Digital marketing has changed the way we market and the way we consume marketing forever.

Channels such as email are drastically evolving thanks to things like complex automations, segmentation and personalization.

Klaviyo is one such marketing tool that offers these complex and advanced features. It is quite famous among ecommerce businesses as an effective marketing tool but it also has a major flaw, or drawback. Let’s discuss Klaviyo, its main flaw and some suitable Klaviyo alternatives that can help replace it.

Klaviyo Alternatives

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a popular and comprehensive marketing tool with features like email capture, advanced segmentation, automated workflows and much more. They specialize in personalized email and SMS marketing campaigns, mostly beneficial for ecommerce businesses.

Launched in 2012, Klaviyo offers integrations with ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento and others. They owe their success to their unique approach to trigger personalized email campaigns by using data.

You can create campaigns using the drag and drop feature and they have a fairly easy to use builder. For ecommerce businesses, customizing emails and adding products is quite easy. Their main attraction includes the automation options, especially for ecommerce.

You can experiment with workflows like abandoned carts and other flows. All in all, everything is good, even the free plan but setting up can be a little tricky for beginners. The main flaw of Klaviyo is its expensive pricing.

Klaviyo managed email marketing

Pricing:

Using it for free for up to 250 contacts but paid plans with more contacts can get pricey for most users. When you exceed 250 the price is $20 per month for up to 500 contacts, $30 per month for up to 1000 contacts and $45 per month for up to 1500 contacts.

Moving forward, you pay a hefty $100 per month for 5,000 contacts and $150 per month for 10,000. If this was not enough, you even pay additional costs for SMS, if you need it, which is why it is not a bad idea to look for Klaviyo alternatives to save some money.

Here is our list of Klaviyo alternatives which we think are worth their costs.

ActiveCampaign

Available in six languages, ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform focused on automation and provides many other practical options including a CRM. They have one of the best deliverability rates in the market and are recognized for their exceptional reporting.

It is a powerhouse of automation and a very useful marketing tool compared to most of the competition. It has a very CRM-centric interface instead of the usual email marketing interface most of the Klaviyo alternatives mentioned on this list offer.

You can experience this right from the beginning, while most platforms ask you to start with your first campaign, ActiveCampaign asks you to start by creating or importing a contact list. This is not exactly a problem; it is just different from the norm.

If you have multiple domains that you are currently managing, ActiveCampaign can work well for you because you do not connect a single domain directly to the platform. It allows you to select a domain, which you can then assign to your campaigns.

It integrates with a variety of ecommerce platforms using its Deep Data Integrations to easily import things, like order data, from your BigCommerce or Shopify store. This makes it an easy choice for ecommerce business owners.

You get to avail great automation, support, email marketing and reporting from the starter plans. The sales automation, landing pages and CRM become available with higher plans, which is still great value for money, considering the features.

The only downside to ActiveCampaign is its steep learning curve, which is okay for experienced users and marketing professionals but it can take new users some time to learn and get used to it. To sum up, you get almost the same features here as you do with Klaviyo but you have to learn the ropes.

Pricing:

The pricing is based on the plan you choose and the number of contacts. Prices start with the Lite Plan at $9 per month for 500 contacts, Plus Plan at $49 per month for 1000, the Professional Plan at $129 per month for 1000 and the Enterprise plan at $229 per month for 2,500 contacts.

As the number of subscribers rises with each plan, so does the price. If you choose a higher plan for the added features, you will find that scaling your subscribers can get expensive pretty quickly. It is also important to note that these plans require a yearly commitment because they are paid yearly.

The Lite Plan goes up to 100,000 contacts for $405 per month, the Plus plan goes up to 25,000 contacts for $319 per month, the Professional Plan goes up to 25,000 contacts for $479 per month and the Enterprise Plan goes up to 10,000 contacts for $399 per month.

Pros:

  • Good automation
  • Good deliverability
  • Multiple Integrations
  • Inexpensive starter plan with good value for money
  • Plenty of features

Cons:

  • No free plan
  • No landing page builder
  • Scaling subscribers and higher plans are a bit pricey

ActiveCampaign is a great Klaviyo alternative for ecommerce businesses looking for a good email automation tool, easy integration and segmentation of ecommerce platforms and contacts.

Drip

Drip is a platform focused on ecommerce that provides SMS, email marketing automation and enhanced customer information and insights through their CRM. They have a visually pleasing interface that focuses on workflows.

The automation is plentiful and very flexible, which allows you to do close to anything you want but it is mainly geared toward ecommerce businesses. You can easily set up automations for customers who purchase your products, abandon their carts or visit your website.

The visual editor falls a bit short compared to other email marketing platforms on this list. While most campaign builders typically work with a block-based interface, emails in Drip are strictly divided into the header, body, and footer of your email without much customization in between.

Drip does have a color-coded visual workflow that works well for any level of user because it is easy to understand for beginners who are starting out with email marketing and automation tools. Drip lacks a few features compared to other platforms but they allow you to integrate third parties for them.

Their tagging system allows for easy segmentation of your list, which lets you tag leads or customers based on things like when they visit specific pages on your site, or whether or not they have purchased something.

Their revenue and engagement reporting lets you view aspects like email, automation and A/B test results all in one place. As a Klaviyo alternative, Drip may lack some features but for beginners who want to cover the basics and do not mind integrating third parties for added features, it can be really good.

The best part is they offer a 14-day trial period for you to check out the platform before you decide to get onboard. However, the trial period has limited emails and a few less features.

Drip managed email marketing

Pricing:

Their pricing is based on the number of subscribers you have and unlike other platforms that leverage features, Drip’s pricing is solely based on subscriber count, unless you want to add SMS. They offer unlimited emails and all features from the smallest plan of up to 500 contacts for $19 per month.

The pricing rises to $29 per month for up to 2,000 contacts, $39 per month for up to 2,500 contacts and then increases $10 per month for every increment of 500 contacts until you pass 5,000 contacts. After this, the increments start to vary, and the unlimited emails option limits itself past 30,000 contacts.

The SMS feature adds to your final pricing, it is $0.015 per send and can be paid for on a pay-as-you-go basis. You can easily calculate the pricing and added SMS costs for needs on their pricing page. As a Klaviyo alternative, we consider the pricing to be fairly good.

Pros:

  • Free 14-day trial period
  • Direct integrations
  • Good pricing for ecommerce, small businesses and startups
  • Flexible automations
  • Easy to understand workflow visuals

Cons:

  • No design or spam testing
  • Slightly less features
  • Their services are mostly geared toward the ecommerce CRM
  • No landing page builder
Drip is a comprehensive solution and a good Klaviyo alternative to ecommerce businesses, especially if you are starting email marketing and automation for the first time. The flexible automations, tagging and integrations help save a lot of time and resources while simultaneously increasing your revenue.

Drip also manages to keep pricing low and fairly simple without many variations so that you can avail their full potential without worrying too much about upgrades.

MailChimp

If you did not know already, MailChimp is the market dominator in email marketing. According to Datanyze, it has almost 70 percent of the market share in email marketing with over a million domains, which are extremely high numbers.

They are the standard go-to email marketing platform for most users around the world and offer an easy-to-use visual editor with comprehensive tutorial videos. This makes their emails easy to create and customize, even for beginners.

Along with Google and Facebook ads, you can even add Instagram ads as part of their offered integrations. Their automation is good, and they are effective in conducting your marketing compared to other platforms.

While they are a good Klaviyo alternative because they offer similar, if not better, features and pricing, their pricing can get very confusing for most users. Which is why even though it is less expensive than Klaviyo, users do not always understand how.

Pricing:

They have Free plan, an Essential plan starting at $9.99 per month, a Standard plan starting at $14.99 per month and a Premium plan starting at $299 per month. At first this pricing seems normal but this is only the price of the plans and you have to pay more once you start adding contacts.

The Essential plan is $9.99 for 500 contacts and increases as more contacts are added. The odd part is that the Free plan has up to 2000 contacts, which is a little contradictory but you get the extra features with the paid plans.

For the Premium plan, pricing can get a little high, but it is still better than Klaviyo. It changes at odd intervals, and you have to get custom pricing past 200,000 contacts. They do offer a pay-as-you-go option instead of monthly payments, where you buy email credits, which is good for infrequent users.

This is not the best pricing method but it is what it is, and it is still better than Klaviyo as far as costs are concerned.

Pros:

  • Free plan
  • Plenty of integrations
  • Plenty of email template options
  • Plenty of signup form options
  • Easy to add triggers and tags
  • Drag and drop feature

Cons:

  • Segmenting could be better due to the lack of segmentation suggestions
  • Confusing pricing but still, less expensive than Klaviyo

MailChimp is a good Klaviyo alternative for users looking for a template-rich, integration-rich and multifunctional email marketing platform that is less expensive than Klaviyo and gets the job done.

Omnisend

Omnisend is one of the best Klaviyo alternatives you can find for budding ecommerce businesses. It is fairly new as it started in 2014 as an email marketing platform but has quickly transformed into an all-in-one email and marketing automation tool.

The interface is quite intuitive, which makes It fairly easy to use. It allows you to easily and quickly create complex automations, email campaigns and use smart segmentation to accurately target your subscribers. There are also plenty of integration options with ecommerce platforms.

You will get most of the segmentation and automations you need as a growing brand or ecommerce business. They offer you the option to create multichannel workflows including SMS and Google or Facebook retargeting ads.

Omnisend also offers you a unique feature of dynamic gamification to engage your customers or subscribers. You can use this feature to add scratch cards or gift boxes, which offer discounts, in your email marketing campaigns.

Our favorite is a wheel of fortune that spins to offer discounts but it will only spin after the user enters their email address. This allows you to engage customers while collecting emails for your list in a fun and exciting manner.

As far as Klaviyo alternatives go, Omnisend has most of the same features and some extra ones too, all at a lower price than Klaviyo.

Pricing:

The pricing is based on the number of contacts you have and the features you require. The free plan lets you send 15,000 emails per month. The Standard plan starts at $16 per month for up to 500 contacts and has features like marketing automations, segmentation and reporting.

The Pro plan starts at $99 per month for up to 2,700 contacts and unlocks advanced features like push notifications, retargeting ads on Google and Facebook, custom workflows and advanced reporting.

All the starting prices of these plans are limited to 15,000 emails per month and all prices get discounted if you commit to yearly payments. Their Enterprise plan offers unlimited emails per month, full access to all advanced features and a dedicated account manager, all for custom pricing.

Pros:

  • Free plan
  • Free trial
  • Drag and drop editor
  • Dynamic gamification
  • Intuitive and easy to use interface
  • Multichannel workflows

Cons:

  • Limited templates
  • Needs more customization options

Omnisend as a Klaviyo alternative makes complete sense because it offers almost everything Klaviyo does at a much better price. This makes it an excellent Klaviyo alternative for ecommerce businesses looking for a less expensive option.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue has over 80,000 users that send out a hundred million emails through them every day. They offer an all-in-one solution with automated email and SMS campaigns, Facebook ads, landing pages, CRM and much more. It is a simple yet highly effective marketing tool.

Their email builder is a great visual builder even if it is a bit limited. The editor offers many template options and is fairly easy to use because of its drag and drop features. They also offer SMS touches with your contacts, a feature only ActiveCampaign, Omnisend and MailChimp (in specific countries) offer.

They also have multiple workflows based on user behavior that let you create different automated flows. The workflow is very visual, which is great for having an overview of exactly how your automation funnel flows.

Pricing is a good plus point for Sendinblue because of its method and their offered features. Even their Free plan offers unlimited contacts, automation, web tracking, and CRM. Upgrading to their paid plans is also not a big problem because they start at $25 per month with improved features.

They also offer transactional emails like order notifications and invoices for ecommerce businesses. As a Klaviyo alternative, Sendinblue can work well for users who do not need too many advanced features. But if you want to scale, you may want to look at other Klaviyo alternatives.

Users who have many subscribers but send limited emails can really take advantage of this platform because they bill you per email, unlike most other competitors that bill you per contact. The important area where we feel Sendinblue is behind other platforms is with its CRM features.

Overall, Sendinblue is a very budget friendly platform with a generous free plan.

Sendinblue managed email marketing

Pricing:

Unlike most other email marketing platforms, Sendinblue sets their pricing off of how many emails are sent per month. They offer a free plan for up to 300 email sends per day and because there is no limit to the number of contacts, you can have 300,000 contacts as long as you only send 300 emails per day.

Their paid plans include a Lite plan starting at $25 per month for 10,000 email sends with no limit on daily sends. Then you have the Premium plan starting at $65 per month for 20,000 email sends, plus added features like automation, landing pages, Facebook ads and more.

They also offer Enterprise plans but you have to contact them for a quote on custom pricing for this plan. Their pricing method is interesting at first but it may get a little confusing for some.

Let us explain – if you send your 2000 contacts around 10 emails per month, including automated emails, you may easily get to the 20,000 emails per month mark in the Essential plan. But if you have a lot of contacts and only need to send them a few emails, Sendinblue is better for you because of its pricing method.

Pros:

  • Free plan
  • Drag and drop features
  • SMS touches and transactional emails
  • Pay for emails sent per month, which is good for minimal mailers with many contacts
  • Chat features like chat widget in stores
  • Inexpensive Lite plan with good features
  • Variety of template options, included in the Free plan as well

Cons:

  • CRM features could be better
  • Limited integrations
  • Landing page builder only for higher plans
  • Their most popular plan, which is the Premium plan, might be expensive for some small businesses and startups

Sendinblue is a great Klaviyo alternative for users who want to have a fairly featured marketing tool but do not necessarily have too many emails to send out each month. Overall, it is much less expensive than Klaviyo and gets the job done effectively.

SmartrMail

Launched in 2016, SmartrMail is a new and simple marketing automation and email tool that is useful for users who do not want, or need, advanced features on their platform. They have quickly captured ecommerce businesses and grown as a company over their few years of being in the industry.

Unlike most of our Klaviyo alternatives on this list, SmartrMail is specifically an email marketing tool without the fancy stuff.

They do not offer SMS marketing, landing pages or any Google integrations. They are focused on email and their customers are typically users who need to meet their email needs without much else. You can create easy pop-ups for email captures and send simple automated email sets.

They give you various automatically updating segments of your lists including loyal customers, one-time customers and at-risk customers. There is the option to do your own segmentation according to things like purchase behavior, campaign and contact profile data.

Email templates are easy to design, thanks to the drag and drop feature and you can add products, prices and descriptions with one simple click. They also have a good automation workflow builder that can help you create basic or complex automation workflows all the same.

Smartrmail managed email marketing

Pricing:

There is no free plan with SmartrMail but there is a free trial that lets you try any plan for 15 days before you decide if you want to pay for their services. The pricing of paid plans is based on features and are recommended by them for a certain number of contacts.

The Standard plan starts at $19 per month with 1,000 contacts and lets you send emails 12 times the size of your list. Available features of this plan include the automation builder, email composes, segmentation and other features.

The Unlimited plan lets you send unlimited emails with 1,000 contacts, you have to subscribe to this plan as it starts at $99 per month. This plan includes advanced features like Facebook audience sync, priority support, smart send frequency and A/B testing among others.

Pros:

Easy to use

  • Drag & drop feature
  • Unlimited emails with higher plan
  • Allows easy migration from Klaviyo
  • Automatically adds products in emails

Cons:

  • No SMS marketing
  • No social media ads feature
  • Limited Standard plan

SmartrMail is a good Klaviyo alternative for beginners, users and ecommerce businesses looking for a useful and simple email marketing platform with decent marketing automations. While it may not be the best Klaviyo alternative, it works well for beginners who want to pay less and meet basic demands.

Conclusion

There is no denying the fact that Klaviyo is an excellent ecommerce marketing platform that offers advanced features and automation to its users. However, the pricing is simply not right for startups, small business and beginners who want to get similar results at a budget friendly cost.

There are also some unique features that are available on other platforms that may pique the interest of certain users, which is why Klaviyo alternatives are a good option. Whatever your reason may be, it is always good to have options.

For more information on Klaviyo alternatives, other email marketing platforms or email marketing in general, please visit our website today.

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