Klaviyo Review

The base Email plan is billed on active profiles, so the number you pay rises whenever the list grows, whether or not the new contacts buy anything.

That is the right trade for a B2C brand that earns money from flows, and the wrong one for a team that mostly sends a weekly newsletter. This review sets out what to expect at each list size, what the paid tier buys, and where the meter surprises people.

Toolradar data: in the October 2026 email marketing ranking we publish at Toolradar, the software directory we run, 8 of the 10 top picks have a free plan, out of 107 tools evaluated.

You can see the full ranking and Klaviyo's Toolradar profile. MarketingShot data: this newsletter list is about 35,000 subscribers with a 31% average open rate, as of 20 September 2026.

Dupple's newsletters, MarketingShot included, run on beehiiv, which we cover in our beehiiv review, not on Klaviyo or any other platform compared here.

How we compared: every Klaviyo figure comes from klaviyo.com's US pricing page and the USD tier table behind its calculator.

Mailchimp, MailerLite and Omnisend were read the same day on their own pricing pages, in USD. We quote no estimates: every price is the vendor's own figure.

Toolradar also keeps profiles for Mailchimp, MailerLite and Omnisend. This page relies on vendor pages and our own data, not a hands-on send test.

For a wider shortlist, see our email marketing software roundup.

Klaviyo is a B2C customer data platform with email, SMS, WhatsApp and reviews attached. It is built for brands that sell online and want messages triggered by what a shopper actually did, such as a cart left behind or a second order.

Every message reads from one customer profile, which pulls purchase and browsing data from store platforms into a single record.

The product is sold as a base plus add-ons. Email marketing comes standard with every plan, while Composer, Customer Hub, the advanced data platform, text messaging and reviews are priced separately.

That structure is why the headline number tells you little until you know your profile count and the channels you intend to run.

The setup work is the data sync. Klaviyo pulls orders, browse events and customer records from the store into one profile, and every flow and segment reads from that profile.

The part a growth team spends its time on is the flow library: welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase and win-back sequences, each fired by an event rather than a calendar date. For the wider field of lifecycle tools, see our lifecycle marketing roundup.

Composer sits on top of the same data as an AI assistant.

It drafts campaigns and flows, analyzes performance and surfaces opportunities, and it draws on your customer data, campaign history and marketing results to do that. It is a separate add-on, not part of the base Email plan, and the free plan includes a small monthly allowance so you can try it first.

Klaviyo's Email plan is billed on active profiles, which the page defines as contacts who can receive marketing.

Your cost moves with that count, not with how many messages you send, so the audience definition is the lever to audit before you pick a tier.

At 2,500 active profiles and 25,000 sends a month, the Email plan is $60 a month, or $720 a year.

Add Composer and the total is $80 a month, or $960 a year. At 10,000 profiles and 100,000 sends it is $150 a month ($1,800 a year), or $170 with Composer ($2,040 a year). At 50,000 profiles the Email plan alone is $720 a month, or $8,640 a year, before any text messages.

Two things soften the first bill.

A limited-time banner takes $19 off the first month of Email at 500 profiles, and the free plan covers up to 250 profiles and 500 sends for a team still testing.

Neither changes the ongoing meter, which is why the entry price matters less than the tier you will be on in month twelve.

MailerLite counts subscribers rather than active profiles, so compare the two at the same count and send volume, not the same label.

At 10,000 subscribers, its Power plan lists at $129 a month for 100,000 emails when billed monthly, against Klaviyo's Email plan for the same send volume.

Text is a second meter. The calculator lists 5,000 messages at $45 a month, 25,000 at $225 and 100,000 at $900, with carrier fees added to each send. A team that runs SMS heavily can end up paying more for text than for email.

Klaviyo fits a growth team at a B2C brand that sends triggered email and SMS, has a store or app feeding purchase data, and can measure revenue per flow.

For that team the profile meter is the price of the data layer, and a working welcome or cart flow is the reason to pay for that data layer. It also suits a team that wants AI drafting without a second tool, since Composer works inside the same account.

Look elsewhere in three cases.

A plain newsletter, or a list that mostly receives one campaign a week, pays for a data layer it does not use. A team that needs only templates and a landing page should start on Mailchimp Essentials at $13 a month for 500 contacts, which is cheaper at that size.

Our Mailchimp review sets out its full contact tiers. And a team that needs a sales pipeline more than marketing flows belongs with a CRM-first product, such as our ActiveCampaign review or HubSpot Marketing Hub review.