Drip

Drip Review: The E-Commerce CRM for Brands That Have Outgrown Mailchimp

Drip occupies a specific niche in the email marketing market: it is positioned between Mailchimp (too simple for complex e-commerce automation) and Klaviyo (expensive at scale) for mid-market DTC brands that need sophisticated automation with a genuine CRM data layer. Its visual workflow builder, flat-rate pricing, and purchase-data-driven segmentation make it a credible choice for brands with specific automation needs that Omnisend's pre-built template approach does not fully address.

E-Commerce CRM Architecture

Drip's differentiating feature is its customer record model. Each contact in Drip has a full customer profile containing email engagement history, purchase events (product SKUs, order values, categories), website behaviour (page views, product views), and custom properties. This unified customer record enables segmentation that combines email behaviour with purchase patterns:

• Contacts who purchased Category A but not Category B and have opened an email in the last 30 days
• High-LTV customers (lifetime spend over $500) who have not purchased in 90 days
• Customers who viewed a specific product more than three times in the past two weeks without purchasing

This segmentation depth is comparable to Klaviyo and significantly beyond Mailchimp or MailerLite, which lack the CRM data layer that makes purchase-behaviour-based targeting possible without custom integrations.

Visual Workflow Builder

Drip's visual workflow canvas allows multi-branch automation logic with conditions, time delays, and actions on both email and SMS channels. A single workflow can handle the complete post-purchase sequence: send order confirmation email immediately → wait 3 days → check if shipped (if yes, send tracking email; if no, wait 2 more days) → wait 7 days after delivery → check if review requested (if no, send review request) → wait 14 days → evaluate LTV segment → send relevant cross-sell sequence.

This level of conditional logic and data-dependent branching is comparable to enterprise marketing automation tools and above what Mailchimp, Brevo, or MailerLite support natively.

Pricing Model

Drip's flat pricing based on contact count (starting at $39/month for 2,500 contacts) includes both email and SMS sending without separate per-message fees for SMS. For brands sending a meaningful volume of SMS messages, this all-inclusive model can produce significant savings versus Klaviyo's add-on SMS pricing structure.

The absence of a free plan is the pricing model's primary weakness. The 14-day trial provides enough time to connect a Shopify store and configure initial workflows, but not enough time to observe automation performance in production — the critical evaluation metric for e-commerce email marketing.

Deliverability and Support

Drip's deliverability infrastructure is comparable to Klaviyo and Mailchimp for dedicated IP availability at scale. Email validation, bounce management, and unsubscribe processing are automated. The support team is responsive via chat and email during business hours, with a comprehensive knowledge base covering workflow configuration, Shopify integration, and segmentation logic.

The Klaviyo Comparison

Klaviyo's predictive analytics (predicted LTV, churn probability, next purchase date) and segmentation flexibility are marginally superior for data-science-driven email marketing at scale. For brands at the 10,000–50,000 contact tier where the pricing difference is most significant, Drip's cost advantage ($200/month vs $700/month at 50,000 contacts) may outweigh Klaviyo's incremental data capabilities for brands not yet fully utilising advanced predictive features.

Verdict

Drip is the best choice for mid-market DTC brands that need sophisticated e-commerce CRM segmentation and multi-branch automation without Klaviyo's pricing at scale. The no-free-plan model and interface complexity make it better suited to established e-commerce operations than early-stage stores.

Score: 7.6/10 — Best e-commerce CRM automation for mid-market DTC brands; no free plan and interface complexity limit entry-level accessibility.