Drip: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026 Guide)

What is Drip?

Drip is an email marketing and automation platform built for online stores. You connect your Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce store (or a custom store through Drip’s API), and Drip pulls in orders, carts and product data. That data then drives everything else: segments such as “bought twice but not in 90 days”, automations such as abandoned cart and price drop emails, product blocks inside emails, and dashboards that tie revenue back to the email that earned it.

Around email, Drip adds onsite pop-ups and embedded forms for list growth, SMS for US stores, and the Drip MCP, a connector that lets AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT read your Drip data and act on it. Drip’s pricing message is “Pay for your list size. Not for features you never use”: there is a single plan, and the price depends only on how many people you have.

The problem it solves: turning a store’s customer data into timely, personalised emails without hiring a full-time email specialist or stitching together separate tools for pop-ups, segmentation and reporting.

Who it is for

• Small and mid-sized Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce stores that want abandoned cart, browse, post-purchase and win-back flows driven by real order data.
• Lean ecommerce teams where the founder or one marketer runs email and wants pre-built workflow templates rather than a blank canvas.
• Brands that use AI assistants for analysis, because the Drip MCP lets Claude or ChatGPT answer questions such as “which campaigns drove the most revenue last month” from live data.
• Stores replacing a separate pop-up tool, since Onsite campaigns (pop-ups, quizzes, spin-to-win, free shipping bars) are included at every list size.

Who should not use it: newsletter writers and creators selling digital products, who are better served by Kit; B2B companies that need lead scoring and a sales CRM, where ActiveCampaign fits better; and very small lists on a tight budget, since Drip has no free plan. Drip is also not a cold email tool; only send to people who opted in.

Key features

• Single Email Campaigns and Email Series. Single Email Campaigns are Drip’s broadcasts: one email to a saved or one-time segment, with split tests of up to four subject lines or four content variations, and an option to resend to people who did not open. Email Series are simple, linear time-based sequences.
• Workflows. A visual builder for multi-step automations with triggers, Actions (apply a tag, send to a campaign, sync to Facebook Custom Audiences), Decisions (yes/no branches), Delays, Goals that pull people forward when they buy, Split Tests and Exits. Pre-built templates cover abandoned cart, price drop, replenishment reminders and review requests. Accounts are limited to 50 active Workflows.
• Ecommerce data and segmentation. Order, cart and product events land on each person’s profile, with lifetime value, browse tracking and custom events. Dynamic segments add and remove people automatically as their behaviour changes.
• Email builders and content blocks. A drag-and-drop Visual Email Builder with 50+ ecommerce templates, an HTML builder and a plain text builder. Store-aware blocks include the Product Block, Dynamic Top Sellers, dynamic coupon codes and conditional show/hide content, plus Liquid for personalisation.
• Onsite pop-ups and embedded forms. Pop-ups, slide-ins, bars, quizzes, multistep forms, countdown timers and spin-to-win, with display triggers (when), page-level targeting (where) and audience targeting (who). Form fields map straight onto subscriber profiles.
• Insights and revenue attribution. Dashboards show revenue, engagement and list growth, and each campaign dashboard reports opens, clicks and revenue per variation.
• Drip MCP. Connects Drip to Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client. It can read subscribers, tags, custom fields, campaign content and performance, and on request tag and bulk-import up to 1,000 subscribers, draft campaigns, send test emails, enroll people in workflows, activate or pause campaigns, fire custom events and log orders. It is read-only by default, every write waits for your approval, and Drip says connector data is never used to train AI models.
• SMS (US only). SMS campaigns and SMS steps in workflows, after an approval process with Drip’s compliance team.

Pricing

At the time of writing Drip has one plan with the full feature set. The monthly price rises with the number of people on your list. These figures come from the price calculator on drip.com/pricing.

People on your list	Price per month	Email sends	Support
Up to 2,500	$39	Unlimited	Email
4,501-5,000	$89	Unlimited	Email
5,001-6,000	$99	Unlimited	Chat and email
9,001-10,000	$154	Unlimited	Chat and email
22,501-25,000	$369	Unlimited	Chat and email
27,501-30,000	$449	Unlimited	Chat and email
45,001-50,000	$699	Up to 600,000 per month	Chat and email
95,001-100,000	$1,199	Up to 1,200,000 per month	Chat and email

What every list size includes, according to the pricing page: dynamic segments, onsite campaigns, up to 50 workflows, unlimited sub-accounts, open API access and the Drip MCP connection. Free migration and personalised onboarding appear from 17,500 people.

Points to keep in mind:

• The send cap starts above 30,000 people. Up to 30,000 people, email sends are unlimited. From 30,001, the calculator allows 12 times the top of your tier in sends per month.
• Big lists get a quote. Above about 180,000 people the calculator shows “Let’s chat” instead of a price, and from 50,000 people Drip steers you to a demo.
• Chat support costs more. All paying customers get email support Monday to Friday; live chat starts at the $99/month tier.
• SMS is extra. Drip’s help centre says SMS tiers start at $39/month, based on SMS subscribers and message segments sent, with carrier fees and the sending number included. A 160-character text counts as one segment, an emoji cuts a segment to 70 characters, and an MMS counts as three.
• The trial is limited. The 14-day trial needs no credit card but allows only 100 live email sends and two campaign sends per day. If it expires without an upgrade, the account goes inactive and active forms and campaigns pause.
• No annual discount is shown on the pricing page, so compare monthly prices.

How to use Drip: step-by-step

1. Start the trial and connect your store

1. Sign up for the 14-day trial at drip.com; no card is needed.
2. Connect your store. Drip has native integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce; the help centre’s Integrate With Drip guide links to each one. For a custom store, install the JavaScript snippet (find it under Settings > Account > Site Setup) and send orders, carts and products through the Shopper Activity API.
3. Import your existing list from a CSV (email is the only required field) or follow Drip’s migration guides for Mailchimp and other tools. Only import people who opted in.
4. Connect the store during the trial, not after. Drip’s revenue dashboards, cart triggers and product blocks need store data to work.

2. Turn on an abandoned cart workflow

1. Go to Workflows > Workflows and click + New Workflow, or install one of Drip’s shareable workflow templates such as Abandoned Cart.
2. Name the workflow. You land in the workflow builder.
3. Set the trigger (for a cart flow, a cart event from your store). Triggers are not retroactive: only people who meet the trigger after you enable it will enter.
4. Click + to add components: a Delay of a few hours, the first reminder email, a Decision that checks whether the person has ordered, and a Goal for “placed an order” so buyers drop out of the reminder path.
5. Write the emails with the Visual Email Builder and add a Product Block or dynamic content so each reminder shows the items left behind.
6. Turn on the workflow trigger when you are ready. Check your count of active Workflows under Settings > Billing > Plan Usage to stay inside the 50 limit.

3. Grow the list with an Onsite pop-up

1. Open Onsite and pick a template. Choose an opt-in template to collect emails, or an announcement template for other goals.
2. Choose a position: pop-up, slide-in or bar. Drip suggests pop-ups for critical messages and exit intent, and slide-ins for softer asks.
3. Customise the design in the drag-and-drop builder, add a countdown timer or product recommendations if useful, and check the mobile version.
4. Set up display settings: triggers decide when it appears, page-level targeting decides where, and targeting options decide who.
5. Map form fields to subscriber profiles, then save and activate (or schedule) the pop-up. Use the new sign-ups as the trigger for a welcome workflow.

4. Send a Single Email Campaign

1. Go to Campaigns > Single Emails > + New Single Email Campaign and give it a name.
2. Under Sending to, choose a saved segment or build a one-time segment. Drip recommends segments and, for discount emails, can leave out people who recently bought with a discount.
3. Mark the email as Commercial or Transactional, build it, and click Done Editing.
4. Optionally add up to four subject line variations or four content variations (not both). The default split test uses click-through rate, a 30% test pool and two hours.
5. Pick a send time, optionally set Resend email to people who don’t open it, and click Schedule or Send Immediately. Results, including revenue, appear on the Campaign Dashboard.

Tips to get better results

• Install the core flows first. Abandoned cart, welcome, post-purchase and win-back workflows usually matter more than any single broadcast.
• Use Goals in every sales workflow. A Goal of “placed an order” stops people receiving “you forgot something” after they have bought.
• Prefer Workflows over Email Series for anything beyond a straight sequence. Series are linear, and new emails added to a series can wait up to four hours in Drip’s scheduler.
• Watch your list size near tier edges. Price rises with every few hundred or thousand people, so remove long-inactive subscribers before they push you into the next tier.
• Schedule local-time sends early. A Single Email Campaign sent in each person’s local timezone must be scheduled at least 19 hours ahead.
• Use the Drip MCP for analysis and drafts. Ask Claude or ChatGPT to rank last month’s campaigns by revenue or audit your automation coverage, then review any draft in Drip before it sends. Our Claude review covers the assistant side.
• Keep SMS personal. Drip’s own guidance treats SMS as one-to-one: short, automated messages perform better and use fewer segments than long blasts.

Limitations and common problems

• No free plan and a tight trial. The 100-send trial is enough to build and test flows, not to judge results. Build everything during the trial and send live only when you are ready to pay.
• Send caps on large lists. Above 30,000 people you get a monthly send allowance, so daily senders with big lists should check the numbers before migrating.
• 50 active Workflows. Fine for most stores, but a brand with many product-specific flows can hit it. Drip suggests turning simple automations into Rules instead.
• SMS hurdles. SMS is limited to US customers with the “Support All People” setting enabled, requires approval (allow up to three days) and a Twilio registration questionnaire, and is billed on top of email.
• Less value without a store. Drip works without ecommerce data, but most of what you pay for (revenue attribution, cart and product triggers) depends on it.
• AI connector data. Drip’s MCP is read-only by default and asks before every write, but your prompts and the data you pull into the chat are governed by your AI provider’s policy, not Drip’s.

Alternatives

• Klaviyo - the best-known ecommerce email and SMS platform and Drip’s most direct competitor; compare both calculators at your list size.
• ActiveCampaign - broader marketing automation with a CRM and lead scoring, better for mixed B2B and ecommerce businesses.
• Sender - low-cost email and SMS with a free plan, a sensible step down for very small stores.
• Moosend - budget email automation with ecommerce triggers and a 30-day trial.
• GetResponse - email, landing pages and webinars in one tool, with a free plan.
• Kit - the better choice for creators and newsletter writers rather than stores.

Browse every option in our marketing tools directory, or see how Drip’s prices compare with other platforms at the same list sizes in our best email marketing software guide.

Verdict

Sign up for Drip if you run a Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce store with a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of customers and want order-driven automations, onsite pop-ups and revenue reporting in one plan, without feature tiers. The Drip MCP is a real bonus if you already work in Claude or ChatGPT. Skip it if you have no store, need a free plan to get started, run a creator business better served by Kit, or send very frequently to a list well above 30,000 people, where the send cap and custom pricing deserve a closer look.