Choosing the right email marketing tool successfully means identifying not only what the platform offers, but also what your needs are. If you’re a run-of-the-mill ecommerce business that has standard-to-advanced needs, you don’t need a specialist platform that focuses on niche complexity, and vice-versa.
Most businesses come down to choosing between Omnisend and Klaviyo. Those two are probably the most popular choices in the market, and while they’re quite similar, they’re also very different.
Let’s see how those two tools compare and which works best for most modern ecommerce businesses.
Pricing transparency and value
Cost is often the first thing you check. If the pricing model is unsuitable, then no amount of features can change the decision. The tool needs to be friendly to scaling and provide good value for money.
Both platforms have free plans available so you can play around before committing, but Klaviyo restricts many of the features for free users, and limits email customer support to 60 days. Live chat support is not included in free plans at all.
Omnisend, on the other hand, provides unrestricted access to all its features even on the free plan. That includes AI tools, templates, automations, segmentation, 24/7 live chat and email customer support, and more.
Either way, most ecommerce businesses are paid customers, so let’s see how the pricing models compare once you’re out of the free plan.
Klaviyo’s cheapest base plan starts at $20 for 500 active profiles, and scales based on your contact list and additional needs. Once you’ve purchased a plan, they remove the Klaviyo logo from emails, allow you to use generative AI tools, provide email support, and enable predictive analytics.
It doesn’t, however, stop there. If you need SMS credits, you have to buy expensive blocks that you need to use in 1 month; otherwise, you lose them. It’s rather harsh, especially considering that Klaviyo only supports 18 countries. What’s more, you have to pay extra for reviews ($25), marketing analytics ($100), advanced Klaviyo data platform ($500), customer agent ($75), and more. If your business scales and you need more support, the price adds up to a sum that you may not be too inclined to pay.
Omnisend’s cheapest plan starts at $16 for 500 contacts, and scales mostly based on your contact list growth. Additionally, you can upgrade to Pro for more features (mostly for more powerful SMS marketing and advanced reporting). With the Standard plan, you also get $1 in free SMS credits, unlimited web push notifications, 24/7 priority support, and AI forms.
That’s more or less all there is to Omnisend’s pricing. You don’t need to pay extra for better analytics or customer support. Once you reach $400 monthly price, you gain a dedicated account expert that personally helps you fix any issues. Otherwise, you can use their 24/7 live chat or email support to help you around.
In short, Omnisend provides a more flexible and user-friendly pricing model that’s fit for businesses of any size.
Quality of customer support
Knowing that you’ll be able to quickly get help if something unexpected happens is an important reassurance factor. It can be infuriating when your automations hit a wall or a segment isn’t properly registering where it should, and there’s no one to help you out.
Omnisend completely removes this risk, as they provide unrestricted, award-winning 24/7 customer support to all users. Even if you’re on a free plan, you can tap the support widget in the corner of your screen and a knowledgeable human support agent will be with you in a few minutes.
If your problem is more serious, they will send the ticket to a dedicated tech team who will try to fix your issues as soon as possible and inform you via email.
Klaviyo doesn’t provide the same level of customer support, and even limits free users to 60 days of email support only. After you purchase a plan, you regain access to support, but the response times vary plan-to-plan. Higher tier users can expect faster email response times, but lower-tier users are usually stuck waiting for 1-2 days before their team gets back to you.
Live chat is faster, but it’s limited to business days only. They don’t provide live chat support on weekends, so if you have a problem on a Saturday, you’ll have to reach out via email and likely wait until Monday to get help.
All in all, Omnisend does a better job at providing customer support to its users. You can always count on them to quickly respond to you, even on weekends, whereas Klaviyo is more conservative with their customer support.
Feature availability on lower and free plans
Features are usually abundant in marketing tools, but what’s more important is that they’re accessible right from the start. If useful and valuable features are locked behind enterprise plans or expensive add-ons, it’s the same as not having any.
Omnisend provides unrestricted access to all of its features immediately. Once you sign up for a free or lower-tier plan, you can use AI tools, templates, automations, segmentation, analytics, SMS credits, and more. They only lock more advanced levels of some features, but not features themselves. For example, if you want global SMS marketing, you’d need to sign up for the Pro plan, but it’s still more affordable than most add-on features offered by Klaviyo.
Klaviyo isn’t as generous with features, especially for the free and lower-tier users. Free users don’t get access to any of the platform’s AI tools, only the subject line generator. Once you buy the Marketing plan, you get access to more AI tools, mobile app marketing, and basic email templates, among other things.
Advanced analytics and support upgrades are also locked behind other add-on packages, so if you need those, you’ll have to spend even more money.
In short, Omnisend provides better access to its features so you can freely and extensively test them out to see if they would work for you in the long term. Klaviyo restricts most of its features for paid users, so it’s more difficult to make an informed decision.
Migration support
Sometimes, businesses need to migrate from one platform to another, and not many businesses are too keen on taking up this task for free, but Omnisend does.
If you decide to switch to Omnisend, and you sign up for a plan that’s at least $250/month, Omnisend gives you a dedicated in-house person who will transfer your contacts, automations, templates, segments, and more, free of charge. The timeline is 3-5 business days, and it doesn’t require your input whatsoever.
Klaviyo, on the other hand, either gives you access to their documentation so you can successfully migrate yourself, or refers you to their list of agency partners who have their own fees.
Migration shouldn’t be a barrier to better service, and if a platform no longer responds to your needs or can no longer justify paying a higher price for similar services, you should be able to migrate without it being a hassle.
Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Verdict
Both platforms provide excellent email marketing services, but sometimes the pricing and feature accessibility is not what it initially looks like.
Omnisend offers a better balance for the standard ecommerce business that doesn’t need niche and excessively complex solutions. It has everything a modern business needs to successfully implement email marketing to its strategy and boost revenue.
Klaviyo is more oriented toward high-end specialists who can leverage its technical interface to achieve the best possible results via extremely specific solutions. But when it comes to regular businesses with regular needs, the pricing may simply be too much for the same power that can be achieved using Omnisend.
If you value power, speed, efficiency, and keeping your overhead low, Omnisend is the clear winner that allows you to produce professional, high-converting campaigns without the technical hurdles or a heavy price tag.
