What is Systeme.io and how does it work?
·Founder, Stakk
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10 October 2026
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6 min read
Systeme.io is an all-in-one platform for selling online, with sales funnels, email marketing, courses, communities, a blog and a booking calendar in one account. It suits people who want to build a list and sell to it without paying for separate tools, and its free plan is permanent rather than a trial. Plans are priced by how many contacts you hold, from free for up to 2,000 contacts to $17, $47 and $97 a month, and every plan takes 0% in transaction fees, so your own payment processor's fee is all a sale costs. Checked 30 September 2026.
At 0% on every plan, Systeme.io takes less from each sale than any platform that charges a percentage, Stakk included. What it charges for instead is the size of your list, and that is the number to understand before you build on it.
What is Systeme.io used for?
Systeme.io is used to run a small online business from one account. It puts email marketing, sales funnels, courses, communities, a blog and a booking calendar together, so you are not paying for each of them in a separate tool.
Every plan includes unlimited email sends, unlimited file storage, an affiliate program of your own and a mobile link-in-bio page. The Webinar plan adds evergreen webinars, and the Unlimited plan removes most of the caps. The free plan never expires and does not need a credit card to start.
The whole product is built around a list. People join through a funnel, receive your emails, and are offered a product, a course or a community along the way. That is why the plans are priced by contacts rather than by sales, and why the contact limit matters more on Systeme.io than any fee does.
How does Systeme.io work?
You build sales funnels, connect your own payment gateway, and sell through the funnel. A funnel is a series of pages in steps, and the free plan allows 3 sales funnels and 15 funnel steps.
Payments go through a gateway you connect yourself. The list includes Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Razorpay, Flutterwave, Mercado Pago and Xendit, plus cash on delivery for physical goods. Systeme.io takes nothing from the sale, and the gateway charges its own fee.
Checkout offers come in set numbers by plan. The free plan has one order bump and one 1-click upsell, Startup has 10 of each, Webinar has 100 and Unlimited has no cap. Email runs on automation rules and campaigns, with one of each on the free plan alongside unlimited newsletters.
Everything is counted in contacts, the people on your list. That number, more than anything you sell, decides which plan you are on.
What can you sell on Systeme.io?
Digital products, online courses and physical goods, through funnels on your own gateway. Courses and communities are built in, and the free plan includes one course and one community. Physical products are covered too, since cash on delivery is one of the payment options for physical goods.
On the free plan, what limits you is not the type of product but the counts: one order bump, one 1-click upsell, one coupon code and three funnels. One product with one offer attached works fine. The second product with its own offers needs Startup at $17 a month.
Even that free funnel is worth noticing. A product, a bump on its checkout and an upsell after it is a shape many platforms keep behind a monthly plan, as our comparison of platforms with order bumps and upsells shows, and Systeme.io gives it away.
How much does Systeme.io cost?
Systeme.io is free for up to 2,000 contacts, then $17 a month on Startup, $47 on Webinar and $97 on Unlimited, with two months free on annual billing and a custom plan for teams. Systeme.io's pricing page lists 0% transaction fees on every plan, because it makes its money from the monthly plans rather than from your sales. What Systeme.io costs, plan by plan goes through the limits on each one.
Our arithmetic: 0% of $20 is $0, and Stripe's US card rate of 2.9% + $0.30 is $0.58 + $0.30 = $0.88. Stakk takes $2.50 of the same sale, card processing included, so Systeme.io costs less.
What happens when the free plan passes 2,000 contacts?
The account is restricted, and payments stop. Systeme.io's restriction article sets out the steps: three warning emails, one a day, and an alert in the dashboard, then restriction on the fourth day if nothing changes.
Its own wording on what restriction means is plain: "Opt-ins and payments stop working." New sales cannot be processed, and no contacts or students can be added by any route, forms and API included. Scheduled newsletters are not sent and campaigns pause. Students lose access to courses while it lasts, though their enrollments and progress are kept.
There are two ways out: upgrade, or delete contacts until you are back under 2,000. The restriction itself does not remove content. Separately, the same article says content may be permanently removed from an account with no login or activity for six months.
This is the real cost of the free plan. It stays free until the list grows, and then the choice is $17 a month, a smaller list, or no sales.
What happens when a paid Systeme.io plan goes over its limit?
It moves up a plan by itself. Systeme.io's restriction article says a paid plan over its limit is upgraded to the next available tier automatically, so the service is not interrupted.
In money, a Startup account that passes 5,000 contacts goes from $17 a month to $47, which is $30 a month more, without a decision on your part. Going back down means removing the extra contacts yourself and then asking support to downgrade you.
Canceling works the other way. A canceled account falls back to the free plan, and if the list is over 2,000 at that point, the contacts above the limit are archived rather than deleted. Reactivating a paid plan brings them back.
So on Systeme.io the number to watch is the size of your list, not your sales. The price grows with your audience whether your sales do or not.
How do you get paid on Systeme.io?
Through your own payment gateway, on that gateway's schedule. The buyer pays into the Stripe, PayPal or other account you connected, so the money is in your account from the moment of the sale and Systeme.io holds nothing in between.
Systeme.io's pricing page says you can accept payments through Stripe or PayPal at no extra cost. Your gateway still charges its own fee. Through Stripe, a US card costs 2.9% + $0.30, which is $0.88 on a $20 sale, and Systeme.io adds nothing to that on any plan.
That puts Systeme.io on the direct side of our comparison of who holds your money, alongside Stakk. When the payout reaches your bank is between you and your gateway.
When would I send you somewhere else?
For most people weighing the two, Systeme.io is the better fit and Stakk is the wrong choice. Systeme.io beats Stakk on price: it takes 0% on its free plan, so a $20 sale costs $0.88 of Stripe processing against $2.50 on Stakk, and its paid plans take 0% as well. It also gives you email, funnels, courses, a community, a blog and a booking calendar in one account, while Stakk has no email marketing, no course hosting, no booking, no memberships, no subscriptions, no tips and no link-in-bio page builder. Stakk sells in US dollars only, prices nothing above $999 and needs a Stripe account, where Systeme.io takes PayPal and several other gateways. Whop is cheaper than Stakk too, at 2.7% + $0.30 a sale with no monthly costs.
Want a checkout with no contact limit?
Stakk is a checkout, not an email tool, so it has no contact limit and its price does not change as your audience grows. It costs nothing a month and takes from 10% + $0.50 a sale, card processing included, which is more per sale than Systeme.io. What that buys is a checkout whose cost tracks your sales rather than your list, with an order bump and a post-purchase upsell on every account and no plan to outgrow. The bump rides the same charge as the product, so it carries one fee rather than two, and the upsell after payment is one tap against the card already on file. The money lands in your own Stripe account, and the layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.