Drip vs Ontraport Comparison 2026
Drip is an ecommerce email tool specifically, one plan from $39 a month priced on active people and send volume. Ontraport replaces a whole stack, a CRM, email, a page builder and payments, in one subscription starting at $83 a month billed annually, with $49 a month per extra user on top. Drip does one job well for a store already running its shop elsewhere; Ontraport is worth its price only once it is replacing several separate tools at once, Drip potentially among them.
At a glance
- Drip starts cheaper, at $39.
- Neither has a free tier.
Side by side
Drip | Ontraport | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $39 | From $83 |
| Pricing model | Free trial, then paid | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Yes |
Drip
Ecommerce email priced on active people
Drip is an ecommerce marketing platform that bills on how many people are active in your account and how much you send, rather than on a feature ladder. Everybody gets everything, which removes the usual argument about which tier has automations. It is aimed at stores, so a writer with a plain newsletter is paying for behaviour tracking they will never wire up.
Our note
Single-plan pricing is the appeal and the risk: nothing is withheld, and the bill moves on its own as the list grows. Model it at twice your current list size before committing, because that is the number that will arrive.
Only on this side
- Covers digital products & storefronts
Ontraport
CRM, email and checkout in one subscription
Ontraport replaces the usual stack of a CRM, an email tool, a page builder and a payment processor with one system, which is worth it precisely when the handoffs between those are where things break. Automations can move a contact, send a message, charge a card and open a task in the same sequence. Pricing is per plan rather than per contact at the entry tier. It is a large system to learn, and anybody who only needs to send a newsletter will spend weeks configuring something they did not need.
Why people weigh these two
- Ontraport instead of Drip
- Ontraport folds CRM, email and checkout into one subscription from $83, a swap when the selling and the sending should sit on one bill.
- Drip instead of Ontraport
- Drip stays focused on ecommerce email rather than the full CRM, page builder and payments Ontraport bundles, priced instead by active contacts.
Which one should you pick
Pick Drip if email is the actual job and a store already has a CRM, checkout and pages sorted elsewhere. It costs a fraction of Ontraport, from $39 a month, and every plan already includes full automation and revenue attribution without a bigger system to learn.
Pick Ontraport to replace the whole stack at once, since it is worth its $83 a month starting price precisely when the handoffs between a separate CRM, email tool, page builder and payment processor are where leads actually get lost. Buy it to cancel four subscriptions, not to add a fifth on top of tools you are keeping, and expect real time spent learning a large system.
Common questions
- Which one is cheaper?
- Drip, by a wide margin: $39 a month against Ontraport's $83 a month billed annually for the entry tier, rising to $124 and $249 above it. Ontraport's price covers a full CRM, page builder and payment processor alongside email, where Drip is email specifically.
- Does Ontraport do everything Drip does, plus more?
- For ecommerce email specifically, that is not clearly stated. Drip's revenue attribution and behaviour tracking are tuned to a store's carts and purchases. Ontraport's own description centres on CRM, automation, pages and payments together, without describing the same ecommerce-specific email tuning Drip offers.
- When is Ontraport worth its price over a focused tool like Drip?
- By its own account, when it is replacing a CRM, an email tool, a page builder and a payment processor all at once, since the price only makes sense once all four separate subscriptions are cancelled. Buying it alongside those tools rather than instead of them is paying for a fifth tool that was not needed.
- Does Ontraport charge per contact the way some email tools do?
- No, its entry tier is a flat monthly figure per plan rather than per contact, with additional users priced openly at $49 a month each. Drip prices differently again, on the number of active people in the account and how much is sent.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.