The 5 Best Klaviyo Competitors for E-Commerce

If you’re looking for Klaviyo competitors for your email marketing, you’ve come to the right place.

Klaviyo is often the go to choice for online stores when they want more advanced functionality out of their email software to increase their sales. 

But as you likely know from your first experience with the platform, Klaviyo’s advanced marketing tools can easily overwhelm most merchants. Still many merchants persevere in order to stick with what’s recommended..

Then as their email list grows, they notice the price starts ballooning to hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month very quickly. Eventually the price triggers a search for a simpler alternative. 

Whether your journey to this page followed a similar path, or you have a different motivation in finding another email marketing solution, we’ve got you covered. 

To simplify your search for Klaviyo competitors, we’ve compiled this list of the five best options for you to check out further. 

But before we get into this list, it’s worth taking a look at why you might want a different solution to Klaviyo.

Why You Need a Klaviyo Alternative

Usability

Klaviyo is a great email marketing tool, but it’s not designed for everyone. 

The feature set that Klaviyo boasts is truly advanced and complex. This is great if you’re a seasoned email marketer, but is very confusing if you’re just looking to set up some best practice automations. 

Support

A common theme among previous Klaviyo users switching to SmartrMail is the difference in support offered. 

Many threads in Quora also mention long waiting times to get a response from Klaviyo’s support team.  

Alternatively, many other email apps out there offer better support with faster response times. Something that you’ll definitely appreciate if you’re new to email marketing. 

Cost

All of the advanced features Klaviyo offers comes at a cost. Unlike many of Klaviyo competitors, you also can’t choose a lower pricing tier if you only want the most important tools. 

With Klaviyo, you pay for all their marketing automation tools whether you want them or not. 

Thankfully there are plenty of cheaper and similar alternatives that integrate with your favourite ecommerce platforms. 

So without further ado, let’s get into these alternative email marketing software solutions. 

NB: Check out our full Klaviyo review here.

1) SmartrMail

SmartrMail is an email marketing app that’s focused exclusively on ecommerce. As a result it has all the tools and features you need to make more sales from email. 

While some of the more advanced and enterprise features that Klaviyo has aren’t present in SmartrMail, this has allowed the app to remain remarkably easy to use. Whether you want to set up abandoned cart emails or create a cross-sell email campaign, you can do so in just a few minutes. 

That said, there are still plenty of advanced features that you can take advantage of if you want. These include an integration with Facebook custom audiences and A/B testing. 

There’s also an easy email composer that lets you craft your emails quickly and intuitively. 

The main way SmartrMail differentiates itself from Klaviyo is in its simplicity. If you’re looking for a simple email marketing solution to help you sell more online, SmartrMail is well worth checking out. 

SmartrMail Pricing

SmartrMail has three pricing tiers: free, basic and advanced. The free plan includes up to 1,000 subscribers and lets you send up to 5,000 emails per month. However there is no feature restrictions compared to the basic plan.

Both paid plans are priced reasonably with the basic starting at $29 and the advanced at $99 per month. These both include up to 200 subscribers, after which point the cost starts to increase.

This makes SmartrMail significantly more affordable than Klaviyo.  

If you have 15,000 subscribers your cost on SmartrMail’s basic plan is $103 and $210 a month on the advanced plan. Whereas on Klaviyo the cost is $350 a month. 

2) Mailchimp

Mailchimp is often the first name to come to mind when you think of email marketing. Their high brand recognition often makes them the first choice for many merchants when setting up their ecommerce stores. 

This also makes Mailchimp a serious Klaviyo competitor. 

Compared to Klaviyo, Mailchimp is definitely geared towards people who are just starting out with email. Setting up common flows and many of the interfaces are more simple than in Klaviyo. 

There’s also not as many ecommerce related features with Mailchimp. There are many automations that generate merchants easy sales that you just cannot automate with Mailchimp. For example, you cannot automate regular product recommendation emails or have much flexibility when scheduling abandoned cart emails.

This is not to mention all the various types of buyer activity related segments you cannot set up either. 

If you’re looking for a Klaviyo alternative for your Shopify store, then there’s something else you should keep in mind: there’s no native integration. 

Mailchimp and Shopify had a very public breakup early in 2019 which resulted in Mailchimp leaving the ecommerce platform altogether. If you want to use Mailchimp with Shopify, then you will need to use a third party connector to have your sales data synced. 

That said, Mailchimp is a still a great option for people as an introduction to the world of email marketing. Just don’t expect it to be anywhere near as powerful as Klaviyo when it comes to ecommerce. 

Mailchimp Pricing

Unlike Klaviyo, Mailchimp has a number of different pricing tiers. 

This includes a free plan for up to 2,000 contacts which requires you include the Mailchimp logo. From there, the Essentials Plan starts at $9.99 a month, the Standard Plan at $14.99 and Premium at $299. 

From those points, the monthly cost will gradually increase as your number of contacts grows. 

If you have 15,000 contacts, then the monthly cost with Mailchimp is $159 with the Standard Plan and $349 with the Premium Plan (which is the plan that comes the closest to Klaviyo’s feature set). For comparison, the monthly cost with Klaviyo is $350. 

There is one major difference between how Mailchimp and Klaviyo calculate pricing you should be aware of though. Unlike Klaviyo, Mailchimp counts unsubscribed addresses towards your total billing amount. Mailchimp is the only entry on this list that bills you for people who have unsubscribed from your email list. 

3) Constant Contact

Constant Contact is another big name in email marketing. 

Compared to Klaviyo, Constant Contact makes it very easy to start sending best practice email flows with a nice and clean email composer. Managing your various lists and segments is also relatively intuitive and user friendly. 

Again, (this is going to be a common theme) Constant Contact lacks many of the ecommerce email marketing features that Klaviyo boasts. This is not to say that Constant Contact is a tool for novices. Rather that is is simply not integrated with ecommerce platforms as closely as other apps. 

For instance, their lowest tier only lets you sync customers from Shopify and BigCommerce. In order to sync products to add directly in emails, you need to upgrade to their top tier. 

There are plenty of other advanced features like support for coupons, online donations and A/B testing. So if you can live without a close integration with ecommerce platforms, Constant Contact is an attractive Klaviyo competitor. 

Constant Contact Pricing

Constant Contact has two different plans: Email and Email Plus. 

Email starts at $20 a month and Email Plus at $45 a month. While both include unlimited email sends, Email Plus obviously includes the more advanced features. 

There’s also a very generous 60 day free trial. 

This lets you test out all the features but limits you to only 100 contacts. So while you probably won’t be able to use Constant Contact as your primary email marketing service during this period, there’s ample opportunity to fully test out the app. 

With 15,000 subscribers, your monthly cost on the Mail Plus Plan is $195. This is significantly cheaper than the $350 you pay with Klaviyo. There’s also discounts of up to 15% if you prepay for 12 months in advance. 

4) ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is another very powerful tool and a serious Klaviyo competitor. 

On first impressions, ActiveCampaign is targeting more seasoned email marketers than those just getting started. The interfaces and feature set definitely give you a plethora of advanced options not dissimilar to Klaviyo. 

The main point where the two seem to diverge is in what they’re trying to be. While Klaviyo is attempting to dominate ecommerce email marketing, ActiveCampaign is more of a CRM. 

That’s not to say that ActiveCampaign doesn’t have powerful ecommerce features too. With integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce, you can automate abandoned cart emails, win back campaigns and more. 

All of this makes ActiveCampaign a strong Klaviyo alternative for ecommerce email marketing and an even more powerful option for a range of other purposes. 

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign’s pricing structure is far more complex than Klaviyo’s single tier structure. 

There are four different plans: Lite, Plus (the most popular), Professional and Enterprise. All include unlimited sending, but in order to integrate with your ecommerce platform you will need to be on the Plus Plan at a minimum. 

For 25,000 contacts the cost of the Lite Plan is $225 a month, whereas Pro is $399 and Professional is $599. Paying a year in advance reduces this amount to $179, $319 and $479 respectively. You need to contact ActiveCampaign for Enterprise Plan pricing. 

There’s also a 14 day free trial. 

5) Sendinblue

Sendinblue is another popular email solution for ecommerce. 

Similar to Mailchimp, Sendinblue offers a variety of ways to reach customers outside of just email. These include SMS marketing, Facebook Ads integration and the ability to create landing pages. 

All of the fundamental email features are present too. Even though it’s not as powerful as Klaviyo in this regard, you can still set up all of the best practice automations and segments. 

Sendinblue’s strong suit is definitely as an omnichannel platform, in this sense it’s approaching CRM territory like other entries on this list. 

Sendinblue Pricing

Sendinblue has five different plans if you count their free option. 

The free plan includes unlimited contacts with transactional and email campaigns but only lets you send up to 300 emails a month. 

Paid plans start at $25 a month but still include monthly send limits. Even the Premium plan at $66 a month has a monthly limit of 120,000 emails. This can be increased to 350,000 for a total of $173 a month. If you wish to send more emails, you’ll likely need to go on their Enterprise plan where they will give you a custom quote. 

Because all the plans include unlimited contacts, your cost doesn’t increase as your email list grows. This makes Sendinblue incredibly competitive with Klaviyo in terms of price. 

The Top Klaviyo Competitors

Now that you have a list of some Klaviyo competitors to check out, the next step is to start investigating the options you think are best for your situation. 

There’s no denying that Klaviyo is a great and highly advanced platform, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. If it’s not for you, then there should be some other options on this better suited to your needs.

Of course, there are also plenty of other options out there too. The five on this list just represents a variety of different competitors.