Klaviyo Review: Is it the Best Email and SMS Marketing Tool?

Launch Your Online Business in Just 7 Days

The widespread use of email is at an all-time high and is expected to rise globally to over 376.4 billion daily email sends by 2025.

Your business needs email software that allows you to effectively launch email campaigns, understand customer behavior, increase revenue, and more.

Is Klaviyo the right tool?

In this full review of Klaviyo, we take an in-depth look at their features and pricing to see whether they’re worth your time, energy, and investment.

Let’s begin.

1. What is Klaviyo?

Klaviyo logo

Klaviyo was created to enable online businesses to enhance customer connection and send out highly targeted customer communications.

They also make it easy to store, analyze and obtain customer information.

Since their inception in 2012, they’ve taken B2C marketing to a whole new level with advanced features that include:

Email and SMS marketing
1-click integrations
A/B testing
Automated workflows
Segmentation

And more.

Let's dig into a bit more of what makes Klaviyo a worthwhile marketing tool.

2. Pros and cons of Klaviyo

Like other emailing software, Klaviyo has both strengths and weaknesses:

Pros

Easy-to-use interface

In-depth reporting and analytics

Advanced segmentation capabilities

Suited for businesses of all sizes

Integration with other leading ecommerce platforms

Cons

Comes with a noticeable learning curve for first-time users

More expensive as contacts increase

A bit difficult to set up flows

No phone support and live chat support is only for clients on paid plans

Their Free plan has limitations

3. Klaviyo’s features

In the next section, we’ll look at Klaviyo’s features, from SMS and email marketing, to benchmarks and analytics.

To start, let’s look at how you can launch email and SMS campaigns for your online business.

3.1. Email marketing

Klaviyo’s email templates

Launching your email marketing campaigns on Klaviyo is extremely easy because they guide you through each step of the process.

Firstly, Klaviyo allows you to import your list from other emailing platforms like Mailchimp and Constant Contact.

This handy feature means you don't have to build your list from scratch and can focus on other aspects of your marketing.

Secondly, they boast dozens of fully customizable pre-built templates to enable you to match the look and feel of your brand.

To create your first campaign, you must choose an existing list or segment on Klaviyo.

Next, they give you 3 options:

Drag-and-drop — Create emails using simple building blocks and their drag-and-drop interface
Text only — Send text-based emails for a more personalized experience
HTML editor — Create HTML emails from scratch using code

Other emailing features are available on the platform:

Campaign scheduling — You can either send it out immediately or at a later time of your choosing
You can change the reply-to email address
You’re able to add a custom web feed and use the content in your emails
Email templates optimized for mobile devices

Klaviyo makes email marketing look like a walk in the park since you're able to quickly launch and optimize your campaigns.

3.2. SMS marketing

Source: Klaviyo.com

According to their website, more than 4,000 brands use SMS marketing on Klaviyo.

And why shouldn’t they?

45% of SMS campaigns generate a positive ROI and, when used in tandem with email marketing, can increase email open rates by 20-30%.

As with your email list, Klaviyo allows you to import an existing SMS contact list to their platform and provide a toll-free number.

If you have over 95,000 contacts, they recommend upgrading to a shortcode.

To start with SMS marketing, you need customers’ consent and Klaviyo has made this possible by letting you create various SMS opt-ins or consent forms:

Klaviyo signup forms — Create signup forms to collect visitors' phone numbers
Click-to-text forms — Mobile visitors can sign up for your list by clicking a button
Custom keywords — People can text your keyword to your SMS number to subscribe to your list
Consent at checkout — You can seamlessly collect SMS consent at a checkout page

Besides varying methods to get people to subscribe, Klaviyo’s SMS marketing allows you to:

Build an SMS segment list for effective targeted messaging
Create multi-step forms to collect SMS consent when collecting email subscribers
Text with your subscribers in real-time
Send price-drop alerts, coupon codes, in-stock alerts, and product recommendations
Create personalized follow-up messages to increase sales

3.3. Signup forms

Klaviyo’s Signup Form Builder

Klaviyo has a Signup Form Builder to help you create signup forms for your marketing campaigns based on your goals.

Whether your goal is to collect email signups, SMS signups or advertise a sale, you can create forms to this effect.

You can create your forms from over 50 ready-made templates or design one from scratch.

The types of forms available are:

Pop-up forms — To command attention from your customers
Exit-intent forms — To help you engage with users who are about to leave your site one last time
Targeted forms — Based on certain user conditions like site activity and location to provide more personal communication

There are more benefits to building signup forms on Klaviyo, such as:

A drag-and-drop editor to help you customize any design element to match your branding
The ability to add embedded forms on your website
Built-in data consent features to help you remain in compliance with GDPR and TCPA

Signup forms are crucial to your business since data collected from these forms is what drives your marketing.

3.4. Ecommerce automation

Klaviyo’s abandoned cart email flow

Ecommerce marketing automation on Klaviyo is available for both email and SMS in what is known as multi-channel digital marketing.

They have dozens of built-in, fully customizable flows.

These automated flows allow you to create personalized customer experiences and send well-timed messaging.

For example, they have automation on hand for:

Cross-sell and upsell — To help you increase the customer lifetime value (CLV)
Browse and cart abandonment — To serve as a gentle reminder before checkout
Back in stock — To notify customers when a product they had shown an interest in is restocked
Welcome series for new subscribers — They’ll be tagged and automatically receive your welcome series as soon as they subscribe to your list

And more.

With every automation you create on Klaviyo, there must be a trigger.

Triggers can be:

List based — When customers are added to a specific list
Segment based — When customers are added to a specific segment
Date based — For birthdays or anniversaries

With Klaviyo’s advanced automation you can rest easy as your business can run on autopilot and move prospects further along the customer journey.

3.5. A/B testing

Klaviyo’s email campaign A/B test

What better way to know what your audience wants and fine-tune your messaging than through A/B testing?

Klaviyo allows split testing of your email campaigns, flows, signup form offers, and more.

For your email campaign, you can test:

Different subject lines
Different colors for your call-to-action buttons (CTAs)
Different email send times

On a deeper level, you can test:

New layouts
Different brand colors

A/B testing works best when you test one variable at a time among other factors.

For example, if you want to improve your open rate by testing your subject lines, don’t include other elements like preview text, as the results will be inaccurate.

3.6. Integrations

Klaviyo’s integrations allow you to integrate with some of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the market — like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and more.

On top of that, they enable an open API regarding custom integrations.

Since you can easily sync data from marketing tools to your Klaviyo account, this will streamline your marketing and boost conversions.

Besides ecommerce stores, you can connect your account with other marketing tools:

Quiz and survey tools
Referral programs
CRMs (Customer Relationship Management systems)
Other ESPs (Email Service Providers)
SMS software

Klaviyo also allows you to gain more leads with optimized lead generation through integration with Facebook and Instagram.

They can sync audience data from Facebook Lead Generation Ads, Instagram Lead Ads, and LinkedIn Lead Ads.

This can boost lead generation efforts and help with segmentation of your customer list.

3.7. Analytics and reporting

Klaviyo’s campaign performance overview report

Klaviyo provides you with in-depth analytics and reporting for your campaigns, strategies, and automated flows to help you measure performance over time.

With such reports, you can:

Track the performance of your emails and texts campaigns
Check conversion rate for email and SMS
Access individual campaigns with a simple click
Check product performance
Track revenue and sales

And more.

For example, when checking the conversion rate for your lists, Klaviyo lets you access the “List Growth Report.”

With this report, you’ll be able to understand the rate at which you acquire new leads and also know which traffic source they’re coming from.

Klaviyo also boasts dozens of prebuilt reports on their platform, and they let you create custom reports based on your business goals.

Here are 3 ways you can access reports and analytics on Klaviyo:

1. Dashboard — View reports and analytics straight from your dashboard

2. Custom schedule — Create a custom schedule to get automated analytics reports

3. Pre-built reports — Access pre-built reports that’ll provide answers to questions regarding your ecommerce business or online store

In addition to reporting and analytics tools, they have a Benchmarks feature.

You have access to pre-built personalized benchmarks relevant to your industry, and other business attributes through this feature.

It also allows you to compare your performance to your competitors, identify your strengths and analyze your KPIs (key performance indicators) in relation to your campaigns.

With such reporting that also gives you an edge over the competition, there's no reason why you shouldn't accomplish your business goals.

3.8. Customer profiles

Example of a customer profile on Klaviyo

Data driven marketing is the best way to market your business and sell your products.

With this in mind, Klaviyo added customer profiles onto their platform.

As with automated flows, this feature lets you send out powerful targeted campaigns and build relationships.

Klaviyo has a database where they sync customer data collected from their interaction with your brand and signup forms to create individual profiles.

You can also add custom data fields to a profile throughout a customer’s journey with your business.

For example, if a customer loves to buy a certain product in your Shopify store, you can add a custom field to their profile: “Jane Smith mostly buys sports gear.”

Customer profile data includes:

Location and timezone
Purchases (transactional data)
Marketing channels (email or SMS list)
Past communications
Total revenue

Additionally, you’re privy to data such as when they opened an email, when they placed an order, when their order was shipped, and more.

3.9. Segmentation

Klaviyo’s cross-sell segment

Much like their customer profile feature, list segmentation on Klaviyo is based on available customer data to enable more precise targeting.

For example, the image above illustrates how you can create a cross-sell segment for summer tank tops to advertise to customers who had bought summer shorts.

To make it easy for you to create segments, they have a user-friendly segment builder to help you group your audience based on:

Discount code usage
Purchase history
Products viewed
Region
Interests

And more.

Klaviyo also lets you sync your segments with Facebook and Instagram to strengthen social ad targeting.

It's now time to close the chapter on Klaviyo's extensive features to look at their pricing plans.

Is Klaviyo worth your money?

4. Klaviyo’s pricing

Klaviyo’s pricing structure

Klaviyo’s pricing is straightforward and depends on the number of contacts you have and the emails and texts you send during a billing cycle.

For example, for 500 contacts with both email and SMS, you’ll have to part with $40. This price also includes:

5,000 emails
2,500 SMSes
Email and chat support

They offer both free and paid plans, and have no annual payment plan.

Their Free plan is limited, but you can still use it to decide if their software is the right fit for your business.

Here’s a monthly rundown of the Free plan if you combine email and SMS:

Maximum of 250 contacts
Maximum of 500 emails
Up to 50 SMS contacts
Maximum of 150 text messages

For email only:

Maximum of 250 contacts
Maximum of 500 emails

For SMS only:

Up to 50 SMS contacts
A limit of 150 text messages
Toll-free number

As your business grows or if you exceed your limit on your chosen plan, you’ll have to upgrade.

Furthermore, you can pay for each channel (email and SMS) separately or pay for them in tandem — there’s a calculator to show you exactly how much to pay.

Both free and paid pricing structures give you access to email support.

Live chat support is only accessible to users with a paid plan and with higher-tiered plans, you’ll have access to:

An onboarding specialist
A customer success manager

On the whole, Klaviyo’s pricing is expensive but if you’re willing to overlook this in favor of their many features, you can give them a shot.

Now let’s see which platforms are giving them a run for their money.

5. Klaviyo’s alternatives

Though Klaviyo is popular in online marketing and boasts many features for ecommerce stores, there are some other emailing tools you can consider for your business.

One of them is systeme.io, and the other is Mailchimp.

5.1. Systeme.io — The best Klaviyo alternative

systeme.io logo

Both Klaviyo and Mailchimp offer attractive features to run your online business effectively.

However, if you want to get more for less, systeme.io is the best alternative.

Systeme.io is a fully integrated all-in-one platform — all the tools you need for your business are synced in one place.

As for email marketing, we have a built-in emailing tool that helps you to:

Create emails using our high converting pre-made templates
Automate your campaigns with IF/THEN workflows to save time and run your campaigns on autopilot
Utilize our tagging system to organize your list and send out personalized messaging
Edit any element using our drag-and-drop builder to match your branding
Access detailed reports on the performance of your campaigns

systeme.io’s features

Apart from the above, systeme.io’s features include:

Blogging tool — Create a blog to help grow your audience with unlimited blog posts
Affiliate marketing — Create and manage affiliates and set up commissions
Online courses — Launch your online course and have unlimited students
Website builder — Create your website with a custom domain even with our Free plan

So, what’s systeme.io’s pricing like? Let’s find out.

systeme.io’s pricing plans

Systeme.io has 4 pricing plans that scale with your online business and offer more features as you upgrade.

Additionally, with our annual pricing, you’ll get to save a whopping 30%.

Here’s our pricing structure:

Free plan — $0/month for a maximum of 2,000 contacts
Startup plan — $27/month for a maximum of 5,000 contacts
Webinar plan — $47/month for a maximum of 10,000 contacts
Unlimited plan — $97/month for unlimited contacts

To start, you don’t need to enter credit card details, and you can upgrade to one of our paid plans at any time.

Unlike Klaviyo and Mailchimp, systeme.io offers more features with their Free plan:

Unlimited emails
3 sales funnels
Unlimited file storage
Affiliate program
1 custom domain
Unlimited blog posts

5.2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp logo

Mailchimp is an email marketing software created to empower small businesses.

According to their website, they’ve invested over $12 million so far to this effect.

Founded in 2001, they started off as an emailing tool but due to customer demand, introduced other features like websites, a marketing CRM, landing pages, and more.

With Mailchimp as a partner, you can:

Create a website with a custom domain
Integrate with your favorite apps and tools
Create emails, landing pages, and digital ads with pre made templates
Use a tagging system to organize your contacts
Create customer journeys from a library of pre-built journeys to push prospects to convert
Automate your campaigns
Analyze email analytics like open rate and click through rate

One major difference between Klaviyo and Mailchimp’s features is that Mailchimp is a bit more versatile — it has a website and landing page builder, whereas Klaviyo doesn’t.

With that said, Klaviyo’s signup forms can generate leads in place of landing pages.

Now let's see how Mailchimp’s pricing plans compare to Klaviyo and systeme.io's:

Mailchimp's pricing plans

Mailchimp’s pricing is divided into 3 categories based on your business goals:

Marketing platform
Websites and commerce
Transactional email

Under the marketing platform, there are 4 pricing plans:

1. Free — $0/month with a maximum of 1,500 contacts

2. Essentials — Starts at $11/month, maximum of 50,000 contacts

3. Standard — Starts at $17/month, maximum of 100,000 contacts

4. Premium — Starts at $299/month as long as you don’t exceed 10,000 contacts

Like Klaviyo, the higher your subscriber count, the more you’ll pay.

For example, Mailchimp’s maximum subscriber count is 200,000 and you’d have to part with a whopping $1,300 for a list this size.

Furthermore, as with systeme.io, Mailchimp’s pricing plans let you access more features as you upgrade.

What about their monthly email send limits?

Monthly email sends for each plan:

Free — 10,000 emails
Essentials — 10 times the contact limit
Standard — 12 times the contact limit
Premium — 15 times the contact limit

Overall, the platform that provides good value for money is systeme.io since our Free plan surpasses that of Klaviyo and Mailchimp, and for $97, you’ll access all of Klaviyo and Mailchimps’s features and more.

6. Conclusion

There’s no doubt that Klaviyo offers many features that can help you run successful campaigns and drive customer engagement.

With such powerful marketing to back you up, you’re able to make the most out of your marketing.

However, if you'd like to get better value for your money and access more features than you would with Klaviyo, systeme.io is the reliable business partner you’ve been waiting for.

With our advanced features and affordable pricing, your business is in safe hands.

Get started with your Free plan today!