Systeme.io's pricing page answers what each plan includes. It does not answer which one to actually buy, or what "no transaction fees" quietly leaves out. Those are the two questions worth working through before you enter a card.
Four plans: Free, Startup at $17 a month, Webinar at $47, Unlimited at $97. Annual billing on any paid plan is charged with two months free, which is a real 16.7% discount, not marketing language for a rounding error.
Pick by contact count, not by which name sounds right
The free plan holds 2,000 contacts, three sales funnels, one course and one blog, never expires, and needs no card. Startup lifts the ceiling to 5,000 contacts and removes the funnel and course caps. Webinar goes to 10,000 contacts and adds automated webinars. Unlimited removes the contact ceiling entirely and adds sub-accounts, free migration and a one-on-one kickstart session.
Read that list again and the decision rule falls out on its own: everything from $17 to $97 is buying contact headroom, plus one named feature apiece. You do not upgrade because Startup sounds more serious than Free. You upgrade the week your list crosses 2,000, or the day you need automated webinars specifically.
Which means the honest way to buy this is backwards from how most software gets bought. Start at zero, build the one funnel you need, and let your actual contact count — not a comparison table — tell you when to pay and which tier to land on.
What happens when you outgrow a plan, or leave one
Systeme.io states plan changes are self-serve: "You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time from your account settings." No waiting on support, no contract term to run out.
The more useful detail is what happens if you cancel while carrying more contacts than the free tier allows. They are archived, not deleted, and the page is explicit about it — the difference matters because archived data comes back the moment you reactivate a paid plan, while deleted data does not come back at all. That is a real answer to a real fear, not a hedge.
"No transaction fees" is true, and it is not the whole cost
Every plan, free included, charges nothing extra when a sale goes through Systeme.io. That claim is accurate and worth taking at face value.
It is also a claim about one layer of the payment, not the only layer. Stripe and PayPal are the two processors Systeme.io connects to, and both charge their own standard fee regardless of which platform sits on top of them. Stripe's published US rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents per successful card transaction. That fee exists whether you sell through Systeme.io, a competitor, or a page you built yourself — it is not something any all-in-one platform waives, because none of them control it.
Two fees, two different owners
Systeme.io's own fee — $0
- Charged on every plan, including Free
- This is the specific claim the pricing page makes
- It is accurate as stated
Processor fee — real, separate, unavoidable
- Stripe's US rate: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card transaction
- PayPal charges its own comparable rate
- Neither is controlled by Systeme.io
- Every competing platform has the same layer underneath it
The unlimited-sends detail worth naming
Email sends are unlimited on every plan, including free. Platforms built around email specifically often price by send volume once a list grows, which turns a growing audience into a rising bill on exactly the tool you need most as you grow. That structural difference is easy to miss on a feature checklist and expensive to discover later on a specialist platform.
A worked example
A creator with 1,800 email subscribers, one course and one funnel stays on the free plan indefinitely — nothing about that setup exceeds any free-tier limit, and there is no clock counting down.
The same creator at 6,000 contacts needs Startup at minimum, because the free tier's 2,000-contact ceiling is now the binding constraint, not the funnel or course count. Add automated webinars to the plan and Webinar at $47 becomes the floor regardless of list size, because that feature does not exist below it. Neither upgrade is about which plan looks more professional. Both are a specific number crossing a specific line.
The API and MCP server are priced in, not bolted on
None of the four plans lists the REST API or the MCP server as a separate add-on. Both come with the account, and the documentation covers roughly 125 REST endpoints across funnels, contacts, automation rules, price plans, coupons, digital products, offers and sales settings.
The MCP server — the newer interface that lets an AI assistant work inside the account directly — is still in beta and its own documentation is known to undersell what it does. Contacts, tags, contact fields and newsletters are the documented surface; broader capability has been demonstrated working against a live account. Whichever plan you land on by contact count, programmatic access is not a reason to move up a tier — it is already included at every level, free plan too.
Technical disclosure
Plan names, prices, contact and feature limits, the annual-billing terms, the archived-contact policy and the self-serve upgrade and downgrade statement were read from Systeme.io's own pricing page on 27 September 2026. Stripe's standard processing rate was read from Stripe's own pricing page the same date. Pricing, limits and processor rates change without notice and are the fastest-aging facts in any review — check both current pages before deciding. Nothing here is a paid placement, and no figure was taken from another review.
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