Omnisend vs Klaviyo: Which Email Marketing Platform Fits Your E-commerce Business

The Short Answer: Both Omnisend and Klaviyo are email marketing platforms built for e-commerce brands, but they serve different needs. Klaviyo offers more advanced segmentation, predictive analytics, and deeper data integrations, making it the stronger choice for brands serious about scaling their email program. Omnisend provides a more user-friendly interface with built-in SMS marketing and multi-channel automation workflows at lower price points, though it lacks the sophisticated targeting capabilities that drive long-term revenue growth.

Why Your Email Platform Choice Matters

Email marketing remains one of the highest-performing channels for ecommerce businesses, generating an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. Unlike paid ads or social media, email lets you communicate directly with customers who've already shown interest in your brand, which is why it converts at a higher rate than most acquisition channels. The largest ecommerce stores bring in nearly a third of their revenue via email, making your choice of platform critical to revenue, customer retention, and marketing efficiency.

For online retailers evaluating Omnisend and Klaviyo, the decision often comes down to specific needs, budget constraints, and technical comfort level. Both email platforms have earned strong reputations in the e-commerce space:

• Klaviyo has become the go-to for data-driven ecommerce businesses that need sophisticated analytics and advanced features
• Omnisend attracts smaller businesses looking for an accessible marketing automation tool that combines email, SMS, and push notifications without the learning curve

This Klaviyo comparison examines both email marketing platforms across pricing, features, user experience, and integrations to help you decide which aligns with your business goals.

Platform Overview

What Is Klaviyo?

Klaviyo launched in 2012 and now serves over 169,000 brands globally. The email marketing platform built its reputation on sophisticated customer data handling and marketing intelligence.

What sets Klaviyo apart is its approach to customer data. The platform collects behavioral information and integrates it with purchase history and engagement patterns to create detailed customer profiles. This data foundation powers its advanced segmentation capabilities, allowing you to create audience groups based on:

• Predicted lifetime value and purchase likelihood
• Customer engagement patterns and browsing behavior
• Purchase frequency and average order value
• Churn risk predictions using machine learning

What Is Omnisend?

Omnisend started in 2014 with a focus on making marketing automation accessible while connecting multiple channels in one email platform. Today it serves more than 100,000 merchants worldwide.

The platform was built for e-commerce businesses that want to run email, SMS, and push notifications without managing separate tools. Omnisend's main advantage is its library of pre-built templates for common scenarios:

• Cart abandonment and browse abandonment sequences
• Welcome series and post-purchase follow-ups
• Order confirmation and shipping notification flows
• Product recommendation and cross-sell campaigns

The user-friendly interface prioritizes simplicity with a drag-and-drop email builder that reduces the learning curve for smaller teams without dedicated marketing specialists.

Feature Comparison

Email Marketing and Automation

Both platforms offer drag-and-drop email builders with pre-built templates and a responsive design that adapts to mobile devices. However, their automation workflows differ in important ways:

• Klaviyo excels with sophisticated flow builders allowing multiple conditional splits based on customer behavior, purchase history, and engagement patterns. You can build complex sequences for cart abandonment, browse abandonment, and welcome series.
• Omnisend offers an intuitive automation workflow builder with pre-built recipes designed specifically for ecommerce businesses. Both platforms support time delays, conditional logic, and behavior-triggered messages.

A/B testing exists in both email marketing platforms. Klaviyo allows split testing of subject lines, content, and send times within flows and campaigns. Omnisend provides similar testing capabilities, though some advanced features require higher-tier plans.

SMS and Multi-Channel Marketing

This is where the platforms diverge significantly, and it's often a deciding factor in the Omnisend vs Klaviyo comparison.

Omnisend includes built-in SMS marketing, push notifications, and web push within its core offering. You can create coordinated marketing campaigns combining all channels from a single platform. SMS messages follow the same automation logic as emails, making it straightforward to add text messaging to existing sequences.

Klaviyo treats SMS as an add-on with separate pricing based on message volume. While this offers flexibility for email-only solutions initially, it requires additional budget planning when scaling to multi-channel campaigns.

Segmentation and Analytics

Both platforms offer segmentation tools that let you target customers based on behavior and purchase history, but they differ significantly in depth and complexity.

Klaviyo built its reputation on data-driven advanced segmentation with predictive analytics. The platform identifies high-value segments, optimal send times for individual subscribers, and churn risk. You can create segments based on hundreds of customer data points including purchase frequency, average order value, and custom event properties.

Omnisend provides a segment builder covering most ecommerce use cases effectively. You can segment based on purchase history, browsing behavior, email engagement, and geographic location. While less complex than Klaviyo's tools, they deliver sufficient targeting capability for small to mid-sized businesses.

For reporting, Klaviyo provides detailed revenue attribution with cohort analysis showing how customer segments perform over time. Omnisend offers straightforward performance reports focused on practical metrics most online stores need to improve results.

Pricing Comparison

Klaviyo Pricing

Klaviyo uses contact-based pricing with separate email and SMS costs. The free plan supports 250 contacts with 500 monthly emails and 150 SMS credits. As of February 2025, paid plans charge based on active profiles:

• $20/month for up to 500 contacts with unlimited email sends
• $100/month at 2,500 contacts
• $350/month at 10,000 contacts

SMS operates on a separate credit model at roughly $0.01 per U.S. message, charged separately from your email subscription. Through 20North's partner network, businesses can often access discounted Klaviyo pricing—making the platform's advanced capabilities more accessible for growing brands. Contact 20North to learn more about partner pricing. 

Omnisend Pricing

Omnisend bundles multiple channels together within their pricing tiers. The free plan includes 250 contacts, 500 emails, and 60 SMS messages monthly with access to all features.

• Standard: $16/month for 500 contacts, $59/month for 2,500, $130/month for 10,000
• Pro: Starts at $59/month with unlimited emails, advanced reporting, and free SMS credits equal to your plan price

Watch for hidden costs: SMS overages on Omnisend if you exceed monthly credits, and auto-upgrades on Klaviyo if your active profiles exceed your tier.

For small businesses under 5,000 contacts, Omnisend typically delivers better value, especially when using SMS and email together. Klaviyo's higher price becomes justified when you need advanced segmentation and predictive analytics your team can actually leverage.

Ease of Use and Integration

Learning Curve

Omnisend builds its email marketing platform around accessibility. The drag-and-drop email builder allows users to construct campaigns without code, and most marketers can launch their first campaign within a few hours.

Klaviyo offers more granular control over every aspect of your marketing campaigns. Users who want advanced segmentation rules or multi-step automation workflows will appreciate this depth, but expect several days to weeks to master its full feature set.

Ecommerce Integrations

Both platforms connect natively with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento. These integrations sync customer data, purchase history, and product catalogs in real-time.

Klaviyo's Shopify integration is particularly well-developed. Shopify holds an 11% ownership stake in the company and recommends it as the email marketing platform for Shopify Plus merchants.

Klaviyo offers over 350 third-party integrations, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Yotpo, and Smile.io.

Omnisend provides around 130 integrations, covering what most mid-sized stores need. This Klaviyo alternative works well unless you have enterprise-level integration requirements.

Support Options

Omnisend provides 24/7 live chat support for all paid plans. Klaviyo offers email and chat support with phone support on higher tiers, plus Klaviyo Academy courses for learning.

Making Your Decision

Choose Omnisend if:

• You're a smaller business wanting email, SMS marketing, and push notifications without a complex learning curve
• You need a user-friendly interface that gets marketing campaigns running quickly
• Budget is a primary concern and you need predictable monthly costs
• You want built-in multi-channel features without integrating separate tools

Choose Klaviyo if:

• You're a growing ecommerce business ready to turn customer data into revenue
• Your team can leverage detailed analytics and create advanced segmentation that drives higher conversions
• You need sophisticated automation workflows based on behavior and purchase patterns
• You want predictive analytics capabilities that help you identify your most valuable customers and anticipate churn

Both platforms offer free plans, so testing them with real email marketing campaigns is worthwhile. That said, brands planning to scale often find Klaviyo's deeper functionality pays off as their list and revenue grow.

Take the Next Step

Selecting the right platform is just one component of a successful digital marketing strategy. As a Klaviyo partner, 20North helps ecommerce brands build marketing approaches that connect email campaigns with SEO, paid advertising, and analytics to drive measurable growth. Our team can help you get the most out of Klaviyo's advanced segmentation and automation capabilities—often with access to partner pricing.

Ready to develop a data-driven email strategy tailored to your brand? Contact 20North for a consultation and discover how the right platform and tactics can drive sustainable results for your business.