Drip Review (2026)“Unlimited” Sending Stops at 30,000
By Daan Haket · Researched and written with an AI assistant · who does what
The word “unlimited” quietly expires.
What Drip costs at your size
What each plan costs a month on annual billing (monthly billing below it), per contact from Drip’s own pricing page. The cheapest plan at each size is in bold.
| Contacts | Drip |
|---|---|
| 1 contact | not published $39 monthly |
| 2 contacts | not published $39 monthly |
| 3 contacts | not published $39 monthly |
| 5 contacts | not published $39 monthly |
| 10 contacts | not published $39 monthly |
| 15 contacts | not published $39 monthly |
Prices read 2026-11-01; tax excluded unless the vendor says otherwise. Calculated by our cost engine; the same numbers are in our open data.
an online store on Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce that already has order data worth segmenting and wants ecommerce playbooks (abandoned cart, welcome series, post-purchase) without assembling them by hand. The pricing model suits a list that grows steadily and mails at a normal cadence, because you pay for people rather than per seat or per feature, and every plan carries the whole feature set.
you are not selling online: Drip says an ecommerce store is not required but that the platform is built for one, and you would be paying for the half you cannot use. Skip it too if your list is large and you mail often, because the send allowance caps at twelve per contact per month once you are past the small tiers. The same goes past 175,000 people, where the published ladder ends and pricing becomes a conversation.
Transparency: we earn nothing from Drip; the links to it are plain links. How we make money →
Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 1 Nov 2026
(ladder re-read on drip.com/pricing on 17 September 2026 and again on 1 November 2026; every rung below was confirmed on the live slider) One ladder, no tiers: you drag a slider to your list size and Drip prints a monthly price. The page now headlines it as paying for your list size and how many emails you send. 1-2,500 people is $39, then $49 at 3,000, $59 at 3,500, $69 at 4,000, $79 at 4,500, $89 at 5,000, $99 at 6,000, $109 at 7,000, $124 at 8,000, $139 at 9,000, $154 at 10,000, $169 at 12,500, $209 at 15,000, $249 at 17,500, $289 at 20,000, $329 at 22,500, $369 at 25,000, $409 at 27,500, $449 at 30,000 and $489 at 32,500; from there it climbs $40 a rung to $609 at 40,000, $649 at 45,000 and $699 at 50,000, after which every extra 5,000 people costs $50 — $1,299 at 110,000, $1,949 at 175,000, and a last published rung of $1,999 for 175,001-180,000 people.
Above 180,000 the price is replaced by “Let’s chat”, though the card keeps printing a send allowance. The trial is 14 days and takes no card, and their FAQ states unlimited emails are not available during it. Two things the ladder does not advertise. “Unlimited email sends” stops being literally true at 30,001 people, where the bullet becomes “390,000 email sends” and every rung above it carries exactly twelve sends a month per person at the top of the bracket — 600,000 at 50,000 people, 2,160,000 at 180,000.
And the card is not the same at every rung: free migration and personalized onboarding appear from 15,001 people ($249) and are absent on every rung below that. What is carried at every price is chat and email support (on 1 November 2026 the card shows it from the $39 rung, and the FAQ says every customer, trials included, gets email and live chat support on weekdays; until at least September it started at $99), up to 50 workflows, unlimited sub-accounts, open API access, dynamic segments, onsite campaigns and the Drip MCP connection, which their FAQ describes as included at no extra cost. Plans change, so check the live price on their site before you buy.
Category context: Marketing. Across the 32 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is $29 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Drip’s entry price of $39 a month sits above that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the pricing page doesn’t say
At the prices most small shops pay, the send allowance really is uncapped. But the switch has an exact address: unlimited holds to 30,000 people, and from 30,001 the bullet becomes a hard number: 390,000 sends there, 600,000 at 50,000 people, twelve per contact per month. Drip never flags the switch. If you run a daily-deal or high-frequency list, do the arithmetic before you migrate: twelve sends per contact is generous for a monthly newsletter and tight for anything that mails several times a week.
The second thing to price in is the move itself. The card looks the same at every level, but two lines on it are not: free migration and personalized onboarding only appear from 15,001 people ($249). Below that you move your list and rebuild your automations yourself. Chat support, which used to start at $99, is on every rung since the page change we read on 1 November 2026.
Watch the video review
The video version of this review, from our YouTube channel.
What Drip does
Ecommerce email and onsite marketing built around your store's order data — segments, abandoned-cart and welcome playbooks, pop-ups and A/B testing, with one-click links to Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce.
What buyers report about Drip
Hands-on: not tested by usDocumented by the vendor: 1 feature, read 2026-10-09Reported by buyers: the Shopify App Store and Capterra, read August 2026
Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We have not run Drip ourselves, so this is other buyers' experience rather than ours. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • Merchants single out the depth of the automation: multiple branches and entry points, with logic that stays usable for a small team.
- • The Shopify connection pulls order history in without an export step, so segmenting on what people actually bought is the default rather than a project.
- • Pre-built abandoned-cart, welcome and post-purchase flows are cited as the reason setup took days rather than weeks.
- • Several merchants moving from HubSpot, Mailchimp or Klaviyo report a lower monthly bill for the same work.
- • Cost is the most common Capterra complaint, with reviewers describing it as expensive for a small business and noting the price rises sharply past 5,000 subscribers.
- • Support quality is reported inconsistently: some reviewers call it fast and competent, others say it is effectively absent and that email replies take days.
- • Contacts can be searched by email address but not by name: one reviewer gives that as their sole reason for leaving.
- • Analytics are described as slow to populate and spread across too many screens, and large filter runs can take hours.
- • The move to an ecommerce-first product left content publishers behind; reviewers who do not sell online say they are paying for the half they cannot use.
- • On the Shopify listing, one merchant reports escalating and inconsistent invoices alongside customer service they could not reach, and another was stuck in a redirect loop that would not reopen the app after installing it.
Where the ratings disagree. The two platforms catch buyers at different stages. Shopify reviewers are mostly describing installation and the first automations, and they are positive. Capterra reviewers are further in and complain about price per subscriber, and they place the pain at roughly the same point our own arithmetic does, where a list of about 5,000 is the worst value on the ladder.
When the paid plan is worth it
There are no tiers to weigh up here, only a slider, so the useful question is a different one: where on that ladder do you get the least for your money? Work out the price per contact and the answer is uncomfortable for the list size most small senders have. At 2,500 people you pay $39, which is 1.56 cents a contact. It gets steadily worse from there: 1.63 cents at 3,000, 1.73 at 4,000, and a peak of 1.78 cents at 5,000 people for $89.
Then it improves again: 1.35 cents at 12,500 and 1.11 at 175,000. A list of 5,000 is the single worst place to sit on this ladder, and growing past it makes each contact cheaper rather than dearer. One thing the slider does not advertise: unlimited sends stops being literally true at an exact rung: it holds to 30,000 people, then becomes 390,000 sends at 30,001 -- twelve per contact per month, a generous cap but a cap nonetheless.
What upgrading does not fix is the product's shape. Beyond free migration and onboarding from 15,001 people ($249), the card is identical at every rung; chat support is now included from the entry price (read 1 November 2026). You are buying list capacity, not capability.
Questions we are still checking
Facts about Drip that would change a buying decision, and where we stand on each. An unanswered question does not mean the feature is missing; it means we have not confirmed it yet.
- Can workflows be exported or moved to another tool? Still checking
Applies to: any plan.
Why it matters: if workflows cannot leave, switching means rebuilding every automation by hand, which is often the biggest part of a move.
Checked: Drip help: Export Data from Drip (covers people, account and analytics exports; workflows not mentioned) (2026-10-06)
Have a public source that answers one of these? How we review explains how we check and correct.
Work at Drip? Answer these on the record. A person reads each answer before it is published as a dated statement from your company.
How to actually use Drip
Connect the store first, and know what that click does to the bill. Drip's own instructions are short: Settings, Integrations, Shopify, install the app, pick the account to link. But the sync brings across your whole customer list and order history, and the same article states plainly that your Drip billing increases based on the number of customers synced. On a price that is a slider tied to list size, that is your first invoice, decided in one step.
Next comes the app embed, a JavaScript snippet you switch on from the integration page so Drip can track page visits and product views. Only then build a workflow. Triggers are forward-facing: Drip's guide says they apply only to people who meet the condition after the workflow is turned on, so nothing fires retroactively for the list you just imported. Use the 14-day trial for shape rather than sending -- unlimited emails are switched off during it.
Distilled from Drip's help centre articles Connect Your Shopify Store (help.drip.com/hc/en-us/articles/4424695491725-Connect-Your-Shopify-Store) and Getting Started with Workflows (help.drip.com/hc/en-us/articles/4424702569357-Getting-Started-with-Workflows), plus the FAQ on drip.com/pricing, all read 19 August 2026. On 6 October 2026 we also read the help centre articles Active People (help.drip.com/hc/en-us/articles/4424702599437-Active-People) and Export Data from Drip (help.drip.com/hc/en-us/articles/4424710429453-Export-Data-from-Drip) for billing status and exports. The pricing card and FAQ were re-read on 1 November 2026 on https://www.drip.com/pricing (slider walked from 1-2,500 to 180,000 people; chat support now on every rung).
The natural comparison is Klaviyo: the comparison Drip picks itself: it publishes a Drip vs. Klaviyo page, and the one most ecommerce teams actually make. Both price on list size and both live off store data; the practical question is what the send allowance and the support line look like at your volume, which is where Drip's ladder is unusually easy to read and unusually quiet about the twelve-sends ceiling.
Frequently asked questions
What will Drip cost for my list size?
There is one slider and no tiers, so the price is a lookup rather than a decision. Read on drip.com/pricing on 17 September 2026: $39 for 1-2,500 people, $49 to 3,000, $59 to 3,500, $69 to 4,000, $79 to 4,500, $89 to 5,000, $99 to 6,000, $109 to 7,000, $124 to 8,000, $139 to 9,000, $154 to 10,000 and $169 to 12,500. After that it moves in $40 steps of 2,500 people to $449 at 30,000, then $50 per 5,000 people from $699 at 50,000 up to $1,949 at 175,000. The last published rung is $1,999 for 175,001-180,000; above that the price is replaced by an invitation to book a demo. Worth knowing before you compare: the worst value on this ladder is a list of 5,000 people, at 1.78 cents per contact, and growing past that point makes each contact cheaper rather than dearer.
Is “unlimited email sends” really unlimited?
Up to a point that the page states but does not flag. On 17 September 2026 the bullet reads “Unlimited email sends” on every rung to 30,000 people. Move the slider one person further and the same bullet becomes “390,000 email sends”, and it stays a number from there on: 600,000 at 50,000 people, 900,000 at 75,000, 2,160,000 on the last published rung at 180,000. In every case the allowance is exactly twelve sends a month per person at the top of your bracket. For a monthly or weekly newsletter that ceiling is far away. For a list that mails several times a week it is not, and the arithmetic is worth doing before you migrate rather than after. Note too that unlimited sending is switched off during the 14-day trial, so the trial will not show you where the ceiling sits.
What do I get on a higher rung besides room for more contacts?
One thing, and it has an exact address on the slider: free migration and personalized onboarding appear at the 15,001-17,500 rung ($249) and are absent on every rung below it, which matters if you are moving a list off another platform and were planning to do it on the entry price. Everything else on the card is carried at every price, including chat and email support (which started at $99 until the page change we read on 1 November 2026), up to 50 workflows, unlimited sub-accounts, dynamic segments, onsite campaigns, open API access and the Drip MCP connector, which their FAQ says is included at no extra cost and connects the account to an AI client in about five clicks. Read 17 September 2026 and re-read 1 November 2026.
Why am I paying for people who unsubscribed?
Because Drip bills on active people, and unsubscribing from marketing email does not make someone inactive. Drip's help centre (Active People, read 6 October 2026) describes all active people as the people you can engage with and are billed for, and says unsubscribed people stay active: they can still receive transactional emails, trigger workflows and be used for Facebook and Instagram advertising. To stop paying for them you move them to Inactive, by hand, in a bulk operation, or with Drip's workflow that deactivates people who are unsubscribed or undeliverable. That has consequences: an inactive person gets no email at all, transactional included, new events, orders and lifetime value are no longer recorded, they leave Facebook Custom Audiences and other third-party tools, and they no longer trigger rules or workflows. If you still rely on those people for order history or retargeting, check that before you switch the workflow on.
What can I take with me if I leave Drip?
Less than your whole account. Drip's export article (read 6 October 2026) lists three routes. A people export is a CSV with email, id, status, created and confirmed dates, tags, email series names, referrer, landing URL, IP address, lead score, lifetime value, user id and custom fields. An account export adds templates, the people list and email series campaigns, but Drip states that emails built with the visual email builder and events are not exportable. Analytics reports (new people, unsubscribes, email metrics, clicks and events) export as CSV too, but an events report is a report, not a transferable event history. The article does not mention workflows at all; we have not confirmed whether they can be exported, so plan to rebuild them. All exports arrive as a download link by email.
Is this a hands-on review of Drip?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test. Where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we have no affiliate relationship with Drip — we earn nothing whether you sign up or not.
- Buyer reviews on the Shopify App Store and Capterra, read August 2026.
- Ladder re-read on drip.com/pricing on 17 September 2026 and again on 1 November 2026; every rung below was confirmed on the live slider.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
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