respond.io pricing for Indian teams: $79 to $279 a month, the contact limits, and what it buys

respond.io is a customer-conversation platform that Indian teams meet when they search for a shared inbox across WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. It is well built and it is priced like software for a support department: a plan fee, a seat count, and a usage meter on how many contacts you talk to. We read its pricing page on 11 October 2026 to see what that costs a team in rupees.

The plans

Plan	Yearly billing, per month	Monthly billing	Users included	Extra user, yearly / monthly billing
Starter	$79	$99	5	$12 / $15
Growth	$159	$199	10	$20 / $25
Advanced	$279	$349	10	$24 / $30
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Unlimited	Not applicable

The page opens on yearly billing, so Starter’s $79 is $948 paid for the year; switch the toggle to monthly and the same plans read $99, $199 and $349, with dearer extra seats. There is a 7-day trial, no card required, which gives Growth features for 5 users and 1,000 contacts, with broadcasts excluded.

What each plan is for

Starter is an inbox. Team and custom inboxes, a mobile app, AI prompt and assist, basic reports, two-factor login. It has no broadcasts, no workflow automation and no AI agents. For a WhatsApp sales or marketing team in India, Starter is the plan you outgrow in the first week.

Growth is where respond.io becomes the product people compare it for: broadcasts, workflow automation, AI agents, Zapier and Make, advanced reports and the developer API.

Advanced adds masked phone numbers and emails for agents, multiple workspaces, HTTP requests inside workflows, webhooks, SSO and custom channels. Enterprise lifts the user and workspace limits.

The second and third numbers

The plan fee is the first number. Two more set the bill.

Users. Starter includes 5, Growth and Advanced 10. The next person costs $12, $20 or $24 a month depending on plan on yearly billing, or $15, $25 or $30 on monthly billing. A twelve-person team on Growth, yearly billing, is $159 plus $40.

Monthly active contacts. A contact you exchanged messages with in the month. The pricing slider starts at 1,000 and runs past 10,000; beyond the allowance, contacts are billed in blocks of 100: $12 on Growth, $15 on Advanced, charged at the end of the cycle. There is also an AI-credit allowance per plan with a $15 per 1,000 overage.

This is the shape that surprises Indian teams. A business with a 4,000-contact active list is paying for the list, not just for the people answering it.

What a month costs for a Jaipur team

Ten people, 3,000 active contacts a month, Growth plan on yearly billing, at about ₹85 to the dollar:

Line	USD	INR
Growth, yearly billing	$159	₹13,515
Contacts beyond 1,000: 20 blocks × $12	$240	₹20,400
Users: 10 included	$0	₹0
respond.io total	$399	about ₹33,900
Meta, 4,000 marketing + 3,000 utility messages		₹3,452 + ₹345 = ₹3,797
Month, before Indian tax treatment		about ₹37,700

The contact meter is two-thirds of the bill. Drop the active list to 1,000 and the month is about ₹17,300. A team that talks to many people a little, which describes most WhatsApp marketing, pays for exactly that.

WhatsApp fees sit outside every plan, by top-up, at Meta’s rates, which for India are ₹0.8631 per marketing message and ₹0.1150 per utility, authentication or service message, with 1,000 free service messages a month per number. And a dollar subscription to a foreign company has its own tax treatment in India; ask your accountant before comparing it with a rupee invoice.

Indian alternatives, and the shape of their pricing

As listed on each pricing page on 7 October 2026, from our provider pricing audit.

Provider	Entry paid plan, per month	Billing	What is metered	Own India rate per marketing message
AiSensy	₹1,500	Monthly	Messages	₹1.09
Interakt	₹2,799	Monthly	Messages; unlimited agents	₹0.949 to ₹0.970
Wati	₹2,999	Monthly	Users (3 on Growth), messages	₹0.9667 to ₹1.0357
Gallabox	₹2,999	Quarterly	Users (3, hard cap), messages	₹0.9926
DoubleTick	₹3,500	Quarterly	Users (5), messages	₹0.99
Conecxt	₹2,499	Monthly	Users (5), numbers, stored contacts, monthly messages	Meta’s rate, no markup

None of these meters monthly active contacts. They cap users, numbers, stored contacts or monthly messages, and that is a cheaper shape for a team that messages a large list a few times a month. The ten-person Jaipur team fits Interakt Growth at ₹2,799 with unlimited agents, Conecxt Growth at ₹4,299 for 10 members, or DoubleTick Pro at ₹5,200 billed quarterly; on Gallabox, ten users need Advanced at ₹16,999. Message charges for that volume run from Meta’s ₹3,797 to about ₹4,400 on the providers’ own rate cards. Every one of those months is under ₹22,000, against about ₹37,700.

Who respond.io suits

A support team spread across several channels, with a modest active list and a need for workflows, SSO and multiple workspaces, will find respond.io coherent and well made. Instagram and Messenger sit beside WhatsApp from the start, and the automation is strong.

A sales or marketing team in India whose main asset is a large WhatsApp list will find the contact meter working against the thing they are trying to do. Compare on the three numbers, plan, users and contacts, and on whether Meta’s message fees are passed through or marked up.

Where Conecxt fits: WhatsApp, Instagram and web chat in one inbox on a monthly rupee plan from ₹2,499, metered on team size, stored contacts and monthly messages, not on how many people you talk to, with Meta’s rates passed through at no markup.