Best Email Marketing Tools for Stripe Users
For a SaaS company that bills through Stripe and keeps a list of up to about 2,500 people, Drip is the simplest place to start: its entry band is $39 per month, the price is set by people rather than by sends, and the plan includes unlimited email sends and up to 50 workflows. Customer.io, Encharge, Userlist, Loops and Klaviyo each suit a different billing setup, and each is covered below with its published price.
Written by the editorial team, a pen name for the site's editors. Plan prices are taken from each vendor's public pricing page, checked 7 October 2026.
Who This Guide Is For
This guide is for software companies that take payments through Stripe and want their email tool to act on billing data. That covers subscriptions with one or more plans, monthly and annual billing, team seats, usage add-ons, and free trials that convert to paid. It is less useful if you sell only physical goods, or if your only Stripe use is a one-time checkout for a digital download. In those cases an ecommerce-first tool may match your needs better, and the Klaviyo section explains when that applies.
Stripe is a payment processor, not an email tool. It records charges, invoices, subscriptions and card events. An email tool takes some of those events, combines them with contact data, and turns them into messages, segments and reports. Most of the work in any setup is deciding which billing events should send which email, which events should stop a sequence, and which customer attributes should drive a segment. The tool you choose changes how much of that work you do by hand and how much you pay for it.
The prices in this guide come from each vendor's public pricing page. Where a vendor does not publish a figure for a given plan or list size, the table says pricing on request, and no estimate is given. Connection methods are described as each vendor documents them. Integration lists change, so confirm the current scope on the vendor site before you sign up.
If you are also working on the lifecycle side of the product, the onboarding emails guide covers trial and first-week sequences, and the churn prevention guide goes deeper on cancellation flows. The Stripe integration guide walks through the connection steps in more detail.
How Billing Data Reaches an Email Tool
Before you compare prices, decide how Stripe data will reach your email tool, because that decision drives both the setup time and the number of moving parts you will maintain later. There are three common routes, and many teams combine them.
The first route is a direct connector. You authorize the Stripe account inside the email tool, choose which objects to sync, and the tool keeps customers, subscriptions and some payment events up to date. This is the fastest route, but you depend on the connector's scope. Confirm which invoice and subscription events are exposed, how far back historical data goes, and whether multi-seat or usage-based amounts are mapped correctly.
The second route is a webhook handler that you write or host. Stripe sends events to an endpoint on your side, the handler verifies each event, updates the contact in the email tool through its API, and sends a named event that starts or stops a sequence. This gives you full control over what leaves Stripe, and it is the usual choice for engineering-led teams. The cost is the handler itself: retries, idempotency, field mapping and monitoring all become your responsibility.
The third route is a no-code or low-code middleman. Make and Zapier can listen for Stripe events and write them into an email tool. Both work for a handful of events and a small team. Both also charge by the amount of work they do, so a busy billing account can reach their limits quickly. The Make free plan allows 1,000 credits per month and two active scenarios, and the Zapier free plan allows 100 tasks per month with two-step Zaps. Paid plans raise those limits, and the prices are listed in the cost section below.
Whichever route you choose, write down the exit condition for each automation before you build it. A dunning sequence, for example, should stop when a payment succeeds, when a new card is attached, or when the subscription is cancelled. If one of those exits cannot be routed reliably, the sequence will eventually message a customer who has already fixed the problem.
Stripe-Ready Email Tools Compared
| Tool | Best for | Starting price (plan and billing) | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drip | Single or few-plan SaaS with individual customers and lists up to about 25,000 people | $39 per month, 1 to 2,500 people, unlimited email sends | Built from an ecommerce model, so MRR segments need custom fields |
| Customer.io | Engineering-led teams that want full control of events and attributes | $100 per month on Essentials, billed monthly, plus profile-based pricing | Stripe data usually arrives through webhooks, an API or middleware, so setup takes engineering time |
| Encharge | Growth-stage SaaS that wants billing and behavior data in one flow builder | $99 per month monthly, or $79 per month billed annually, on Growth for up to 2,000 subscribers | Listed bands stop at 2,000 subscribers on the plan table; larger lists need a custom quote |
| Userlist | B2B SaaS with company-level and team-based billing | $149 per month on Basic, up to 10,000 users | Revenue attribution is limited, and MRR calculations need setup |
| Loops | Developer-led SaaS that wants transactional and marketing email on one platform | $99 per month on Growing Audience; free Early Stage plan with limits | No direct Stripe connector is listed, so you build the event layer |
| Klaviyo | SaaS that also sells products or add-ons, and Shopify-based businesses | $20 per month on the email plan for 500 profiles; free plan up to 250 profiles | Built around orders, so subscription fields need custom properties |
| Kit | Creators and course sellers who also run a SaaS product | Free up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator from $33 per month billed annually for automations | Visual automations and sequences start on a paid plan; tag-based, with no built-in MRR view |
| ActiveCampaign | Sales-led SaaS that wants a CRM and email automation together | $15 per month on Starter, starting price at 1,000 contacts | No native SaaS billing model; Stripe usually needs Zapier or a custom handler |
| HubSpot Marketing Hub | Teams already using HubSpot for CRM, support and sales | Starter listed at $7 per month; Professional $800 per month | Expensive for an email-only use case |
| Mailchimp | Newsletter-style lists and early-stage products | Free up to 250 contacts; Standard from $20 per month at 500 contacts | Stripe depends on third-party connectors and Zapier |
Tool-by-Tool Notes for Stripe Billing
Each section covers who the tool fits, how it usually receives Stripe data, where it falls short for a subscription business, and the plan prices on its pricing page.
Drip
Drip fits a SaaS company with one or a few plans, individual customers rather than team seats, and a list that will stay under roughly 25,000 people for the next year. Pricing is set by the number of people, not by sends, so a team that mails onboarding, product news and dunning messages every week pays the same monthly amount as long as the contact count stays in the same band. That predictability is the main reason it is the default suggestion on this page for smaller teams.
Drip lists a Stripe integration in its marketplace that brings customers, subscription status, plan details and payment events into the platform. The events you can use as workflow triggers depend on what that integration exposes when you connect, so confirm the list with Drip before you build a dunning flow around a specific event. Drip also accepts custom events through its API. That lets you add a signal Stripe does not send, such as a usage threshold reached inside your product, and trigger an upgrade message from it.
The limitation is the data model. Drip grew out of ecommerce, where a subscriber's value is what they have bought. That maps well to lifetime spend, but a recurring SaaS business usually wants current MRR, plan tier and billing status as clear fields. You can store those as custom fields and build segments on them, and that works. It is more manual than a tool built around subscriptions, and you will need to keep those values in sync when a customer changes plans.
The larger bands show how the price moves with the list. The 4,501 to 5,000 band is $89 per month with email support, the 9,001 to 10,000 band is $154 per month with chat and email support, and the 22,501 to 25,000 band is $369 per month with free migration and personalized onboarding. Some higher bands list a send allowance instead of unlimited sends, such as 480,000 sends at the 37,501 to 40,000 band and 600,000 sends at the 45,001 to 50,000 band. If your product mails a large volume to each contact, check that allowance against your plan before you commit to a band.
Published Drip prices
- 1 to 2,500 people: $39 per month, unlimited email sends, up to 50 workflows
- 2,501 to 3,000 people: $49 per month, unlimited email sends
- 4,501 to 5,000 people: $89 per month, with email support
- 9,001 to 10,000 people: $154 per month, with chat and email support
- 22,501 to 25,000 people: $369 per month, with free migration and personalized onboarding
Drip offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. There is no ongoing free plan. Current bands are on drip.com/pricing.
Customer.io
Customer.io fits teams with an engineer who can own the event pipeline and who want to decide exactly which Stripe fields become profile attributes and which events become workflow triggers. Its workflow builder supports branching, time delays and multi-step sequences, and the profile model stores any attribute you send. That makes it a strong choice for a dunning flow with several branches, such as one path for high-value accounts and another for standard plans.
Stripe data does not usually arrive as a one-click connection in this setup. You configure Stripe webhooks, send the events to the vendor's API or pass them through middleware, and map each event to a profile attribute or a trigger. Some teams place Segment or Make in front of Customer.io to handle the mapping. Segment's pricing is on request, and Make's Core plan is $9 per month billed annually for 10,000 credits. Budget engineering time for the first version and for keeping the mapping current when your Stripe objects change.
The price has two parts. The Essentials plan starts at $100 per month and includes the visual workflow builder, email and community support, and basic data integrations. Profile volume is priced separately. The published profile tiers are $145 per month for 10,000 profiles, $235 per month for 20,000, $325 per month for 30,000, $415 per month for 40,000, and $505 per month and up for 50,000 profiles or more, all billed monthly. The Premium plan is $1,000 per month, with custom profile volume, elevated AI Agent limits and premium support.
Customer.io also runs a Startup Program. Eligible early-stage companies that have raised under $10 million can receive 12 months free. Check the eligibility terms on the pricing page, because the offer belongs to that program and is not a permanent free plan.
Where it falls short for a small team is the effort needed to reach the first working dunning flow. Revenue attribution is not a built-in view. You connect conversions from Stripe or your product analytics to get a revenue figure per campaign. For a team with a clear data model and a developer available, that is a reasonable trade. For a founder who wants a sequence running this week, it is more work than Drip or Kit.
Current plans and profile tiers are on customer.io/pricing.
Encharge
Encharge fits a growth-stage SaaS that wants to combine billing data with product behavior in one flow builder. A typical use is a sequence that starts when a user visits the upgrade page without converting, or a trial reminder that depends on how much of the product the user has touched. Billing fields such as plan and status sit alongside page visits and custom events, so a single condition can check both.
Encharge lists a native Stripe connector. You authenticate the Stripe account, choose which data to sync, and then use customer, subscription and payment fields for segments and triggers. The scope of the sync depends on the connector version you enable, so check which objects are included before you plan around them. Behavior tracking uses a JavaScript snippet on your site or app. That is an extra step some teams skip, and the billing side is weaker without it.
The Growth plan is listed at $99 per month, or $79 per month billed annually, for up to 2,000 subscribers. It allows monthly email sends of 10 times the subscriber limit and includes unlimited flows and team members. The Premium plan is listed at $159 per month, or $129 per month billed annually, for the same 2,000 subscriber band, with sends of 12 times the subscriber limit and added HubSpot, Salesforce and transactional email. Above the listed bands, the pricing page points to a custom plan.
The pricing page states that free email verification is included on plans. That matters if you import contacts from several sources and want fewer hard bounces. Confirm what the verification covers with the vendor, because it may not match a dedicated verification service in volume or in the depth of its checks.
The limitation for Stripe users is depth. The connection is useful, but a team that wants every Stripe event and every subscription field available for triggers may find a purpose-built billing workflow more complete. Encharge is strongest when the behavior side of the product matters as much as the billing side.
Current plans are on encharge.io/pricing.
Userlist
Userlist fits B2B SaaS where a customer is a company with several users, and billing is set per company or per seat. Its data model keeps companies and users as separate objects, so a billing message can go to the account owner while a product tip goes to the team members who log in. That is the main reason to choose it over a tool built around individual subscribers.
The company view makes some segments easy to build. You can target companies with several active users on a low-priced plan, which is a common upgrade signal, or companies where the admin has stopped logging in while the subscription is still active, which is a churn signal. Userlist supports marketing and lifecycle email, in-app messages, and segments for both users and companies.
Userlist describes its Stripe connection as a native integration for subscription data. Plan details and billing dates sync, and the company model holds subscription information at the account level. MRR calculations may need additional setup, and you should confirm how multi-seat and usage-based amounts map before you rely on a revenue segment. Much of the engineering effort goes into the product snippet and the data mapping rather than the Stripe connection itself.
Revenue attribution is the weak spot. You will see which campaigns drive engagement, but tying a specific email to a change in MRR usually requires outside analysis. For a team that already measures revenue in a warehouse or finance tool, that is manageable. For a team that wants a campaign-level revenue figure inside the email tool, look at a tool with built-in attribution, or pair the data with your own reporting.
Published Userlist prices
- Basic: $149 per month at up to 10,000 users, with marketing and lifecycle email, in-app messages and company and user segments
- Professional: $349 per month at up to 10,000 users, adding A/B split testing, conversion goals and advanced workflow features
- Enterprise: custom message limits, pricing on request
Current plans are on userlist.com/pricing.
Loops
Loops fits a developer-led SaaS team that wants one platform for marketing email and transactional email, and is willing to write the integration between Stripe and the platform. Its API is the main way data gets in. Events you send from your backend become triggers for loops, the name Loops uses for its automations.
No direct Stripe connector is listed for Loops, so the Stripe layer is yours to build. A common pattern is a small webhook handler that receives invoice and subscription events from Stripe, updates the contact's properties such as plan and status, and sends a named event such as payment failed or payment recovered. Loops then runs the sequence, and your handler decides when it should stop. The handler is where most of the engineering effort goes, and it is also where you control exactly which data leaves Stripe.
The free Early Stage plan includes unlimited contacts, with up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days to the 1,000 newest contacts. It adds a Loops footer and sends at up to 10 emails per second. The Growing Audience plan at $99 per month includes unlimited sends to subscribers and transactional sends to users outside your audience. For a SaaS that needs to send receipts, sign-in messages and billing notices to users who have unsubscribed from marketing, that transactional allowance is the main reason to move to the paid plan.
The limitations are the lack of a native Stripe connector and the lack of built-in revenue attribution. Both are workable, but both add work. A team that wants a finished dunning flow on the first day will get there faster with Drip or Customer.io.
Current plans are on loops.so/pricing.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo fits a company that sells more than a software subscription: physical products, one-time digital purchases, add-ons, or a Shopify store alongside a SaaS plan. Its Stripe connection is designed around purchases, so orders, customers and purchase history arrive as native objects, and its revenue attribution is detailed. If your Stripe account handles product sales as well as subscriptions, Klaviyo gives you that combined view.
Pure subscription SaaS is a poorer fit. Klaviyo's model is built around orders, so subscription status, plan tier and MRR do not map natively. You can treat each invoice as an order and store plan and status as custom properties. That works, but the subscription logic then lives in your setup rather than in the platform. For Shopify businesses that use Stripe for subscriptions, Klaviyo's Shopify integration usually handles the data better than a direct Stripe connection.
Dunning in Klaviyo requires custom events. You send payment failed and payment recovered events from Stripe, then build flows that start on the failed event and exit on the recovered one. The email builder and segmentation are strong, so producing the emails is easy. The hard part is making sure the events are correct and that the flow exits when it should.
Published Klaviyo prices
- Free: up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends per month and $5 of mobile messages
- Email plan: $20 per month for 500 profiles, $30 for 1,000, $60 for 2,500, $100 for 5,000, $150 for 10,000 and $400 for 25,000
- Email plus SMS: pricing on request for the listed profile counts
Current plans are on klaviyo.com/pricing.
Kit
Kit fits a founder who sells courses, memberships or digital products next to a SaaS subscription and wants one place to manage the audience. Its free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages and forms, unlimited email broadcasts, audience tagging and segmentation, and the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions.
Stripe works in Kit through Kit Commerce for products sold inside Kit. For a SaaS subscription processed in your own Stripe account, the link is usually a Zapier or API workflow that writes subscription events as tags or custom fields. That is workable for a few events, such as a new subscriber or a paid conversion. It is fragile for dunning, because a successful retry has to remove the subscriber from the failed-payment tag.
The plan structure matters for this use. Visual automations and email sequences start on the Creator plan at $33 per month billed annually. Pro is $66 per month billed annually and adds subscriber signals, unlimited users, deliverability reporting and a newsletter referral system. Kit offers a 14-day free trial on paid plans with no credit card required. A team that only needs broadcasts can run on the free plan, but a team that needs a dunning flow will be on a paid plan from the start.
Kit's segmentation is tag-based. It does not calculate MRR or LTV, so those figures have to be computed in your own system and synced back. For a creator business that is enough. For a SaaS that tracks revenue per segment, it adds work that the billing-focused tools handle for you.
Current plans are on kit.com/pricing.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign fits a sales-led SaaS that needs a CRM, deal stages and email automation in one platform. Sales reps can see the billing status of an account before a call, and the automation builder is capable enough for complex lifecycle logic once the data is in place. It is a weaker fit for a product-led company that wants billing events to drive email with the least possible plumbing.
Stripe data usually reaches ActiveCampaign through Zapier or a custom webhook handler. The integration can push fields such as plan, status and MRR, plus tags for events like failed payments. Each step depends on the previous one, so a broken Zap can stop a dunning sequence without an obvious error. If you take this route, monitor those automations as you would any production job.
The published plans are Starter at $15 per month, Plus at $49 per month, Pro at $79 per month and Enterprise at $145 per month, each with a starting price at 1,000 contacts. Prices rise with the contact count. A free trial is offered, though its length is not stated on the pricing page used for this guide.
For a Stripe-billed SaaS that already runs ActiveCampaign for sales, adding billing fields is reasonable. For a team starting from scratch, a billing-first tool usually needs less work to reach the same dunning and upgrade flows.
Current plans are on activecampaign.com/pricing.
HubSpot Marketing Hub
HubSpot fits a team that already keeps customer records, support and sales pipeline in HubSpot and wants billing data next to those records. Stripe data is synced into contact and company properties, and workflows can start when a property changes. Support and sales can see a customer's subscription status while they work, and that is the main reason a team would choose it for Stripe data.
For an email-only use case, HubSpot is expensive. Marketing Hub Starter is listed from $7 per month, Professional at $800 per month and Enterprise at $3,600 per month. HubSpot's pricing combines plan and seat terms, so the total for your team depends on how many people use the platform and which plan you need. Check the seat and contact terms on the pricing page before you estimate a budget.
Dunning in HubSpot is built with workflows triggered by property changes, such as a payment status field moving to failed. HubSpot does not provide SaaS dunning templates, so you write the sequence from scratch. Its email tools and personalization are solid, and branching by customer value is possible, but the workflow has to be designed carefully to exit when a payment succeeds.
HubSpot's attribution works best for sales-assisted revenue and inbound marketing. It connects campaigns to deals in the pipeline, which fits a company that sells through a sales team. For a self-serve SaaS, the value of that attribution depends on how much of your revenue passes through a deal record.
Current plans are on hubspot.com/pricing/marketing.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp fits a very small SaaS that sends a newsletter to a modest audience and does not yet need billing-driven automation. Its free plan covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends per month, with a maximum of 250 sends per day. For an early product with a small list, that may be all the email you need for a few months.
Stripe has no native connection in Mailchimp. Teams use third-party connectors or Zapier to write payment data into contact tags and merge fields, then use Customer Journeys to react to those changes. That works for basic cases such as adding a paid tag. It is harder to keep reliable for dunning, where a failed payment has to be cleared when a retry succeeds, and each extra step is another point of failure.
The paid plans scale by contact count. Essentials at 500 contacts is listed at $13 per month, and Standard starts at $20 per month for 500 contacts, with up to 6,000 emails per month at that tier. Standard at 2,501 to 5,000 contacts is $100 per month with up to 60,000 emails per month, at 5,001 to 10,000 contacts it is $135 per month with up to 120,000 emails per month, and at 10,001 to 15,000 contacts it is $230 per month with up to 180,000 emails per month.
Most growing SaaS teams move off Mailchimp when they want reliable billing triggers and a clear link between a payment event and a message. The migration section below covers the order of work.
Current plans are on mailchimp.com/pricing.
Deliverability, Transactional Sending and List Verification
Billing emails and marketing emails carry different risks. A receipt or a failed-payment notice is expected by the customer and goes to an address that has already paid you, so it is high value and should not be blocked. A marketing campaign goes to a wider list, and a poor list can damage the sender reputation that all of your email depends on. A sound setup keeps those two streams apart, checks the addresses that enter the marketing list, and watches bounce and complaint rates over time.
List verification is the step most often skipped. If you import older contacts, buy leads, or collect sign-ups without confirmation, some addresses will be misspelled, disposable or no longer active. Verification services such as ZeroBounce, NeverBounce and Kickbox check addresses before you send, which helps you find the ones that would bounce. These are separate products from the email tools above, and their prices are on request from each vendor, so ask for a quote for your list size before you commit. Verification is most useful before a first large import and before a re-engagement campaign to a dormant segment.
Verification is not a substitute for consent. A verified address can still belong to someone who never asked to hear from you. Keep consent status with each contact, and keep paying customers on billing sequences rather than moving them into a newsletter without a clear opt-in. Suppression lists, including addresses that unsubscribed or complained, should move with the contact data when you change tools.
Separate the streams at the domain level. Many teams send product email from a subdomain used only for transactional messages, and marketing email from a different subdomain with its own authentication setup. The goal is that a marketing complaint spike does not interrupt password resets or receipts. Confirm the sending domain and authentication settings in the tool you choose, and check that it can send transactional messages from a domain you control.
Some tools in this guide handle both streams in one place. Loops lists transactional sends to users outside your audience as part of its Growing Audience plan. Customer.io, Encharge and Userlist can run lifecycle messages from the same workflow builder as marketing campaigns. Whatever you pick, make the choice on purpose: decide which messages must always arrive, which can wait for a campaign window, and which should never go to an address that has bounced.
Once you send, watch three signals: hard bounces, complaints and unsubscribes. A rising bounce rate usually means the list needs cleaning. A rising complaint rate usually means the audience has been mailed too often or was not expecting the message. A change in unsubscribes often points to a segment that has stopped finding the content useful. Respond to each signal with a change to the list or the sequence, not with more volume.
Costs of the Plumbing Around the Email Tool
The email tool is only one line in the budget. If you use middleware to move Stripe events, or a payment recovery tool next to the email platform, those costs belong in the total. The figures below are the published prices for each tool.
- Make: the free plan includes 1,000 credits per month, two active scenarios, scenarios that run at most every 15 minutes and a 5-minute maximum execution time. Core is $10.59 per month billed monthly, or $9 per month billed annually, for 10,000 credits per month. Pro is $18.82 per month billed monthly, or $16 per month billed annually, for the same credit amount. Teams is $34.12 per month billed monthly, or $29 per month billed annually. Enterprise is on request. Details are on make.com/en/pricing.
- Zapier: the free plan includes 100 tasks per month and two-step Zaps. Professional is $19.99 per month and adds multi-step Zaps, unlimited premium apps and webhooks. Team is $69 per month for up to 25 users, with shared Zaps and SAML SSO. Enterprise is on request. Details are on zapier.com/pricing.
- Churnkey: Starter is $250 per month billed annually and includes Cancel Flows, Payment Recovery and Metrics. There is a 14-day trial and no free plan. Details are on churnkey.co/pricing. It complements the email platform rather than replacing it, and it is worth considering when failed payments make up a large share of your churn.
- Stripe: payment fees are per transaction, and standard payments pricing has no monthly platform fee. Details are on stripe.com/pricing.
- Segment: pricing on request for Connections, Unify and Engage. It is a customer data layer, so budget it only if you need one profile store across several tools.
A common mistake is to pick the cheapest email plan and then add a Zapier plan, developer time and a second tool to make it work. Add those costs up before you compare the headline prices.
What the Listed Plans Cost at Four List Sizes
| Tool and plan | 1,000 contacts or people | 5,000 | 10,000 | 25,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drip (priced by people) | $39 per month (1 to 2,500 band) | $89 per month (4,501 to 5,000 band) | $154 per month (9,001 to 10,000 band) | $369 per month (22,501 to 25,000 band) |
| Klaviyo (email plan, profiles) | $30 per month (1,000 profiles) | $100 per month (5,000 profiles) | $150 per month (10,000 profiles) | $400 per month (25,000 profiles) |
| Mailchimp Standard (contacts) | Pricing on request | $100 per month (2,501 to 5,000 contacts) | $135 per month (5,001 to 10,000 contacts) | Pricing on request |
| Customer.io (Essentials, profiles) | Pricing on request | Pricing on request | $145 per month (10,000 profiles, billed monthly) | Pricing on request (20,000 profiles is $235 per month; 30,000 is $325 per month) |
| Encharge (Growth) | $79 per month billed annually, or $99 monthly (up to 2,000 subscribers) | Pricing on request | Pricing on request | Pricing on request |
| Userlist (Basic) | $149 per month (up to 10,000 users) | $149 per month (up to 10,000 users) | $149 per month (up to 10,000 users) | Pricing on request |
| Loops (Growing Audience) | $99 per month (plan price; band not shown) | $99 per month (plan price; band not shown) | $99 per month (plan price; band not shown) | $99 per month (plan price; band not shown) |
| ActiveCampaign (Starter) | $15 per month (starting price at 1,000 contacts) | Pricing on request | Pricing on request | Pricing on request |
| Kit (Creator) | $33 per month billed annually (Creator; free plan up to 10,000 subscribers without automations) | Pricing on request | Pricing on request | Pricing on request |
Figures are monthly unless noted. Where a list size is not shown on the vendor's pricing page, the cell says pricing on request. Check the vendor page before you buy, because contact bands, send limits and billing options change.
Stripe Events, the Emails They Drive, and Their Exits
| Stripe event | Typical email | Stop or exit condition |
|---|---|---|
| customer.subscription.created | Welcome and first-week onboarding sequence | Stop if the customer cancels during the trial |
| customer.subscription.trial_will_end | Trial conversion message before the trial ends | Skip if the customer has already added a paid plan |
| invoice.payment_failed | Dunning step one, with a link to update the card | Exit when a payment succeeds |
| invoice.payment_succeeded | Receipt, thanks, and a usage tip for the plan | Exit any dunning sequence still running |
| invoice.upcoming | Renewal reminder, especially for annual plans | Skip if the subscription is cancelled before renewal |
| customer.subscription.updated | Plan change confirmation and a note on the features of the new plan | None; this is a notification |
| customer.subscription.deleted | Cancellation follow-up and the start of a win-back sequence | Stop the win-back if the customer subscribes again |
| charge.refunded | Refund confirmation | None; this is a notification |
Event names follow Stripe's documentation. Which events a given connector exposes depends on the tool and its version, so match this list against what your tool shows before you build the flows.
Building a Failed-Payment Sequence That Does Not Embarrass You
A failed-payment sequence is the most common reason a SaaS team adopts a billing-aware email tool, and it is also the easiest to get wrong. The most visible mistake is a "your payment failed" email that goes out after the card has already been retried and the customer is fine. The second mistake is a sequence that never stops, so a customer who updated the card on day two still gets a threatening message on day ten.
Start from the exit condition. Before you write any copy, decide what ends the sequence: a successful invoice payment, a new card attached to the customer, a subscription that is cancelled, or a manual change by support. Each of those should be an event your email tool can see. If you cannot route one of them reliably, do not launch the sequence yet, because the exit will fail in production and the customer will be the one who notices.
Next, decide how many messages you will send and how far apart they are. Many SaaS teams send a first message at once, a second a few days later, and a final notice before the subscription is cancelled. Each message should say what happened, link to a page where the customer can update the card, and state what will happen next. Avoid wording that suggests the customer did something wrong. The message should read as help, not as a threat.
Think about who receives the message. On a team plan, the person who owns the card may not be the person who uses the product every day. Send the first message to the billing contact on the account, and copy the workspace owner if your product has one. Userlist's company model makes that routing simpler. In a tool that stores only individual contacts, store the billing email as an attribute and use it for the send.
Some teams run different sequences by plan value. A high-priced account can receive a personal note from the founder or an account manager, while a standard plan receives the automated sequence. Keep the branching simple at first. Two branches, high value and standard, are easier to maintain than a matrix of plan, region and failure reason.
Review the sequence every month. Look at how many customers entered it, how many exited because a payment succeeded, and how many cancelled. Those three numbers show whether the timing and copy are working, and whether the exit logic fires correctly.
Decision Guide: If You Need X, Pick Y
| If you need | Pick | Because |
|---|---|---|
| A predictable bill for a small list and one or two plans | Drip | The entry band is $39 per month for up to 2,500 people, with unlimited email sends and up to 50 workflows |
| Branching dunning flows and full control of event data | Customer.io | The workflow builder supports branches and delays, and the profile model stores any attribute you send |
| Billing data and product behavior in one flow builder | Encharge | Billing fields and page visits or custom events can be checked in the same condition |
| Company-level billing with several users per account | Userlist | Companies and users are separate objects, so billing and product messages can go to different people |
| Marketing and transactional email on one developer platform | Loops | Transactional sends to users outside your audience are part of the Growing Audience plan |
| Purchases and subscriptions in one customer history | Klaviyo | Orders, customers and purchase history arrive as native objects, with detailed revenue attribution |
| A creator business that also runs a SaaS product | Kit | The free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers, and Creator adds visual automations at $33 per month billed annually |
| A CRM and sales pipeline next to email | HubSpot or ActiveCampaign | Billing properties can sit next to deal stages and support records, but both need extra setup for subscription logic |
| A newsletter with a small free list and no billing automation yet | Mailchimp | The free plan covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends per month |
How to Choose
Start with the number of people, not the number of emails. Most of the published prices in this guide are set by contacts, profiles, subscribers or people, so a list that grows faster than your send volume will change the bill more than your campaigns do. Estimate your list size twelve months from now, then look at the band that covers it.
Next, decide who owns the Stripe connection. If you have an engineer who will maintain a webhook handler, Customer.io and Loops give you the most control. If nobody on the team wants to maintain code, choose a tool with a native connector and confirm the events it exposes. If the team already runs a CRM, check whether Stripe data can live there before you buy a second tool.
Then decide which messages are essential. For most SaaS companies they are the failed-payment sequence, the card expiry warning, the trial conversion sequence, the cancellation response and the win-back sequence. A tool that can run all five with reliable exits is more valuable than one with a larger template library and weak exit logic.
Finally, test the exit logic with real accounts before you switch on every automation. Use a small group of customers or internal accounts, trigger a failed payment in Stripe's test mode where possible, and confirm that the sequence stops when the payment is recovered. A sequence that sends one extra message is a poor experience. A sequence that never stops is a serious one.
If you are unsure, start with the lowest band that covers your list, one automation, and the events your tool exposes natively. Add more automations after the first one has run cleanly for a few weeks.
Setup Checklist for a Stripe-Billed Email Program
Use this order when you connect a tool for the first time. Each step depends on the one before it.
- Write the list of billing events you need, with the exit condition for each automation.
- Choose the connection route: direct connector, webhook handler, or Make or Zapier. Check the event list the vendor documents.
- Decide which contact fields you need: plan, status, billing email, subscription start date and MRR if you track it.
- Verify the existing list before the first import, using a verification service if the list came from older sources.
- Set up separate sending paths for transactional and marketing email, with authentication on each sending domain.
- Import historical customers and confirm that counts match Stripe for a sample of plans.
- Build the failed-payment sequence first, then the card expiry warning, the trial conversion sequence, the cancellation response and the win-back sequence.
- Run each automation with a small group of internal or test accounts, and confirm the exit condition fires.
- Switch on the automations for real customers in small batches, and watch bounces, complaints and unsubscribes for the first few weeks.
If you are moving from another tool, keep the old sequences running until the new ones have a clean record, so that no customer falls between the two systems during the switch.
Migrating From Mailchimp, Kit or a Spreadsheet
Many SaaS teams start with a general newsletter tool and a spreadsheet of paying customers, then discover that the spreadsheet is out of date. The migration is easier if you treat the billing system as the source of truth and the email tool as a consumer of it. Export the current customer list from Stripe, not from the spreadsheet, and reconcile the two before you import anything.
Move marketing subscribers and paying customers separately. Subscribers who never bought anything should stay on the marketing list with their existing consent. Paying customers should be imported with their plan and status attributes, and placed in the billing sequences rather than the newsletter. Keep the consent status from the old tool with each contact; do not treat a paying customer as a marketing subscriber unless they opted in.
For Mailchimp users, the main work is replacing tag-based automation with event-based automation. Each tag you used to set through Zapier becomes a field or event in the new tool. For Kit users with Commerce, purchases may already be native events, but external Stripe subscriptions usually still need the same work described above. In both cases, run the old and new sequences side by side for a short period, and disable the old one only after the new one has run cleanly.
Keep an export of the old tool's data, including unsubscribes and suppression lists. Those lists protect your sender reputation, and a customer who unsubscribed in the old tool should stay unsubscribed in the new one.
What to Measure Once It Is Running
Opens and clicks are easy to report and weak as a guide to revenue. For a billing-driven program, the better numbers connect a message to a payment outcome: how many customers entered a failed-payment sequence, how many recovered before the final notice, and how many cancelled after receiving it. Those counts tell you whether the sequence is doing its job.
Track the exit reasons, not only the entries. A sequence where most people exit because the payment succeeded on the first retry is working differently from one where most people exit because they cancelled. Both are useful, but they call for different changes. If most exits are cancellations, the copy may be fine and the product may be the problem.
Watch the health of the list at the same time. Bounce and complaint rates, and the share of contacts who unsubscribe after each campaign, should stay steady. A campaign that lifts revenue but doubles complaints is a cost you pay later. Review those numbers alongside revenue, not after the fact.
If your email tool has no revenue attribution, connect Stripe data to your own reporting. A monthly export that joins campaign sends to subscription status is enough to answer the main questions, and it works with any of the tools in this guide.
Our Pick for Stripe Users
For a SaaS company billing through Stripe with a list of up to about 2,500 people, Drip is the simplest place to start. The entry band is $39 per month, the price is set by people rather than sends, and the plan includes unlimited email sends and up to 50 workflows. That leaves room to add a dunning flow, a trial sequence and a win-back sequence without a change in the monthly price.
For engineering-led teams that want full control of events and attributes, Customer.io is the stronger choice, at $100 per month on Essentials plus profile-based pricing, billed monthly. Budget the engineering time it takes to map the Stripe events.
For B2B teams billing per company, Userlist at $149 per month for up to 10,000 users matches the account model. For developer-led teams that want transactional and marketing email on one platform, Loops at $99 per month on Growing Audience is the reference point, with the Stripe layer built in-house.