Softwr

E-Commerce · head to head

Drip vs Sailthru

Drip logo

Drip

E-Commerce

Ecommerce email marketing and automation priced purely on contact count

From
$39/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sailthru logo

Sailthru

Email Marketing

Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • 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.; Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • They diverge on capability: Drip covers Ecommerce data sync, Sailthru covers Interest profiles.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Drip and Sailthru actually diverge.

Attributes where Drip and Sailthru differ
AttributeDripSailthru
Starting price$39/monthOn request
Pricing modelPer month by contact countquote
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, REST API
CategoryE-CommerceEmail Marketing

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

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 Sailthru

  • Interest profiles
  • Personalisation engine
  • Prediction Manager
  • Site personalisation
  • Zephyr templating
  • Lifecycle optimiser

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 Sailthru
  • 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 Sailthru
  • A marketer needs onsite capture forms and popups included rather than paying separately for a popup tool alongside the email platform.not Sailthru
  • 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 Sailthru

Sailthru

  • A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot Drip
  • A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot Drip
  • High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot Drip
  • Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot 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.

Sailthru

  • The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
  • On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
  • Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
  • It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.

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

Sailthru

On request
  • Sailthru$undefined/year
    • Priced on stored profiles and send volume
    • Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
    • Annual contract through Marigold

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 Sailthru if

  • You need interest profiles.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want personalisation engine.
Sailthru review

Questions people ask

Is Drip or Sailthru better?
Neither clearly leads. Drip starts at $39/month and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Drip or Sailthru?
Drip starts at $39/month and Sailthru at On request.
Does Drip or Sailthru run on more platforms?
Drip runs on Web, API. Sailthru runs on Web, REST API.
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 Sailthru is typically brought in for.
What can Drip do that Sailthru cannot?
Drip covers Ecommerce data sync, Visual workflow builder, Behavioural segmentation, Onsite forms and popups. Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.

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.

Sailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?

Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.

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.

Sailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?

It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.

Drip: Who owns Drip?

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

Sailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?

For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.

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.

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