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Omnisend vs. Shopify Email: A detailed comparison of features

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Comparing the features of Omnisend vs. Shopify Email can help you understand the differences between them so you know which one best suits your business needs. 

While Shopify Email is a convenient choice for sending basic campaigns, it often requires additional applications to achieve advanced email marketing features and automation.

With Omnisend, you get many built-in features that eliminate the need to use third-party apps for your email marketing. The Omnisend platform integrates seamlessly with Shopify, making it simple to market and sell your products virtually on autopilot.

Use this detailed comparison of features for Omnisend and Shopify Email to help you choose the right one for your marketing strategy.

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Omnisend vs. Shopify Email: An overview

Both Omnisend and Shopify Email are built to cater to the email marketing needs of ecommerce businesses. They offer a range of features, such as email builders, customizable templates, and integrations to help businesses create and manage email campaigns.

However, they differ in terms of their approach and capabilities.

The key difference is that Shopify Email is built for Shopify stores. On the other hand, Omnisend is a standalone platform that integrates with Shopify and other popular ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce and BigCommerce, serving a broader audience base.

The most significant difference lies in their scope and complexity. Omnisend offers more advanced features like complex automation workflows, detailed segmentation, and multi-channel integration. Shopify Email integrates directly with the Shopify admin interface, catering to Shopify stores and prioritizing ease of use and basic email functionality.

Here’s a table that gives you an overview of each of these email marketing apps:

FeaturesOmnisendShopify Email
Email builder
Email list building
Segmentation and targeting featuresAdvanced segmentation features, including location, purchase history, etc.Good contact segmentation because you can use all the data from your Shopify store
Marketing automationMultiple triggers, separate reporting, multiple channels in a single flowQuite basic automation to cover the most popular ecommerce cases
Analytics and reportingAdvanced reporting for key metricsVery basic reporting
Email templates
Customer support24/7 live chat and email customer support available to all customers– No dedicated live Shopify Email support, general Shopify live chat available
– 24/7 email and live chat support with its paid plans
– Priority support available with Shopify Plus plan that starts at $2,300/month
Omnichannel marketingSupports email marketing, SMS, and web push messagesFocuses on email marketing, other channels available with additional tools
Multi-store features
A/B testing
Integrations
PricingFree forever plan available. Paid plans start at $16/month– Allows paid Shopify subscribers to send 10,000 emails for free on each monthly plan. Each additional email costs $0.001
– Shopify’s subscription plans start from $29/month
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Omnisend vs. Shopify pricing

Omnisend offers free and paid plans, while Shopify Email is free only to users with a paid Shopify plan. Both of these email marketing platforms offer add-ons and an extensive range of functions.

For example, Omnisend’s free plan is limited to 500 emails a month, but the Pro plan gives you access to unlimited emails. As such, it’s important to consider not only the price but also the additional features that come with it. This will help you select a platform that can adequately meet the email marketing needs of your Shopify store.

Email marketing appPlans & pricing
OmnisendFree: $0 
Standard: $16/month
Pro: $59/month
Shopify Email10,000 emails for free per month for Shopify paid plan subscribers. Each additional email costs $0.001.

Shopify paid plans:
Basic: $29/month
Shopify: $79/month
Advanced: $299/month

Email builders

Designing the perfect email can lead to higher engagement and more sales. An attractive email that contains the right information encourages your recipients to read your messages and click on links. Let’s go over the features of email builders in this Shopify Email vs. Omnisend comparison.

Shopify Email’s builder

Omnisend vs Shopify email: Shopify Email's builder
Image via Shopify

The email builder for Shopify Email offers:

  • Customizable templates: Shopify Email offers 30+ customizable email templates that you can modify to fit your brand and campaign objectives. Whether crafting promotions, win-back emails, newsletters, or showcasing product collections, you can easily adjust the colors, fonts, images, and content to create a unique and engaging email.
  • Drag-and-drop interface: You can easily add, delete, and rearrange content blocks such as text, images, buttons, and videos. Shopify Email automatically pulls the branding elements, such as your logo, from your Shopify store into your emails, saving time.
  • Personalized content: Shopify Email allows you to personalize your emails with customer data, such as first and last name, location, and email. You can use this data to create targeted and relevant content that resonates with your customers. However, personalization while adding product recommendations is impossible with Shopify email.
  • Preview and testing: You can preview your email in desktop and mobile view to ensure it looks great on all devices. Shopify Email also has a “Send test” feature that lets you send a test email to yourself or a team member to preview the email before sending it to your audience.

Building campaigns with Shopify Email is relatively easy. However, it doesn’t offer A/B testing and its email template library is quite limited compared to Omnisend’s.

Omnisend’s email builder

Omnisend email builder features
Image via Omnisend

Here’s what Omnisend’s email builder offers:

  • A vast library of customizable templates: An extensive range of pre-built and mobile-friendly templates helps you create beautiful email campaigns. You can find a template for all use cases and marketing goals, such as new product launches, weekly newsletters, welcome series, teaser emails, etc.
  • Automatic brand assets: When you connect your compatible ecommerce store with Omnisend, the tool extracts branding elements and assets from your website and applies them to your email templates. This includes your font, colors, and logo.
  • Auto-save feature: In addition to an autosave feature, Omnisend’s email builder allows you to save specific sections. This way, you can resume designing the email from where you left off without having to start from scratch every time. It helps you to save time.
  • Customizable elements: You can customize each element of your email. Change anything from the email layout and width of the email to themes and button style.
  • Advanced personalization: Omnisend allows you to add personalization tags in the email subject line, content blocks, and email content. In addition to location, name, and account, you can also use personalization variables, such as event and subscribers’ information, such as clothing size or loyalty points. And, as mentioned earlier, you can add product recommendations.

List building features

Given that the success of your email campaigns often depends on the size and quality of your email list, this is an important feature to discuss when comparing Omnisend vs. Shopify Email. The built-in forms Omnisend offers make adding them to your website and collecting emails simple. With Shopify Email, you’ll have to rely more on third-party tools to create and add forms to your website because of its limitations.

Let’s look at some examples of the forms you can use on both platforms so you have an idea of what to expect with each.

Shopify Email’s list building

Shopify Email doesn’t offer signup forms. But it integrates with all the tools on the Shopify app store. So by installing another application, for example, Shopify Forms, you can get:

  1. Popups: Shopify offers a native tool to create customizable popup forms and build your email list
  2. Landing pages: Shopify doesn’t have a built-in landing page builder, but you can use PageFly Landing Page Builder, a third-party tool, to capture email addresses from your website visitors
  3. Customizable forms: Shopify offers native signup forms, which you can create, customize, and embed on any page of your site

Omnisend’s list building

Omnisend popup
Image via Omnisend

For those looking for more list-building options, Omnisend is the right choice. All these options are available within the platform, eliminating the need to download and install multiple apps:

  1. Landing pages: Omnisend makes it easy to create focused and branded landing pages that maximize the lead-capturing potential 
  2. Signup forms: Right from signup bars and embedded forms to multi-step forms that break down the lead collection process into two steps, Omnisend offers a comprehensive range of signup forms
  3. Popups: You can pick from a selection of customizable popups with default high-converting text, beautiful images, and unique styles
  4. Wheel of Fortune: This is a gamified form that can entertain and entice your visitors to sign up
  5. Teasers: Omnisend’s nonintrusive teasers can be used on any page to promote offers and capture leads

Last but not least, all these list-building options can be launched automatically without editing the code and come with performance analytics to measure the impact and results.

Segmentation and targeting

Segmentation is an important feature to highlight when comparing Omnisend vs. Shopify Email because it enables businesses to target their email campaigns more effectively and achieve better results.

Shopify Email’s segmentation and targeting

Image via YouTube

While Shopify Email offers default customer segments that you can use, you can also build new customer segments. 

Here are the segmenting features Shopify offers

  1. Customer behavior: Shopify allows you to segment your email list based on customer behavior, such as customers who have made a purchase, abandoned their cart, or the amount spent
  2. Customer location: You can segment your email list based on customer location, allowing you to send targeted messages to customers in specific geographic areas
  3. Customer interests: Shopify allows you to segment your email list based on customer interests, such as the products they have purchased or viewed or the categories they have browsed
  4. Subscription status: You can segment your email list based on subscriber engagement, such as email subscribers, product, and SMS subscribers
  5. Email engagement: You can group customers based on clicks, bounces, opens, and emails that were delivered or marked as spam
  6. Customer lifetime value: Shopify allows you to segment your email list based on customer lifetime value (CLV), allowing you to prioritize high-value customers with targeted messages and promotions

Overall, Shopify Email can provide robust segmentation using comprehensive Shopify data from your business.

Omnisend’s segmentation and targeting

Image via Omnisend

Omnisend’s segmentation and targeting features can offer all of that and even more data points from email marketing activities. This helps ecommerce businesses segment their lists at a granular level and create hyper-personalized emails. For example, you can segment users based on purchase behavior, targeting them with emails that recapture their interest in the products they purchased in the past or similar products that may interest them now.

Explore Omnisend’s advanced segmentation features here:

  • Customer lifecycle: Omnisend’s AI-powered algorithms dynamically assign each customer a lifecycle stage, presenting this data visually to easily target the most valuable customers at the right stage
  • Funnels: You can also segment your lists based on the funnel stage where your customers dropped off before they completed a purchase
  • Engagement: Omnisend allows you to segment lists based on extensive engagement metrics, such as page views, opens, and clicks from promotional messages
  • Behavior segmentation: You can create targeted groups of people based on their behavior on your website, including visitors to a specific page or website views
  • Shopping behavior: Contacts can be grouped based on their shopping behavior, including spend value, those who purchased products, or items ordered from you
  • Granular segments: Omnisend’s new segmentation features allow you to create granular segments based on data, such as: 
    • People who purchased Item A but did not purchase Item B
    • Number of items bought
    • Those who bought from a specific product range but inside or outside of a date range
    • Purchased or did not purchase upsell or cross-sell products
    • Risk of unsubscribing

In addition, Omnisend also offers pre-built segments and a Segment Builder Helper to guide you through the process of creating segments.

Segmentation optionsOmnisendShopify Email
Signup source
Recent subscribers
Purchase behavior
Customer lifecycle stage
Email campaign engagement
Top order value
City or county
Website activityLimited
Discount code usage
Elevate the marketing efforts for your Shopify store with Omnisend

Marketing automation

The next feature to focus on in this comparison of Omnisend vs. Shopify Email is marketing automation.

Shopify Email’s automation features include automation templates for customer win-back campaigns, welcome emails, first-purchase upsell, and custom automations.

However, Shopify Email offers only email automation. If you want to create custom automations or use other channels, such as SMS or push notifications, you need to have integrations with third-party tools.

In contrast, Omnisend offers omnichannel automation features and allows you to automate email, SMS, and web push notifications.

Omnisend optimization features
Image via Omnisend

There is a wide range of pre-built automation templates and a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor to create automations quickly.

Automation splits are one of Omnisend’s features that allow businesses to create branching paths within their automation workflows based on specific criteria or conditions.

Omnisend A/B testing
Image via Omnisend

When a subscriber enters an automation workflow, the automation split will evaluate the subscriber’s behavior or attributes and route them down different paths within the workflow based on the criteria set by the business. You can perform A/B testing to see which emails your customer opens and use the data to improve open rates.

As a result, the entry-level automation offered by Shopify Email doesn’t come close to the comprehensiveness of Omnisend.

Analytics and reporting

Analytics and reporting can help ecommerce merchants understand how their campaigns and automations are performing, what works and what doesn’t, and what insights they can gain to improve their next iterations. Comparing Omnisend vs. Shopify Email in this context reveals different strengths and weaknesses, helping merchants make informed choices for their specific needs.

Shopify Email’s analytics

Shopify analitics
Image via Shopify

Here are the insights offered by Shopify Email:

  • Open and click-through rates: With these metrics, you can see how many subscribers opened your emails and clicked on links within the email
  • Total sales: You can get data on total sales, the number of first-time purchasers, average order value (AOV), and average products sold per order for your email marketing campaigns
  • Web activity: Insights are offered on marketing funnel behavior, such as unique online store visitors, cart additions, page views, and so on
  • Deliverability: Shopify can track the deliverability of your emails, so you can see who opened your emails and when

Omnisend’s analytics

Omnisend reporting
Image via Omnisend

However, Omnisend’s reporting features are more advanced and comprehensive.

  • Customer profiles and actions: In addition to a customer lifecycle map, Omnisend tracks customer actions on your ecommerce store so you can get insights on products added or removed, orders placed, products and product categories viewed
  • Campaign performance: You can get insights on open and click rates for a specific automation workflow, a particular campaign, various segments, or a specific message, as well as campaign data such as:
    • Most opened
    • With the most total sales
    • With the highest AOV
    • Most unsubscribed
    • Most clicked
  • Sales and revenue: In addition to data on the campaigns with the most revenue, you can get insights on revenue generated by each contact and automation flow
  • Email deliverability: Insights on email delivery, bounce, unsubscribe rates, and spam help you understand if your email lists are effective
  • Activity: Omnisend tracks the activity of individual contacts on various channels or devices apart from total activity per device, message, and across different channels
  • Audience growth trends: A centralized dashboard to monitor how your SMS and email lists are changing
  • Insights on forms: Data on the forms that are getting you the most contacts and the ones that need fine-tuning, plus reports for signup forms, offer information on customer location, browser language, and devices
  • Click maps: Customer interactions within the email
  • Retention reports: Granular data on returning customers, including:
    • Returning customer rate
    • Revenue from returning customers
    • Returning customers’ AOV
    • Revenue from first-time vs. returning customers

Business intelligence is a key factor in achieving a sustainable business and a profitable bottom line. When comparing Shopify Email and Omnisend in terms of analytics, it’s clear that Omnisend offers more robust capabilities.

Customer support

  • 24/7 customer support: The Shopify team offers 24/7 email and live chat support for the overall Shopify platform users, while the Shopify-enhanced live chat is only available to users on the highest plans.

    On the other hand, Omnisend has won the prestigious Stevie Award for excellent customer support and received 5,000+ five-star reviews on Shopify.

    The key differentiator of Omnisend from Shopify is that its 24/7 email and live chat support is available to all subscribers, including those on the free plan. Shopify’s priority customer support is reserved for users on the highest plans.
  • Resource center: Shopify has an extensive help center filled with video tutorials, webinars, and clearly written guides. Users can also participate in Shopify community discussions.

    Omnisend offers a resourceful help center and an academy. The Omnisend help center is regularly updated with useful guides, blogs, podcasts, ebooks, and expert interviews.
  • Response time: Omnisend’s customer service covers all time zones and has an average first response time of four minutes.

    Shopify’s customer support also covers all time zones, with quick response time. However, only users on the highest Shopify plans can request immediate callback or phone support.

Multi-store features

Multi-store features are a crucial factor to consider when selecting an email marketing app for multiple online stores. Choosing a platform that allows you to manage all your stores from one place can eliminate the need to perform tedious and repetitive tasks for each account.

Omnisend lets you run email marketing campaigns for multiple stores and easily switch between your stores on its dashboard. From a single Omnisend account, you can share templates and workflows between your stores and manage multiple channels (email, SMS, push). You won’t have to log in and out each time you want to switch accounts, and you can easily create cross-channel campaigns to promote your brand.

In contrast, the Shopify Email app doesn’t support multi-store features and requires a new installation on every store. However, you can switch between Shopify stores in your Shopify admin and import and export data from the Shopify Email app. But you will have to recreate your marketing emails and other materials for each store.

So, if you operate multiple Shopify stores, Omnisend is the best-fit email marketing app for your needs.

Omnisend or Shopify Email: Which one should you choose?

After reading this Omnisend vs. Shopify Email comparison, you should have a much better idea of the advantages and drawbacks of both options. While Shopify Email is designed specifically for Shopify users, it has some limitations that often make it necessary to use third-party apps to really get your marketing campaign up and running.

Omnisend, on the other hand, offers virtually everything you need to create effective email campaigns and start driving sales without going anywhere else. You can easily integrate Omnisend with your Shopify store, launch effective marketing campaigns, and get access to user-friendly yet advanced marketing tools.

Elevate the marketing efforts for your Shopify store with Omnisend
Richard White
Article by

Richard is a Content Marketing Manager at Omnisend. An avid writer, he's said to have been born holding a pencil. Fascinated by all things handmade, if he's not reading or writing he can often be found practicing leathercraft.