Systeme.io Pricing Plans Explained (2026): Every Tier, Annual vs Monthly

Last updated October 2026 · ~8 min read · by StackHonest

Short answer: Systeme.io has four self-serve tiers -- Free at $0, Startup at $17/month, Webinar at $47/month, and Unlimited at $97/month -- plus a custom-priced plan for teams. Annual billing gives you two months free, which works out to $14.17, $39.17 and $80.90 per month. The free plan is permanent, not a trial, and it includes checkout with 0% transaction fees, so you can take real money on it. Most people who upgrade do it because they hit the funnel or automation-rule ceiling, not the contact ceiling.

Two things the usual roundups get wrong

I wrote this page because the brief I started from had the Startup plan at $27/month and listed only three paid tiers. Both are wrong, so let me correct them up front rather than quietly fixing them:

• Startup is $17/month, not $27. That number is on systeme.io/pricing right now and in the vendor's own pricing FAQ, which reads "Startup ($17/month): 5,000 contacts".
• There are four tiers, not three. Free, Startup, Webinar and Unlimited at $97/month. Roundups routinely skip Unlimited and jump straight from Webinar to "contact sales", which makes the ladder look steeper than it is.
• The free plan is not a free trial. It has no expiry and no credit-card requirement. Calling it a trial is the most common error in this niche, and it changes the entire buying decision.

Every tier, verified October 4 2026

Monthly prices are off systeme.io/pricing. The annual per-month equivalents are off Systeme.io's own annual checkout pages, each of which states the comparison in plain text -- for example the Startup annual page reads "Only $14.17 per month instead of the usual $17 monthly fee".

Annual billing saves you two months, so the real annual outlay is $170, $470 and $970. That is a ~16.7% discount, which is normal for this category and not the "save 50%" theatre some competitors run.

The vendor's own page contradicts itself on Startup funnels

Worth flagging because it will bite someone. Systeme.io's pricing FAQ says Startup gets "5,000 contacts, unlimited funnels, 5 courses". The feature comparison table further down the same page says Startup gets 10 sales funnels and 5 websites. Those cannot both be true. The comparison table is the more specific and more recently structured of the two, and its numbers form a consistent ladder across all four tiers (3 / 10 / 50 / unlimited), so I would treat the table as authoritative and the FAQ blurb as stale copy. If funnel count is the thing you are buying on, confirm it in-app before you pay rather than trusting either line.

What you actually get on the free plan

This is the part worth understanding, because it is unusually generous and it is why Systeme.io shows up on this site a lot. On $0 you get 2,000 contacts, 3 sales funnels with 15 funnel steps, 1 blog, 1 course with up to 500 students, 1 community, 1 custom domain, 1 automation rule, 1 workflow, 1 A/B test, 1 order bump and 1 one-click upsell. Emails sent, file storage, and physical products are unlimited. Stripe and PayPal both work. Transaction fees are 0%.

The shape of the free plan is "one of everything". You can run a complete business on it -- capture a lead, email them, sell them a course, take the payment, keep all of it -- but you can only run one of each moving part. That is a smart ceiling design: it is not crippled, it is narrow. You will outgrow it the moment you want a second offer, not the moment you get busy.

Where each upgrade is actually triggered

• Free to Startup ($17/mo). Almost always triggered by funnels or automation rules, not contacts. One automation rule is tight -- a single welcome sequence plus a single abandoned-checkout trigger already wants two.
• Startup to Webinar ($47/mo). Triggered by one feature: evergreen automated webinars. Free and Startup both show 0 evergreen webinars; Webinar unlocks 10. This is a hard feature gate, not a usage limit you can squeeze past.
• Webinar to Unlimited ($97/mo). Triggered by contact count past 10,000, or by genuinely wanting unlimited everything plus free migration. The jump buys headroom, not new capability.

How that compares to the obvious alternatives

All figures below were read off each vendor's own pricing page on October 4, 2026. Where a vendor shows both, I give monthly first and annual second.

ClickFunnels runs three public tiers at $97, $197 and $297 per month, discounted to $81, $164 and $248 on annual. Kajabi runs $179, $249 and $499 monthly, discounted to $143, $199 and $399 annual. For Kartra I could only cleanly confirm the entry tier's annual/monthly pair on its pricing page, so I am listing that one and not guessing at the names or figures for its higher tiers.

I deliberately left GoHighLevel and Builderall out of this table rather than carry numbers over from older articles on this site -- if a price is not re-read today, it does not belong in a pricing page. The headline is unchanged regardless: Systeme.io's paid entry point is between 3x and 10x cheaper than the funnel-builder competition, and it is the only one of the four with a permanent free tier.

What the price does not buy you

Being fair about the trade-off, since the cheap price is doing a lot of work in that comparison. Systeme.io's page builder is noticeably less polished than ClickFunnels' or Kajabi's, the template library is smaller and plainer, and the course player is functional rather than beautiful. There is no AI writing assistant. If your business depends on the storefront looking premium, you will feel that, and the $97 you saved will start to look like a false economy. Systeme.io's actual pitch is that funnels, email, courses, checkout and an affiliate program are one bill with no transaction fee -- not that any individual module is best in class.

Verdict by situation

FAQ

How much does Systeme.io cost in 2026?

There are four self-serve tiers. Free is $0 forever with 2,000 contacts and 3 sales funnels. Startup is $17/month, Webinar is $47/month, and Unlimited is $97/month. Paying annually gets you two months free, which works out to $14.17, $39.17 and $80.90 per month respectively -- those annual figures come from systeme.io's own checkout pages. There is also a custom-priced "For teams" plan. Every tier, including Free, has 0% transaction fees and unlimited email sends.

Is the Systeme.io free plan a trial?

No. This is the single most common misunderstanding about Systeme.io pricing. The free plan is permanent -- it does not expire, and it does not ask for a credit card. It caps you at 2,000 contacts, 3 sales funnels, 1 automation rule, 1 workflow, 1 course and 1 custom domain, but emails sent and file storage are genuinely unlimited on it. You are not on a countdown; you are on a feature ceiling. See my full Systeme.io review for what that ceiling feels like in practice.

Which Systeme.io plan do I actually need?

If you are validating an offer and have under 2,000 contacts, Free is genuinely enough to take money -- it includes checkout and 0% fees. Startup at $17/month is the right step once you need more than 3 funnels or more than one automation rule, which happens fast. Webinar at $47/month exists almost entirely for one feature: evergreen automated webinars, which are a hard gate, not a soft limit. Unlimited at $97/month is for people who have outgrown contact counts entirely. My evergreen webinar setup guide covers the Webinar-tier gate in detail, and best free funnel builders covers the $0 route.