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E-Commerce · head to head

Drip vs Magento

Drip logo

Drip

E-Commerce

Ecommerce email marketing and automation priced purely on contact count

From
$39/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Magento logo

Magento

E-Commerce

Open core commerce platform, free as Magento Open Source and licensed by revenue as Adobe Commerce

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Magento has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Drip drip SMS is closed to new accounts and was US-only when it was open, so the multichannel positioning that competitors offer is not actually available to a new customer.; Magento it is open core rather than open source, so B2B, customer segmentation, content staging and the Adobe analytics and recommendation services sit behind the Adobe Commerce licence, and discovering that mid-project converts a free platform into a revenue-banded contract.
  • They diverge on capability: Drip covers Ecommerce data sync, Magento covers Two editions.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Drip and Magento actually diverge.

Attributes where Drip and Magento differ
AttributeDripMagento
Starting price$39/monthFree
Pricing modelPer month by contact countopen-source
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb
FoundedUnknown2008

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (E-Commerce).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Drip

  • Ecommerce data sync
  • Visual workflow builder
  • Behavioural segmentation
  • Onsite forms and popups
  • Unlimited sends
  • No feature gating
  • Product recommendations
  • A/B testing

Only in Magento

  • Two editions
  • Complex catalogue handling
  • Multi-store and multi-website
  • Native B2B in the paid edition
  • Multi-currency and multi-region
  • Composer module system
  • GraphQL and REST APIs
  • Hyva and Mage-OS ecosystem

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Drip

  • A Shopify retailer wants abandoned cart, winback and post-purchase automation without the tier-by-tier feature gating that makes Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign quotes unpredictable.not Magento
  • A store with a mid-sized list finds Klaviyo expensive for the volume it sends and wants a comparable ecommerce data model at a lower monthly cost.not Magento
  • A marketer needs onsite capture forms and popups included rather than paying separately for a popup tool alongside the email platform.not Magento
  • A team sends high email volume to a modest list, such as daily deals or frequent restocks, where unlimited sends on a contact-based price is materially cheaper than send-metered plans.not Magento

Magento

  • A retailer with tens of thousands of SKUs and attribute-heavy catalogue logic that SaaS platforms restrictnot Drip
  • A multi-brand or multi-region group needing separate websites, currencies and tax treatment from one back officenot Drip
  • A B2B seller needing company accounts, negotiated pricing and quoting inside the storefrontnot Drip
  • An enterprise with an in-house or retained development team that treats commerce as owned softwarenot Drip

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Drip

  • Drip SMS is closed to new accounts and was US-only when it was open, so the multichannel positioning that competitors offer is not actually available to a new customer.
  • Pricing scales on total contacts regardless of engagement, so an unpruned list of lapsed subscribers costs the same as an active one and list hygiene becomes a direct budget item.
  • Analytics and revenue attribution are thinner than Klaviyo, with no predictive lifetime value or churn scoring, so a data-led ecommerce team hits the ceiling on measurement before it hits it on sending.
  • The integration catalogue is far smaller than Klaviyo or Mailchimp, and outside the main ecommerce platforms and Zapier you will often be writing against the API yourself.
  • It sits inside Leadpages rather than being an independent company, and as the smaller of the two products its roadmap is subject to a parent whose primary business is landing pages rather than ecommerce email.

Magento

  • It is open core rather than open source, so B2B, customer segmentation, content staging and the Adobe analytics and recommendation services sit behind the Adobe Commerce licence, and discovering that mid-project converts a free platform into a revenue-banded contract.
  • The Adobe Commerce licence is priced on bands of gross merchandise value, so the platform bill increases as the store succeeds and is largely unrelated to the infrastructure or support you consume.
  • A production installation needs a search engine, a cache, a reverse proxy, a message queue and a database tuned together, so hosting is a DevOps engagement rather than a plan, and the first serious traffic event is where under-sizing becomes visible.
  • Minor version upgrades regularly break third party modules, so staying current means a regression testing and remediation project several times a year, and merchants who skip upgrades to avoid that end up running software with unpatched vulnerabilities.
  • The specialist developer market is small and expensive relative to other platforms, so an agency retainer becomes a permanent operating cost and losing that agency is a genuine business continuity problem rather than a procurement inconvenience.

Pricing, plan by plan

Drip

$39/month
  • Up to 2,500 contacts$39/month
    • Unlimited email sends
    • All workflows and segmentation
    • Onsite forms and popups
  • Up to 5,000 contacts$89/month
    • Identical feature set
    • Unlimited email sends
  • Up to 10,000 contacts$154/month
    • Identical feature set
    • Unlimited email sends
    • Price continues to scale with contact count above this

Magento

Free
  • Magento Open SourceFree
    • Unlimited products
    • Multiple storefronts
    • Advanced marketing
  • Adobe Commerce$20000/year
    • All Open Source features
    • 24/7 enterprise support
    • Managed cloud hosting

Which should you pick?

Choose Drip if

  • You need ecommerce data sync.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want visual workflow builder.
Drip review

Choose Magento if

  • You need two editions.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want complex catalogue handling.
Magento review

Questions people ask

Is Drip or Magento better?
Neither clearly leads. Drip starts at $39/month and Magento at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Drip or Magento?
Magento has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $39/month for Drip and Free for Magento.
Does Drip or Magento run on more platforms?
Drip runs on Web, API. Magento runs on Web.
Can I use Magento for free?
Yes. Magento has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Drip starts at $39/month.
What is Drip best used for?
Drip is most often used for a shopify retailer wants abandoned cart, winback and post-purchase automation without the tier-by-tier feature gating that makes mailchimp and activecampaign quotes unpredictable., a store with a mid-sized list finds klaviyo expensive for the volume it sends and wants a comparable ecommerce data model at a lower monthly cost., a marketer needs onsite capture forms and popups included rather than paying separately for a popup tool alongside the email platform., a team sends high email volume to a modest list, such as daily deals or frequent restocks, where unlimited sends on a contact-based price is materially cheaper than send-metered plans.. Of those, a shopify retailer wants abandoned cart, winback and post-purchase automation without the tier-by-tier feature gating that makes mailchimp and activecampaign quotes unpredictable. and a store with a mid-sized list finds klaviyo expensive for the volume it sends and wants a comparable ecommerce data model at a lower monthly cost. are not what Magento is typically brought in for.
What can Drip do that Magento cannot?
Drip covers Ecommerce data sync, Visual workflow builder, Behavioural segmentation, Onsite forms and popups. Magento covers Two editions, Complex catalogue handling, Multi-store and multi-website, Native B2B in the paid edition.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Drip: Does Drip do SMS?

Not for new customers. Drip SMS is closed to new accounts and was only ever available in the United States, so treat Drip as an email and onsite platform.

Magento: Is Magento free?

Magento Open Source is. Adobe Commerce is not, and it holds back B2B, segmentation, content staging and the Adobe analytics and recommendation layer. Establish which edition a requirement needs before you commit.

Drip: How is Drip priced?

Entirely by contact count, from 39 US dollars a month for 2,500 contacts. Email sends are unlimited and no features are held back on lower tiers.

Magento: How is Adobe Commerce priced?

On bands of gross merchandise value, so the licence grows with revenue rather than with usage. Model it against your three year forecast, not this year's turnover.

Drip: Who owns Drip?

Leadpages, which acquired it in 2016. Drip retains its own name, site and product.

Magento: What does it really cost to run?

Licence if applicable, plus tuned infrastructure, plus a specialist agency or in-house team. For most deployments the people and hosting exceed the licence.

Drip: How does it compare to Klaviyo?

Cheaper at small and mid list sizes with a similar ecommerce data model, but weaker on analytics, predictive segmentation and the breadth of its app ecosystem.

Magento: Why do agencies keep mentioning Hyva?

The stock front end stack is slow to develop against, so Hyva, a commercially licensed replacement front end, has become a common default. It is another licence to budget for.

Magento: What happened with Magento 1?

It reached end of life and left merchants on unsupported, unpatched software facing a full replatform. It is the reference point for how long to assume support for any edition you adopt.

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