Today in this post we are going to present you the best Klaviyo alternatives.
The main goal of most eCommerce businesses is to get continuous and profitable growth.
However, Klaviyo isn’t the only wholesome tool that can help you get there. There are several Klaviyo alternatives developed to do exactly that for eCommerce sites through marketing automation.
| # | Product | Starting price | Trial available? | Split testing | Explore more |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Drip | $19 for 500 subscribers. | 14-days trial period | You can split test emails and automation workflows | Explore Drip |
| 2 | Omnisend | Free plan for up to 15000 emails a month, Premium plan starts at $16/mo | 14-days free trial | It allows split testing subject line, sender’s email address and name | Explore Omnisend |
| 3 | Privy | Forever free for 3000 autoresponder emails/mo. | Yes | You can email subject lines, pop up offers, site design, product descriptions, headlines, ads, | Explore Privy |
| 4 | ActiveCampaign | $9/mo for 500 contacts | 14-days free trial | You can split test subject lines, email content, images, call to actions, from information | Explore ActiveCampaign |
| 5 | SendPulse | Free plan for up to 2500 subscribers and 12000 emails/mo. Premium plan costs $52.4/mo. | Yes | You can test the sender, subject line, and the content | Explore SendPulse |
These Klaviyo alternatives can integrate with data from other marketing tools like Shopify or WordPress helping you map out an email strategy based on real customer data.
In short, they are like an eCommerce automation machine on steroids.
Don’t get me wrong. Klaviyo shines in automation that’s why online stores are always running towards this high-end email marketing tool.
Klaviyo Alternatives
Drip
Drip is an eCommerce CRM that is specially developed for building profitable and personal relationships with contacts at a scale.
It literally makes your business stand out.
Why?
It ensures your customers identify and remember what your brand offers. And what’s the whole point of eCommerce marketing. Right? 90% of consumers purchase products from brands tailored to their needs.
It stands apart from other Klaviyo alternatives because it gives detailed insights on your customer’s journey helping you understand and identify each action behind every customer that visits your website.
Drip also empowers businesses with on-point personalization helping you separate people from their actions on your site and develop personal relationships.
This results in deeper trust and loyalty with your contacts.
Not forgetting their powerful analytics that skyrocket your email campaign optimization.
I did a Drip complete review you can read to get all the goodies.
Pros
- With Drip, you can easily make millions of Facebook users your customers. If you combine Drip and Facebook Ads, every Facebook audience that clicks on the ad and fills in their contact information is immediately added as a lead on Drip. And if you can create a lead campaign workflow to convert these prospects to customers.
- It has an excellent visual workflow builder that allows you to create automation workflows from scratch or using the pre-made templates. Regardless of how complex your email sequence is, Drip ensures you can pinpoint your customer’s position in their buying journey.
- And they allow you to do workflow split testing increasing the performance of your customers’ experience.
- They have a Shopper Activity API that helps you create deeper customer segments based on the brands and items they have bought.
- It has a secret sauce that Klaviyo lacks. Stack, its app integration. It makes it a workflow automation powerhouse that’s beyond sending emails and giving analytics with individual customer timelines.
Cons
- Email templates could do with an upgrade.
- The form builder is a bit limited.
Pricing
Their pricing is totally based on the number of subscribers you have. You pay higher as the subscribers increase. You have a 14-days trial period to figure out if you should proceed with them or not.
The basic plan starts at $19 for 500 subscribers.
Bottomline: If automation is the main thing you’re looking for, your go-to tool is Drip. You’ll get a visual automation builder to handle even the most complex workflows without a sweat.
Omnisend
It’s a very unique platform built specifically for an eCommerce seller use case. More so for a Shopify store owner.
They have been referred to as an “omnichannel marketing automation platform, built SPECIFICALLY for merchants selling on multiple channels.”
Basically, they go beyond providing out-of-the-box email automation to synchronizing all your marketing channels on one dashboard to give you a birds-eye-view of your campaigns.
Saving you from re-creating the wheel over and over again on multiple dashboards. Your emails, social media, SMS, and other platforms can be viewed here.
I like that you get to reach all your customers at a go and boost your sales.
Pros
- You can create high converting lead forms that increase your lead capture rates. From landing pages to pop-ups, sign-up boxes, and a more interactive option the gamified Wheels of Fortune. Got to say you don’t get this anywhere else but on Omnisend.
- They offer you all the eCommerce friendly features you need to increase your sales. I’, talking of gift boxes, scratch cards, and discount codes. Customers just don’t get discounts, they win them in a more lively way.
- It empowers you to create Facebook and Google retargeting ads through Facebook Custom Audiences segments.
- Being an omnichannel platform, customers are allowed the freedom to choose how they want to engage with your brand.
- You get segments into three – Profile data, Campaign Activity, and Shopper Behavior – this ensures you create pretty personalized emails when your customers need them.
Cons
- Minimal email design options
- When they do their regular updates some workflows may look or work differently than they did.
Pricing
They have a free plan for up to 15000 emails a month. For their Standard and Pro plans, they offer a 14-days free trial period. The plans are based on the number of subscribers on your list.
Bottomline: Omnisend works best for any small or medium-sized company selling on multiple channels. It is a cheaper platform that enables these businesses to reach their various audiences at a go.
Privy
It is the Rolls-Royce of lead generation as it’s an excellent platform for email address capture. They have poured their heart and soul into conversion rate optimization (CRO).
I love that they have focused on two angles to maximize CRO. One, they have tons of design tools, display formats, and targeting tools. Their bread and butter is the exit intent email capture.
Add these to cross-sell displays and cart saving displays, online stores can easily grow and scale their businesses to insurmountable heights.
Two, they have email marketing tools and features to supplement the engagement tools. In short, you not only grow your email list but also drive on-site conversion and increase sales.
Their wide array of display options are ideal for subtle promotions. I especially love the ‘Spin-to-win’ which is a very clever approach to get your audience’s email and have them purchasing in a jiffy.
Pros
- They have numerous display options. You don’t need coding skills to create highly engaging pop-ups, bars, flyouts, banners, and lightboxes. They have an intuitive drag and drop designer that helps you tweak your display options to suit different occasions.
- Detailed segmentation feature that includes the number of visits, visited pages, geographical location, etc.
- It has an excellent audience targeting feature. They offer a powerful tracking engine that accesses audience behavior on the site with regard to the set campaign parameters. As a result, you can create rules to target specific page visitors ensuring you have the high-ticket customers you want.
- They also offer a cool campaign trigger feature that lets you dictate the visitor behavior that will trigger certain display campaigns. The triggers come in hand to help you identify warm leads and direct them to the next step in your conversion funnel.
- Being a full-stack email marketing tool, Privy combines audience targeting with pre-set automation workflows boosting your conversions with timed emails.
Cons
- They have a limited number of email templates so you’ve got to create your own from scratch if you want to stand out.
- Low customer support. They take quite a while to reply to your emergency. So it’s a no-no if you need instant feedback.
Pricing
Guess what? The start off-plan is forever free. Cool, right? You get to send 3000 autoresponder emails per month. The only catch is you lack audience targeting options.
But hey, you have upgrade options starting at $30/month.
Bottomline: Anyone who prioritizes lead generation should embrace Privy. It will get you business quality leads, drive on-site conversion, and increase sales.
ActiveCampaign
To grow and scale an eCommerce, you need a combination of email marketing automation, sales CRM, and an awesome messaging tool.
ActiveCampaign is another tool that’s all about that beat. Meaning, it doesn’t put a break at email marketing. It goes further.
On their website, they say they’ll help you, “Turn leads into customers, customers into repeat clients.” Well, they aren’t just chasing clout.
They make marketing automation a walk in the park by making it easy yet powerful. They have simple pre-built automation for you to use.
Put that together with a smart CRM to automate your sales, boom! All your customer data is under one roof allowing you to sell more.
Pros
- It allows you to send welcome emails, create a welcome series, and send lead magnets automatically.
- The email automation helps you convert your contacts from prospects to paying clients.
- It offers trigger emails based on engagement, site visits, or purchase activity. This way your clients get emails when they need them.
- ActiveCampaign allows you to sync your contact tools, calendar, and email with their CRM system.
- The drag-and-drop interface allows you to create emails that customers look forward to.
- It has a visual workflow builder that allows you to build workflows in a snap and manage complex automation series.
Cons
- ActiveCampaign reporting is fairly comprehensive and gives lots of insights on sales conversions. The only problem is that it can be quite crowded and not so easy to navigate at times.
Pricing
They have a simple pricing structure based on the subscribers on your list and the features.
If you need access to the sales automation and user permission features it costs $49/month. But if you don’t need this they have a Lite plan that goes for $9/month.
Bottomline: ActiveCampaign is a powerful yet affordable Klaviyo alternative that works best for businesses looking for top-of-the-class automation.
SendPulse
It is an all-in-one platform that manages all your marketing outreach efforts regardless of the platform used.
From SMS, email campaign, web push notifications, and chatbots it has got you sorted. No wonder it’s a hit with large enterprises like PWC.
They deem themselves as SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) that sets your business up for bulk email marketing.
This way you have no limit to the number of emails you send which is perfect for campaigns.
Plus it’s like a marketing automation powerhouse. You can send automated follow-up emails, surveys for customer feedback, or welcome emails to your subscribers.
Pros
- They offer web push notifications which have a great way to capture audience attention. People can always choose to ignore SMS or email but they can’t ignore a pop-up on their browser.
- It has got an Automation 360 feature that keeps an eye on your visitor’s actions and sends them messages based on that. This feature triggers a chain of notifications, emails, and SMSes ensuring you can track the journey of your audience completely.
- They offer excellent segmentation as all emails sent are triggered based on customer activities.
- It gives you daily detailed analytics on the conversion journey of your customers.
- You can split-test SMS, emails, and push notifications to know which actions your visitors respond to.
Cons
- More email templates would be appreciated.
- Occasionally, when your mailing list is updated, the system can block sending your scheduled newsletters.
- Your email campaigns have to be vetted by the SendPulse support team to prevent spam or illegal mail. It’s a good practice but it may take some time before you get the green light. So your campaigns might delay.
Pricing
Compared to its competitors, it charges 50% less, and believe me, it’s a steal.
Then, they have a free plan for up to 2500 subscribers and you can send up to 12000 emails monthly.
Bottomline: SendPulse is perfect for medium to large enterprises that need to send bulk transactional emails, SMSes, and building chatbots for their social platforms.
Why do you need to search for Klaviyo alternatives?
You have a consistent stream of income coming your way, Klaviyo can be quite costly as your audience grows.
You have a free account for your first 250 subscribers with 500 emails to send monthly. However, it gets expensive fast.
Around $25 for every 500 subscribers. Add SMS marketing to the mix and the slope is steeper.
If you want automation triggers that are engagement-based, you need a tool that has lead scoring capabilities. Yes, you can integrate Klaviyo with a third-party tool but you don’t want more bills to pay.
Lack of conditional email forms
With most email marketing tools, you can add awesome email forms on your site. However, Klaviyo doesn’t let you change your email forms based on customers’ past behavior.
Take for instance, you’re giving customers a free eBook in exchange for their email.
Once a customer has fulfilled their end of the deal, they shouldn’t see the form every time they visit your site.
What to look for in Klaviyo the alternatives?
Well, automation is everything to an eCommerce store. With some email marketing tools, automation is like wrestling with a bobcat, and by the time you’re done you’re busy pulling tufts of the feline hair from your teeth.
You need a platform that helps you generate cash as soon as your store comes on board.This calls for efficient automated flows.
At the push of a button, you should have welcome series, abandoned cart, cross-sell, browser abandonment, and repeat customer appreciation flows.
You have to put into consideration the subscriber tagging feature. Customers today need highly personalized emails delivered at the right time.
Tagging is a must-have for running a successful business. If you compare Klaviyo’s subscriber tagging to Drip or ConvertKit, they are quite poor.
They don’t let you click and tag subscribers in their emails.
Can you sustain it as your business continues to grow? What happens when you get to 5000 subscribers?
Will you jump ship and start learning another tool and inconvenience your subscribers?
Budget is a major consideration when picking a platform.
The good news is that even if Klaviyo is out of your wallet league, I have come up with 5 alternatives that won’t put your budget under too much strain.
Conclusion
An ideal tool for an eCommerce business has to be i) reasonably priced, ii) reliable 24/7, iii) very efficient for running email marketing campaigns.
My verdict:
- Opt for Privy if you need a Klaviyo alternative that will boost your conversion rate and increase your sales. And if lead gen is your main goal, you can never go wrong with Privy.
- Opt for Drip if you’re a growing company or a large team looking for a way to expand and be better. If you want A1 workflow automation capabilities it’s the tool to go for.
- Opt for Omnisend if you’re an SMB but you want something cheaper that delivers.
- Opt for ActiveCampaign if you’re worried about outgrowing Klaviyo or you’ve outgrown the affordable Klaviyo price range.
- Opt for SendPulse if you’re running a large enterprise and you send transactional bulk emails.
Hope you found this helpful.
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