Customer.io features: what you get on each plan
Of the 26 features we test, 17 are reachable on the entry plan and 8 more need Premium. The gating is unusual: there is no free tier at all, but SSO, two-factor authentication, unlimited seats and unlimited webhooks all land on the entry plan at $100 per month. What Premium at $1,000 per month actually buys is data plumbing, not messaging. Sources consulted 27 August 2026: the vendor pricing page and the Customer.io documentation centre.
Feature matrix
| Feature | Included | From plan | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No | — | Paid entry only, no free tier |
| Email sending | Yes | Essentials | 1 million included, then metered |
| Push notifications | Yes | Essentials | Unlimited sends on every plan |
| In-app messages | Yes | Essentials | Identified users only at entry |
| Anonymous in-app messages | No | Premium | Logged-out audiences cost more |
| Slack messages | Yes | Essentials | Rare as a first-class channel |
| Webhook actions | Yes | Essentials | Unlimited, any HTTP endpoint |
| SMS | Partial | Essentials add-on | Priced apart, never bundled |
| Partial | Essentials add-on | Add-on, same billing treatment | |
| Transactional messages | Partial | Essentials add-on | API on all tiers, volume billed apart |
| A/B testing | Yes | Essentials | Email, push and SMS covered |
| Visual workflow builder | Yes | Essentials | Drag-and-drop, no tier gate |
| Segments | Yes | Essentials | AI segment builder included |
| Object types | Partial | Essentials (2) | 10 on Premium, custom above |
| Profiles included | Partial | Essentials (5,000) | Extra profiles at $0.009 each |
| Workspaces | Partial | Essentials (2) | Unlimited from Premium up |
| User seats | Yes | Essentials | Unlimited seats at entry |
| SSO and two-factor auth | Yes | Essentials | Unusually early for this market |
| Custom roles | No | Premium | Standard roles only at entry |
| Audit logging | Partial | Essentials (30 days) | Full retention needs Premium |
| Data warehouse sync | No | Premium | Reverse ETL is a Premium line |
| Data replay | No | Premium | Backfilling events locked at entry |
| Collections | No | Premium | Reference data sets gated |
| Dedicated IPs | No | Premium | Shared pools only at entry |
| Premium integrations | No | Premium | Basic connectors only at entry |
| HIPAA compliance | No | Premium | Custom-priced even above Premium |
What the plan column means here
Most platforms in this directory gate messaging capability by tier. Customer.io does close to the opposite. Every channel it supports is reachable on Essentials, including the webhook action that lets a workflow call any endpoint you own, and the seat count is unlimited from the first dollar. The two exceptions are SMS and WhatsApp, which are add-ons billed on top rather than plan features, and transactional volume, which follows the same pattern: the API is there on every tier, the throughput is invoiced separately.
Premium is a data plan. Warehouse sync, data replay, collections, custom roles, dedicated IPs and unbounded audit retention are the lines that move, and none of them changes what a message can do. Read the jump from $100 to $1,000 as the price of governance and reverse ETL, not of reach.
Continue reading
Plan prices and volume maths belong to the pricing tab. Endpoints, SDKs and rate limits belong to the API tab. For the overall verdict on Customer.io, see the review.
This review follows our email infrastructure testing methodology. We disclose affiliate relationships in our editorial independence policy.
