Reply.io prices its email plan by something called an active contact, and almost nobody reads the definition before they budget.

An active contact is not a person on your list. It is a person you send a first email to in a given month, and every follow-up after that is free. Once you know that, the entire ladder reads differently, and one step on it turns out to cost more per contact than the steps on either side.

TL;DR

The Email Volume ladder runs from $49 per user a month at 1,000 active contacts up through $59 at 2,000, $69 at 3,000, $89 at 5,000, $159 at 10,000, $259 at 25,000, $459 at 50,000 and $899 at 100,000, with 200,000, 300,000 and 500,000 shown as contact sales. Reply defines an active contact as "the number of unique contacts you can send 1 first-step email and an unlimited number of follow-ups per month", so the meter is list size rather than sequence length. Two things fall out of the arithmetic. The step from 5,000 to 10,000 costs 1.4 cents per added contact, which is more than the 1 cent per contact charged on every step below it and more than any step above it. And at exactly 5,000 active contacts the Email Volume price of $89 equals the Multichannel price of $89 per user a month on annual billing, at which point Multichannel gives you unlimited active contacts and bundles LinkedIn, SMS and calls, at the cost of capping mailboxes at ten. Add the channels to Email Volume and it is $147 against Multichannel's $89. Work out your mailbox requirement first, then read the ladder.

What an active contact actually means

The definition is on the pricing page and it is unusual. Reply states that "Active contacts is the number of unique contacts you can send 1 first-step email and an unlimited number of follow-ups per month."

Which means follow-ups are free. Adding a fourth, fifth or eighth step to a sequence costs nothing on this plan. The meter counts how many new people you start on, not how many messages you send them.

So the plan punishes list size, not persistence. That is the opposite of how most sequencing tools are priced, and it is the single most consequential fact for budgeting one.

It also changes what a plan upgrade buys you. Moving up a tier does not let you say more to the same people. It lets you start on more people, which is a targeting decision rather than a messaging one.

And the unit is per user. Every figure on the ladder is a per-seat price, so a three-person team is paying three times whichever rung it sits on. Whether the contact allowance itself is shared across seats or applies per seat is not stated on the page, and it is the first question to put to sales.

The ladder, and the step that costs more than its neighbours

The published rungs are close together at the bottom. $49 at 1,000, $59 at 2,000, $69 at 3,000 and $89 at 5,000. Each of those steps works out at exactly one cent per additional active contact.

Then one step breaks the pattern. Going from 5,000 to 10,000 costs $70 more for 5,000 more contacts, which is 1.4 cents each. That is the most expensive marginal contact anywhere on the published ladder.

And it gets cheaper again above it. From 10,000 to 25,000 is $100 for 15,000 contacts, about 0.67 cents each. From 25,000 to 50,000 is 0.8 cents, and from 50,000 to 100,000 is about 0.88 cents.

So the ladder is not a smooth curve. The cheapest marginal contacts on the whole page are between 10,000 and 25,000, and the dearest sit immediately below that band.

Which produces a practical rule. If you are sizing at 6,000 or 7,000 active contacts a month, price 10,000 and price 25,000 before you commit, because the rung you are about to buy is the worst-value one published.

Every figure here is arithmetic on Reply's own numbers. Price divided by contacts for the averages, and the difference between two rungs divided by the difference in contacts for the marginal figures.

Where Multichannel overtakes Email Volume

The two plans meet at exactly $89. Email Volume reaches $89 per user a month at 5,000 active contacts. Multichannel is published at "$89 per user/month" on annual billing.

But Multichannel has no contact ceiling. It lists "Unlimited active contacts", so above 5,000 the Email Volume ladder keeps climbing while the Multichannel price does not.

And it bundles the channels. LinkedIn, SMS, calls and semi-automated WhatsApp come with the seat rather than being charged separately.

The catch is mailboxes. Multichannel lists "10 mailboxes". Email Volume lists unlimited mailboxes, qualified as "Subject to our Fair Usage Policy", with the terms of that policy not stated on the page.

So the decision is a single question. If ten mailboxes covers your sending, Multichannel is cheaper than Email Volume at every volume above 5,000 active contacts and gives you more. If it does not, you are on Email Volume regardless of what the arithmetic says, and the ladder is what you pay.

Work the mailbox number out from your provider, not from Reply. Google Workspace publishes 2,000 messages a day for standard paid accounts, applied "over a rolling 24-hour period, not a set time of day", and cold sending should sit well below that. Divide your intended daily volume by whatever rate you consider safe and you have the count that picks the plan.

Which is why mailbox count belongs at the top of the evaluation. Our Reply.io review covers that decision in more detail, and our deliverability guide covers why mailbox count is the real throughput constraint.

The add-ons that flip the arithmetic

Channels are priced per account, not per seat. On Email Volume, LinkedIn Automation is "$69 /mo/acct" and Calls and SMS Automation is "$29 /mo/acct".

Which makes the entry tier expensive the moment you go multichannel. Email Volume at 1,000 contacts plus both add-ons is $147 per user a month. Multichannel, with those channels included and no contact ceiling, is $89.

That is a 65% premium for a plan with a contact limit. It is the clearest single number on this page, and it argues for Multichannel for almost anyone running more than email.

Email validation is separate again. Reply lists validation add-ons starting from "$20/month", which is a real line item for anyone buying lists rather than building them.

And the AI SDR line is not on this ladder at all. Jason is published on a separate page at $500 to $1,000 a month for 1,000 to 3,000 active contacts and $1,500 to $3,000 for 5,000 to 10,000, billed annually, with enterprise on request. Those are ranges, so the figure you pay is negotiated.

None of the tiers change what caps your sending. Google's sender guidelines require anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail to hold spam rates in Postmaster Tools "below 0.30%". Buying more active contacts raises how many people you can start on, not how fast you can safely reach them.

Agency pricing is a different shape entirely. Agency Core is published at "$210/month" with unlimited clients, users and mailboxes, and Agency AI SDR at "$500/month/client".

What Reply does not publish

The fair usage policy behind unlimited mailboxes. Named on the pricing page, with the terms not there.

Whether the active contact allowance is per seat or per account. The prices are per user. What the allowance attaches to is not stated.

Anything above 100,000 active contacts. The 200,000, 300,000 and 500,000 rungs are shown as contact sales, so the top of the ladder is negotiated.

A fixed AI SDR price. Published as ranges rather than figures.

What happens if you exceed your active contact count mid-month. No overage rate, no grace period and no suspension behaviour is described.

FAQ

How much does Reply.io cost?

The Email Volume plan runs from $49 per user a month at 1,000 active contacts through $89 at 5,000, $159 at 10,000, $259 at 25,000, $459 at 50,000 and $899 at 100,000, with larger volumes quoted on request. Multichannel is $89 per user a month on annual billing with unlimited active contacts. Agency Core starts at $210 a month, and the Jason AI SDR product runs from $500 to $3,000 a month on published ranges.

What is an active contact in Reply.io?

Reply defines it as the number of unique contacts you can send one first-step email to, plus an unlimited number of follow-ups, in a month. That means the plan meters how many new people you start sequences on rather than how many emails you send, so adding steps to a sequence costs nothing while adding names to a list costs money.

Is Reply.io's Multichannel plan cheaper than Email Volume?

Above 5,000 active contacts a month, yes. Both are $89 per user a month at that point, but Multichannel has no contact ceiling while Email Volume keeps climbing to $159 at 10,000 and beyond. Multichannel also bundles LinkedIn, SMS and calls. The trade is that it includes ten mailboxes rather than unlimited, so heavy multi-mailbox senders stay on Email Volume.

Which Reply.io tier is the worst value?

On published figures, the step from 5,000 to 10,000 active contacts. It costs $70 more for 5,000 more contacts, which is 1.4 cents each, against exactly 1 cent per contact on every step below it and roughly 0.67 to 0.88 cents on the steps above. If you are sizing near that band, price the 10,000 and 25,000 rungs before committing.

How much do Reply.io's LinkedIn and calling add-ons cost?

LinkedIn Automation is $69 per account a month and Calls and SMS Automation is $29 per account a month on the Email Volume plan. Adding both to the $49 entry tier brings it to $147 per user a month, against $89 for Multichannel with those channels included and no active contact limit.

Does Reply.io charge more for longer sequences?

No, and this is the useful part of the pricing model. Follow-ups are unlimited within the active contact definition, so a ten-step sequence costs the same as a three-step one for the same number of people. The cost driver is how many new contacts you start each month.

Bottom line

Read the definition before the ladder. Because an active contact is a first touch rather than a person on a list, sequence length is free here and list size is the whole bill, which is the reverse of what most buyers assume. Then check two numbers. If ten mailboxes covers your sending and you are above 5,000 active contacts a month, Multichannel costs less than Email Volume and gives you more, and adding channels to Email Volume makes that gap wider rather than narrower. If you need more mailboxes than that, you are on the Email Volume ladder whatever the arithmetic says, in which case avoid the 5,000 to 10,000 rung, which is the dearest marginal contact Reply publishes anywhere.

Want the sending programme run rather than the slider modelled? Book a call with GROU. We run outbound and lead generation inside B2B revenue engines across verticals. If the question is how many steps to put in the sequence, our touch count piece covers it.

We are GROU, a B2B pipeline agency that runs lead generation, outbound, and LinkedIn content for clients across manufacturing, fintech, iGaming, software, and professional services. Some links in this article are affiliate links, including Reply.io. Every figure above was read on Reply's own pricing page, and the arithmetic points most readers toward the cheaper of the two plans.