Best Drip Email Tools & Campaign Software in 2026

Drip helped popularize the concept of drip email marketing for e-commerce, and the platform remains one of the strongest options for online stores in 2026. The entire product is designed around the e-commerce customer lifecycle: acquisition, first purchase, repeat purchase, loyalty, and win-back.

Product-based drip sequences are where Drip shines. Abandoned cart recovery flows automatically pull in the exact products a shopper left behind, complete with images, prices, and direct checkout links. Browse abandonment drips re-engage visitors who viewed products without adding to cart. Post-purchase sequences trigger based on what was bought, enabling cross-sell and upsell campaigns that feel relevant rather than spammy. Replenishment reminders use purchase frequency data to time re-order prompts perfectly.

Native integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce make setup straightforward. Product catalog data, purchase history, and customer behavior flow automatically into Drip. The revenue attribution dashboard shows exactly which drip campaigns generate sales, down to the individual email level.

The visual workflow builder handles complex conditional logic well. You can create sophisticated drip sequences with splits based on purchase value, product category, customer lifetime value, or engagement level. Goal tracking exits subscribers from a drip when they complete the desired action, preventing unnecessary emails after conversion.

Where Drip falls short: Not optimized for SaaS drip campaigns -- no billing integrations or MRR tracking. No built-in CRM for sales team coordination. The starting price of $39/mo is higher than alternatives like Sequenzy. AI features are basic compared to platforms with full generative capabilities. The e-commerce focus limits usefulness for service businesses, agencies, or content creators.

Best for: E-commerce stores needing sophisticated product-based drip sequences. Particularly strong for Shopify and WooCommerce merchants who want advanced drip automation beyond basic platform email tools.

Pricing: Starts at $39/mo for 2,500 contacts. Pricing scales with list size. All features are included on every plan.

ActiveCampaign offers one of the most powerful drip campaign builders in the industry. The automation canvas lets you create intricate multi-branch drip sequences with conditional logic, splits, wait steps, goals, webhook actions, and integrations with the built-in CRM. If you can imagine a drip workflow, ActiveCampaign can probably build it.

What sets ActiveCampaign apart from other drip tools is the deep integration between email automation and sales workflows. Your drip sequences can update deal stages, assign follow-up tasks to sales reps, trigger internal notifications, and move contacts through your pipeline based on engagement. This makes it ideal for B2B companies where marketing drips need to hand off to human sales conversations at the right moment.

Site tracking adds another layer to your drip campaigns. When a contact visits specific pages on your website, that behavior can trigger or modify a drip sequence. Combined with lead scoring, you can build drip campaigns that gradually warm prospects and alert sales reps when someone reaches a threshold of interest.

The machine learning features help optimize drip performance with predictive send times and win probability scoring. The AI content assistant helps generate email copy, though it is less sophisticated than Sequenzy's full sequence generation approach. Split testing within automations lets you optimize drip campaigns systematically over time.

Where ActiveCampaign falls short: The power comes with a steep learning curve. The interface can feel overwhelming, especially for solo founders or small teams. Pricing tiers gate important features -- you need the Plus plan ($49/mo) for the full CRM and landing pages. For pure SaaS drip campaigns, Sequenzy offers simpler setup with native billing integrations at a lower starting price. The sheer number of options can lead to over-engineered drip sequences that become difficult to maintain.

Best for: Businesses with sales teams who need drip campaigns coordinated with CRM deal flow. Excellent for B2B lead nurturing drips, appointment-based businesses, and companies with complex multi-touch sales processes.

Pricing: Starts at $29/mo for 1,000 contacts on the Lite plan. Plus plan at $49/mo adds CRM, landing pages, and lead scoring. Professional plan at $149/mo adds predictive sending and split automations.

ConvertKit was built by creators for creators, and that focus shows in every aspect of the drip email experience. The sequence builder prioritizes clarity over complexity: linear drip campaigns with time delays, simple conditions, and tag-based branching. For bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, and course creators, this intentional simplicity is a feature, not a limitation.

The visual automation builder handles the drip workflows creators actually need: welcome sequences for new subscribers, course drip campaigns that deliver lessons on a schedule, launch sequences that build anticipation and urgency, and evergreen funnels that run continuously. Tags and segments keep your audience organized without drowning you in options.

For course creators specifically, ConvertKit offers compelling drip delivery features. You can drip out lesson content on a fixed schedule, gate access based on purchase, and integrate with platforms like Teachable, Podia, and Thinkific. The built-in landing page and form builders help you capture leads to feed directly into your drip sequences without needing separate tools.

The commerce features let creators sell digital products and paid newsletters directly through ConvertKit. Drip sequences can trigger based on purchases, enabling post-purchase upsell campaigns and customer onboarding drips tied to specific products.

Where ConvertKit falls short: Limited automation compared to dedicated marketing platforms like ActiveCampaign. No behavioral triggers based on product usage -- you cannot drip based on what users do inside a SaaS app. Pricing gets expensive at scale, especially for the Creator Pro plan. Not designed for SaaS subscription drips or e-commerce product flows. Reporting is basic compared to tools with revenue attribution.

Best for: Content creators who want simple, effective drip sequences for newsletters, online courses, and content businesses. The ideal choice for launch sequences, evergreen sales funnels, and audience nurturing drips.

Pricing: Free tier for up to 1,000 subscribers (limited automation). Creator plan at $29/mo adds visual automations and sequences. Creator Pro at $59/mo adds subscriber scoring and advanced reporting.

Customer.io is enterprise-grade drip marketing built for companies that need sophisticated behavioral automation at scale. The platform processes events in real time, enabling drip campaigns that respond to user actions within seconds rather than minutes or hours.

The event API is Customer.io's core strength for drip campaigns. Any user action in your product -- feature activation, milestone reached, support ticket opened, plan limit approached -- can trigger or modify a drip sequence. Combined with powerful segmentation that updates in real time, you can create highly targeted drip campaigns that respond to actual user behavior rather than relying solely on time delays.

Multi-channel drip orchestration goes beyond email. Customer.io supports push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, and webhooks within the same drip workflow. A single drip sequence can email a user on day one, send an in-app message on day three if they haven't engaged, and follow up with a push notification on day five. This channel flexibility is rare among drip email tools.

A/B testing within drip workflows is genuinely useful. You can test not just subject lines and content, but entire branch strategies -- does a three-email onboarding drip outperform a five-email version? Customer.io gives you the tools to answer that question with statistical significance. The data infrastructure handles high volumes reliably, processing millions of events daily for fast-growing companies.

Where Customer.io falls short: The $100/mo starting price is a significant barrier for early-stage companies. The learning curve is steep, and you will likely need engineering resources for implementation and ongoing management. The platform can feel over-engineered for simple drip campaigns. For most SaaS startups, Sequenzy offers comparable drip capabilities for SaaS-specific use cases at a fifth of the cost with far less setup time.

Best for: Funded startups and mid-market companies with dedicated marketing engineering resources who need enterprise-grade behavioral drip automation. Ideal for product-led growth companies with complex user journeys spanning multiple channels.

Pricing: Essentials plan starts at $100/mo for up to 5,000 profiles. Premium plan with advanced features starts at $1,000/mo. Pricing scales based on profile count.

Klaviyo dominates e-commerce drip marketing, and for Shopify stores in particular, it is the default choice in 2026. The integration is seamless -- product catalog, purchase history, browse behavior, and customer data flow automatically into Klaviyo for sophisticated drip targeting without manual configuration.

The predictive analytics engine powers intelligent drip campaigns that go beyond simple triggers. Klaviyo calculates expected date of next order, predicted customer lifetime value, and churn risk scores for every contact. These predictions enable drip campaigns that adapt to individual patterns: sending a replenishment reminder right before a customer typically reorders, or triggering a win-back drip when churn risk spikes.

Pre-built e-commerce drip flows are optimized using data from hundreds of thousands of stores. Welcome series, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, post-purchase follow-up, win-back, VIP nurturing, cross-sell, and replenishment templates give you a running start. Dynamic product blocks automatically populate emails with relevant products based on browsing history, purchase patterns, and predictive recommendations.

SMS integration creates true multi-channel drip sequences. You can coordinate email and text message timing within the same flow, using channel preferences and engagement data to reach customers where they are most responsive. The CDP (Customer Data Platform) functionality unifies customer data across touchpoints for more personalized drip targeting.

Where Klaviyo falls short: Exclusively e-commerce focused -- SaaS billing integrations do not exist. Pricing is higher than general-purpose drip tools and scales aggressively with list size. The platform can feel complex for stores with simple drip needs. No native CRM functionality. For SaaS companies, Sequenzy or Customer.io are far better choices.

Best for: E-commerce stores serious about drip email marketing, especially those on Shopify. If you sell physical or digital products online and want data-driven drip campaigns with predictive intelligence, Klaviyo is the market leader.

Pricing: Free tier for up to 250 contacts and 500 email sends. Paid plans start at $45/mo for 1,000 contacts. SMS pricing is separate. Pricing scales with contact count.

Mailchimp remains the most recognizable name in email marketing, and the Customer Journey builder provides a visual way to create drip campaigns with triggers, conditions, branches, and time delays. For small businesses taking their first steps with drip email automation, the familiarity and extensive documentation lower the barrier to entry.

Pre-built journey templates help you launch common drip sequences quickly: welcome series for new subscribers, abandoned cart recovery for connected stores, re-engagement campaigns for dormant contacts, and birthday or anniversary drips. The template library for email design is one of the largest in the industry, which helps if design resources are limited on your team.

AI features have improved meaningfully in recent updates. The content optimizer suggests improvements to your drip emails, send time optimization uses engagement data to schedule delivery, and the subject line helper generates alternatives. E-commerce integrations are mature for Shopify and WooCommerce, enabling product-based drip workflows with dynamic content blocks.

Where Mailchimp falls short: Drip automation is less sophisticated than dedicated tools like Sequenzy, ActiveCampaign, or Customer.io. The interface has grown cluttered with features, making navigation less intuitive than it once was. Pricing scales aggressively as your contact list grows -- the value proposition weakens at higher tiers. Reporting lacks revenue attribution depth. Not suitable for complex SaaS lifecycle drips or advanced behavioral sequences.

Best for: Small businesses wanting a familiar, well-supported tool with basic drip campaign capabilities. A solid starting point for companies new to email automation before graduating to more powerful platforms as needs grow.

Pricing: Free tier for up to 500 contacts. Essentials at $13/mo, Standard at $20/mo (includes Customer Journeys), Premium at $350/mo. Pricing scales with audience size.

HubSpot's drip campaigns live within the broader Marketing Hub ecosystem, which includes CRM, content management, social media, ads, and customer service. The workflow builder triggers drip sequences from form submissions, deal stage changes, lifecycle stage transitions, list membership, custom events, page visits, and dozens of other signals.

The deep CRM integration is HubSpot's differentiator for drip marketing. Sales and marketing drip campaigns stay coordinated through shared contact records, deal properties, and lifecycle stages. A marketing drip can pause when a sales rep starts a conversation, resume if the deal stalls, and branch based on deal outcome. For organizations where marketing and sales alignment matters, this coordination is powerful.

For enterprise needs, HubSpot delivers advanced reporting with custom attribution models, sophisticated A/B testing across drip variants, personalization tokens that pull from hundreds of CRM properties, smart content that adapts email blocks based on contact segments, and AI-powered content generation. The ecosystem extends to sales sequences, service tickets, and CMS-hosted content for a truly unified customer experience.

Where HubSpot falls short: Expensive for advanced drip features -- the Marketing Hub Professional plan at $890/mo is where the real automation power lives. Complex to set up and maintain properly. You pay for a full marketing suite even if you only need drip campaigns. The starter plan's automation capabilities are limited. For focused drip email needs, Sequenzy or ActiveCampaign often deliver better value at a fraction of the cost.

Best for: Mid-market and enterprise companies wanting a unified marketing platform with sophisticated drip capabilities, deep CRM integration, and sales-marketing alignment. Best justified when you use multiple HubSpot hubs.

Pricing: Free CRM with basic email. Marketing Hub Starter at $50/mo (limited automation). Professional at $890/mo (full workflow automation). Enterprise at $3,600/mo.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) offers solid drip email capabilities at competitive prices, with a unique advantage: multi-channel drip sequences that include email, SMS, and WhatsApp within a single workflow. For businesses whose audiences respond to text messages, this integration saves you from stitching together multiple platforms.

The automation builder handles common drip workflows reliably: welcome series, lead nurturing sequences, re-engagement campaigns, post-purchase follow-ups, and event-based triggers. The interface is straightforward without being overly simplistic. Drip sequences support conditional splits, A/B testing, and time-based delays.

The built-in CRM adds pipeline management alongside your drip campaigns. This is basic compared to ActiveCampaign or HubSpot, but useful if you need lightweight deal tracking without a separate tool. AI features help with send time optimization and subject line suggestions, though content generation is limited compared to Sequenzy's full sequence generation.

Pricing is structured by email volume rather than contact count, which can be advantageous for businesses with large lists that send infrequently. The free tier includes 300 emails per day, making it accessible for testing drip strategies before committing to a paid plan.

Where Brevo falls short: Drip automation is less sophisticated than specialized tools -- complex branching logic and behavioral triggers are more limited. The interface can feel dated in places. SaaS-specific features like billing integration and MRR tracking are absent. Deliverability can be inconsistent on shared IPs. For SaaS needs, Sequenzy offers better features at a similar price point.

Best for: Budget-conscious businesses needing drip sequences with multi-channel capabilities across email, SMS, and WhatsApp. Good value for companies with large contact lists and moderate sending volume.

Pricing: Free tier with 300 emails/day. Starter at $25/mo for 20,000 emails. Business at $65/mo adds advanced automation and A/B testing. Pricing by email volume, not contacts.

Loops takes a refreshingly minimal approach to drip email for SaaS. The interface is clean, setup is fast, and the platform combines transactional and marketing drip emails in one place. If complexity is your enemy and you want a drip tool that stays out of your way, Loops is worth serious consideration.

The API is well-designed, documentation is thorough, and the developer experience is notably smooth. For engineering-led teams that integrate email through code, Loops provides a clean abstraction over drip campaign management. Events and user properties flow in through the API and trigger drip sequences without requiring a marketing team to configure webhooks.

The team ships improvements at a rapid pace, and the product feels intentional about what it includes and what it leaves out. For many SaaS products with straightforward drip needs -- welcome sequence, onboarding tips, upgrade prompt -- Loops provides enough functionality without the feature bloat of larger platforms.

Where Loops falls short: Drip automation is basic compared to Sequenzy's AI-generated sequences and native billing integrations. No Stripe integration for automatic revenue tracking or subscription-event triggers. Segmentation options are more limited than Customer.io or ActiveCampaign. No AI content generation for drip sequences. The pricing model based on email volume rather than contacts can become expensive for frequent senders. If you need sophisticated lifecycle drip campaigns for SaaS, Sequenzy delivers more capability at a lower price.

Best for: Developer-focused SaaS teams who prioritize clean UX, fast API integration, and simplicity over feature depth. Good for products with straightforward drip campaign needs.

Pricing: Free tier for up to 1,000 contacts and 2,000 emails. Starter at $49/mo for 5,000 contacts and 10,000 emails. Growth plans scale from there.

Encharge focuses specifically on behavior-based drip automation for SaaS companies. The core premise is compelling: track what users do inside your product, segment them by engagement level, and trigger drip sequences based on feature usage, activation milestones, and engagement patterns rather than arbitrary time delays.

Integration with product analytics tools like Segment, Mixpanel, and Heap lets you use rich behavioral data to power your drip campaigns. If a user has explored your dashboard but never created their first project, Encharge can automatically enroll them in a drip sequence focused on that specific activation step. This granularity enables drip campaigns that feel genuinely helpful rather than generic.

The flow builder handles complex conditional logic for multi-branch drip sequences. Combine behavioral triggers with time delays, tag conditions, and segment membership to create drips that adapt to individual user journeys. The platform also supports lead scoring that accumulates based on both email engagement and product usage.

Where Encharge falls short: No native billing integrations like Sequenzy offers -- connecting Stripe requires webhook setup and custom mapping. The starting price of $79/mo is higher than Sequenzy's $19/mo for comparable SaaS drip features. As a smaller company, documentation and community resources are more limited. The platform lacks AI sequence generation, so you write all drip emails manually. Feature development pace is slower than larger competitors.

Best for: SaaS companies that want behavioral drip automation with deep product analytics integration and can invest time in manual setup. A solid middle ground between simple tools and enterprise platforms like Customer.io.

Pricing: Starts at $79/mo for up to 2,000 subscribers. Pricing scales with list size. All automation features included on every plan.

GetResponse has been building drip email automation since before the term "drip campaign" entered common usage. The platform started as an autoresponder service and has evolved into an all-in-one marketing suite that includes email sequences, landing pages, webinars, conversion funnels, and basic CRM -- all in one subscription.

The automation builder handles visual drip workflows with conditions, filters, tagging actions, and scoring. Pre-built automation templates cover common drip scenarios: welcome drips, lead qualification sequences, post-webinar follow-ups, and e-commerce abandonment flows. Conversion funnels guide you through creating complete drip campaigns from opt-in to sale, which is helpful for marketers who want structure.

AI features include email content generation, subject line testing, and send time optimization. The webinar integration is unique among drip tools -- you can build drip sequences that promote upcoming webinars, follow up with attendees, and nurture no-shows, all within the same platform. For businesses that rely heavily on webinars for lead generation, this integration eliminates the need for separate webinar and drip tools.

Where GetResponse falls short: The jack-of-all-trades approach means no single feature is best in class. SaaS-specific drip features like billing integration and product usage triggers are absent. The interface shows its age in places compared to modern tools like Sequenzy or Loops. Automation capabilities trail dedicated platforms like ActiveCampaign. Better specialized options exist for every individual use case.

Best for: Businesses wanting an all-in-one platform that bundles drip email, landing pages, webinars, and basic CRM at a reasonable price. Strongest for webinar-based businesses and coaches who want everything in one place.

Pricing: Free tier for up to 500 contacts. Email Marketing at $19/mo, Marketing Automation at $59/mo, E-commerce Marketing at $119/mo. Pricing scales with list size.

MailerLite delivers surprisingly capable drip automation at entry-level prices, making it one of the best values in the drip email space for 2026. The visual automation builder creates multi-step drip sequences with delays, conditions, and actions. For small businesses, freelancers, and early-stage startups, the combination of generous free tier and affordable paid plans makes MailerLite an accessible on-ramp to drip marketing.

The interface is clean and modern, avoiding the feature clutter that plagues many marketing tools. Setting up a basic drip sequence -- welcome emails, lead nurturing, re-engagement -- takes minutes rather than hours. The drag-and-drop email editor produces professional-looking drip emails without design skills, and the template selection covers common use cases.

The free tier includes up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails, which is generous enough to build and test drip campaigns before committing financially. Paid plans starting at $10/mo add automation workflows, A/B testing, and auto-resend features. For cost-conscious teams, this value proposition is compelling.

Where MailerLite falls short: Drip automation depth is limited -- no complex branching logic, behavioral triggers from product usage, or revenue attribution. Segmentation options are basic compared to platforms like Sequenzy or ActiveCampaign. No SaaS-specific features like billing integration. The account approval process can be slow and occasionally frustrating. Advanced marketers will outgrow the platform quickly. AI content features are minimal.

Best for: Small businesses, freelancers, and early-stage startups needing affordable, no-frills drip campaigns. An excellent starting point for teams testing drip email marketing before investing in more capable platforms.

Pricing: Free tier for 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails/month. Growing Business at $10/mo adds automation. Advanced at $21/mo adds smart sending and AI features. Pricing scales with subscriber count.

Ortto (formerly Autopilot) pioneered the visual journey canvas for drip campaigns, and the approach remains one of the most intuitive ways to design complex automated sequences. The canvas-based builder lets you design entire customer journeys by dragging and connecting blocks for triggers, actions, conditions, delays, and splits. For visual thinkers, this is a more natural way to plan drip campaigns than list-based or form-based builders.

The platform includes Customer Data Platform (CDP) features that unify contact data from multiple sources for richer drip targeting. Audience segmentation updates in real time, and drip campaigns can leverage unified profiles that combine website behavior, email engagement, product usage, and CRM data into a single view.

Multi-channel support spans email, SMS, in-app messaging, and push notifications within the same journey canvas. AI assists with journey optimization, suggesting improvements based on performance data, and content generation helps draft drip email copy. Analytics dashboards visualize drip campaign performance with attribution across the entire customer journey.

Where Ortto falls short: Premium pricing at $99/mo starting limits accessibility for smaller teams. Less SaaS-focused than Sequenzy -- billing integrations require custom setup. The CDP features, while powerful, add complexity that may be unnecessary for teams with simple drip needs. The platform targets mid-market companies and can feel over-built for early-stage businesses.

Best for: Marketing teams who think visually and need to orchestrate complex customer journeys across multiple channels with unified customer data. Strongest for mid-market companies with dedicated marketing resources.

Pricing: Professional plan starts at $99/mo for 5,000 contacts. Business and Enterprise tiers add advanced CDP, custom events, and premium support. Pricing scales with contact count.

Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) combines CRM, drip email, and business automation into a single platform designed for service-based small businesses. The target audience -- coaches, consultants, agencies, and professional service firms -- needs client management, appointment scheduling, invoicing, and drip marketing in one place, and Keap delivers that unified experience.

The drip automation builder is genuinely powerful, handling complex sequences with conditions, delays, and integrations across the CRM, invoicing, and appointment modules. When a prospect books a consultation, Keap can automatically trigger a pre-meeting drip sequence, create a deal record, assign follow-up tasks, and schedule reminder notifications. This level of business process automation goes beyond what pure email tools offer.

Payments and invoicing are built in, which enables drip campaigns triggered by billing events: overdue invoice reminders, post-payment thank-you sequences, and renewal nurture drips. For service businesses, this eliminates the integration gap between billing and marketing that other platforms require Zapier or custom code to bridge.

Where Keap falls short: The $159/mo starting price makes it the most expensive option on this list by a wide margin. The learning curve is notoriously steep. For pure drip email needs, you are paying for CRM, invoicing, and scheduling features you might not use. Not designed for SaaS, e-commerce, or product companies. For SaaS drip campaigns, Sequenzy delivers far better value. The interface feels dated compared to modern alternatives.

Best for: Service businesses, coaches, and consultants who need CRM, invoicing, scheduling, and drip automation in a single platform and can justify the premium pricing for that consolidation.

Pricing: Pro plan at $159/mo for 1,500 contacts. Max plan at $229/mo adds advanced automation and analytics. Pricing scales with contact count. No free tier.