30,000 people, sends are unlimited, so the people count is the whole bill. Above the entry step the calculator climbs in steps of 500 people at $10 each, then 1,000 people at $10 to $15, then 2,500 people at $15 to $40, and past 40,000 people in steps of 5,000 at $40 to $50. A growing store therefore sees frequent small increases early and rarer, larger ones later.

An "active person" is anyone in the account Drip can still email. Deleting people or moving them to inactive lowers the count, and Drip's help center recommends regular pruning for that reason. If you run several stores under one subscription, the bill uses the total across all of them.

The high-watermark rule

Drip charges each month for the previous month's peak, not for the count on the invoice date. The help center calls this a high-watermark system: the highest active-people count and the highest send volume during the billing period set the step for the next invoice. Prune 500 people on the last day of the month and you still pay the step those 500 pushed you into; the lower step applies one cycle later.

The same rule runs in both directions. Exceed a step and the account upgrades itself to the cheapest step that fits, with an email notice you can set to daily or weekly. Shrink the list and the downgrade happens for the following cycle, without a call to support. Drip's terms add that a price change applies from the billing cycle after you are notified, so a mid-cycle increase cannot hit a current invoice.

What is included at every list size?

The feature list does not change with the step, which is the point of a single-plan model. Each step includes dynamic segments, onsite campaigns (popups and forms), a visual email builder, revenue reporting, the Drip MCP connection for Claude or ChatGPT at no extra charge, open API access, unlimited sub-accounts and one-click integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and more than 90 other apps.

Two things are gated. Every account is capped at 50 workflows, on the smallest list and the largest alike, so a store that runs separate automations per product line or per market can hit the ceiling long before it hits a list-size step. And free migration plus personalized onboarding appear on the calculator only from 17,501 people, so a mid-sized store moving from Klaviyo does the import itself. The pricing page separately offers a migration call to anyone, so ask before assuming.

Support is the same at every size in 2026: email and live chat, Monday to Friday, with a median chat reply the page puts under two minutes. That is a change from earlier years, covered below.

Does Drip have a free plan or a free trial?

No free plan. The 14-day trial needs no card and opens every feature except unlimited sending: the trial has an email send limit, and the help center says you are prompted for a card when you reach it or when the 14 days end, whichever comes first. The account then pauses, with forms and campaigns stopped, until a card is on file.

The trial also sets your first step. Drip's billing article says the plan type after the trial is based on the highest number of active people the account held during the trial, so importing a full 6,000-person list to test segments puts the first invoice on the 5,001-to-6,000 step even if you only meant to try a few hundred of them. Import a sample first.

If you want the next change to this ladder in your inbox, MarketingShot's weekday brief tracks what marketing tools cost; the signup sits at the end of this page.

Does Drip offer an annual discount?

No. The pricing page prints only a monthly price, the terms say subscriptions renew automatically for terms equal to the initial one, and the help center's billing article, updated in August 2024, describes annual billing as a legacy option: an account still on it can switch to monthly by emailing support, and the switch is irreversible. A new account in 2026 cannot buy a year up front, so there is no prepay discount to model, and the twelve-month figures on this page are plain multiples of the monthly rate.

Cancellation follows from monthly billing. You can cancel in Settings at any time and keep access to the end of the paid period, but the refund policy issues no refund for unused days, and the terms ask for notice at least three business days before the next term starts. Only the account owner can cancel, and cancelling closes every sub-account under the subscription.

How much does Drip cost at 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 people?

Three stores, one plan, our arithmetic on the calculator's monthly rates:

• A 2,500-person store pays the entry step, $468 a year, with unlimited sends. Add 100 people and the step becomes $49/mo, so those 100 subscribers cost $120 a year, or $1.20 each.
• A 5,000-person store pays $1,068 a year. It sits on the last $10 step; the next person moves it to $99/mo, and from 5,001 the steps widen to 1,000 people each.
• A 10,000-person store pays $1,848 a year, about 1.5 cents per person per month. The next step, $169/mo, covers 10,001 to 12,500, so the store has 2,500 people of headroom before another increase.

Per person, the plan is flattest in the middle: 1.56 cents at 2,500, 1.78 cents at 5,000 (the top of the small-step zone), 1.54 cents at 10,000, 1.45 cents at 20,000 and 1.20 cents at 100,000. The 5,000 figure is the one to watch, because a store between 2,500 and 5,000 pays the most per subscriber of any size.

What happens above 30,000 people?

Sends stop being unlimited. From 30,001 people the calculator prints a monthly send allowance equal to twelve times the step ceiling: 390,000 emails for the 30,001 to 32,500 step, 600,000 at 50,000 people, 1,200,000 at 100,000. A store that mails every subscriber more than twelve times a month, which a daily sender does, moves to a higher step on volume even when the list has not grown. The billing article confirms it: on high-volume plans, exceeding the send limit auto-upgrades the subscription to the next step that fits.

At 50,000 people the calculator also replaces the trial button with a demo request, and past 180,000 people it prints no price at all. Expect a sales conversation at those sizes rather than a self-serve checkout.

How much does Drip SMS cost?

SMS is a separate usage tier, billed on the same high-watermark rule, and it is available only to US customers. The SMS billing article, updated 14 October 2026, lists tiers from $39/mo for up to 1,500 SMS subscribers and 3,500 message segments, $99/mo for 3,000 subscribers and 8,000 segments, $249/mo for 7,000 and 20,000, up to $1,899/mo for 48,000 subscribers and 180,000 segments. Carrier fees and a dedicated sending number are included.

Segments are the unit: a text-only message of 160 characters or less is one segment, one emoji drops the segment size to 70 characters, and an MMS with an image counts as three segments regardless of length. A 2,500-person store that texts 1,500 opted-in subscribers twice a month, with a plain 160-character message, uses 3,000 segments and stays on the entry SMS tier, so email plus SMS comes to $78/mo at that size. The SMS marketing cost guide covers the per-message economics across vendors.

Drip vs Omnisend, Mailchimp and Klaviyo

Omnisend is the direct comparison because it prices the same way, by contacts, with a published monthly ladder. Its regular monthly prices below were read on Omnisend's pricing page on 26 October 2026, ignoring the 30% three-month prepay offer it shows first.

Active people	Drip	Omnisend Standard	Omnisend Pro
2,500	$39	$44	$59
5,000	$89	$81	$90
10,000	$154	$132	$150
20,000	$289	$265	$375
30,000	$449	$338	$497
50,000	$699	$413	$715

Drip is cheaper only at the entry step. From 5,000 people Omnisend Standard undercuts it at every size, and by 30,000 people the gap is $111/mo, or $1,332 a year. Standard caps monthly emails (6,000 at 500 contacts, on the page), while Drip's sends are unlimited to 30,000 people, so a store that mails more than a dozen times a month is comparing Drip with Omnisend Pro, where the two are within $20 of each other up to 10,000 people. Omnisend also has a free plan for 250 contacts; the Omnisend review covers what Standard leaves out.

Mailchimp's cards print starting prices at 500 contacts: Essentials from $13/mo, Standard from $20/mo and Premium from $350/mo, each with a 14-day trial, with larger bands priced in its calculator. The Mailchimp pricing breakdown walks the bands. Klaviyo publishes a free plan for 250 profiles and 500 emails a month and prices its Email plan by active-profile band; check the current price on Klaviyo's site, and see the Klaviyo pricing page for how its bands and send multiples work. Stores pricing the whole category at once can start from the best email marketing for ecommerce ranking or the cheaper Klaviyo alternatives list.

Has Drip's price changed?

The ladder has not moved in almost four years. Archived copies of Drip's pricing page from 6 February 2023, 25 January 2024, 2 January 2025 and 11 March 2026 all show the same entry price for up to 2,500 people and the same step sizes and increments as the live calculator.

What did change is support. Each of those archived pages limited live chat to plans of $99/mo and above, with email-only support below. The live page in October 2026 gives email and live chat to every customer, trials included. A store under 5,000 people now gets chat it would not have had a year ago, at the same price.

Who should pay for Drip?

A store on the entry step that sends often is Drip's best case. At that size it is the cheapest of the ecommerce-specific tools compared here with unlimited sends, every feature is open, and the trial costs nothing to run. The same is true, less strongly, for a store that values one invoice with no plan tiers to decode.

A store at 5,000 to 50,000 people that watches cost per subscriber should price Omnisend Standard first, because it is cheaper at every one of those sizes if its send cap fits the calendar. A store that needs more than 50 workflows, wants to prepay a year, or sells outside the US and wants SMS in the same bill is not Drip's buyer in 2026.

Methodology and sources

Every Drip price on this page is the monthly rate printed by the calculator on Drip's pricing page on 26 October 2026, including the send allowances above 30,000 people and the 17,501-person line for migration and onboarding. The high-watermark rule, trial behavior and the legacy status of annual billing come from Drip's help center articles on how the bill is calculated, billing information and cancellation, and the renewal and notice rules from Drip's terms of service. The SMS tiers are the table in the SMS billing article linked above.

Twelve-month totals, per-person rates and the two-vendor gaps are our arithmetic on those printed monthly prices. Omnisend's figures are the regular monthly rates its calculator prints for each contact band; Mailchimp's are the starting prices on Mailchimp's pricing page at 500 contacts. The past prices come from the dated web.archive.org copies linked in the history section, used only for the "before" comparison. The Toolradar counts are from its email marketing data dated 25 October 2026.

Louis Corneloup, founder of Toolradar and Dupple, wrote this page. We run no test lab and give no rating. The ranking method is on how we rate, corrections on the editorial policy, and the author note on about. Re-read the calculator before you approve the card: a step can change between the day we read it and the day you buy.

FAQ

How much does Drip cost per month in 2026?

The entry step covers 1 to 2,500 active people and is the first row of the table above; 5,000 people is the $89 step and 10,000 people the $154 step. All prices are monthly, every feature is included at every size, and the only other charge is the optional SMS tier for US stores. Lists above 180,000 people get a quote instead of a printed price.

Does Drip have a free plan?

No. Drip offers a 14-day trial with no card, with every feature open but a limit on emails sent during the trial. When the trial ends, or the send limit is reached, the account pauses until you add a card, and the first paid step is set by the highest active-people count the account reached during the trial.

Can I pay for Drip annually?

Not as a new customer. Drip bills monthly and its help center describes annual billing as a legacy option that existing accounts can leave but nobody can join. There is no prepay discount, so a year of Drip is twelve monthly invoices at whatever step the list sits on each month.

What counts as an active person in Drip?

Anyone in the account Drip can still email, across every sub-account on the subscription. People you delete or set to inactive drop out of the count, but the invoice uses the highest count reached during the previous billing period, so a cleanup only lowers the bill one cycle later.

Is Drip cheaper than Omnisend?

At 2,500 people, yes: Drip's entry step is $5/mo below Omnisend Standard and $20 below Omnisend Pro. From 5,000 people Omnisend Standard is cheaper at every size in the table, by $8/mo at 5,000 and by $286/mo at 50,000, though Standard caps monthly emails while Drip's sends stay unlimited up to 30,000 people. Omnisend Pro, which also sends unlimited emails, costs within $20 of Drip up to 10,000 people.

Does Drip limit email sends?

Not until 30,000 people. From 30,001 people the monthly allowance is twelve times the step ceiling, 390,000 emails on the first capped step and 600,000 at 50,000 people, and exceeding it moves the account to the next step on its own. Below that line the only usage cap is the 50-workflow limit on every account.

Cite this: MarketingShot, "Drip Pricing 2026: Cost by List Size, Trial and Billing", October 2026.

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