Choosing a tool to send emails and text messages is a big step for any online store. Two of the most famous names for that are Omnisend and Klaviyo, which are wrongfully represented as only fitting for small businesses, and large enterprises, respectively.
Both Omnisend and Klaviyo can cater to small businesses as much as they can benefit medium and large enterprises.
The main difference between these tools is not the business size, but the technical depth, the learning curve that comes with it, and price.
Let’s take a closer look at how these tools compare for growing businesses in terms of pricing, features, SMS, and customer support.
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How pricing changes – Omnisend vs Klaviyo
Money is one of the main factors when growing your business. You want to make more money without spending too much money on tools and solutions.
If your business is still small enough, you can start with a free plan. Both platforms offer one, but Omnisend’s seems to be better than Klaviyo’s when it comes to feature availability and customer support accessibility.
Omnisend doesn’t restrict any of its features on the free plan, so you can utilize the platform to its full potential.
Customer support is also available 24/7 on live chat and email. Klaviyo, on the other hand, limits access to both features and customer support. Most AI tools are only available on paid plans, and customer support is limited to 60 days of email-only support.
If you’ve already established a quite large number of contacts, you’ll have to sign up for a paid plan, as the free plans only support up to 250 contacts. That’s when the difference in pricing starts becoming stronger.
Omnisend’s cheapest plan (>500 contacts) starts at $16/month, while Klaviyo’s (>500 contacts) starts at $20/month. The $4 dollar difference may not seem as a dealbreaker, but for growing businesses that could become a problem in the long term.
Let’s say it’s been 2 successful years of growing, and now you have a contact list size of 15k subscribers. The $4 dollar difference now stands at $143, as Omnisend is priced at $207/month at this scale, while Klaviyo goes for $350/month.
On top of that, this $350/month plan comes with the lowest tier of support, where live chat is still unavailable on weekends, and email support can take 1-2 days to respond.
Omnisend’s $207/month plan comes with priority 24/7 support on both live chat and email. To get that level of support from Klaviyo, you’d need to sign up for the Professional plan which starts at $500/month and the final price is only known after talking to their sales team.
Continuing about support, Klaviyo requires at least $500 to reach the level of support Omnisend offers on its free plan. Whereas with Omnisend, you get your own dedicated account expert once you reach $400 on any plan.
All in all, Klaviyo is a good choice for small businesses since the pricing won’t affect you as much, but if you’re planning to scale, then Omnisend is better. Klaviyo’s pricing model may put too much strain on your budget in the long run.
Also Read: Best Drip Campaign Software
Feature comparison – Omnisend vs Klaviyo
The most important features that a growing business needs from email marketing platforms are automations, campaign builders, segmentation, and SMS capabilities.
Both Klaviyo and Omnisend allow you to do these things, with some exceptions:
- Automations. Klaviyo has deeper automation capabilities tailored for niche situations, but comes at a steep learning curve and price tag. Omnisend provides standard-advanced automations that roughly 95% of scaling businesses need without the technical excessities.
- Campaign builders. Both Klaviyo and Omnisend have strong campaign builders with drag-and-drop interfaces that allow you to easily create your email using different blocks. Omnisend has a more intuitive product picker block that allows you to quickly add items from your store, while Klaviyo is more focused on dynamic product feeds that require a bit of setup.
- Segmentation. Both platforms give access to AI segmentation tools where you can create different segments in seconds via prompting. For more complex segments you may need to go back to the manual way, and for extremely detailed segments, you may want to use Klaviyo as it provides more control.
- SMS capabilities. Omnisend supports SMS-sending across the globe, whereas Klaviyo is limited to 18 countries. Also, Omnisend provides a more flexible SMS billing model where you can top up your credits in small batches, and, if unused within the month, they roll over to the next one. Klaviyo requires you to buy expensive blocks of SMS credits, and you lose them if you have a surplus by the end of the month.
In short, they’re quite similar in terms of features, and the only differentiator here that may impact your decision to go toward Omnisend is SMS. Klaviyo offers more control when it comes to highly specific automations and segment-building.
Migration support
Sometimes, regardless of how much research you do, you only start noticing the limitations of the platform once your business scales.
To be fair, it’s not something you can easily predict: pricing models can change in time, and the competitiveness could decrease, resulting in lack of features. If that happens, you may need to consider migrating to another platform.
Most ESPs don’t make migration easy, and Klaviyo is one of them. If you want to migrate, you need to either pay Klaviyo to handle the process, or do it yourself using their extensive documentation.
But doing it yourself demands time, patience, and comes with the risk of losing some of your data. There’s also a choice of leveraging Klaviyo’s agency partners to complete the migration process efficiently, but these agencies also charge their own fees.
Omnisend, on the other hand, comes with a unique migration service that does it for you, completely free of charge, if you meet one condition. The condition is signing up for a $250/month (or more) plan upon switching to Omnisend.
If that’s the case, they will dedicate an in-house person to handle the entire migration process for you. They will move your contacts, automations, segments, templates, forms, and more in 3-5 business days.
Omnisend makes the migration process completely stress-free and you don’t need to worry about dedicating weeks to do it yourself and potentially losing some of your contacts.
Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Verdict
Both platforms are strong choices for selling online, they just cater to different needs. Klaviyo offers very deep data if you have the time, team, and money to use it.
Omnisend provides better value because it’s a more growth-focused tool that’s intuitive to use and doesn’t come with overly technical overhead. There’s no learning curve or hidden costs.
All in all, it comes down to the vision of your business. If you’re planning that standard-advanced features are, and most likely will be, enough for you, then there’s no need to invest in Klaviyo, as Omnisend provides the same level of power at a more affordable cost and user-friendly price scaling.
If your business has a niche specificity where you require highly advanced segmentation or automation workflows that most tools don’t offer, Omnisend won’t be enough for you in the long run, so it’s better to go with Klaviyo right from the start.