Compare Pricing Before Switching

Compare Respond.io's per-seat pricing against flat-rate alternatives to understand the real cost of switching.

Respond.io Pricing: What You Actually Pay

Respond.io uses a tiered pricing model based on seats and monthly active contacts (MACs). Three plans — Starter, Growth, and Advanced — each have different seat limits, feature gates, and contact allowances. All advertised prices assume annual billing; monthly billing costs about 25% more ($99/$199/$349 vs $79/$159/$279). WhatsApp per-conversation fees from Meta apply on top of every plan.

Starter: $79/mo (Annual) or $99/mo (Monthly)

Includes 5 user seats and unlimited monthly active contacts. You get AI Prompt, AI Assist, basic reports, Growth Widgets, and team inboxes — but no AI Agents, no broadcast messaging, no workflow automation, and no Developer API (respond.io pricing page, 2026). The "unlimited contacts" headline is hollow: without broadcasts or automation you can't reach those contacts proactively, so any team that needs to actually run campaigns is pushed straight to Growth at $159/mo.

Growth: $159/mo (Annual) or $199/mo (Monthly)

Includes 10 user seats and starts at 1,000 monthly active contacts, with overage billed at $12 per additional 100 MACs at the end of the cycle. Unlocks AI Agents, workflows, broadcasts, Zapier/Make/n8n integrations, the Developer API, and advanced reports. Additional users cost +$20/mo each (respond.io pricing page, 2026). This is the first plan with broadcast messaging and workflow automation — the features many teams actually buy the platform for.

Advanced: $279/mo (Annual) or $349/mo (Monthly)

Includes 10 user seats (same as Growth), multiple workspaces, custom channels, SSO, HTTP requests in workflows, incoming/outgoing webhooks, and AI Voice Agents. The MAC baseline stays at 1,000 with overage at $15 per 100 — so you pay more for integrations and security but get no extra contact headroom. Additional users cost +$24/mo each. WhatsApp conversation fees still apply on top (respond.io pricing page, 2026).

Hidden Cost: WhatsApp Conversation Fees

Every Respond.io plan charges Meta's WhatsApp conversation fees on top of the subscription. These are per-conversation charges that vary by country and conversation type (utility, marketing, authentication, service). A team sending 500 service conversations per month in the US pays roughly $30-50 extra. Marketing conversations cost significantly more. These fees are unavoidable on any platform using the WhatsApp Business API.

Real Cost Scenarios

A 5-agent team on Starter (annual): $79/mo base + WhatsApp fees, but with no workflows, broadcasts, or AI Agents. Moving to Growth for those features starts at $159/mo — and note that figure is the 1,000-contact tier, not a fixed plan price: respond.io's contact selector reprices the plan as you move up through 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 monthly active contacts (respond.io pricing page, 22 August 2026). On top of the tier sit MAC on-demand at $12 per 100 contacts, AI Credit on-demand at $15 per 1,000 credits, and seats beyond the included 10 at +$20/mo each — so a 20-person team adds $200/mo in seats alone. Converge is $49/month flat for up to 15 agents with no contact caps.

Annual Billing Lock-In

The advertised prices ($79, $159, $279) all require annual billing commitments. Monthly billing costs about 25% more: Starter jumps from $79 to $99, Growth from $159 to $199, and Advanced from $279 to $349. If you want to try the platform without a 12-month commitment, you're paying the higher monthly rate. The 7-day free trial runs on the Growth feature set (5 users, 1,000 MACs, broadcasts excluded), giving limited time to evaluate the platform before committing.

For a full feature-by-feature comparison, see our Respond.io pricing analysis.