Guide to Klaviyo Pricing: Is It Worth It?

Even knowing that, you might wonder — but how do I connect with customers through email? 

There are countless email marketing service providers available to you, and choosing the one that’s right for you can be tricky. 

One of the newest industry-leading services on the market today is Klaviyo, which currently serves more than 10,000 clients. Though Klaviyo’s price points may seem high, this article will explore its pricing and services to show just how Klaviyo’s value justifies the cost.

The Basics: What Does Klaviyo Do?‌

Klaviyo brings enterprise-level marketing capabilities to business owners by providing fast, effective solutions and direct insight into their effect on your company’s bottom line. Here are a few of the features that Klaviyo provides.

Integration

In today’s business landscape, data drives major marketing decisions. The more data you have at your disposal, the more effective your marketing efforts can be. Klaviyo offers native integrations with a full suite of e-commerce platforms and marketing tools including Shopify, Facebook, and Salesforce. You don’t need to hold back when integrating other applications — you can incorporate as many as you need to with no limitations or hidden fees. The more data sources you can integrate to inspire your marketing, the more cost-effective the service becomes.

Personalization

One of Klaviyo’s hallmarks is a high level of personalization that goes beyond adding a customer’s first name to the subject line. The software allows you to pull in and use additional data, including order details, cart contents, and data from questionnaires. By doing this, you can better categorize your email list and send dynamic emails based on customer characteristics, and show or hide elements based on their profiles. 

Data Science

By this point, you may be starting to notice a theme — much of what makes Klaviyo so worthwhile hinges on its data analytics. With the data they collect, their sophisticated artificial intelligence platform can make predictions such as expected customer purchases, the average time between orders, and the probability of churn. With this information, you can leverage automation to reach your audience at the most opportune times to increase your sales and customer retention with highly personalized offers. ‌

Segmentation

Not all of your marketing messages will apply to everyone on your email list, and sending too many irrelevant communications can quickly lead potential customers to unsubscribe. While segmenting with other programs can be time-consuming, Klaviyo automatically segments your email lists so you can target people based on behaviors, events, or other combinations with ease.‌

Automation

Klaviyo’s automation technology lives at the intersection of functionality and simplicity without sacrificing either. A straightforward drag-and-drop interface makes it easy (and fun!) to design a highly personalized end-to-end customer journey that includes A/B testing and Klaviyo flows — branched email sequences contingent on actions that the customer has already taken. All of this lends itself to enhanced reporting and data collection, which enables you to easily compare emails in a series and refine your marketing efforts. 

Synchronization 

Social media is an excellent companion to — not a substitute for — email marketing. If you’re doing both, you’ll want to create unified campaigns that incorporate both platforms. Klaviyo allows you to exchange data with Facebook and Instagram to deliver a consistent experience.

SMS Marketing

While many people use Klaviyo solely for its email capabilities, they also offer SMS marketing capabilities within the same platform. This is an uncommon benefit for those seeking to develop an omnichannel marketing campaign — you can create and manage every aspect from text and email to social media from your Klaviyo dashboard. 

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list of Klaviyo’s features. Rather, these are just a few of the elements that help set them apart from other providers, helping you to see a return on investment (ROI) most quickly. 

Klaviyo Pricing

Though the purpose of this guide is to understand the value that Klaviyo can bring to your business, it’s difficult to discuss it in terms of the investment required without understanding the pricing structure. ‌

Free Tier

For starters, it may be helpful to know that Klaviyo pricing includes a free tier, which allows you to use many of their features at no cost. It could be that you’re maintaining a small, very niche service, and this is all you need. If so, that’s awesome! You're getting one of the best email marketing solutions on the market for free. More likely, though, you can just think of this as a free trial that you can use to help you determine whether you’d like to invest in a full subscription.

This level of service does come with a few drawbacks. Your contact list can’t be any larger than 250 subscribers under the free plan, and your account will be limited to 500 email sends per month. This means your sample audience will likely need to be smaller than the maximum of 250 in order to get the most out of its features, such as Klaviyo flows and data analysis. What’s more, all emails sent using free plans will include Klaviyo branding in the footer section. There are a few options available to match the logo to your messages, but it cannot be removed until you upgrade to a paid plan. 

Paid Plans‌

Once you add your 251st contact, you’ll be prompted to upgrade to the first level of paid service, which requires an investment of $20 per month for up to 500 contacts and unlimited email sends. ‌

From there, the pricing schedule grows more cost-efficient as your contact list grows. Some sample segments and corresponding prices include: 

• ‌$30 for 501-1,000 contacts

• $60 for 1,001-2,500

• $110 for 5,001-5,500

• $175 for 9,901-10,500

• $375 for 15,001-20,000

• $550 for 30,001-35,000

• $700 for 45,001-50,000

• $1,000 for 75,001-80,000

• $1,250 for 100,001-104,000

• $1,500 for 125,001-130,000

• $1,700 for 145,001-150,000

Beyond 150,000 contacts, Klaviyo directs you to contact them for a custom quote. ‌

SMS and MMS

SMS and MMS messages are billed at flat rates of $0.01 and $0.03, respectively. When you complete the SMS setup, you receive a credit for $1.50, enabling you to send any combination of messages for free. After that, you’ll be charged for each according to the listed prices. 

In order to send either SMS or MMS messages, you must have an account balance that's sufficient to cover the costs of sending a single message, including additional throughput costs. 

To ensure that your messaging stays active or that you don’t overspend in this area, you can set up automatic refills and spending limits in your account settings. For more information about SMS billing, check out Klaviyo’s SMS handbook.

Resources and Support‌

Because all plans beyond the 250-contact mark include unlimited emails, one of the major differences you’ll see as your account grows is the level of support and resources that you have access to. All plans above that level get access to live chat support, which enables you to get answers to questions much more quickly than the email support available at the free tier.

At paid plans for up to 27,000 contacts, you get access to material produced by the Klaviyo Growth Team, which provides you with strategic guidance for getting started and making the most of your plan in the five-part Klaviyo Onboarding training series.

With between 27,001 and 50,000 contacts, you become eligible for two calls with an Onboarding Specialist. 

‌Once you exceed 50,000 contacts, you can access managed onboarding, which includes weekly calls with an Onboarding Specialist for 60 days.

The ultimate Klaviyo resource is the Customer Success Manager, which you gain access to with plans that allow more than 125,000 subscribers. This person will provide specific guidance related to onboarding, new features, and best practices for ongoing success and customer retention.

Is It Worth the Price?

Klaviyo’s focus is on ensuring that you and your subscribers have a good experience, so they’ve packed a lot of functionality and resources into their services. There’s no doubt that they’re among the best email service providers on the market, but it can be difficult to determine without using it whether their service justifies the cost. 

Rather than looking at it as an expense, consider framing it in terms of an investment. Klaviyo’s reporting is based on ROI so that you can tell without any guesswork if you’re getting your money’s worth. They want you to be pleased with the service you receive so they can keep your business. But as a show of good faith, they don’t ever lock you into a contract, and there’s no minimum purchase, so you’re free to experiment with different service providers as you see fit. 

With that in mind, if you’ve got the capital to invest in Klaviyo, you should see a substantial return on your email marketing investment.