Respond.io’s New Pricing and Everything You Need to Know

Over the past four years, we’ve upgraded our infrastructure and introduced features that have expanded the scope and utility of our platform immensely. These include Workflows, HTTP Request, advanced reporting and more.

Although our platform has evolved, our pricing hasn’t and there are limitations in our offering that can only be resolved with pricing changes. Here are some of the culprits:

Charging by total contacts impedes value generation for marketing, sales and support
Some recently released features need to be made available on lower-tier plans

Before we improve the platform even further, we’ll be releasing a new set of pricing plans that will become available on 29th June 2022. Let’s take a look into the changes and how this will affect existing customers.

What’s Changing and How It Will Affect You

Building respond.io has been a long journey and along the way, we’ve collected many amazing customers. Our goal is to make the transition to the new plans smooth.

Below, we’ve described the new plans and the best ways for existing customers in each plan to take advantage of the discounts available during the transition. Here’s what you’ll find in the next section:

The new Monthy Active Contact (MAC) plans
Respond AI Credits - Added in August 2023
The Pro plan is now the Team plan, with more features 🎊
An all-new Business plan, with more features 🎊
No changes for existing Enterprise & Reseller customers
The Free plan is now a Free Trial

The New Monthly Active Contacts (MAC) Plans

It’s safe to say the total contacts pricing model didn’t correspond with the value generated by marketing, sales, or support teams using respond.io. Customer feedback indicated value was generated when actual conversations occurred with contacts.

So we’ll be using MACs as the key-value metric for our new plans. MACs are contacts that have sent or received a message (excluding broadcasts) over the billing month. This means you don’t have to worry about the total contacts limit anymore, plus:

You won’t pay for the contacts you don’t speak to
You don’t have to delete contacts and lose their conversation history
Your pricing will scale with the number of contacts you actually talk to

Respond.io’s New Pricing Plans: Team and Business

Once the new prices go public on June 29th, all existing Pro & Business plans will automatically get the additional features of the new plans. New pricing and MAC limits will only start once your billing date rolls over.

There are significant discounts for existing customers:

A 50% discount on new pricing plans is automatically applied for the first three months to all existing Pro and Business customers
The 50% discount can be extended to a full year of service if you upgrade to an annual plan within three months after the pricing changes

We’ve designed the new plans so 95% of current Pro and Business customers will have enough MACs when they migrate to the new Team and Business plans. If you’d like to know the number of MACs you currently use, please contact Support.

August 2023: Introducing Respond AI Credits in Our Pricing Plans

Following the release of Respond AI, an additional component called Respond AI credits has been added to our pricing plans. Here's what you need to know:

Credit usage: Each response generated by Respond AI consumes one credit.
Credit allocation: Depending on your chosen pricing plan, you'll receive a specific number of Respond AI credits each month. As long as you stay within your credit limit, there are no additional fees.
Tracking your credits: Extra credits cannot be carried over to the next month. You can easily monitor your credit usage in your Organization Settings.

Without further delay, here are our new pricing plans in detail.

The Pro Plan is Now Team, with More Features

When analyzing users on the Pro plan, we realized they comprised companies with just one team. So we’ve named our new plan Team and bundled the features necessary to operate the platform in a single team environment.

Every customer that is currently on the Pro plan will be migrated to the new Team plan. Here is what the new Team plan includes:

1,000 Monthly Active Contacts (MACs)
10 Users
2,000 Respond AI credits
5 Workflows (increased from 3)
Shortcuts Trigger (previously only available on the Enterprise plan)
Total Contacts is no longer a hard limit

This new plan will stop you from having to worry about which Contacts to delete, enable you to automate even more processes, and even allow Agents to start automation Workflows directly from the Messages Module.

We’ve designed the MAC system so you can go over your MAC limit occasionally using MAC Overcharges. This can be used when you have a month of increased chat traffic because there is a shopping holiday, new product release or similar occasion.

If you plan to go over 1,000 Monthly Active Contacts regularly, do consider upgrading to the new Business plan introduced below. You will still be eligible for the above-mentioned discounts if you upgrade within the next three months from Team to Business.

The All-New Business Plan, with More Features

When analyzing existing Business plan customers, we found tech-savvy companies coordinating across several multiple use cases simultaneously. So we’ve bundled features required for multi-team operations and third-party integration in the new Business plan:

3,000 Monthly Active Contacts (MACs)
25 Users
5,000 Respond AI credits
20 Workflows (increased from 15)
Custom Channel Integration (previously only available on Enterprise)
HTTP Request Step (previously only available on Enterprise)
Total Contacts is no longer a hard limit

This new plan will stop you from having to worry about which Contacts to delete, enable you to automate even more processes and even allow you to integrate any business software with an open API to Workflows.

If you plan to go over 3,000 Monthly Active Contacts regularly do consider reaching out to our sales team. They can put together a Custom plan that works at a higher scale.

No Changes for Existing Enterprise and Reseller Customer

Rest assured these changes will not have any impact on your current plan. You can keep using it as you do now. If you’re interested in the MAC-based pricing model instead, please speak to your dedicated customer success manager.

The Free Plan is Now a Free Trial

We’ve explored methods of continuing the free plan. However, we were not able to find a workable way to apply a MAC limit to a free plan without Users losing data due to reaching their limit.

We will continue to have a free trial and all existing free plan users will receive an extended 30-day trial period. Keep in mind that if you upgrade to a Pro or Business plan before the pricing changes, you will receive the same discounts as existing customers.

Transition to New Plans & MAC Overcharges

Transition To New Plans

On June 29th, when the new plans come into effect, there will be no changes to your billing cycle. However, on June 29th, you’ll receive all the features of your new plan. You’ll only be charged for the new price on your next billing date.

What are MAC Overcharges?

For most customers, the MAC-based Team and Business plans will work perfectly. However, some companies may require a little bit more MAC than their chosen plan allows or need more MACs during a particularly busy season.

For these situations, we’ve created MAC overcharges. At the end of each month, if you’ve used more MACs than your plan allows, you’ll be billed for the additional MACs at the rate of $10 for every block of 100 MACs (10¢ per MAC) you use.

Depending on your overcharge amount, it could be cheaper to upgrade to a Business or Custom plan if you foresee this as a long-term need. Please speak to our support team to determine the best option.