systeme.io pricing explained (2026): 2,000 contacts free, and what 0% fees actually mean
systeme.io sells one promise: replace five tools with one, at a price that undercuts all five. The pricing page supports that promise more honestly than most — there is a real free plan that never expires, transaction fees are 0% on every tier including free, and there is no seat-based charge. The limits are counted in funnels, automation rules and contacts instead, which is a very different kind of ceiling.
The plans (verified October 23, 2026; prices as displayed on annual billing)
- Free — $0, no credit card. 2,000 contacts, 3 sales funnels (15 steps), 1 automation rule, 1 workflow, 1 email campaign, 1 custom domain, 1 blog, 1 course (500 students), 1 community. Unlimited emails sent, unlimited file storage.
- Startup — $17/month on the annual tab. 5,000 contacts, 10 funnels (50 steps), 10 automation rules, 5 workflows, 10 email campaigns, 3 custom domains, 5 blogs, 5 courses with unlimited students.
- Webinar — $47/month annual. 10,000 contacts, 50 funnels, 100 automation rules, 20 workflows, 10 evergreen webinars, 10 custom domains.
- Unlimited — $97/month annual. Unlimited contacts, funnels, automation rules, workflows, domains, courses.
- Teams — custom. Adds a dedicated account manager on top of Unlimited.
One caveat we want to state plainly: the page we captured was showing annual billing (its "2 months free" tab). Monthly-billing prices are higher; we did not capture them in this pass and will not guess at them.
The 0% transaction fee line is the real differentiator
Every tier, including Free, lists 0% transaction fees. That is unusual and materially different from the newsletter platforms: Kit's plan table lists a 3.5% + 30¢ line on product transactions, and course platforms typically take a cut at lower tiers.
What 0% does not mean is "free to sell." Your payment processor still takes its cut — Stripe, PayPal, Razorpay and others are integrated, and their fees are separate and unavoidable. systeme.io is telling you it adds nothing on top. For a $99 course sold 100 times a month, a 3.5% platform fee is about $346; at 0%, that is the entire argument for the platform in one number.
The limits that actually bind
Because there is no per-seat charge and no fee, the constraints you hit are structural:
- Automation rules, not emails, are the free plan's binding limit. One automation rule on Free is enough to demonstrate the feature and not enough to run a business. Even Startup's 10 rules is modest if you build real lifecycle logic.
- Contacts are the pricing axis. 2,000 → 5,000 → 10,000 → unlimited. This is the number that moves you between plans, and it is a much gentler curve than subscriber-tier email pricing.
- Funnels are counted, steps are counted. 3 funnels × 15 steps on Free. A quiz funnel with upsells and a thank-you page will eat most of that.
The sub-account detail almost nobody mentions
systeme.io allows unlimited sub-accounts on every plan, including Free, and each sub-account carries the same limits as your main plan at no extra cost. In the vendor's own words: if your plan allows 50 funnels, each sub-account can also have 50.
Read that carefully, because it changes the economics. A consultant on Startup ($17/month) can spin up a separate sub-account per client, each with 5,000 contacts and 10 funnels. That is not a normal pricing structure — most platforms charge per workspace. If you run client work, this is the single most valuable line on the page, and it is buried below the comparison table.
The honest caveat: sub-accounts are a management feature, not a legal separation. Your clients' data sits inside your account, which raises data-processing questions you should answer before reselling. Check the terms; we have not verified how data deletion works at the sub-account level.
Which plan actually makes sense
- Free — genuinely usable for a first product launch: one funnel, one course, 2,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, no fees. Most people should start here and stay for months.
- Startup ($17) — the moment you need a second funnel or a third email campaign. At $17 this is one of the cheapest paid tiers in any category, and it covers a full solo business.
- Webinar ($47) — for evergreen webinar funnels specifically. If you are not running webinars, this tier's headline feature is dead weight and Startup is where you belong.
- Unlimited ($97) — past 10,000 contacts, or when you are running multiple brands and want the counting to stop. Compare it against the cost of the four tools it replaces before assuming it is expensive.
Who should not choose systeme.io
- Teams that need a polished, fast interface. Breadth has a cost: the editor and builder are functional rather than elegant, and the platform is denser than a single-purpose tool.
- Newsletter-first publishers. If your business is a newsletter, Kit or beehiiv will serve you better — deliverability tooling and publishing ergonomics are their whole product, not one module of five.
- Anyone who needs serious CRM pipeline management. Pipelines exist (1 on Free, 5 on Startup) but this is not a sales CRM; a six-figure pipeline does not belong here.
- Enterprise buyers with procurement requirements. SSO, audit logs and DPA negotiations belong to a different vendor class.
What we cannot verify
Plan limits, prices and the 0% fee line above come from systeme.io's own pricing page, captured October 23, 2026 on its annual-billing view; monthly-billing prices were not captured and we will not estimate them. We re-check pricing pages quarterly. Our hands-on testing cycle is in progress — the full review will add account screenshots, a real product sale to measure landed fees against a processor's own cut, measured email deliverability, and the friction points we hit building a funnel per our How We Test process. We cannot yet speak to deliverability in practice, page-load performance under real traffic, or how sub-account data deletion behaves.