Respond.io Pricing Explained: Priced by the Contacts You Actually Talk To

Respond.io pricing explained starts with its unit, because the unit is the whole idea: Monthly Active Contacts, or MACs. A MAC is a contact your team sends or receives a message with during a billing month, excluding broadcasts. You pay for the contacts you actually talk to — not for the size of your database, not per message, and not per seat as the primary lever. Per respond.io's own pricing guidance, the plans are Starter at $99 a month, Growth at $199, and Advanced at $349, with Enterprise custom-priced and annual billing discounted 20%. Here is how the unit moves the bill.

The unit: what counts as a MAC

A contact who messages you once in a month counts once, whether you exchange two messages or two hundred. A contact in your database who stays silent all month costs nothing. Broadcasts do not count toward MACs. That shape rewards a particular business: one with a large database but a modest monthly conversation count pays for the modest count. It penalises the opposite shape: a business whose entire database messages every month pays for the entire database. Before choosing a tier, count last month's distinct conversational contacts, not your total contacts — the gap between those two numbers is the whole pricing decision.

Starter: $99, unlimited MACs, no AI Agents

Starter is the inbox plan: shared omnichannel inboxes, lifecycle management, AI-assisted drafting (grammar, tone, summaries — not autonomous agents), and basic reporting, with unlimited MACs. Unlimited MACs on the cheapest plan sounds generous until you see the gate: Starter does not include AI Agents, advanced automation workflows, or broadcasts. A team that only needs humans answering in one shared inbox can grow its contact count without the bill moving; a team that wants an agent answering must leave Starter regardless of MACs.

Growth: $199, the AI floor

Growth is the practical floor for automation: AI Agents trained on your business knowledge, advanced workflows and routing, broadcasts, API access, and CRM integrations, with 1,000 MACs included by default. Past 1,000 MACs you raise the tier (respond.io's own example: Growth at 5,000 MACs runs $399 a month) or pay on-demand charges in blocks of 100 contacts at a published rate — currently $12 per 100 on Growth. The discipline is respond.io's own: if you exceed your tier two months running, move up a tier rather than paying on-demand twice.

Advanced: $349, and what it alone holds

Advanced adds AI voice agents, multiple workspaces, Salesforce integration, single sign-on, and top-tier security, with 1,000 MACs included and on-demand blocks at $15 per 100. Users are the second lever on every plan: Growth and Advanced include 10 users by default, and seats can be added or removed without changing plan. Meta's WhatsApp fees sit outside the subscription on every tier, and respond.io states it passes Meta's fees through with no markup — the cleanest version of the

platform-plus-Meta split.

Who the MAC model fits — and who should pass

The MAC model fits a mid-market B2C team with a stable monthly conversation count and a need for automation across channels: the bill tracks real usage and can be adjusted in-product without a plan change. It fits poorly at the small end: a solo owner or two-person team pays a $99 floor for an inbox, and $199 for the first AI Agent, where Neksio's shape is priced by AI replies instead — Free 100 a month on WhatsApp, Starter $8.99 for 5,000, Growth $11.99 for 15,000 including Facebook and Instagram, Scale $29.99. Different units, different buyers: contacts-talked-to versus replies-sent. And the scope note: Neksio is not a bulk or broadcast tool, so respond.io's broadcast features have no Neksio equivalent — compare the inbox and agent, not the campaign tools.