Platform · email marketing
Klaviyo
Email and SMS marketing built around ecommerce store data
The verdict
Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing platform for online stores. It ties messaging directly to a store's product, order, and customer data.
What it is
Klaviyo connects to a store's catalog and order history, so segments and automated flows react to real purchase behavior. It handles abandoned-cart, welcome, and post-purchase sequences, plus predictive metrics like expected next order. Email and SMS are billed and managed in one place. The depth is aimed at brands that already have store data worth acting on; a brand sending occasional newsletters will not use most of it.
Strengths
- Segments and flows read live product, cart, and order data, so triggers fire on actual buying behavior
- Email and SMS share one contact list and reporting, instead of two disconnected tools
- Predictive fields like expected next-order date let you time win-back messages per customer
Trade-offs
- Billing scales with both contact count and SMS volume, so a growing list gets expensive faster than flat-rate rivals
- The store-data depth is wasted on senders without an ecommerce catalog, who still pay for it
- Building advanced flows has a real setup cost; the visual editor is dense for a first-time sender
Best for
Shopify and BigCommerce stores running behavior-triggered email and SMS flows
Not for
Bloggers or service businesses with no product catalog, who would pay for store features they never touch
AI tools that fit Klaviyo
Scored on how well each tool actually works with Klaviyo — integration depth, workflow fit, and real adoption. Higher is better.
Pricing
Free tier for small lists; paid plans scale by contacts and SMS volume, getting expensive at scale. Email and SMS priced separately.
Free
Free$0
- up to ~250 contacts
- email plus limited SMS
Custom
- price scales by contact count
Email + SMS
Custom
- adds SMS sending credits on top of the email plan
What people build with it
Frequently asked
- Does Klaviyo have built-in AI?
- Yes. Klaviyo includes AI subject-line and content generation, predictive analytics such as expected next-order date, and send-time optimization, all tied to store data.
- Why is Klaviyo popular with Shopify stores?
- It two-way-syncs Shopify products, orders, and customers, so segments and automated flows react to real purchase behavior rather than static lists.
- Does Klaviyo handle SMS as well as email?
- Yes. SMS and email share one contact list and reporting, and both can run inside the same automated flow.
- Is Klaviyo a good fit for a non-ecommerce newsletter?
- Usually not. Much of Klaviyo's value is store-data segmentation, so a plain newsletter pays for features it will not use; a creator-focused tool fits better.