Encharge vs Drip: subscription-event automation or an ecommerce revenue engine
Drip is the cheaper bill on both public price lists: $154 a month at 10,000 people against $249 for Encharge Growth at 10,000 subscribers. The gap is $95, or $1,140 a year, and it narrows to $20 at 25,000. In exchange, Encharge gives you trial, renewal and cancellation triggers from Stripe, Chargebee, Recurly and Paddle, unlimited flows and unlimited team members, while Drip's pages are built around store orders and revenue per email.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Choose Encharge if your revenue is subscriptions and the emails you need are driven by trial and billing state. Choose Drip if you sell through an online store or want the lowest bill and can build your own events. If you are a SaaS above 20,000 subscribers the price argument for Drip mostly disappears, because $20 separates Drip from Encharge Growth at 25,000.
Cost at 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000
Figures come from each vendor's own slider, read on 7 Oct 2026. Encharge rows are monthly-billed Growth and Premium readouts; Drip has one plan whose price changes with the number of active people.
| People on the list | Drip | Encharge Growth | Encharge Premium | Growth minus Drip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5,000 | $89 | $179 | $269 | $90 |
| 10,000 | $154 | $249 | $399 | $95 |
| 25,000 | $369 | $389 | $649 | $20 |
At the small end, Drip's slider reads $39 for up to 2,500 people, while Encharge Growth is $99 monthly for up to 2,000 subscribers, or $79 on yearly billing. Premium costs $280 more than Drip at 25,000 ($649 − $369), so the Premium integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, Segment, WooCommerce, Shopify, transactional email) are the item to weigh against that number. Neither has a free plan; Drip offers a 14-day trial with no card, and Encharge shows a 14-day free trial on both paid plans.
Send limits are shaped differently
Drip says your cost depends on the number of active people and the volume of email you send in the month, but its readouts show unlimited email sends up to 30,000 people, 480,000 sends at 40,000 and 600,000 at 50,000, which is 12 sends per person at the top of the range. Encharge sets Growth at 10 times the subscriber limit and Premium at 12 times, so a 10,000-subscriber Growth account has 100,000 sends before the $100-per-100,000 overage begins. A weekly newsletter to a 10,000-person list is 4 × 10,000 = 40,000 sends a month, comfortably inside both. Mailing the whole list daily would be about 300,000, which is where Encharge's ceiling and its overage would start to matter.
Tracking a subscription through Stripe
- Encharge lists twelve Stripe triggers, among them trial started, trial ends, trial converted, trial expired, subscription activated, subscription past due, scheduled cancellation, subscription cancelled, expanded and contracted. It imports historical billing data when connected and syncs changes after that, and the integration list adds Chargebee, Chargify, Recurly and Paddle (Encharge for Stripe).
- Drip shows example automations on its Stripe page: tag a subscriber when a payment completes, subscribe someone to a campaign when a payment attempt fails, remove a tag after a refund, enroll a new plan sign-up. Its help center says Drip adds the customer if missing, records an event, updates lifetime value on charge events and does not import history (Drip's Stripe help).
The practical gap is the vocabulary of state. Encharge names "trial expired" and "subscription expanded" as triggers, so a flow can start on them directly. With Drip you would rebuild those states from charge events and tags.
What each tool is designed around
Drip's pricing page lists multi-channel marketing across email, social and onsite popups, prewritten playbooks for welcome, abandoned cart and win-back, segmentation by browsing and buying, and integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and "90+ more". It includes unlimited sends in its readouts, up to 50 workflows on the lower ones, and an MCP connector for AI clients at no extra cost. Encharge's pages are written for B2B SaaS: a visual flow builder, behavior-based emails, segmentation on product events, webhooks, unlimited flows and unlimited team members, with Twilio SMS listed among its integrations.
If you sell physical or digital products with an order history and product catalog, Drip has the model for it. If a customer is a subscription with a trial, plan and renewal date, Encharge does.
Switching from Drip to Encharge
- Export people with tags and custom fields, and list the workflows that use revenue or order events, since those have no direct Encharge equivalent.
- Connect Stripe in Encharge first so that trial and subscription state is imported before flows go live.
- Import unsubscribed and bounced addresses as suppressed, and carry your list of do-not-email contacts across.
- Rebuild the welcome sequence as an event-triggered flow, then run it next to the Drip version on a share of new signups for one trial length.
- Update SPF and DKIM for the new platform once volume has moved.
Deciding
- Encharge Growth for a SaaS that bills in Stripe, Chargebee, Recurly or Paddle and wants trial and renewal triggers without writing webhook handlers.
- Drip for stores, and for small SaaS lists that care more about a $39 to $154 bill than about named subscription states.
- Revisit at 25,000: with only $20 between Drip and Encharge Growth, features decide.
Related reading: all comparisons, Loops vs Encharge, Loops vs Drip, ActiveCampaign vs Drip, ConvertKit vs Drip and the marketing automation guide.
Encharge vs Drip: common questions
Is Drip really cheaper than Encharge?
On the public sliders, yes at every size read. At 5,000 people Drip is $89 against $179 for Encharge Growth, a $90 gap. At 10,000 it is $154 against $249, a $95 gap, or $1,140 a year. At 25,000 the gap shrinks to $20, with Drip at $369 and Encharge Growth at $389.
Does Drip limit how many emails I can send?
Drip's readouts show unlimited email sends up to 30,000 people, then 480,000 sends at 40,000 people and 600,000 at 50,000. Encharge sets a monthly send limit of 10 times your subscriber limit on Growth and 12 times on Premium, and lists overage at $100 for every 100,000 emails sent.
Which handles Stripe subscription events better?
Encharge's Stripe page lists twelve triggers, including trial started, trial ends, trial converted, subscription past due and subscription cancelled, and says it imports historical billing data on connect. Drip's Stripe page lists example automations for payments, failed payment attempts, refunds and new plan sign-ups, and its help center says it records charge events going forward with no historical import.
Can Drip run a SaaS onboarding sequence?
Yes, in principle: it has workflows, tags, dynamic segments and custom events. Its own pricing page, though, is written around stores: Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce integrations, abandoned-cart and win-back playbooks, and revenue traced to the email. A SaaS using Drip is working against the grain of the product's vocabulary, not against a hard limit.