Shopify Email vs. Klaviyo: Which Is Best for You in 2024?

Did you know that 88% of email users check their email every day?

This means that if you want your brand to be more visible, email marketing is something must not miss.

Especially since, on average, ecommerce stores see a $45 return for every $1 they spend on email marketing!

Today, we're installing and testing two popular email marketing tools: Shopify Email and Klaviyo.

We wrote this article to share our conclusions and help you find which suits you best!

The main difference between Shopify Email and Klaviyo is that Shopify Email is simpler, more budget-friendly, and integrated with Shopify, while Klaviyo offers more advanced features, detailed segmentation, and more sophisticated analytics for established businesses.

Read on to learn more!

Tip: Have you already created your Shopify account? If not, sign up by clicking this link here to get a free 3-day trial + 1 month for $1!

Overview: Shopify Email vs. Klaviyo

In this article, we compare Shopify Email and Klaviyo on their:

• Features
• Customer support
• Pricing

However, if you're looking for a quick overview, here it is!

Shopify Email is a great choice if:

• You're a small business owner looking for an easy-to-use email marketing tool.
• You have basic email marketing needs.
• You have a limited budget.

Klaviyo is an excellent choice if:

• You're running an established store with consistent sales (over $10k monthly or an email list of over 10k subscribers). Out of the 1,000 most successful Shopify stores, a whopping 759 of them use Klaviyo!
• You have experience with email marketing and need detailed segmentation and advanced automation.
• You rely on data to drive your marketing decisions.

Pros of Shopify Email

• Shopify Email is very easy to use. You don't need to be a tech expert to get started. The interface is simple, making it easy to create and send emails. If you're new to email marketing, you'll appreciate how straightforward it is.

• Best integration with Shopify. Since it's made by Shopify, you can easily include your product images and details in your emails. This makes it super convenient to create professional-looking emails without much effort.
• Affordable. Shopify Email is affordable and sometimes even free, especially if you're a small business. The pricing is straightforward, and you won't have to worry about hidden costs.

Cons of Shopify Email

• Limited advanced features. If you're looking for advanced segmentation, detailed analytics, or complex automation, you might find Shopify Email a bit too basic.

Pros of Klaviyo

• Advanced segmentation. Klaviyo allows you to send the right message to the right person at the right time. You can segment your audience based on their previous purchase history, new subscriptions, interactions with a specific product, and much more.
• Lots of integrations. Klaviyo integrates with 350+ other tools, including Shopify, Meta, Google Ads, Trustpilot, and Triple Whale.

• Detailed analytics. Klaviyo excels at providing analytics that go beyond basic email metrics. You can track metrics like customer lifetime value, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates. Or run A/B tests on subject lines, content, send times, and more!

Cons of Klaviyo

• Higher cost. One of Klaviyo's main drawbacks is its cost. It's more expensive than Shopify Email, especially as your email list grows.
• Steeper learning curve. Klaviyo comes with a lot of features, which can make it a bit overwhelming at first. You'll need to spend some time learning how to use all the features effectively.

Features

Both Shopify Email and Klaviyo are great, but they have different strengths and weaknesses.

So, let's compare them between the main features of an email marketing platform: templates, AI, segmentation, automation, and analytics!

Note: A big difference between Shopify Email and Klaviyo is that Klaviyo does more than email marketing, like SMS, mobile push marketing, Reviews, and more. In this article, we focus on comparing both tools' email marketing features.

Templates

First, let's talk about templates.

Templates are helpful because they help you create professional-looking emails quickly, even if you don't have design skills.

Shopify Email currently offers 54 templates:

The focus here is on simplicity and ease of use, which is perfect for beginners.

You'll find the most important templates here, including:

• Back-in-stock alerts
• Upcoming sales
• Discounts
• Newsletters
• Holidays and special occasions

Here is Shopify Email's birthday template:

As you see, it looks okay right from the start, so you can make it look pretty nice with just a few edits. It also automatically imports products from your Shopify store!

You may find that some more advanced templates are missing on Shopify Email.

Here are a few examples that are missing on Shopify Email, but are available on Klaviyo:

• Anniversary from first purchase
• Post-purchase instructional emails
• Almost sold out reminder emails
• Back to school sales
• & more

The reason for this is that Klaviyo offers significantly more templates compared to Shopify Email.

In fact, we counted 130 templates on Klaviyo, which is significantly more than what Shopify Email offers:

Before we go to Klaviyo's birthday template, it's worth pointing out that Klaviyo recommends their templates based on the time of the year.

For example, at the time of writing, Father's Day was quickly coming up, so Klaviyo shows Father's Day sale templates first, as well as Spring-related templates and Summer product announcement templates.

It's very helpful and clever!

Let's move on to Klaviyo's birthday template:

Just like Shopify Email, it looks very good design-wise, right?

However, here's where Klaviyo's advanced features come into play.

Not only is Klaviyo's template more optimized for conversions with a big coupon box, but it's also more personalized using syntax expressions.

For example, the expression {{first_name|title|default:'FRIEND'}} does the following:

• It first attempts to retrieve the recipient's first name.
• It then capitalizes the first letter of each word in the first name. For example, if the first name is "john", it will be converted to "John".
• If the first name is not available, it defaults to the word "FRIEND".

So, if the first name of the recipient is "john", the heading will read:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
John

If the first name is not available, the heading will read:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
FRIEND

Meanwhile, Shopify Email's template doesn't even include any name! (You can manually add the first name and a default value, but the feature that capitalizes the first letter is not available.)

Conclusion: Shopify Email's templates are great for simplicity and ease of use. If you need more design flexibility and advanced customization options, Klaviyo is the way to go.

AI

Next, let's check out the AI capabilities of Shopify Email and Klaviyo.

AI, or artificial intelligence, can help you create email campaigns by automating tasks and providing insights that you might not have considered.

Shopify Email is integrated with Shopify Magic, Shopify's built-in AI:

Shopify Magic can generate email subject lines and body copy, and optimize send times.

For example, if you want to generate a subject line, you must describe what the email is about, choose a tone, and click on the generate button:

Klaviyo's AI features are much more advanced.

The platform uses machine learning to analyze your customer data and predict future behaviors.

For example:

• It can identify which customers are most likely to make a purchase soon, allowing you to target them with special offers.
• It can forecast metrics like future purchase frequency, customer lifetime value, and churn risk.
• It can automatically customize the content of your emails based on each recipient's past behavior, preferences, and interactions with your brand.

Sounds amazing, right?

This quote from Klaviyo was particularly interesting:

Understand your customers—maybe even better than they understand themselves.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo's more advanced nature becomes clear when comparing the AI subject line generator:

Instead of Shopify Email's approach, which just considers your own description and tone of voice, Klaviyo's AI considers:

• The campaign type
• Your top-performing subject lines from the last 90 days
• Your brand name
• Your description

It also gives you tips to learn from, such as using under 10 words or 60 characters, getting personal, and evoking curiosity.

One of the subject lines Klaviyo generated was "Celebrate Your Birthday with a 20% Discount!"

Conclusion: Shopify Email provides basic AI that helps you get started with email marketing quickly. However, if you need more advanced AI capabilities, Klaviyo is the clear winner.

Segmentation

Segmentation is crucial for email marketing because it helps you send more targeted and relevant emails, which can lead to better engagement and higher conversions.

Shopify Email uses the default segments from your Shopify admin.

This means you can create segments based on Shopify's templates or simple criteria like customer location, purchase history, and email engagement (e.g., who opened your emails):

Here are some of these template examples:

• Customers who spent a large amount per order recently
• Customers who haven’t ordered recently but used to do so frequently
• Customers with recently abandoned checkouts
• Customers who have purchased specific products
• Customers in a specific city

These templated segments are easy to set up and use, making them a good starting point for beginners.

However, since these are Shopify's native segments they can be pretty advanced and useful (especially if you customize them yourself).

For example, both Shopify Email and Klaviyo allow you to create segments based on multiple criteria, and segments from both tools are updated in real time as customers visit your store.

But, once again, Klaviyo goes one (or, a few) steps further in the following ways:

1. Integration-based segmentation

• Example: Use data from Klaviyo’s 350+ integrations to create a segment. For instance, you could create a segment of customers who have interacted with your customer support team (via Zendesk), purchased a specific product (from your Shopify store), and engaged with your social media ads (through Facebook integration).
• Why Shopify Email can’t do this: Shopify Email’s integrations are limited to the Shopify ecosystem, whereas Klaviyo pulls data from various platforms.

2. Omnichannel segmentation

• Example: Create a segment of customers who have opted into both email and SMS communications, have purchased during seasonal sales, and have a high predicted customer lifetime value (CLV). Target this segment with coordinated email and SMS campaigns during your next big sale.
• Why Shopify Email can’t do this: Shopify Email does not offer integrated SMS features.

One disadvantage of Klaviyo is that there are no segment templates.

However, it automatically generates some standard segments for you, including potential purchasers, churn risks, and win-back opportunities:

Plus, the "Define with AI" tool can help you create segments with just text, which can be great for beginners.

Conclusion: Shopify Email provides sufficient segmentation features for most stores as it's built on Shopify's native segments. Klaviyo is the superior choice if you want to create segments based on multiple different apps and marketing channels.

Automation

Automation features in email marketing tools usually translate to workflows that automatically send emails based on specific triggers, saving you time and ensuring that your customers receive timely and relevant messages.

Again, Shopify Email makes life easier with pre-built automation templates:

They work on Shopify's regular "Automations" feature, which means they're easy to implement and modify.

You can create simple workflows like welcome emails for new subscribers, order confirmation emails, and follow-up emails after a purchase.

If you want to use a different workflow, you can create a custom automation as well:

Tip: You can also use Shopify Flow to create automations!

Although you can integrate these integrations with a few other Shopify apps, like Aftership, Parcel Panel, or ReConvert, you'll likely encounter the same limitations as before.

There are just a lot fewer options with regard to integrations with other platforms!

Meanwhile, Klaviyo is excellent in automation.

You can create complex sequences that include multiple triggers, actions, and conditions.

For example, you can set up a workflow that sends a welcome series, follows up with product recommendations based on browsing behavior, and sends a reminder for abandoned carts, all within one seamless flow.

You can also use if/then logic to create branching workflows that change based on customer interactions. For instance, if a customer opens an email but doesn’t click the link, you can send a follow-up email with a different offer.

However, you don't have to think of this all by yourself, as Klaviyo offers over 60 templates for its Flow feature:

Then, for each template, you will be guided on creating a flow that fits your brand:

Conclusion: Shopify Email is perfect for small stores that need simple workflows without the complexity. However, if you’re looking for detailed customization and highly targeted sequences, Klaviyo is the better choice.

Analytics

Let's compare the analytics capabilities of Shopify Email and Klaviyo.

Shopify Email offers good, Shopify-based analytics. It allows you to track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, the number of emails sent, and more:

If you’re looking for in-depth insights, again, Klaviyo is better.

Klaviyo offers contextual analytics, meaning relevant data is highlighted right alongside whatever you’re working on:

Klaviyo’s reports library has dozens of pre-built reports, organized by topic.

This makes it easy to find the answers you need. Additionally, you can build custom reports that get as granular as you’d like.

One of Klaviyo’s standout features is its built-in, personalized benchmarks.

This means you get insights into how your performance compares to similar businesses.

For example, Klaviyo can show you if your click rate is good for your industry and how you can aim even higher:

Conclusion: Again, Shopify Email provides the basics that are easy to use and understand. However, Klaviyo is the better option for more advanced analytics, detailed reports, and personalized benchmarks.

Customer support

Before implementing any software, it's a good idea to check if they have good customer support.

Since Shopify Email is part of the Shopify platform, you get access to Shopify's customer support.

This means you can reach out for help 24/7 with not just your email marketing, but all aspects of your Shopify store:

There have been reports of Shopify's customer service quality going downhill recently, but at least it's still free and available 24/7.

Klaviyo’s customer support is also available 24/7.

Users on the free plan can reach out through email 24/7 or ask their questions to an AI virtual assistant. Meanwhile, paid users have access to a 24/5 live chat.

Klaviyo offers priority support for users on higher-tier plans. This means faster response times and access to senior support staff.

However, since Klaviyo's customer support is trained specifically on their own product (Klaviyo), you can generally expect more helpful responses from them.

Conclusion: Shopify Email provides round-the-clock support without extra costs. Klaviyo offers specialized support with a deep understanding of its own features but without a live chat except for paid users.

Pricing

Let’s break down the pricing models of Shopify Email and Klaviyo:

Shopify Email is designed to be budget-friendly, especially for smaller stores.

It charges based on the number of emails you send, rather than the number of subscribers you have.

Here’s a quick overview:

• Free tier: You can send up to 10,000 emails per month for free.
• Paid tier: After the free 10,000 emails, it costs $1 for every 1,000 emails you send.

Klaviyo uses a tiered pricing model based on the number of contacts in your list. This means your costs will increase as your subscriber base grows.

Here’s a breakdown:

• Up to 250 contacts: Free, with limited features.
• Paid plans: Start at $20 per month for up to 500 contacts, and prices increase as you add more subscribers.

As you can see, Klaviyo also offers SMS marketing, which has its own separate pricing.

Conclusion: When it comes to pricing, Shopify Email is the clear winner for those with a limited budget. However, if you have a small email list, Klaviyo offers great value for money.

Summary

Before we go to the final verdict, we've created a quick summary of this article, so you can easily remember it.

Shopify Email:

• Is ideal for small business owners with limited budgets who need an easy-to-use tool.
• Is easy to use, integrates well with Shopify, and is affordable.
• Provides 24/7 support as part of the Shopify platform.
• Charges based on the number of emails sent, with a free tier for up to 10,000 emails per month.

Klaviyo:

• Is suitable for established stores with consistent sales and larger email lists.
• Excels in advanced segmentation, with the ability to use data from 350+ integrations and target through omnichannel campaigns.
• Provides detailed analytics, including contextual insights, multi-channel attribution, and personalized benchmarks.
• Uses a tiered pricing model based on the number of contacts, with separate pricing for SMS marketing.

Final verdict

We've compared a lot between Shopify Email and Klaviyo!

But what's the final verdict? And which is best for you?

Final verdict: Klaviyo's features are superior compared to Shopify Email. However, it's costly and has a steep learning curve, so it's not for everyone. Shopify Email is perfect if you need a basic, low-cost, and user-friendly email marketing app.

Therefore, we recommend choosing Klaviyo if you make $10k in monthly sales or have an email list of at least 10k subscribers.

Otherwise, Shopify Email or any of these other email marketing tools will be a better fit!

Want to learn more about Shopify?

Ready to move your Shopify store to the next level? Check out the articles below:

• The 15 Best AI Tools for Shopify in 2024 (Free & Paid)
• Does Shopify Give You an Email? (& Is It Free in 2024?)
• Abandoned Cart Emails for Dropshipping: A Beginner’s Guide (2024)

Plus, don’t forget to check out our in-depth how to start a Shopify store guide here.