Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Which Email and SMS Marketing Tool Is Best for You?

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Many businesses use email marketing to send highly targeted messages, enhance brand awareness, and build long-term customer relationships.

And it’s easy to see why when you take into consideration that email marketing has an ROI of $42 for each $1.

However, to truly succeed in this industry, you need an email tool that’s a cut above the rest.

That’s why we’ve brought you an in-depth review and comparison of 2 solid players in the space — Omnisend and Klaviyo.

What is Omnisend?

Omnisend logo

Omnisend is an omnichannel marketing automation platform that mainly targets ecommerce businesses.

Launched in 2014, Omnisend was an email-only platform and known as “Soundest”.

A few years later, they shifted focus towards omnichannel marketing and officially rebranded themselves as Omnisend in 2017.

That resulted in offering customers new features like:

Pop-ups and forms
Segmentation
Marketing automation
Web-push notifications

They let you combine email, SMS, and browser push notifications to increase your business’ sales potential.

What is Klaviyo?

Klaviyo logo

Klaviyo was also created for ecommerce platforms.

As an all-in-one email marketing platform, they boast a wide variety of marketing tools to help grow your online business.

They also integrate with the biggest ecommerce platforms like PrestaShop and support third-party integrations with shipping tracking providers, loyalty and rewards programs, and more.

One of their biggest strengths lies in offering customer data storage that allows you to create highly effective ecommerce marketing campaigns.

Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Pros and cons

Specialized email marketing tools like Omnisend and Klaviyo also possess strengths and weaknesses, as mentioned by their users.

Below are Omnisend’s pros and cons:

Pros

Easy to use and navigate

Offers a wide variety of email capture options like landing pages and the Wheel of Fortune

Budget-friendly SMS pricing

You can automatically generate unique discount codes to use in your emails

Cons

All your content on their Free plan comes with Omnisend’s branding

Advanced reporting is only available on the Pro plan

Setting up automated workflows comes with a learning curve

Limited email template options

Now let’s look at Klaviyo’s pros and cons:

Pros

Easy-to-use interface

Stores customer data you can leverage in marketing campaigns

Has many resources to help you learn the platform

Powerful segmentation tool for ecommerce businesses

Cons

SMS marketing is limited to 4 countries (US, Canada, Australia, and the UK)

Gets really expensive as your list grows

You have Klaviyo’s branding as long as you’re in the Free plan

Live chat support is only available to customers on Klaviyo’s paid plans

Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Comparing features

Omnisend and Klaviyo seem to be on par with one another and offer similar ecommerce tools for their target audience.

Let’s dive right in and take a deeper look at their features to see who comes out on top.

Email marketing

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo’s email marketing features are ecommerce-focused and can help you:

Understand your customers' behavior and preferences
Send personalized emails for precise campaign targeting
Boost clicks, opens, conversions, and improve deliverability rates

Omnisend’s email marketing

Omnisend’s ready-made email templates

Omnisend has many tools to help you create and launch powerful email campaigns with ease.

To help you start, they offer you a library of customizable email templates that you can save and reuse in future emails.

Here’s a list of what you can do with Omnisend’s email tools:

Create campaigns with content blocks. Add products, text, images, and unique discount codes with their drag-and-drop content editor
Filter email templates based on your goals, such as announcing a sale, promoting a product, or offering a discount
Send relevant and personalized emails based on your customers’ traits using segmentation, like gender, age, and shopping behavior
Use the Campaign Booster to automatically resend your unopened emails with a new subject line in 48 hrs
A/B test your email subject lines and content to find out what drives the most conversions
Add products directly from external online stores on popular platforms like Shopify and Woocommerce, complete with pictures, pricing, and descriptions using their Product Picker feature
Send abandoned cart emails, and browser web-push notifications

Omnisend’s email builder offers extra email marketing features like online scratch cards and Gift Boxes to boost your click and conversion rates.

However, they lack a ton of email templates because they only have 6 Standard templates on hand and 18 different themes to choose from.

Klaviyo’s email marketing

Examples of Klaviyo’s pre-built email templates

Email marketing on Klaviyo is built around email lists and segments.

They let you have up to 1,000 lists and segments at any time.

You can export your subscriber list using their built-in ESP integrations if you’re migrating from email marketing software like Campaign Monitor.

With Klaviyo’s robust email marketing features, you can:

Add blocks into your emails like text, background images, products, and social icons with their drag-and-drop editor
Customize 400+ pre-built email templates with your brand logo, colors, and fonts to remain consistent with branding
Enable Smart Send Time to determine the best time to send emails to get more opens and clicks
A/B test your email campaigns — from subject lines to content and everything in between to find out what performs best
Send personalized campaigns based on your customers' behavior using segmentation
Send abandoned cart emails though different “flows”

Deciding which email marketing provider is best between Omnisend and Klaviyo is like choosing between a BMW and a Mercedes . . . They both get the job done while being pretty good at it.

Verdict:

On the one hand, Klaviyo has a ton of email templates and customization.

On the other, Omnisend is simpler when it comes to editing content and has extra features like Gift Boxes.

So, it’s pretty much a tie when it comes to email marketing.

Omnisend: 1 — Klaviyo: 1

SMS marketing

With 9 out of 10 people preferring to communicate with brands through text, SMS marketing is a powerful way to complement your marketing efforts.

Omnisend’s SMS marketing

SMS marketing on Omnisend

SMS marketing on Omisend is centered on an SMS credits system; they let you buy these credits no matter which plan you’re subscribed to.

Credits expire after 60 days and can be added to your account in 2 ways:

1. SMS credits subscription — Includes varying billing tiers for monthly credits from $20-$2,000/month, with the price — in the US — being $0.015 per SMS text message

2. SMS credits for Pro plan — Free credits equal to the price of your monthly subscription, and you can still subscribe for more

Once you get going with SMS marketing on Omnisend, you can:

Send messages to any country to expand your global reach
Engage with your customers using 2-way SMS
Create SMS campaigns to promote new products or special offers
Collect visitors’ phone numbers and grow your list using TCPA-compliant tools like pop-ups and signup boxes
Track your performance using detailed SMS-only reports

You can try out text messaging for free on Omnisend, though it’s limited — you only get up to 60 SMS/month.

Omnisend has taken care of all the details regarding SMS marketing. Can the same be said about Klaviyo?

Klaviyo’s SMS marketing

SMS marketing on Klaviyo

Klaviyo’s SMS marketing works to bring customers closer to your brand with powerful targeted text messages.

With their impressive text marketing features, you can:

Collect consent from visitors using SMS opt-in options, like click-to-text web banners and multi-step forms, to grow your list
Have 2-way conversations with customers to build connections
Send personalized automated text messages at the right time
Send follow-up messages to enhance sales
Run contests and offer sweepstakes
Send cart abandonment texts, price drop alerts and product recommendations

Klaviyo also provides a toll-free number (US and Canada) at no cost.

Like Omnisend, you can start text messaging for free but once you go over your limit (150 SMS/month), you’re left with no choice but to upgrade to a paid plan.

At the time of writing this post, they supported text messaging in only 4 countries — the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

Verdict:

Omnisend wins this round because they support worldwide SMS marketing.

Omnisend: 2 — Klaviyo: 1

Ecommerce automation

When it comes to marketing automation, you can’t afford to be slacking.

Not only can it improve your lead nurturing rates by up to 20%, but you could also see an increase in your normal conversion rates as indicated by 77% of marketers.

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo offer automation, but to what extent?

Let’s find out.

Omnisend’s ecommerce automation

Example of an A/B split test for an automated workflow

Automation workflows on Omnisend combine multiple marketing channels (email, text, and browser push notifications) in the same automated workflow for enhanced marketing automation.

They have an intuitive library of pre-built workflows where all the automation steps are already set up, saving you time and effort.

Here are some of the prebuilt workflows Omnisend offers:

Welcome series
Cart abandonment series
Order confirmation
Product abandonment

When creating custom workflows with their drag-and-drop automation builder, you can:

Create automation workflows that split based on various filters
Track sales and other relevant data
Edit text messages from the automation editor
A/B split test your offers, subject lines, and more to improve your workflows and learn what drives the most conversions

Each automated workflow is based on a specific trigger (e.g. “Abandoned Cart”, “Order Placed”) and is applied alongside filters.

For example, if you set your “Country” filter to the United Kingdom, only subscribers from the UK will enter the automated workflow.

Klaviyo’s ecommerce automation

Example of a pre-built welcome series flow on Klaviyo

Klaviyo’s ecommerce automation helps you to send timely messages, enhance customer retention, and increase your ROI.

Like Omnisend, Klaviyo’s flows are trigger-based automation rules and are used alongside flow filters.

People will qualify to enter a flow based on a specific trigger.

Here are some examples of what can trigger a flow on Klaviyo:

Viewed product
Customer’s birthday
A specific segment
Expected date of next order

They also have dozens of built-in pre-populated flows fit for any mix of emails and texts — you can still customize them to make sure they’re on-brand.

Here are some of the essential pre-built flows available on Klaviyo:

An abandoned cart flow to convert potential customers and drive up sales — you can customize this flow based on cart value
A “winback” flow to encourage inactive customers to re-engage with your brand
A welcome series flow to introduce your brand to new subscribers and provide helpful information

Using their automation builder, you can:

Create your flows by dragging and dropping messages onto a visual canvas
A/B test your emails and texts within each flow

Verdict:

Omnisend and Klaviyo are on equal footing in regards to ecommerce automation because they both offer advanced email and SMS marketing automation through split testing and trigger-based automation.

Omnisend: 3 — Klaviyo: 2

Signup forms

List building is a crucial component of online marketing.

A digital marketing platform or ESP (email service provider) that understands this will have all you need to help you create and optimize your signup forms.

Furthermore, it’s best to use a combination of forms to maximize conversions.

What kind of signup forms do Omnisend and Klaviyo have lined up for you?

Let’s look into it.

Omnisend’s signup forms

Omnisend’s landing page signup form

Omnisend offers a variety of built-in signup forms or list-building tools you can use in your marketing efforts.

They take it a step further by letting you gamify email capture with their Wheel of Fortune to incentivize people to subscribe.

Here are the types of signup forms Omnisend has to offer:

Landing page — You can create separate landing pages for each of your campaigns and customize them with ease
Pop-ups — Create pop-ups that can appear immediately after a specific number of pages have been viewed, or when a customer intends to leave your site (exit intent pop-ups)
Signup bar — When people click on the small non-intrusive signup bar widget, they willingly subscribe to your promotional campaigns
Wheel of Fortune — Give people a prize in exchange for their email contacts with this interactive form

Klaviyo’s signup forms

An example of a signup form on Klaviyo

Klaviyo has over 50 form templates designed to help your ecommerce business drive conversions.

You can also edit any design element (background, font, color, etc.) on these signup forms to complement your brand’s styles.

There are 3 types of forms you can create on Klaviyo:

Flyouts — These forms slip in and fly onto the edge of the web page allowing visitors to keep browsing uninterrupted
Embed — You can include embedded forms on specific sections of your site like your footer in case your flyout or popup isn’t triggered when a visitor comes to your site
Pop-ups — These high-converting forms are eye-catching and command attention

As with email and SMS, Klaviyo lets you A/B test your signup forms, but unfortunately, they don’t offer landing pages that’ll help you capture leads.

This is quite a setback since landing pages are proven to have high conversion rates.

Verdict:

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo have a variety of signup forms that are compliant with ever-changing data privacy laws.

However, Omnisend takes the lead because they offer more email capture options in the form of gamified signup forms and landing pages.

Omnisend: 4 — Klaviyo: 2

Analytics and reporting

When you have access to reports and analytics, you’ll have answers to questions like:

1. How much revenue is my email campaign generating?

2. What are the least performing steps in my funnel?

3. How many customers return to make another purchase?

Getting answers to the above questions will help you learn what your target audience responds to and what their shopping behavior is so you can drive more sales.

Omnisend’s analytics and reporting

Example of an automation report for email workflows on Omnisend

Omnisend offers an assortment of reports to help you identify which of your marketing strategies are most efficient.

Below are some of the reports you’ll find on Omnisend:

Campaigns reports — Shows you how many people opened and clicked your emails, your campaign sales, which devices were used, and more
Built-in message reports — View message performance statistics from the automation editor
Campaign Clickmap — With campaign Clickmap, you can monitor the distribution of clicks in your email campaigns to see which CTAs, products, and images are the most effective
Automation reports — Shows you how many people entered, are currently in, or have exited a specific workflow

Unfortunately, advanced reporting is only available on Omnisend’s Pro plan.

Klaviyo’s analytics and reporting

Example of email performance analytics on Klaviyo

Klaviyo also has an extensive variety of reporting and analytics tools:

Predictive analytics — Lets you predict customers' next date of purchase, customers at-risk of churn (haven’t engaged with your brand in a certain period), highest-value customers (VIPs), and more
Pre-built and custom reporting — Access dozens of customizable pre-built reports, grouped by topic, and build custom reports with their custom report builder
Campaign analytics — Helps you keep tabs on performance over time as well as jump into an individual campaign’s analytics
Peer benchmarks — Access built-in personalized benchmarks to let you know how your performance (email, SMS, metrics like open rate and click rate) compares to businesses like yours

Verdict:

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo offer useful data to help you analyze your ecommerce business from every angle in terms of the revenue made, campaigns and workflows’ performance, business metrics, and so forth.

However, Klaviyo wins this round because you can access advanced reporting on any plan (including their Free plan).

Omnisend: 4 — Klaviyo: 3

So far, Omnisend is ahead of the game. Let’s see if the subsequent sections can tip the scale in favor of Klaviyo.

Extra features

Omnisend and Klaviyo have extra features that make each platform more unique in its own way.

The below table illustrates some of these extra features:

Pricing

To bring the battle of Omnisend vs. Klaviyo to a close, let's look at their distinct pricing options.

Omnisend’s pricing

Omnisend’s pricing plans

Omnisend’s pricing depends on your subscriber count, and to start, they don’t require any credit card details.

You can use their Free plan for an unlimited time and upgrade to a paid plan whenever you choose.

Their 3 pricing plans are as follows:

Free plan — $0/month for 250 contacts, 500 emails, and up to 60 SMSes
Standard plan — starts at $16/month for 500 contacts, 6,000 emails, and up to 60 SMSes
Pro plan — starts at $59/month for 500 contacts, unlimited emails, and up to 3,933 SMSes/month

Omnisend’s Free plan includes:

Pop-ups and signup forms
A/B testing
Segmentation and customer analytics
Pre-built automations and workflows
Up to 500 web-push notifications
Email support

Omnisend’s Standard plan:

The Standard plan gives you everything in the Free plan, as well as:

A customer success manager with a minimum of 60,000 contacts
24/7 live and chat support

Omnisend’s Pro plan:

With the Pro plan, you’ll access all the features of the Standard plan, plus:

Advanced reporting
A customer success manager starting from 27,000 contacts
24/7 priority support

Omnisend’s Pro plan is your best bet if you want to save on text messaging every month and send unlimited emails and web-push notifications to your subscribers.

Klaviyo’s pricing

Klaviyo’s pricing

Klaviyo offers customers tiered pricing that grows as your business scales.

They have a Free plan (very limited) that gives you access to many of their features.

Once you go over your contact or email send limit, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan.

Here’s what to expect with Klaviyo’s Free plan:

Up to 250 contacts
500 monthly email sends
Up to 50 SMS contacts
Up to 150 monthly SMS sends
Email support

Both email and SMS have their own pricing plan — you can opt to use each marketing channel separately or combined.

For example, to market to a list of 2,000 contacts using email only, you’ll spend $60/month and get:

25,000 email sends
Email and chat support

With their highest-tiered plans, they offer a customer success manager but you must qualify first.

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo can get pretty expensive as you scale your business.

However, if advanced reporting is not a must-have feature for you, Omnisend would be a better option for you than Klaviyo.

For example, for up to 50,000 contacts, you’ll spend $330 with Omnisend’s Standard plan, whereas with Klaviyo, you’ll have to part with $700.

You also get more email sends — 600,000 on Omnisend and 500,000 on Klaviyo.

Even with Omnisend’s Pro plan, you’d still get better value for your money because you may not have to pay for SMS marketing — you get free credits.

When it comes to pricing plans, Omnisend is the winner.

Omnisend: 5 — Klaviyo: 3

But what if there’s a better option for you than Omnisend or Klaviyo?

One that has affordable pricing, has a shorter learning curve, and offers more features than Omnisend and Klaviyo?

The answer is simple — Systeme.io!

Systeme.io — The best alternative to Omnisend and Klaviyo

systeme.io logo

Systeme.io was created in 2018 by founder Aurelien Amacker to help people create successful online businesses without spending a fortune.

Our system is fully integrated, eliminating the need for expensive third-party apps.

With our easy-to-use interface, you can quickly start email marketing with access to features that let you:

Segment your list with a tagging system for precise targeting
Create automated email sequences
Access detailed analytics from your email dashboard
Integrate your email list with your sales funnels and website
Send unlimited emails to your subscribers

And since we’re an all-in-one platform, you’ll also get features like:

Business automation rules and workflows to save time and energy
Sales funnels to meet customers at each stage of the buying cycle
Affiliate marketing to increase sales and publish your offers for free on our marketplace

And much, much more!

So, how much will access to the aforementioned features cost you?

Systeme.io’s pricing

Systeme.io has a Free plan in addition to 3 paid plans. You can upgrade to a paid plan at any given time.

Here’s a rundown of our 4 pricing plans:

1. Free plan — $0/month for 2,000 contacts and 1 email campaign

2. Startup — $27/month for 5,000 contacts and 10 email campaigns

3. Webinar — $47/month for 10,000 contacts and 100 email campaigns

4. Unlimited — $97/month for unlimited contacts, email campaigns and everything else systeme.io offers

With our annual pricing, you’ll get to save 30% as well as have your entire business migrated for free onto our platform.

Unlike Omnisend and Klaviyo, our Free plan is enough for you to create and run your entire online business, and it’s free forever as well.

Here are some of the features you’ll find in our Free plan:

3 sales funnels
1 custom domain
Unlimited file storage space
Unlimited emails
Unlimited blog posts
Unlimited students

FAQs for Omnisend and Klaviyo

Do you have more questions?

Below are some of the most commonly asked:

Can I integrate a website with Klaviyo?

If your website is made with a popular ecommerce platform like Shopify, then Klaviyo will seamlessly connect to your store and sync all your historical and real-time data.

Is Omnisend easy to use?

With a G2 rating of 9.2/10, Omnisend is definitely easy to use in terms of the user interface, integrations, and creation of email content.

They also have an academy where you can learn more about their features through educational video courses and live training.

Is Klaviyo a CRM?

Yes.

Klaviyo has built-in CRM (customer relationship management) features for ecommerce merchants and works much in the same way as any good CRM.

Conclusion

The battle of Omnisend vs. Klaviyo has been a tough one but Omnisend has emerged victorious.

With more features for your marketing campaigns and flexible pricing, they managed to get the upper hand against Klaviyo.

However, Omnisend fails to take the lead when compared to systeme.io.

Systeme.io is the best option because you’ll save more time and money, our marketing tools are synced in one place, and if you’re a novice, you can still use our platform without any hassles.