Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: A feature for feature comparison

With the recent Mailchimp and Shopify split, many ecommerce marketers have been left wondering what to do for their email marketing strategies. If there are two names that come up most often when talking about Mailchimp alternatives, it’s Klaviyo and Omnisend. There’s been quite a bit of debate from customers using both tools over which is better, and today, we’ve got your answer.

We’re going to go through a feature-by-feature comparison. Omnisend vs Klaviyo: which is the better tool for your ecommerce email marketing strategy?

Omnisend vs Klaviyo: Who is each platform built for?

Both platforms position themselves as specifically built for ecommerce marketing. Both Omnisend and Klaviyo integrate and play nice with the biggest ecommerce platforms, like Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. With that said, Omnisend integrates more easily with Prestashop, Drupal Commerce, and Opencart.

Both Klaviyo and Omnisend offer an impressive amount of third-party integrations, ranging from loyalty and rewards programs, to shipping tracking providers, and checkout services.

So far, both tools seem pretty similar and stack up evenly against one another. Now let’s dive a bit deeper and take a look at each aspect of the battle Omnisend vs. Klaviyo.  

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Email marketing: The core function of Omnisend and Klaviyo

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo have visual email composers allowing you to drag and drop elements into your email campaign. Both offer plenty of templates to get your creative juices flowing.

Let’s take a look at each email builder and compare them.

In Klaviyo’s email builder, you can add basic customizable text, images, columns, buttons, and tables. Outside of that, you can’t add anything too flashy.

It’s definitely possible to create lovely emails using Klaviyo’s builder, but there are quite a few ecommerce-related things you’ll have to do manually. For example, creating unique discount codes is pretty complicated. You can, however, add in products directly from your store which is a timesaver.

In Omnisend’s email builder, you have a lot more options for customization. You might start off with less templates than Klaviyo, but you have a lot more to work with in terms of the content you can create.

For example, Omnisend also offers the Product Picker feature that allows you to pull products from your store directly into your campaign. You can also integrate with Nosto for smart product recommendations straight to your campaigns, making your products even more personalized for your customers.

Also, Omnisend offers more ecommerce-friendly features, like unique discount codes, scratch cards, and gift boxes that allow your customers to win their discounts in a more dynamic way. Additionally, you can add videos to your campaign, or custom HTML for more advanced users.

While Klaviyo’s email builder is nice, it’s ultimately missing some ecommerce features that will save online marketers a lot of time when creating campaigns.  

Email marketing winner: Omnisend

Which tool builds the best subscriber list?

Anyone who knows anything about email marketing knows that list building is crucial to your strategy. After all, it doesn’t matter if you have gorgeous campaigns if there’s no one to see them.

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo offer features that help you build your subscriber list organically from the visits on your site. Both offer targeted popups to help you convert more visitors into subscribers. However, only Omnisend offers landing pages, which are proven to convert more than any other kind of sign up form.

Also, Omnisend offers a gamified Wheel of Fortune sign up form that entices your customer to sign up to spin for their discount.

Email capture winner: Omnisend

Which tool offers the best segmentation and targeting?

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo offer targeting through segmentation to help you send the most relevant message to the right person at the right time.
Klaviyo’s segmentation is rather robust. However, it’s worth mentioning that some of the language used in their segmentation definitions can be a bit confusing.

Omnisend, for example, separates segments into three main categories:

• Profile data: whatever kind of information you have on your customer
• Campaign activity: how the customer has responded, or not responded to your campaigns
• Shopping behavior: if the customer has added to their cart, browsed and abandoned, purchased in the last 30 days, etc

These segments make a lot of sense in terms of ecommerce because you can layer them based on what you need. For example, using profile data to target women in their 30s, then campaign activity to select only women who have clicked on the last 2 campaigns, and then shopping behavior to select only those who have purchased in the last 6 months.

With Klaviyo’s segmentation, the language is more basic, asking you to choose a definition based on “what someone has or hasn’t done” which could either be campaign related, shopping related, or something else. So this might be a bit confusing if you’re used to separating it a different way.

Finally, both Omnisend and Klaviyo allow you to sync your segments into Facebook Custom Audiences for retargeting ads, but only Omnisend allows you to sync those contacts for Google retargeting ads without any additional tools.  

Segmentation winner: It’s pretty much a tie, with Omnisend inching slightly ahead of Klaviyo

Which tool offers the best automation workflows?

While both Omnisend and Klaviyo have been neck and neck up until this point, with small differences here and there in favor of Omnisend, things are about to change drastically.

The biggest differences in these two tools can be seen in their automation workflows.

Klaviyo certainly has a great visual workflow that is quite powerful. You can use conditional splits and trigger splits to create very complex workflows that are highly targeted to your subscribers.

With Omnisend, you can create automated workflows that are just as powerful, and you can add in other channels to the same automated workflow. At Omnisend you can also use conditional splits and trigger splits to create complex workflows.

For example, you can start an abandoned cart workflow with SMS, follow up with an email, engage your customer the next day with a push notification discount, and then follow up with an email from there. When your customer does finalize their purchase, you can send order and shipping notifications via SMS.

All from one automated workflow.

This means you can provide an omnichannel customer experience and offer your customers a choice in how they want to engage with your brand and on what channel.

Both service providers offer advanced and sophisticated automation features. At this point, Omnisend has more channels to reach out to the audience – an addition is browser push notifications.

Another important aspect to note is that Klaviyo and Omnisend track cart abandonment in slightly different ways. Omnisend applies cookie-based tracking (for Shopify) and is able to identify users when they add products to their carts. Meanwhile, Klaviyo identifies the user only at the checkout step. As a result, at Omnisend you can track and win-back more abandoned carts, even if they didn’t yet reach the checkout step.

Automation winner: It’s again pretty much a tie.

Which tool offers the better customer support?

Both tools provide multiple tutorials and extended knowledge bases.

Customers on Omnisend paid plans get 24/7 live chat and email support.

However, Klaviyo provides limited hours of email support (6 am-10 pm ET) on weekdays, and 10 am-4 pm ET on weekends, with even more limited chat support.

Customer support winner: Omnisend.

Klaviyo pricing?

Both Omnisend and Klaviyo have pricing based on the number of subscribers you have. However, Klaviyo separates its three plans based on marketing channels like email and SMS, and all three get pricey quickly as you add more subscribers.

If you add SMS in addition to your email subscribers, Klaviyo can get much more expensive depending on how many SMS messages you want to send. For example, if you had 2500 email subscribers, and you wanted to send only 1000 of them one SMS campaign per month, your Klaviyo pricing would increase from $60 to $100.

With Omnisend, there are three main plans for growing ecommerce merchants, with a Standard Plan starting at $16 per month and a Pro Plan starting at $59 per month.

While the Standard plan offers most of the great email features Omnisend has, in order to take full advantage of the omnichannel features, the Pro plan is your best bet.

Both tools tend to be on the pricier side compared to most ecommerce email marketing providers. However, with Klaviyo, your pricing will grow exponentially if you decide to add SMS into the mix.

Winner: Omnisend

An independent evaluation from G2.com

Biggest takeaways:

• Both tools are built for ecommerce merchants who are well established and looking to grow even more.
• Both tools integrate well with ecommerce platforms and third-party apps online sellers need.
• Omnisend nudges Klaviyo out with pricing and extra email marketing features for ecommerce.
• Omnisend offers more email capture options than Klaviyo.
• Both tools offer precise segmentation for great targeting and conditional splits in automation.
• Omnisend is a winner in automation, offering more channels for omnichannel customer experience and budget-friendly SMS pricing.

When choosing something as critical as an email marketing provider, it’s important to do your homework and really test everything that the tool can offer your growing online store.

Try out both tools and see how they really work. After all, not every tool will be right for every business. But hopefully, this in-depth comparison has given you some good points to work from.

What are your favorite features from both tools?