Drip Alternatives for SaaS Teams in 2026

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from.

Why SaaS teams leave Drip

Drip's pricing page opens with "Pay for your list size. Not for features you never use." The slider then reads $39 a month for 1 to 2,500 people; $89 for 5,000; $154 for 10,000; $369 for 25,000; and $699 for 50,000, where the button turns into "Book a demo". Email sends are listed as unlimited at the stops up to 30,000 people (the 40,000 and 50,000 readouts show 480,000 and 600,000 sends), so for most of the range the bill tracks how many people sit in your account, not how much you mail them. For a store with a steady repeat-buyer base that is a fair deal. A SaaS product that collects trial signups pays for every address it keeps, including the ones that never activated, and Drip's own page says the cost depends on the "active people" in your account.

There is no permanent free plan, only a 14-day trial with no card. A new product with 800 signups therefore pays $39 from the first month, while Loops (free up to its send cap) and Resend (free at 1,000 marketing contacts) charge nothing at that size. The slider also lists "up to 50 workflows" at the 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 stops. Fifty is plenty for one store, but a product that runs a separate sequence per plan, per persona and per lifecycle stage reaches it sooner than it expects.

The second reason is vocabulary. The page is titled "Drip Ecommerce Marketing Software Pricing". Its included features read "Playbooks already written for you. Welcome series, abandoned cart, win-back", "One-click integrations with your store. Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and 90+ more" and "Revenue traced back to the email that earned it. Not opens and clicks. Orders." A subscription product has no orders to trace revenue to; its revenue events are a plan change, a seat added or a failed invoice. Drip does list Stripe among its integrations and open API access in its included features, so the data can get in, but you are building the SaaS model on top of an ecommerce one rather than starting from it.

The alternatives, one by one

1. Customer.io: the closest replacement when events drive the message

Customer.io is built around people and the things they do. Its pricing page reads Essentials at $100 a month for 5,000 profiles, then $145 for 10,000; $235 for 20,000; $325 for 30,000; and $415 for 40,000, all billed monthly. Essentials includes 1 million emails a month and lists transactional email as included on every plan. Extra profiles cost $0.009 each and extra email costs $0.12 per 1,000. Next to Drip the curve is flatter: at 5,000 people Drip is cheaper ($89 against $100), at 10,000 Customer.io is $9 cheaper, and at 20,000 it is $289 against $235.

The cost is operational. Someone has to decide what a "trial_started" or "teammate_invited" event looks like, send it from the application and keep the names stable. The comparison table also marks managed deliverability as not included on Essentials, and its US and EU data centers are listed. Early-stage companies that have raised under $10M can apply for a free year through its Startup Program, which is worth checking before you compare monthly bills. For a head-to-head with another lifecycle tool, see Customer.io vs Loops.

2. Loops: the lowest bill for a founder-run SaaS

Loops reads free for unlimited contacts, with up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days to your 1,000 newest contacts and a small "Powered by Loops" footer. Paid plans are priced by subscribers on its pricing page: $48 at 4,788; $99 at 9,998; $198 at 24,339; and $249 at 49,989. Transactional sending is included on paid plans at no charge, and there are no seat fees. Set that against Drip's $154 at 10,000 and $369 at 25,000: the gap is $55 and $171 a month, which is $660 and $2,052 a year.

Pick Loops when one person writes the emails and wants onboarding, announcements and trial messages in one place. Its own pricing page says nothing about store catalogues or order revenue, which is the point: nothing in the product is shaped like a shop. If your lifecycle has many branches per account or role, read our Loops alternatives page before you commit.

3. Userlist: when the customer is a company

Drip counts people. Userlist counts tracked users but organises them into companies, and its pricing page lists segments for users and companies on Basic. Basic reads $149 a month for up to 10,000 users plus $10 per extra 1,000, with $229 shown at 18,000 users and $369 at 32,000; Professional reads $349 at 10,000 users and adds A/B split testing and conversion goals. Its billing documentation says every plan includes a monthly message allowance of 5 times the tracked user count with a 500,000 floor, and $1 per 1,000 messages beyond that.

The floor is the catch. A product with 2,500 people pays $39 on Drip and $149 on Userlist, so Userlist is a poor fit before the account model matters. It pays back at the other end: 25,000 users fall between the $229 stop at 18,000 and the $369 stop at 32,000, so the bill is at or under Drip's $369 at 25,000 people, and you get company-level segments, in-app messages and one consolidated view of each workspace.

4. Encharge: visual flows with a sends cap to watch

Encharge prices by subscribers: Growth reads $99 a month for up to 2,000 subscribers ($79 billed yearly); $179 at 5,000; $249 at 10,000; and $389 at 25,000. Premium reads $159, $269, $399 and $649 at the same stops and adds HubSpot, Salesforce and transactional email. Growth includes unlimited flows and team members, but monthly email sends are limited to 10 times your subscriber limit (12 times on Premium), and extra email is billed at $100 for every 100,000.

That makes it more expensive than Drip at every stop shown, so the reason to move is the flow model rather than cost. A 10,000-subscriber Growth account may send 100,000 emails a month, which Drip would not cap. If your sequences are short and your list is large, you will not hit it; a product that sends a weekly digest to everyone will.

5. ActiveCampaign: keep automation depth, add a CRM

ActiveCampaign's pricing page sets Starter at $15 for 1,000 contacts and its contact selector reads $39 at 2,500; $79 at 5,000; $149 at 10,000; and $391 at 25,000, billed annually. Plus reads $95, $145, $189 and $389 at the same stops, which means Plus is cheaper than Starter at 25,000 contacts. Starter allows one user and 5 actions per automation; email sends are capped at 10 times your contact limit on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro. Transactional email is an add-on rather than part of the plan.

This is the move for a team whose Drip workflows already end in a sales conversation. It is not a cost move: Starter matches Drip at 2,500 contacts ($39 each) and Plus costs more everywhere else. The ActiveCampaign alternatives page explains when its contact-centred model starts to hurt a product-led company.

6. Klaviyo: a lateral move for products with a catalogue

Klaviyo sits beside Drip in the ecommerce group, so choose it only if you still sell items. Its pricing page prices the Email plan by active profiles: $20 at 500; $30 at 1,000; $60 at 2,500; $100 at 5,000; $150 at 10,000; and $400 at 25,000, with a free plan of 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month. Against Drip that is $150 against $154 at 10,000 and $400 against $369 at 25,000. The case for it is feature fit, such as product-level reporting for a store, not a lower price.

7. Brevo: a list-heavy product that mails rarely

Brevo flips the pricing unit. Its pricing page says the email volume you select sets the tier: Free is $0 with 300 emails a day, Starter starts at $9 a month and Standard at $18, both beginning at 5,000 emails a month. Its help article on plans adds that the free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts. For a product with 30,000 stale trial signups that each get two messages a month, pay-by-volume beats pay-by-list. For a product that mails every user weekly, the same model turns against you.

8. HubSpot: only if sales owns the funnel

HubSpot's Marketing Hub page lists Free tools, Starter at $7, Professional at $800 and Enterprise at $3,600 a month. Automation is the gating feature: Free allows 1 automated action, Starter up to 10 and Professional unlimited actions. A Drip workflow with a dozen steps therefore needs Professional, which is a long way from $154. Choose HubSpot when deals, owners and lifecycle stages are the system of record and the email tool is the junior partner.

9. Resend: cheap marketing email for developer-owned products

Resend's pricing page has a marketing tab: Free at 1,000 contacts with unlimited broadcasts and automations, then Pro at $40 for 5,000 contacts; $80 for 10,000; $180 for 25,000; $250 for 50,000; and $450 for 100,000. That undercuts Drip by $74 at 10,000 and $189 at 25,000. Its transactional tab is separate: Pro $20 for 50,000 emails and $35 for 100,000. The gap to check is features. Drip advertises dynamic segments, onsite campaigns and order-level revenue attribution on every plan, and you should confirm each one you use has a counterpart before moving.

10. Postmark, Intercom and Iterable: three different problems

Postmark ($15 a month at 10,000 emails, $55 at 50,000, from its pricing page) replaces only the transactional side. It is the choice when Drip was mixing resets and invoices with promotions and you want them separate. Intercom's pricing page charges per seat plus usage, with email campaigns billed per bulk email sent, which suits teams that want support and onboarding messages in one inbox. Iterable sends you to a demo and lists no price, so it only belongs on a list if you already run cross-channel experiments with a dedicated owner.

What it costs at 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 people

Drip charges by people on the list, so the table uses the same three list sizes. Where a vendor has no stop at a size, the cell names the stops it does show.

Read it by list size. At 5,000 people Drip's $89 is below Customer.io, Klaviyo, Encharge and Userlist, so a product that small has little reason to leave on price; Loops at $48 and Resend at $40 are the exceptions. By 10,000 the order changes: Customer.io ($145) and ActiveCampaign Starter ($149) land within $10 of Drip's $154, and Loops ($99) and Resend ($80) are about half. At 25,000 Drip's $369 is below Klaviyo, Encharge and ActiveCampaign Starter, so leaving for one of those buys features, not savings.

Three things the table hides. Customer.io and Userlist both add usage charges (extra profiles at $0.009, messages beyond the allowance at $1 per 1,000), so heavy mailers should read the overage line, not just the plan price. ActiveCampaign's figures are billed annually. And Drip's unlimited sends only matter if you send a lot: a list of 10,000 mailed twice a month uses 20,000 emails, far below the 1 million that Customer.io Essentials includes.

Which one for which situation

• Trial signups, product events and an engineer who can send them: Customer.io. It costs about what Drip does at 10,000 people and models behaviour directly.
• One founder, a few hundred to a few thousand users, a tight budget: Loops, or Resend's marketing tab if the developer already owns email.
• Workspaces, roles and invitations: Userlist, once you are large enough that $149 is not the biggest line in the bill.
• You want to draw flows on a canvas and connect Stripe or Chargebee: Encharge, with the send cap in mind.
• Sales calls follow the trial: ActiveCampaign or HubSpot, and price the automation tier you actually need.
• You still run a store beside the product: stay on Drip, or move to Klaviyo for its reporting rather than for savings.
• Long list, few emails: Brevo, because the volume you pick, not the list size, sets the price.

Migrating off Drip

Drip's account is organised around people, tags, custom fields, workflows, dynamic segments and onsite campaigns. The steps below follow those objects. Drip's help center documents the export options, so check the current screens there before you start.

1. List what Drip is doing. Count the workflows (the plan allows up to 50), the dynamic segments, the onsite pop-ups and forms, and every integration. Note whether any application mail goes through Drip, since its pricing page says transactional email is billed inside the same usage model.
2. Translate tags into state. A tag such as "trial-expired" or "paid" is usually a status that the new tool should know as an attribute or an event. Write down what each tag means before you export it, because tags become noise if you import them as they are.
3. Export people, then clean. Pull the people list with custom fields and subscription status. Drop addresses that never opened anything in a year. The new bill counts what you import: Customer.io counts any profile that existed during the month, and Loops and Encharge price by subscribers.
4. Load suppressions before anyone else. Unsubscribed, bounced and complained addresses must be in the new tool first, so that an old unsubscribe cannot be mailed on day one.
5. Rebuild one workflow first. Take the welcome series, the one with the clearest goal, and recreate it with the new tool's trigger. Replace Drip's cart and order language with your own events: signup, activation, plan change, cancellation.
6. Replace the forms and pop-ups. Drip's onsite campaigns do not move with the list. Check whether the target tool has a form builder or plan on a separate form service, and point your site's embeds at it.
7. Authenticate the sending domain. Publish the new tool's DKIM records in DNS before its first send, and leave Drip's records alone until the last workflow there has stopped.
8. Run both for one billing cycle. Send the welcome series from the new tool to new signups only, keep Drip running for existing contacts, then move the remaining workflows one at a time. Cancel Drip when its workflows have been silent for a full cycle, after exporting the reports you want to keep, because Drip's order-based revenue reports will not follow you.

Our pick

For a SaaS product leaving Drip, Customer.io is the first one to trial: it costs $145 where Drip costs $154 at 10,000 people, includes transactional email and thinks in events rather than orders. Loops is the runner-up when the team is one or two people and the bill matters more than depth, at $99 for the same list. If the customer is a company rather than a person, add Userlist to the trial.

Related reading: Customer.io vs Loops, Klaviyo vs Customer.io, email for product-led SaaS and migrating email platforms.