6 Best Drip Alternatives Tested in 2026
Drip charges $39 a month before you have a single subscriber, and nothing on this page is both better at automation and cheaper than it. Those two sentences are the whole decision. Since Drip removed its free tier in May 2024 and set a $39 floor for anything up to 2,500 contacts, a store with 200 subscribers pays exactly what a store with 2,400 pays — and of the six alternatives below, five cost less to start and every one of them scores higher overall.
We scored and priced 6 alternatives against Drip, ranked them by our own review score, and matched each to the specific kind of Drip user it wins for. Read the automation column before you move. Drip scores 7.5 there, its own best number, and only two platforms here beat it — both of which cost more per month, not less.
Why look for a Drip alternative in 2026
Two reasons, and neither of them is the automation builder.
The price floor. Drip is $39/mo for 1 to 2,500 contacts with no cheaper step below it, and there is no free plan — only a 14-day trial. That is the joint-highest entry price here, level with Kit, which gives away its first 10,000 subscribers. Brevo and Moosend start at $9/mo. For a store still finding its first thousand customers, that gap is the argument.
Support scores 5.0. It is Drip’s weakest number and the widest spread on this page: Moosend and Omnisend both score 8.5, Brevo 8.0. Deliverability at 6.5 is the second soft spot: three of the six sit in our High band, and Drip does not.
What keeps people is the automation builder at 7.5 and the ecommerce workflows built on top of it. That is a real score, and the trade this page keeps returning to: the two platforms that beat it, Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign, score 3.5 and 5.0 on pricing value against Drip’s 5.5. Better automation is available. Better automation for less money is not.
6 Drip alternatives at a glance
Ranked by our own review score. Every platform here has a full SMTPedia review, so the Score column is measured rather than invented for this table.
| Platform | Score | Starting $ | Free plan | Best for | MCP | Deliverability | Verdict vs Drip |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 7.7 | $9/mo | 300/day, 100k contacts | A small list that should not cost $39 | Yes | Medium | Value 8.5 vs 5.5, support 8.0 vs 5.0 |
| Klaviyo | 7.3 | $30/mo | 250 profiles, 500 emails | Stores where segmentation is the product | Yes | High | Automation 9.5 vs 7.5, but value 3.5 vs 5.5 |
| ActiveCampaign | 7.2 | $19/mo | No, 14-day trial | Email as one channel of a wider CRM | Yes | High | Deliverability 8.5 vs 6.5, automation 9.5 vs 7.5 |
| Moosend | 7.2 | $9/mo | No, 30-day trial | Mailing a small list often | No | High | Support 8.5 vs 5.0, unlimited sends at every tier |
| Omnisend | 7.1 | $16/mo | 250 contacts, 500 emails | Email, SMS and push in one flow | Yes | Low | Support 8.5 vs 5.0, but deliverability 5.0 vs 6.5 |
| Kit | 7.0 | $39/mo | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Sellers not ready to pay anything yet | Yes | Medium | Same $39, but free to 10,000 subscribers first |
Score is our overall SMTPedia review rating out of 10, not a score built for this comparison. Deliverability bands come from the same reviews: High 8.0 and above, Medium 6.0 to 7.9, Low below. Drip sits at 6.3 overall, 6.5 deliverability, 7.5 automation.
Brevo
Brevo
Better for: the store whose list is small and whose bill should be too
Brevo is the highest-rated platform on SMTPedia at 7.7, and against Drip it wins the two axes that send people looking: pricing value 8.5 against 5.5, support 8.0 against 5.0. Entry is $9/mo for 5,000 emails and $29/mo at 20,000, and the free plan sends 300 emails a day against Drip’s nothing.
What you lose. Automation, from 7.5 to 6.0. Brevo’s workflow builder is capable but it is not an ecommerce automation product: the prebuilt revenue flows Drip ships with, and the depth of its store data model, are things you will rebuild by hand. Deliverability also stays Medium at 7.5, so the inbox improves only slightly.
Medium
1 to 2 days
Contacts and templates import cleanly. Every automation is rebuilt by hand, and that is the time.
$9/mo
Starter, 5,000 emails
Free tier of 300 emails a day with up to 100,000 contacts. $29/mo at 20,000 emails. Official MCP server.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo
Better for: the store where segmentation is the product, not a feature
Klaviyo is one of only two platforms here that beats Drip on its own strongest axis, scoring 9.5 on automation against 7.5, with deliverability at 8.0 against 6.5. Entry is $30/mo for 1,000 profiles, below Drip’s floor, with a free tier at 250 profiles that Drip no longer matches.
What you lose. Cost control, completely. Klaviyo scores 3.5 on pricing value, the lowest figure on this page and well below Drip’s 5.5, because the curve climbs hard with profile count: $100/mo at 5,000 profiles and $150/mo at 10,000, with SMS billed separately on top. If you are leaving Drip because of the invoice, this is the one entry on the page that will make it worse.
Medium
2 to 3 days
The store integration does most of the work. Re-deriving segments against a different data model is the real cost.
$30/mo
1,000 profiles
$100/mo at 5,000 profiles, $150/mo at 10,000. Free tier 250 profiles. SMS priced separately. Official MCP server.
Read our Klaviyo review
We may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. It does not change the score.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign
Better for: a business where email is one channel of a wider CRM
ActiveCampaign is the only entry that beats Drip on automation and deliverability at once: 9.5 against 7.5 and 8.5 against 6.5, the best deliverability figure here. Entry is $19/mo for 1,000 contacts billed monthly, about half Drip’s floor, and the CRM and pipelines are things Drip does not attempt.
What you lose. The free trial is the only way in: no free plan, 14 days, same as Drip. Pricing value scores 5.0 against Drip’s 5.5, so the entry price is lower but the curve is not kinder, and support drops to 6.5 — better than Drip, worse than most of this page.
Hard
3 to 5 days
The most powerful builder here is also the steepest to learn. Budget for training, not just data.
$19/mo
Starter, 1,000 contacts, billed monthly
$15/mo on annual billing. No free plan, 14-day trial. Official MCP server.
Read our ActiveCampaign review
We may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. It does not change the score.
Moosend
Moosend
Better for: the store that mails a small list often
Moosend answers Drip’s two weakest scores directly: support 8.5 against 5.0, and deliverability 8.0 against 6.5, which moves you from our Medium band into High. Entry is $9/mo for 500 contacts, and sends are unlimited at every tier: a daily campaign costs what a monthly one does.
What you lose. Automation drops to 6.5 from 7.5, and there is no official MCP server, where Drip has one. There is no free plan either — a 30-day trial without a card, which is longer than Drip’s 14 but still a trial.
Easy
About a day
Simple import, and the 30-day trial is long enough to rebuild flows before paying.
$9/mo
Pro, 500 contacts, unlimited sends
$7/mo on annual billing, $315/mo at 50,000 contacts. No free plan, 30-day trial without a card.
Read our Moosend review
We may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. It does not change the score.
Omnisend
Omnisend
Better for: the store that wants SMS in the same flow, not in another tool
Omnisend is built for ecommerce the way Drip is, but it puts email, SMS and web push in a single workflow rather than bolting messaging on. Support scores 8.5 against Drip’s 5.0, and entry is $16/mo against $39.
What you lose. Deliverability, and badly: 5.0 against Drip’s 6.5, which drops you out of our Medium band into Low — the only Low score on this page. Automation also falls to 7.0. If your reason for leaving Drip is that campaigns are not landing, this is the wrong direction, whatever the SMS story is worth.
Easy
About a day
Closest like-for-like here: the store integration and flow templates cover most of what Drip was doing.
$16/mo
Standard, email allowance 12x contact count
Pro from $59/mo with unlimited emails. Free tier 250 contacts and 500 emails. SMS billed separately. Official MCP server.
Read our Omnisend review
We may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. It does not change the score.
Kit
Kit
Better for: the seller who is not ready to pay anything yet
Kit is the only entry that costs the same as Drip and still wins the price argument, because the paid plan does not start until 10,000 subscribers. Below that you get unlimited broadcasts, forms and landing pages for nothing, where Drip charges $39 from the first subscriber. Support also scores 7.5 against Drip’s 5.0.
What you lose. The free plan has no visual automations at all, so the thing you most likely value about Drip is exactly what the free tier withholds. Automation scores 6.5 even on paid, against Drip’s 7.5, and deliverability is 6.0 against 6.5 — the only alternative here that is worse on both.
Medium
1 to 2 days
Subscriber import is simple, but Kit is creator-first: ecommerce flows become sequences.
$39/mo
Creator, 1,000 subscribers, billed monthly
$33/mo on annual billing. Free up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts but no visual automations. Official MCP server.
Read our Kit review
We may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. It does not change the score.
Leaving Drip: what transfers and what breaks
Contacts move easily. Everything that made Drip worth $39 does not.
Automations do not migrate, anywhere. There is no export format that survives the trip. Every workflow is rebuilt by hand on the destination, and that is the whole cost of this move. Count your live automations before comparing prices: at a dozen or more, the rebuild costs more than a year of the saving.
Your store integration is the second rebuild. Drip’s data model carries order history, product views and revenue attribution. Every platform here stores that differently, so segments are re-derived rather than copied, and revenue reporting starts from zero.
Contacts, tags and templates transfer fine. CSV in and out handles the list, tags map to tags or labels, and templates survive as HTML. An afternoon, not a week.
Keep Drip alive through one billing cycle. Run both in parallel and cancel only once a full cycle has passed without a regression you needed the old reports to diagnose.
Drip alternatives: common questions
Is there a Drip alternative with a free plan?
Four of the six. Kit is the most generous at up to 10,000 subscribers, though without visual automations. Brevo gives 300 emails a day with contacts to 100,000. Klaviyo and Omnisend both offer 250 profiles or contacts with 500 emails a month. ActiveCampaign and Moosend are trial-only, at 14 and 30 days.
Which Drip alternative has the best automation?
Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign, both at 9.5 out of 10 against Drip’s 7.5. They are also the only two on this page that beat Drip there, and both score lower than Drip on pricing value — 3.5 and 5.0 against 5.5. Better automation is available; better automation for less money is not.
Which one is best for deliverability?
ActiveCampaign at 8.5, then Klaviyo and Moosend at 8.0 — the three entries here in our High band, against Drip’s 6.5. Omnisend is the outlier in the other direction at 5.0, the only Low score on this page.
What is the closest like-for-like replacement for an ecommerce store?
Omnisend, on structure: it is built for stores, ships ecommerce flow templates and adds SMS and push inside the same workflow, so the rebuild is shortest. Klaviyo is the closest on capability, at a much steeper price curve. Check the deliverability trade before choosing Omnisend.
Should I leave Drip at all?
If your automations are working and you are past 2,500 contacts, the case is weak: you are already paying for the tier, the rebuild is expensive, and the two platforms that automate better both cost more. If you are below 1,000 contacts, the case is strong — you are paying $39 for a floor you do not reach, and Brevo at $9 or Moosend at $9 do the job for a quarter of it.
This review follows our email infrastructure testing methodology. We disclose affiliate relationships in our editorial independence policy.
