Event-triggered email, push, SMS and in-app messaging on your own data
Customer.io is the messaging tool for teams that want every email, push and SMS to be triggered by what a user actually did in the product, not by a list upload. The visual workflow builder, the data model (people plus objects like accounts or orders) and the webhook action make it a developer-friendly choice. It is priced per profile from $100 a month; Indian startups under $10M raised can get the first year free through its Startup Program.
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Customer.io is a customer messaging platform. You send it events and attributes from your app (or through Segment, RudderStack or a warehouse sync), and build campaigns that react to them: an onboarding sequence that stops when the user finishes setup, a re-engagement push after 7 idle days, an SMS when a loan is approved. Channels are email, push, in-app, SMS and webhooks to anything else.
Compared with marketing-first tools (Mailchimp, Zoho Campaigns), its centre of gravity is the event stream and the workflow builder. Compared with Indian engagement suites (MoEngage, CleverTap, WebEngage), it is simpler, cheaper at small scale and more transparent on price, but it has no built-in WhatsApp channel and no India sales team.
Quick facts: Founded 2012, Portland · Email, push, in-app, SMS, webhooks · Priced per profile · 1 million emails a month included on Essentials · Startup Program: a free year for companies under $10M raised.
Branch on events, attributes, time and A/B splits; every step shows conversion and delivery numbers.
Model accounts, orders or policies as objects linked to people, so a message can be about the thing, not just the person.
Send OTPs, receipts and alerts through the same templates and logs as campaigns, with a separate transactional endpoint.
Modals, banners and inline components inside your web or mobile app without a release.
Call any HTTP endpoint from a workflow: a WhatsApp provider, your own API, a Slack alert.
An agent that drafts messages, builds segments and runs daily routines on Premium, with core skills on Essentials.
Priced by the number of profiles (people plus objects) you store, with a large email allowance included. Premium and Enterprise are custom beyond the starting price.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials | From $100 per month, billed monthly | 5,000 profiles, 1 million emails a month, 2 object types, 2 workspaces, workflow builder, email and community support |
| Essentials, more profiles | $145 (10k) · $235 (20k) · $325 (30k) · $415 (40k) · $505+ (50k+) per month | Extra profiles $0.009 each; extra emails $0.12 per 1,000 on all plans |
| Premium | From $1,000 per month, billed yearly | Custom profiles and emails, 10 object types, unlimited workspaces, elevated AI Agent limits, chat support, 90-day onboarding, Salesforce integration, HIPAA (custom) |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | Everything in Premium plus audit logging, data governance, priority sending capacity, priority support |
| Startup Program | Free for one year | For companies that have raised under $10M |
Source: customer.io/pricing, checked 22 Oct 2026. Prices in US dollars; no rupee billing. AI credits beyond the included amount cost $10 per 100K on Essentials and Premium.
In the order a small team would do them.
If you have raised under $10M, apply first; the free year starts when your account is approved.
signed_up, activated, first_payment, plan_changed, churn_risk and the like. Send them from the backend, not the browser, so they are reliable.
Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on a subdomain such as mail.yourapp.in before any campaign; use a separate subdomain for transactional mail.
Trigger on signed_up, exit on activated, one message every two days for a week. Watch the per-step conversion panel for a month.
Point a webhook step at your Gupshup or MSG91 template endpoint so WhatsApp lives in the same workflow as email and push.
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