Missive Pricing 2026: Plans, Real Costs and the Free Plan
Missive has three paid plans, each priced per user, and each has two prices depending on whether you pay monthly or a year up front. The “$14 a month” you see quoted is the cheapest of the six: Starter, billed yearly. Starter also leaves out rules, integrations, AI and the API, which is most of what people buy Missive for.
The quick answer: Missive costs $14, $24 or $36 per user per month billed yearly, or $18, $30 and $45 month to month. There is no longer a free plan, only a 30-day trial of Productive. For a five-person team on Productive, that is $1,440 a year paid up front. If what you actually want is the email and scheduling work done for you rather than a shared inbox to do it in, Carly is an AI assistant that works inside the Gmail or Outlook inbox you already have, with free Zapier-style workflows and AI agents from $35/month.
Missive plans at a glance
Prices as listed on Missive’s pricing page and in its billing and plans documentation on September 28, 2026, per user per month, in US dollars:
| Starter | Productive | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billed yearly | $14 | $24 | $36 |
| Billed monthly | $18 | $30 | $45 |
| User limit | Up to 5 | Up to 50 | No cap |
| Rules and auto-assignment | No | Up to 1,000 rules | Up to 1,000 rules |
| Integrations (HubSpot, Asana, ChatGPT, etc.) | No | Yes | Yes |
| AI assistant | No | Yes, paid by usage | Yes, paid by usage |
| API and MCP access | No | Yes | Yes |
| Analytics | No | Basic | Advanced (SLA, team and user reports, exports) |
| SAML SSO and IP restrictions | No | No | Yes |
All three plans include full email history, team inboxes, internal comments and chat, assignment, tasks, guest access and SOC 2 Type II compliance. The pricing page opens on the yearly toggle (“20% off”), which is why the low numbers travel.
Starter: $14 yearly, $18 monthly
Starter is a collaborative email client and nothing more. You get shared team inboxes for email, SMS, WhatsApp and social accounts, internal comments on threads, assignment, snooze, canned responses and a calendar view. You do not get rules, auto-follow-ups, integrations, AI or analytics.
The hard limit is five users. A sixth hire forces the whole organization onto Productive.
Productive: $24 yearly, $30 monthly
Productive is the plan most teams end up on, and it is what the free trial runs on. It adds rules and automations (up to 1,000), auto-assignment, integrations with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Asana and Google Drive, API and MCP access, basic analytics and the AI assistant. It caps at 50 users.
Business: $36 yearly, $45 monthly
Business removes the user cap and adds SAML single sign-on (Okta, Azure AD), IP restrictions, advanced analytics (SLA reports, per-team and per-user performance, exports) and personalized onboarding sessions.
What it really costs
Worked out from the September 28, 2026 prices:
| Who | Plan | Yearly billing | Monthly billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh, solo consultant | Starter | $168/year | $216/year |
| Josh, solo consultant | Productive | $288/year | $360/year |
| Emily’s 5-person team | Starter | $840/year | $1,080/year |
| Emily’s 5-person team | Productive | $1,440/year | $1,800/year |
| Emily’s 5-person team | Business | $2,160/year | $2,700/year |
Josh will almost certainly want Productive: Starter has no rules and no AI, so it is a nicer Gmail, not an automated one. Emily’s team sits exactly at Starter’s five-user ceiling, so budget for Productive the moment the team grows.
Then add AI. Missive’s AI runs on usage, not the seat price. According to its AI setup guide, Productive and Business organizations get $5 of Missive AI credits to start, and credits carry a 25% markup on the provider’s price. The alternative is bringing your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini API key and paying the provider directly with no markup. Either way, heavy AI use is a separate bill.
Pricing gotchas to watch
The yearly plan is non-refundable. Missive’s billing FAQ says yearly plans can’t be cancelled or refunded mid-cycle, and they renew automatically. You also cannot downgrade tiers until renewal.
Removed users keep costing you on yearly. If you drop from 10 users to 9 mid-year, you still pay for 10 until the cycle ends. Adding a user is charged immediately, prorated.
Shared accounts come from a pool. Each user adds five shared accounts (team inboxes) to the organization’s pool. Past that, it is $15 a month for every five extra shared accounts. A small team running many client inboxes, such as a bookkeeping firm, can hit this faster than expected.
Billing is per organization. You can’t upgrade just yourself; the whole organization moves together. Running two companies as separate organizations means two subscriptions.
No discounts. Missive does not discount for nonprofits, students or schools. Tax-exempt organizations in New York, Ohio and Maryland can have sales tax removed, which is the closest thing to a discount.
Prices can rise. The billing FAQ says Missive “generally” does not raise prices on existing seats but reserves the right to, with at least 30 days’ notice.
Does Missive have a free plan?
Not anymore. Missive’s current docs state plainly: “Missive has no free plan.” New organizations get one 30-day trial of Productive, with no credit card, up to 25 users, 10 shared accounts and only the last 30 days of history. The trial follows the person, so creating a second organization doesn’t reset it.
When the trial ends, the organization is paused: you can’t send, past conversations are hidden, and data is eventually deleted if nobody picks a plan.
This is a 2026 change. As recently as April 2026, the same billing FAQ described a free plan limited to 3 users, 15 days of history and 2 shared accounts. Some users noticed. A Trustpilot reviewer on September 2, 2026 wrote: “we are changing provider. Dropping the free tier is ridiculous.”
What users say about the price
Missive holds a 4.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot as of September 28, 2026, and price comes up on both sides.
Where it earns the money. The most common argument is that it is cheaper than Front for similar team-inbox work. One Hacker News commenter chose Missive in 2022 because it “feels like a proper snappy desktop app and is vastly cheaper ($15 vs $50 per user).” An App Store reviewer who switched from Front put it as “Better pricing and integrations.” A Trustpilot reviewer in May 2026 called it “definitely worth the money, as it has saved us a huge amount of time through clear team communication that connects directly with emails.”
Where it stings. Some fans pay for one feature. A Trustpilot reviewer in January 2026 wrote: “I am honestly paying a lot of money almost exclusively because I love the ability to ‘turn my email off’ during set hours.” The same 2022 Hacker News commenter who praised the price added: “But, Missive is full of design flaws.” And a 2024 Hacker News comment noted Missive is “definitely not as low price as Jelly.”
Our read: for a team that lives in shared inboxes, the per-seat price is fair. For a solo user who used to be on the free plan, the jump to $168 to $360 a year is real.
Missive vs Carly
These solve different problems. Missive replaces your email client so a team can work inboxes together. Carly is an AI executive assistant that does the email and scheduling work for you in the inbox you already use.
| Missive | Carly | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Collaborative email client and team inbox | AI assistant you CC, forward or text |
| Price | $14 to $45 per user/month | Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month |
| AI | Productive and up, billed by usage or your own API key | Built in: triage, drafts, replies, follow-ups |
| Scheduling | Calendar view and syncing | CC Carly and it finds times, sends invites, handles reschedules |
| Works with | Gmail, Outlook, IMAP, SMS, WhatsApp, social | Gmail and Outlook inboxes and calendars, multiple accounts at once |
| Automation | Rules (Productive and up) | Visual workflows triggered by new emails, calendar events, forms or schedules |
If your pain is five people stepping on each other in one support inbox, Missive is built for that. If your pain is the volume of email and meetings landing on you, Carly takes the work instead of organizing it. CC Carly on a thread and it books the meeting, or set up Email Agents, each with its own address, instructions and knowledge files, to handle a class of inbound email on your behalf. Carly connects to thousands of apps, including HubSpot, Slack, Salesforce and Asana, through its integrations, and you keep your current Gmail or Outlook setup.
Who should pay for Missive
- Pay for Productive if a team of 2 to 50 shares inboxes and needs rules, integrations and assignment.
- Pay for Business if you need SSO, IP restrictions or SLA reporting, or you are over 50 users.
- Starter only makes sense for up to five people who just want shared inboxes and comments.
- Look elsewhere if you were relying on the old free plan, want a nonprofit discount, or mainly need your own email and calendar handled. Our Missive alternatives and best shared inbox tools roundups cover the options, and Missive vs Front with Front pricing covers the closest rival.
FAQ
How much does Missive cost per user? As of September 28, 2026: Starter is $14 per user per month billed yearly or $18 monthly, Productive is $24 or $30, and Business is $36 or $45. Prices are in US dollars.
Is Missive free? No. Missive ended its free plan in 2026. You get a single 30-day trial of Productive with no credit card, and the organization is paused when it ends unless you subscribe.
Does Missive charge extra for AI? Yes, in practice. AI requires Productive or Business. You either buy Missive AI credits (provider price plus a 25% markup, with $5 to start) or connect your own OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini key and pay the provider. If you want AI that drafts, replies and schedules without managing a separate API account, Carly starts at $35/month.
Is Missive cheaper yearly or monthly? Yearly saves 20%, but it is a 12-month commitment with no refunds, no mid-year downgrades, and no credit for users you remove. Monthly can be cancelled at the end of any billing period.
Does Missive offer nonprofit or student discounts? No. Its billing docs say it keeps pricing the same for everyone, including nonprofits and schools.
Is Missive worth it for one person? It can be, if you juggle several inboxes and want rules, which means Productive at $288 to $360 a year. If what you want is someone handling the email and calendar for you, book a call with the Carly team or try Carly’s booking pages first.
Related: Missive review · Missive alternatives · Missive vs Front · Front pricing
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