How to choose respond.io pricing: Plan, Monthly Active Contacts (MACs) & users

If you run a mid-market B2C business and need predictable messaging software costs as volume grows, this guide helps you choose a respond.io plan, set your Monthly Active Contacts (MACs) and user seats.

As your inbound and outbound conversation volume grows across your channels, pricing should not force you into sudden upgrades or bloated feature bundles.

That’s why respond.io pricing combines clear plan tiers with value-based scaling. Your cost is shaped by what actually drives outcomes: Monthly Active Contacts and users. In this article, we break down each plan, what you get at every stage and how to adjust contact tiers or seats as your business changes.

Pricing that scales with your business

Teams on flat or all-or-nothing plans either overpay for capacity they don't use, or get blindsided by a plan-wide upgrade when only their contact volume changed.

Respond.io separates those two problems by pricing on Monthly Active Contacts and user seats independently, so a spike in conversations doesn't force you into features you don't need.

• Adaptive to business growth: You only pay for what you need, aligning costs directly with your actual business requirements.

• Scale at your own pace: Scale your growth sustainably without sudden cost spikes.

• Clear costs: Transparency aids in planning and budget management, helping your business scale smartly.

• Fair for all sizes: No matter your business size, you can get the best out of

  respond.io.

In addition to our subscription plans, we implement value-based pricing through two primary metrics: The number of Monthly Active Contacts and the number of users.

Trade-off: If you underestimate Monthly Active Contacts, you may pay on-demand charges that can exceed the cost of moving to a higher tier. If you’re a B2C team handling high-volume conversations across multiple channels, respond.io is a customer conversation platform that's a strong fit because you can forecast cost using Monthly Active Contacts and manage seats in-product.

If you only need a basic single-channel inbox for a low-volume team and don’t need workflow automation or multi-channel coordination, a simpler helpdesk or native channel tool may be a better fit than respond.io.

Prerequisites before choosing a pricing plan

Before choosing a plan, gather four inputs: your last 30 days of conversation counts by channel, the number of agents who need access, any required integrations or security controls, and the billing owner who can approve changes.

Having these inputs ready makes it easier to choose the right plan, Monthly Active Contacts tier and seat count without rework.

Respond.io pricing: Subscription plans

Respond.io offers four tailored subscription plans, each designed to support different stages of a business’ growth. Choose our monthly subscription or opt for an annual subscription to benefit from a 20% discount.

• Starter plan: Best for B2C teams starting with managed conversations and basic reporting.

• Growth plan: Ideal for sales and marketing teams looking to scale with automation, AI Agents and integrations.

• Advanced plan: Crafted for large, mature teams that require advanced features and integrations to supercharge the customer journey.

• Enterprise plan: Designed for marketing and sales teams requiring a custom solution for their enterprise needs.

Let’s get into more detail about what these plans have to offer.

Starter plan: Master the basics

Designed for B2C teams that want to manage chat-based conversations without overcommitting on advanced features, respond.io is a customer conversation platform that includes a shared inbox to manage conversations across channels and maintain visibility into every conversation.

It's ideal for teams aiming to streamline their operations, gradually increase their number of agents, and build a robust foundation using respond.io’s omnichannel capabilities.

With this plan, you'll have full access to our core features, allowing for efficient management of customer conversations. Here's what you can expect.

• Team & custom omnichannel inboxes

• Customer lifecycle management

• Respond.io - Inbox Mobile app

• Contact import

• Merge duplicate Contact profiles

• Use AI to draft replies, correct grammar, adjust tone and summarize conversations

• Supervisor dashboard

• Data export

• Basic reporting

…and more!

Growth plan: Scale up efficiently

Tailored for marketing and sales teams aiming to enhance lead flow and conversions, the Growth plan adds AI Agents and advanced automation and integrations to scale operations and ensure sales efficiency.

This plan is perfect for businesses ready to expand their lead capture, automate processes and conversations, and boost sales effectively without a proportional increase in effort or team size.

• AI Agents trained on your business knowledge that take on roles including receptionist, sales agent and support agent

• Fully automate processes including routing, assignment, customer lifecycle management and more with AI agents and Workflows

• Advanced reporting

• Broadcasts

• Integrations with n8n, Zapier, Make.com, HubSpot and other CRM systems

• API access

...and more!

Advanced plan: The comprehensive solution

Designed for experienced sales and marketing teams, the Advanced plan is respond.io’s premium offering, ideal for executing highly specific integrations. It provides access to all existing respond.io features and expands AI capabilities to include voice. In this plan, AI Agents not only answer chats but calls as well.

This plan is perfect for businesses needing complex integrations and specialized features like custom channel configurations and HTTP requests. It also facilitates the expansion of use cases by adding new Workspaces, allowing teams to scale their operations seamlessly.

Most importantly, the Advanced plan adds top-tier security features such as Single Sign-On (SSO), giving you centralized control over who can access your workspace, on top of the encryption, ISO 27001 certification and GDPR compliance included on every plan.

• AI Voice Agents

• Workflow Step: HTTP Request

• Salesforce integration

• Create Incoming Webhooks

• Connect Custom Channels

• Build Webhook Events

• Multiple Workspaces

• Phone Number and Email Masking

• Single Sign-On (SSO)

...and more!

Enterprise Plan: Reach new heights

Designed for large organizations that require scalability, the Enterprise plan provides a higher level of customization and flexibility. It includes everything you can find in the Advanced Plan, plus:

• Unlimited user seats

• Custom monthly active contacts

• Increased API rate limits

• Even higher number of Workspaces

For more detailed information, visit the official respond.io pricing page.

Increase or decrease Monthly Active Contact tiers as needed

Monthly Active Contacts (MACs) are the contacts who send or receive a message (excluding broadcasts) during your billing month. We believe our pricing should correspond to the value we provide. Each chat with a contact is a potential sales opportunity, and our Monthly Active Contacts pricing model ensures you only pay for the contacts you engage with.

There are four reasons why this matters to your business.

• You’re not restricted by the number of total Contacts you can have

• You don’t have to pay for the Contacts you don’t speak to

• Your pricing will scale with the number of Contacts you actually talk to in a month

• You don’t have to delete Contacts and lose their conversation history

Growth and Advanced plans include 1,000 Monthly Active Contacts by default and allow businesses to increase or decrease Monthly Active Contacts limits without switching plans, providing the flexibility to start strong and scale within their chosen plan as their business grows.

The reason behind this decision is simple: If you only need more Monthly Active Contacts, why should you upgrade your plan and pay for features you won’t use?

Quick tip: If your last-month Monthly Active Contacts were within ±10% of your limit, keep your tier; if you exceed it for 2 months in a row, move up a tier instead of relying on on-demand Monthly Active Contacts.

On the other hand, Starter plans offer unlimited Monthly Active Contacts, ensuring new users can build their contact base without constraints.

Add or remove user seats as needed

Set user seats to match the number of agents who need access to the respond.io Workspace. Users are the last key-value metric in our pricing plans. A respond.io user is someone granted access to anOrganization’s Workspace.

Recognizing that businesses of various sizes have different user requirements, we want to make it easy for you to scale them up at your own pace without incurring unnecessary costs.

Each plan includes a default number of users. Similar to our Monthly Active Contact tiers, you can add and remove users individually as your needs grow without changing your subscription plan.

Next, review usage weekly for the first month (Settings → Billing & Usage) and adjust Monthly Active Contact tier or seats before your next billing date to avoid on-demand charges. After 30 days, you'll know it's dialed in if your Monthly Active Contacts stay within your tier and you're not paying on-demand charges in consecutive months.

Execution framework: choose a plan and set Monthly Active Contacts + user seats

By the end, you’ll have selected a plan, set a Monthly Active Contacts tier and user seats in Settings → Billing & Usage, and confirmed your forecasted monthly cost range.

• Step 1: Estimate Monthly Active Contacts (MACs) from last month’s conversations across your active channels.

• Step 2: Choose a plan based on the channels, automation, integrations and security controls your team actually needs.

  • Basic chat management without automation: Starter's unlimited Monthly Active Contact keeps costs flat as you grow.

  • Automating routing, lifecycle management or running AI Agents: Growth is the practical floor.

  • Need Salesforce, SSO or multiple workspaces: Advanced is the only plan that covers it.

• Step 3: Set your Monthly Active Contact tier and user seats in Settings → Billing & Usage so your configuration matches expected usage.

• Step 4: Validate cost predictability with a 30-day usage check and adjust before the next billing date if actual usage trends above your forecast.

Remember to check the official pricing page or start a trial if you want to validate your assumptions against real usage data before committing.

Respond.io advantage for predictable messaging costs

Respond.io helps teams keep messaging costs predictable in two practical ways: billing can scale with Monthly Active Contacts instead of forcing a full plan change, and Billing & Usage controls let teams adjust Monthly Active Contact tiers and seats in-product as needs change.

This is most useful for B2C teams managing high-volume conversations across multiple channels and forecasting spend month-to-month.