Klaviyo vs Omnisend: Which One Fits Your Store?

Hayes Media is an eCommerce growth agency that runs email and SMS retention for DTC and Shopify brands. Klaviyo is worth it over Omnisend when your revenue depends on segments and flows built from deep order history. Omnisend is enough when you need solid core flows on a simpler, lower bill. Hayes Media builds in Klaviyo for most accounts and has experience in most other email and SMS platforms, so a brand already on Omnisend is still a fit.

This is the operator's view. Every price below is quoted from each platform's own pages or its Shopify App Store listing, and every URL is in the sources at the end. Prices change, so check the live pages before you sign anything. If you're weighing Klaviyo against Mailchimp instead, we covered that in Klaviyo vs Mailchimp for eCommerce.

A few terms first.

Active profile: Klaviyo's billing unit, which its pricing page describes as contacts who may receive marketing emails.

Billable contact: Omnisend's billing unit, which covers subscribers and non-subscribers who received automated messages.

Flow or workflow: An automated sequence triggered by something a customer does, like abandoning a cart.

Segment: A group of customers defined by rules, like everyone who bought twice and hasn't ordered since.

What actually differs between Klaviyo and Omnisend for a Shopify store?

Short answer: Both run the core eCommerce flows well, and the gap shows up in how deep your segments and reporting can go and how each one bills you.

Data depth. Klaviyo's segmentation page says it stores event data at the profile level indefinitely and lets you segment on purchase history, products bought, loyalty metrics, and predictive fields like churn risk and customer lifetime value. Klaviyo's help centre adds an expected date of next order to those predictions. Omnisend's features page describes segments built on purchases, opens, clicks, or location, plus a lifecycle stage view from new subscribers to VIPs.

Automation. Both run the core Shopify flows, like welcome, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, post-purchase, and win-back, and both let you mix email and SMS in one flow.

Billing. Klaviyo bills by active profiles, with mobile messages priced on top. Omnisend bills by contacts, and its plans also cap or uncap monthly email volume.

Support. Omnisend's pricing page says 24/7 live chat and email support is included on every plan, including free. Klaviyo's free plan includes email support for the first 60 days, and its pricing page lists paid support options above that.

Shopify fit. Both are rated 4.7 out of 5 on the Shopify App Store. Klaviyo's listing says it syncs Shopify tags, catalog, and coupons.

How does each one bill you, and where do the costs cross over?

Omnisend is cheaper at the entry level on published prices, and the real crossover depends on your list size, send volume, and how many non-subscribers get your automated messages. Price your own numbers in both calculators.

Klaviyo. The Shopify App Store listing shows a free plan for up to 250 contacts, Email from $20 a month for 251 to 500 contacts, and SMS from $15 a month for up to 1,250 SMS/MMS credits, which it says includes carrier fees. Above that, the price comes from the calculator on Klaviyo's pricing page, driven by active profiles and mobile message volume.

Omnisend. The Shopify App Store listing shows a free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, Standard from $16 a month covering up to 500 contacts with 6,000 emails a month, and Pro from $59 a month covering up to 2,500 contacts with unlimited emails. Both paid plans carry 30% off the first 3 months. Omnisend's pricing page says you're billed for subscribers and non-subscribers who received automated messages, and that unsubscribed contacts aren't billed.

On Omnisend Standard, 6,000 emails across 500 contacts is 12 emails per contact per month. If you send a campaign three times a week plus flows, you'll hit that cap and need Pro. On Omnisend, a non-subscribed buyer who receives an order follow-up counts toward your bill. On Klaviyo, the help centre says any profile that can be emailed counts as active regardless of consent status, which includes checkout customers who never opted in. So the cheaper platform depends on how many of each kind of contact you hold, and how often you send.

Omnisend's own pricing page claims an invoice up to 35% smaller than Klaviyo's. That's the vendor's claim, not ours, so test it against your real profile count. Then ask the better question. Does the extra segment depth produce more gross profit than the price difference costs? If it doesn't, the cheaper platform is the right one.

How deep do automation and segmentation go on each?

Klaviyo goes deeper on data and prediction. Omnisend covers the flows most stores need and keeps the builder simpler.

In Klaviyo, a flow can branch on anything stored on the profile. That includes which product someone bought, how many orders they've placed, a predicted next order date, or a loyalty point balance synced from another app. That matters once your program runs on product-specific cross-sells and VIP tiers. We go through the flows we build first in our guide to Klaviyo email flows.

In Omnisend, the workflow builder combines email, SMS, and push notifications in one view, with behavior-based triggers and the prebuilt recovery and post-purchase flows. Its segments use purchase and engagement data, and its AI assistant can build a segment from a plain description. On Pro, it adds dynamic content and a personalized product recommender. For a store whose program is welcome, cart, browse, post-purchase, and win-back, that's enough.

We didn't find predictive fields like next order date or churn risk listed on Omnisend's features page, so if those drive your plan, confirm them with Omnisend before you choose it.

How does SMS work on Klaviyo and Omnisend?

Both let you combine email and SMS in one automated flow. The differences are plan access and how you pay.

Klaviyo SMS. Available as its own plan from $15 a month for up to 1,250 SMS/MMS credits, carrier fees included, per the Shopify App Store listing. Klaviyo's SMS page says SMS and MMS messages cost a different number of credits depending on the recipient's country. It lists Automated SMS Conversations and a Compliance Hub, and it lets you collect marketing consent separately from transactional consent.

Omnisend SMS. Omnisend's pricing page lists SMS on the Pro plan card, with the line "Add Global SMS credits to your Pro plan." The Standard card doesn't list SMS. Its FAQ says the Free plan can use SMS, so confirm plan access with Omnisend. Estimated US rates are tiered by spend: $0.009 per SMS from $10 to $49.99, $0.0085 from $50 to $999.99, $0.008 from $1,000 to $9,999.99, and $0.007 from $10,000 up. Price varies by country and volume. Its SMS page lists two-way SMS.

If SMS is a big part of your plan, model your real monthly volume and countries on both. Our guide to SMS marketing for eCommerce covers what to send and how often before you price it.

When is Omnisend the right call?

Omnisend is the right call when your program is the core flows done well and you want a simpler bill and support on every plan.

Your list is small or early. The free and Standard plans cover a store that's still building its list.

Your flows are standard. Welcome, cart, browse, post-purchase, and win-back cover the job, and you don't plan segments on predicted behavior.

You want support on every plan. Omnisend says 24/7 live chat and email support is included for all customers, on any plan.

It already works. If your Omnisend flows are live, tested, and producing revenue, moving them costs time and carries deliverability risk. Fix the program before you change the platform.

When is Klaviyo the right call?

Klaviyo is the right call when your segments need to read order history and predicted behavior, and when retention is a big enough share of revenue that deeper targeting pays for itself.

Worked example (made-up scenario). Say you sell apparel and want first-time buyers to come back for a second order. Klaviyo's help page on predictive analytics says every customer who orders gets an expected date of next order, worked out for one-time buyers from data across all your customers. You build a flow that nudges one-time buyers toward a second order around that date. If they don't click the email, a text follows. Anyone who reorders drops out, because Klaviyo says its segments update in real time.

The same page sets two limits. The predicted date doesn't consider which product someone bought, so for products with known reorder cycles Klaviyo recommends Placed Order flows filtered by product with a fixed time delay. And predictions only show once you have an ecommerce integration or orders sent by API, 500 customers who've ordered, 180 days of order history with orders in the last 30 days, and some customers with 3 or more orders.

The same pattern works for cross-sells by product, VIP tiers by lifetime spend, and win-back by predicted churn risk. If you plan to hire help to build this, we keep a list of the best Klaviyo agencies.

How do you migrate between them without losing sending reputation?

Gmail judges both your sending domain and the IP addresses you send from, so authenticate first, move your cleanest contacts first, and ramp volume by engagement.

Authenticate the sending domain. Google's sender guidelines require SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for bulk senders and one-click unsubscribe, and say to keep your Postmaster Tools spam rate below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching 0.30%. Set these up on the new platform before you send anything.

Clean the list before you export. Suppress hard bounces and long-unengaged contacts, and carry over unsubscribes and SMS consent records exactly.

Warm up by engagement. Send first to your most recently engaged subscribers, then widen the audience as opens and clicks hold.

Rebuild flows in revenue order. Welcome and abandoned cart go live first, then post-purchase, browse, and win-back.

Keep the old account running. Leave the old flows on until the new ones are live and tested, then switch them off one at a time so no customer gets both. Omnisend offers free migration into Omnisend.

What about Klaviyo vs Attentive and Klaviyo vs Shopify Email?

These are the other two comparisons people ask about. Attentive prices by quote. Shopify Email, now sold as Shopify Messaging, is the free starting point built into Shopify.

Klaviyo vs Attentive. Attentive's pricing page says its pricing is tailored to your business needs based on your message volume, subscriber list size, number of channels, and AI products selected, and that it uses usage-based pricing with no credit system. It offers SMS, email, RCS, and push. Klaviyo publishes entry prices and a self-serve calculator. The choice comes down to a negotiated contract or a self-serve platform your team or agency runs.

Klaviyo vs Shopify Email. Shopify's page says you can send up to 10,000 manual or automated emails a month for free, then $1 USD per 1,000 additional emails, with SMS charged separately. It offers prebuilt welcome, winback, and upsell automations and custom triggers, conditions, and logic, with no monthly commitments. For a new store, that's a sensible place to start. Shopify's segments cover order counts and a predicted spend tier. Klaviyo adds predicted churn risk, lifetime value, and next order date.

When this doesn't apply

You're pre-revenue or still testing product. Any of these platforms on a free plan is fine. Spend the time on getting customers.

Your problem is acquisition. If too few new customers come in, a better email platform won't fix that.

Your flows aren't built yet. A store with no welcome or abandoned cart flow will gain more from building them on its current platform than from switching. If you're not sure what's live and working, start with an email marketing audit.

You're about to hit peak season. Don't migrate into a sale period. Move when sending volume is steady.

Sources

Klaviyo pricing: https://www.klaviyo.com/pricing

Klaviyo on the Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/klaviyo-email-marketing

Klaviyo SMS marketing: https://www.klaviyo.com/products/sms-marketing

Klaviyo segmentation: https://www.klaviyo.com/features/segmentation

Klaviyo help centre, how Klaviyo bills customers: https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000976672

Klaviyo help centre, predictive analytics: https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020919731

Omnisend pricing: https://www.omnisend.com/pricing/

Omnisend on the Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/omnisend

Omnisend SMS marketing: https://www.omnisend.com/sms-marketing/

Omnisend features: https://www.omnisend.com/features/

Attentive pricing: https://www.attentive.com/pricing

Shopify email marketing: https://www.shopify.com/email-marketing

Shopify predicted spend tier: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/customers/customer-segmentation/predicted-spend-tier

Shopify segment filters: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/customers/customer-segmentation/reference-guide/components

Google email sender guidelines: https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126

Hayes Media runs email, SMS, loyalty programs, and subscribe-and-save programs for eCommerce brands, in Klaviyo for most accounts and in most other platforms when that's where a brand already runs. If you want a straight answer on whether your platform is holding your retention revenue back, book a discovery call. We'll audit your current account, the flows that are live, the segments you can and can't build, and your deliverability setup, then tell you whether to stay or move. See what we run on our email and SMS service page. One-time email projects start from $2,000 USD, and retainers for ongoing full management start from $4,000 USD per month, scoped on the discovery call. No onboarding fees. No lock-in contracts. No junior marketers.