9 Best Klaviyo Alternatives for 2025: Smarter Email & SMS Marketing

Managing customer communications can sometimes feel like juggling blindfolded. You’re crafting emails, firing off texts, segmenting audiences—yet one wrong move and your strategy wobbles. The truth is, even a popular platform like Klaviyo doesn’t always make it easy. Some tools bog you down with limitations or unexpected costs, turning what should be a marketing symphony into a solo struggle. You need a solution that not only handles the basics, but gives you a competitive edge with every send.

That’s why we’re breaking down the top Klaviyo alternatives for 2025. Some options will save you serious money, others unlock fresh capabilities.

A Klaviyo Overview

Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing platform built with e-commerce in mind, known for its deep integrations with online stores (especially Shopify) and powerful automation capabilities. It excels at turning purchase data into targeted campaigns: think triggered abandoned cart emails, personalized product recommendations, and timely SMS alerts that feel relevant rather than spammy. For many small and mid-sized brands, Klaviyo has been the go-to solution to quickly set up email flows and segmentation that drive sales.

Email & SMS Marketing

Klaviyo’s core strength is multi-channel automation. From one dashboard, marketers can design email campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor and set up SMS messages to complement those emails. It provides a library of templates and an easy-to-use email editor, so you can whip up professional-looking newsletters or promotions without coding.

Its SMS tools integrate with your contact lists and allow targeting by customer behavior, albeit with some regional limitations (Klaviyo’s native SMS is currently available mainly in a handful of countries). The platform prides itself on good deliverability and the ability to add dynamic content (like product feeds) into messages to make them more engaging.

Klaviyo’s email composer

Segmentation & E-Commerce Focus

One place Klaviyo shines is e-commerce segmentation. It taps directly into your store data to segment customers by purchase history, website activity, and more. Need to target all customers who bought running shoes in the past 90 days and haven’t bought socks yet? Klaviyo’s got you. You can build segments using plenty of criteria and use them to trigger flows (like a cross-sell email series).

It’s also known for its analytics tied to revenue, helping you see exactly how much money each campaign or flow brings in. For an online store owner, that clarity is gold. Klaviyo offers handy features like benchmarking your email performance against industry peers and including dynamic product recommendation blocks in emails.

In short, it’s tailor-made for online businesses that want data-driven, automated marketing without needing a big in-house tech team.

Fragment of Klaviyo’s business review dashboard

Pain Points with Klaviyo

Klaviyo isn’t perfect—far from it. For all its popularity, many businesses eventually feel the pinch and start exploring alternatives. Here are a few of the biggest complaints that keep popping up:

Cost

Running Klaviyo can hit your budget like a sucker punch. While it offers a free plan for up to 250 contacts (500 emails) to get you in the door, costs ramp up quickly as your list grows. Users often find Klaviyo relatively expensive, especially at scale. There’s an $20/month base for ~500 contacts, but add more subscribers or upgrade to include SMS, and you might be looking at hundreds or thousands per month. Worst of all, essential features (like more advanced support or certain integrations) sometimes only come with higher-tier plans.

Many small businesses feel Klaviyo’s pricing isn’t friendly once their marketing needs expand. If you’re watching ROI, paying premium prices for each extra subscriber or text message can sting.

Customer Support Constraints

Klaviyo’s support has left some users frustrated. On lower-tier plans, getting timely help can be a challenge. Marketers report slow or inconsistent support responses, which is not what you want during a critical campaign push.

In fact, Klaviyo recently shifted its policy to limit live chat support to higher-paying customers, leaving smaller clients to rely on email support or self-serve docs. For fast-growing brands, that lack of readily available support can be a major drawback. When you hit a snag building a complex flow or integrating a new tool, waiting days for an email back (or paying more to get better support) is less than ideal.

Limited Flexibility for Growth

Klaviyo is laser-focused on email and SMS, which is great until you need more. It lacks native support for other channels like web push notifications, and it doesn’t offer built-in loyalty or on-site personalization features.

Essentially, as your marketing strategy matures to include advanced omnichannel campaigns or customer loyalty programs, Klaviyo starts to feel a bit rigid. You might find yourself adding extra apps or platforms to fill the gaps. This can lead to a fragmented toolkit that’s harder to manage and data scattered across platforms.

Additionally, some users mention that Klaviyo’s interface, while powerful, can become challenging to navigate as you build out dozens of segments and flows.

In short, Klaviyo sometimes struggles to scale with truly ambitious, omni-channel marketing plans, pushing brands to consider more flexible alternatives.

Why (or When) to Consider Alternatives

Klaviyo is a decent starting point for businesses dipping their toes into lifecycle marketing. But as your company grows and your strategy becomes more sophisticated, Klaviyo’s cracks start to show. Costs escalate, support may lag, and you may crave capabilities that just aren’t there. If you find yourself held back—whether by budget, features, or integration limits—it’s a sign you might be outgrowing Klaviyo.

In 2025, marketers are laser-focused on creating connected, personalized customer journeys. Flexibility and scalability aren’t optional luxuries; they’re essential requirements. So really, the question isn’t if you should explore a Klaviyo alternative—it’s when. Below, we break down some of the popular contenders that could better fit your needs when Klaviyo doesn’t.

The Alternatives at a Glance

With that in mind, let’s take a quick look at the leading Klaviyo competitors and what they bring to the table:

Platform

Best For

Key Features

Price Range

Maestra

Full-funnel marketing for ambitious e-commerce brands

• Real-time CDP for behavior-driven segmentation
• Hyper-personalized omnichannel flows
• Built-in loyalty program & promotions engine
• Real-time site personalization
• Dedicated Customer Success Manager

From $2,300/month

Omnisend

Omnichannel automation tailored to e-commerce

• Email, SMS and web push in one platform
• Pre-built automation workflows for cart recovery & more
• Segmentation based on shopping behavior
• Easy Shopify, BigCommerce integration

Free plan available; Paid plans from $16/month

ActiveCampaign

Advanced automation for growing businesses

• Powerful multi-step email automations
• Built-in CRM and sales automation
• Extensive third-party integrations (Shopify, WordPress, Zapier)
• Detailed performance reporting

Starts at ~$15/month (Lite plan); higher-tier plans up to $79+/month for more features

Mailchimp

All-in-one marketing for small businesses

• User-friendly email campaign builder
• Large template library and AI-assisted design
• Basic segmentation and analytics
• Social posting and ads integration

Free for 500 contacts; Paid plans from ~$13/month

Brevo (Sendinblue)

Budget-conscious email & SMS marketing

• Unlimited contact storage with tiered emailing• SMS marketing and transactional emails• Simple marketing CRM included• Strong deliverability focus

Free plan (300 emails/day); Paid plans from $15/month

Drip

E-commerce personalization and insights

• Specialized e-commerce workflows and tagging
• Dynamic product recommendations in emails
• Deep Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce integrations
• Revenue dashboards for campaigns

Starts at $39/month for 500 contacts; scales with list size

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Inbound marketing + CRM for scaling teams

• All-in-one suite (email, SMS add-on, CRM, ads, more)
• Sophisticated workflow builder across channels
• Native CRM and sales integration
• Rich analytics and lead scoring

Free CRM + limited email; Paid plans start ~$50/month for 1,000 contacts (higher tiers in the hundreds+)

Braze

Enterprise cross-channel engagement

• Real-time messaging across email, SMS, mobile push, etc.
• Powerful journey orchestration with APIs
• AI personalization and segmentation at scale
• Robust data integration capabilities

No free plan; Enterprise pricing (typically $$$) reflecting its large-scale focus

Sendlane

High-touch automation for DTC brands

• Unlimited emails with contact-based pricing
• Strong focus on deliverability and retargeting
• Dedicated onboarding and customer support
• Simplified event-based triggers

Higher entry cost (plans start at 5,000 contacts); pricing scales by contacts + SMS volume

Tool #1: Maestra

Best Klaviyo alternative for comprehensive omnichannel marketing

Maestra’s flow example: abandoned card flow with emails, mobile and web pushes, pop-ups, paid ads and loyalty points

Maestra Review: The Most Unified Platform for E-Commerce Marketing

Maestra is an all-in-one marketing platform built for e-commerce brands that are ready to leave the patchwork of multiple apps behind. It combines omnichannel marketing automation, a real-time customer data platform, and even loyalty program management in one place.

With Maestra, you’re not just doing email and SMS; you’re orchestrating coordinated campaigns across email, text, push notifications, on-site personalization, and more, all driven by up-to-the-moment customer data.

Every Maestra client gets a dedicated Customer Success Manager to assist with onboarding, strategy, and support, reflecting its focus on being a full-service partner rather than a DIY tool.

Key Features:

Real-time CDP with sophisticated segmentation: Maestra’s built-in customer data platform updates segments instantly based on customer behavior. This means you can target shoppers with precision (e.g., viewed product X more than twice and hasn’t purchased) and the moment someone’s data changes, they move into the right campaign segment in real time.
Email, SMS, and Push Automation: Design automated flows that might start with an email, follow up with an SMS, then trigger a push notification—all in one visual workflow builder. Each message can be hyper-personalized with dynamic content.
On-site Personalization: Maestra can tailor the website experience for each visitor. For example, show different homepage banners or product recommendations based on a visitor’s past purchases or browsing history, all in-session.
Loyalty Program & Promotions Engine: Unlike Klaviyo, Maestra has native loyalty and referral program capabilities. You can reward customers with points or perks and use those incentives directly in your campaigns (send an email with the customer’s current points balance, trigger a double-points offer via SMS on their birthday, etc.).
Advanced Analytics & Optimization: Maestra offers revenue attribution for each customer touchpoint and even uses AI to optimize send times and channel mix. It also integrates your ad campaigns (Google, Facebook) to help retarget or suppress audiences intelligently.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Maestra’s biggest strength? Making every customer interaction feel personal. It’s not about just hitting “send”—it’s about hitting the mark with the right message at the right time. The platform’s real-time data engine powers some impressive feats.

For instance, you can set up triggers like “low stock alert” or “price drop alert” that send individualized messages exactly when those events happen for products a customer has shown interest in. Imagine a shopper browsing a jacket and leaving; if that item’s price goes down two days later, Maestra can automatically shoot them a tailored email or text about the sale. These kinds of reactive, moment-specific campaigns are where Maestra shines and drive conversion lifts that generic blasts can’t match.

Another standout is Maestra’s dynamic email composer, which ensures every email is packed with personal touches (like product recommendations based on browsing, or content that adapts if the customer is a loyalty VIP versus a first-time buyer) and remains fast-loading and unclipped in inboxes.

Maestra’s visual email composer

On the “weaknesses” side, Maestra doesn’t currently include a built-in UGC/review management tool. You’d still rely on another app for managing product reviews or user-generated social content (if that’s a big part of your strategy). Maestra does facilitate using that social proof in campaigns and incentivizing reviews via loyalty, but you won’t be moderating Instagram photos or website reviews within Maestra itself. For most, this isn’t a dealbreaker given Maestra’s integrations, but it’s one of the only feature gaps in an otherwise feature-packed platform.

Compared to Klaviyo

Klaviyo is okay for basic email & SMS automation tied to your store, but it’s far from a complete solution for larger ambitions. It relies on third-party apps to extend beyond those channels, which can leave you juggling tools instead of building seamless experiences. Maestra eliminates the need for a patchwork setup by integrating everything—email, SMS, loyalty, on-site personalization, even paid ad audiences—into one system.

While Klaviyo’s segmentation is strong, Maestra’s is real-time and more granular, powering truly adaptive campaigns.

And unlike Klaviyo, Maestra includes a dedicated success manager on all plans, so you have hands-on guidance as you grow.

Essentially, Klaviyo might help you send newsletters and cart reminders, but Maestra helps you build an entire customer journey.

Klaviyo focuses on email/SMS for Shopify stores, but lacks broader omnichannel reach and loyalty features, so brands often end up needing more tools as they grow. Maestra addresses those gaps by being your one-stop-shop for customer engagement.

Tool #2: Omnisend

Strong Klaviyo alternative for omnichannel marketing automation in e-commerce

Omnisend’s prebuild abandoned cart automation

Klaviyo vs Omnisend vs Maestra: Comprehensive eCommerce Marketing Platform Comparison

Omnisend is built from the ground up for e-commerce marketers who want to go beyond just email. It’s a platform that combines email, SMS, and web push notifications under one roof, with an emphasis on pre-built automation workflows that save you time. If Klaviyo ever felt a bit too email-centric, Omnisend might be a breath of fresh air. It offers a library of templated workflows for common scenarios like welcome series, cart recovery, post-purchase follow-ups, and more—all of which can include emails, texts, and push messages intertwined. The goal is a unified customer messaging experience without needing multiple tools.

Omnisend’s tight focus on online retail shows in features like product picker widgets (easily drop products into emails), discount code generators, and even built-in product review request emails. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and others that online stores use, making setup a breeze for most shops.

Key Features:

Pre-built Automation Workflows: From cart abandonment to birthday offers, Omnisend provides ready-made automation templates. You can customize the triggers and timing, but the heavy lifting (content ideas, sequence structure) is done for you.
Multi-Channel Messaging: Within those workflows, mix and match channels. For example, an abandoned cart flow could send an email 1 hour after abandonment, a push notification 2 hours later, and an SMS the next day. All managed in one workflow editor.
Segmentation: Like Klaviyo, Omnisend allows segmentation based on customer behavior and profile data—purchase history, email engagement, etc. Send targeted campaigns (or automate flows) for segments like “VIP customers,” “Frequent browsers who haven’t bought,” and so on.
Templates & Content Editor: A drag-and-drop email builder with a decent template library. Omnisend also has a unique “Wheel of Fortune” signup form and other interactive forms to grow your list, which can be more engaging than standard pop-ups.
Reporting: Consolidated dashboard to see email and SMS performance together. They highlight metrics like conversion rate and even have sales tracking to attribute revenue to each campaign or automation, similar to Klaviyo.

Omnisend’s segment builder

Strengths and Weaknesses

Omnisend’s strength is in its omnichannel simplicity. It’s often praised as being very easy to use; even marketers without a tech background get comfortable quickly. The fact that you can manage three channels in one place is a big win—no more hopping between your email tool and a separate SMS dashboard and a push notification service. For many small to mid-sized e-commerce businesses, this “all-in-one lite” approach hits a sweet spot.

They also offer a generous free plan (include all features with a sending limit) which is great for trying out the platform’s full capabilities before committing. Paid plans are reasonably priced, starting at about $16/month for a healthy sending allowance, which undercuts Klaviyo’s pricing for similar list sizes.

Because Omnisend is laser-focused on e-commerce, it has little touches that matter: e.g., product pickers for emails, automatic inclusion of product images/prices in messages, back-in-stock and price drop automation triggers, etc. These save time and boost relevance. The platform is also known for strong support and continuous improvements (they roll out new features frequently, often based on user feedback).

On the flip side, if you’re a power user, Omnisend might feel a bit constrained. It has fewer advanced customization options than some competitors. For instance, its segmentation, while good, isn’t as deep or real-time as Maestra’s or as flexible as ActiveCampaign’s—very complex segment rules or multi-condition triggers might be outside its scope.

Some users mention that the reporting, while solid, lacks some depth they’d like (e.g., advanced cohort analysis or deliverability diagnostics).

Another weakness: Omnisend’s higher-tier plan benefits aren’t huge leaps in features, mostly just sending volume. It doesn’t have the expansive ecosystem or add-ons that something like HubSpot has. And while you can integrate other apps, extremely custom integrations might require using their API.

In summary, Omnisend is superb for standard e-commerce marketing needs, but not the choice if you need ultra-fine control or broader marketing toolsets outside email/SMS/push.

Compared to Klaviyo

For a Shopify or WooCommerce store, Omnisend covers 90% of what Klaviyo does for email/SMS, and adds web push too. Merchants often switch to Omnisend for its more attractive pricing and equally robust ecommerce focus (and indeed, Omnisend’s paid plans can be notably cheaper than Klaviyo’s at the same subscriber count).

Both platforms have strong email builders and automation; Klaviyo might edge out on some analytics and deep data science features, whereas Omnisend wins on ease and multi-channel integration. One notable difference: Klaviyo’s segmentation and data integration with Shopify might be slightly more granular (e.g., Klaviyo can use Shopify-specific events very deeply).

However, Omnisend’s users frequently cite that the learning curve is gentler—you can get complex campaigns running in Omnisend faster with less tinkering. Also, Omnisend provides live chat support even on lower tiers, whereas Klaviyo’s support can be slower unless you’re a big customer.

If Klaviyo’s cost or limited channels are a pain, Omnisend is often a top pick to solve those.

Compared to Maestra

Omnisend and Maestra share the omnichannel philosophy, but target different tiers. Omnisend is like a solid toolbox for small-medium businesses—it’s affordable and gets the job done across channels. Maestra is more like an enterprise command center, with real-time data and more channels (including loyalty, on-site personalization, etc.).

For example, Omnisend can send emails and texts well-timed to customer behavior, but Maestra can also change the content of your website in real time for that customer or adjust a loyalty offer dynamically—capabilities Omnisend doesn’t have.

Moreover, Maestra’s segmentation is more advanced (Omnisend segments update, but not in true real-time mid-session). On the other hand, simplicity is a form of strength for Omnisend: it’s quick to set up and cheaper. A mid-sized brand with basic needs might find Omnisend perfectly sufficient, whereas a brand looking to push personalization boundaries would lean Maestra.

Consider Omnisend the budget-friendly multi-channel starter, and Maestra the high-end personalized marketing suite.

Tool #3: ActiveCampaign

Klaviyo alternative for advanced automation capabilities

ActiveCampaign’s email composer

ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo vs Maestra: An In-Depth 2025 Comparison

ActiveCampaign isn’t an e-commerce specialist per se, but it’s a powerhouse in the email marketing world, known especially for its sophisticated automation and CRM integration. Think of ActiveCampaign as the veteran that’s been doing marketing automation since before it was cool. If your business needs go beyond just e-commerce emails—say you also have a sales team or multiple customer touchpoints—ActiveCampaign can be a compelling alternative with its rich feature set.

At its core, ActiveCampaign offers a very flexible automation builder. You can create intricate workflows with if/else branching, multiple conditions, and a variety of actions (send email, add a tag, update a deal stage, send SMS, etc.).

It also includes a built-in CRM system, so it’s possible to manage contacts and sales pipelines in the same platform as your emails. This is a plus for businesses that need to nurture leads as well as blast promotional emails—something Klaviyo doesn’t handle (Klaviyo has no CRM for sales tracking).

Key Features:

Multi-step Automations: ActiveCampaign’s visual automation editor lets you build scenarios like “If contact does A, send Email 1; if not, wait 2 days and send Email 2, then create a task for sales team”—it’s extremely flexible and one of the most lauded in the industry.
Contact & Lead Scoring: You can score contacts based on their interactions (opens, clicks, purchases, etc.), which is great for prioritizing leads or segmenting highly engaged customers.
Site & Event Tracking: Install AC’s tracking code on your site and it will log page visits and custom events into a contact’s profile (similar to how Klaviyo logs viewed products or added to cart events). This can trigger automations or inform segmentation.
SMS and Conversations: ActiveCampaign offers SMS marketing capabilities (though on higher plans) and even a feature called Conversations for web chat, making it a more multi-channel platform than many realize.
Integrations: It integrates with over 850 apps (Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, Facebook Custom Audiences, you name it). Notably, it can integrate with e-commerce platforms to pull purchase data—though the very tight “deep” integration (like Klaviyo’s with Shopify) might require AC’s higher tier and some setup.

Strengths and Weaknesses

ActiveCampaign’s biggest strength is its automation and segmentation muscle. It often ranks as one of the top platforms for marketers who want to get really granular and creative with their customer journeys. You can do things in AC that are hard or impossible in Klaviyo—for example, automations that branch based on whether a contact clicked a specific link in any campaign in the last 30 days, or workflows that involve internal notifications and deal updates for a sales rep. This makes AC popular with not just online retailers but also SaaS companies, agencies, and others who have complex funnels.

ActiveCampaign’s segments

The platform also boasts very strong deliverability and gives users a lot of control (you can even edit the raw HTML of emails if you want, which Klaviyo’s builder doesn’t allow as freely).

Another plus: pricing scalability. ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer a forever-free plan, but its entry pricing is attractive (around $15/month for basic features). Even as you grow, the pricing tends to be somewhat more predictable and sometimes cheaper than Klaviyo for equivalent list sizes, especially if you utilize annual discounts. They also include all email features on all plans (you upgrade mainly for more channels/users rather than unlocking basic features).

On the weak side, because AC can do so much, it can be a bit overwhelming. New users might find the interface less immediately friendly than something like Mailchimp. There’s a learning curve to mastering all the automation options.

In e-commerce specifically, AC isn’t as turnkey as Klaviyo or Omnisend—for example, you might need to manually set up some e-commerce oriented automations or use their WooCommerce integration, whereas Klaviyo might auto-suggest them. ActiveCampaign’s focus is broader, so it doesn’t have built-in review requests or product recommendation blocks the way e-comm-specialized tools do.

Another consideration: some advanced e-commerce data (like predicted customer lifetime value, or in-depth product browse tracking) isn’t native in AC. You might replicate some of it with custom fields or events, but it’s not out-of-the-box.

And while AC does have SMS, it’s not their primary emphasis and you may need a higher plan or add-on for heavy SMS use.

Support on lower plans can be hit or miss too—AC offers chat support, but priority is given to higher tiers.

Compared to Klaviyo

This is often a head-to-head matchup: Klaviyo vs ActiveCampaign. The main difference boils down to focus. Klaviyo is built for e-commerce first, with deep store integrations and easy revenue tracking, whereas ActiveCampaign is built for flexible automation across industries. One comparison noted that ActiveCampaign provides more powerful automation, segmentation, and reporting capabilities overall, while Klaviyo offers a friendlier experience for online store data and has a free plan option.

If you primarily run an online shop on Shopify, Klaviyo feels tailor-made (plug and play flows, etc.). But if you need to coordinate marketing and sales, or want more sophisticated branching logic in campaigns, ActiveCampaign is superior.

Also, AC doesn’t penalize you feature-wise as you pay—even lower plans get almost all the email features, whereas Klaviyo gates some capabilities by tiers or profile count.

On the flip side, Klaviyo’s reporting is a bit more ecom-focused (showing actual $ per email) and its template library for ecom is richer out of the box. So for pure e-commerce use, Klaviyo is convenient; for multi-faceted marketing, AC is a stronger, more expandable foundation.

Compared to Maestra

ActiveCampaign and Maestra both target sophisticated marketing needs, but Maestra is more all-encompassing for retail specifically. For instance, Maestra includes a loyalty program engine and on-site personalization—ActiveCampaign does not, and you’d need external solutions for those. Maestra’s real-time CDP means segment updates and triggers happen instantly with on-site actions, whereas ActiveCampaign’s segments update on a schedule or via event triggers (not typically in-session).

However, ActiveCampaign might be considered by someone who doesn’t need the full Maestra suite or who prioritizes the sales CRM aspect—Maestra doesn’t have a sales pipeline CRM for managing deals, whereas AC does.

Also, AC is lower cost; you could start small and grow into it, whereas Maestra aims at brands ready to invest in a larger solution.

In short, Maestra unifies more marketing channels (covering ads, site content, loyalty in addition to email/SMS) with hands-on service, whereas ActiveCampaign offers a do-it-yourself toolkit that’s exceptionally flexible but may require augmenting with other tools as your needs broaden.

Tool #4: Mailchimp (now part of Intuit)

Best Klaviyo alternative for small businesses getting started

Mailchimp’s email builder

Mailchimp is practically synonymous with email marketing. It’s the veteran platform that many businesses start with, and for good reason: it’s incredibly user-friendly and offers a broad set of marketing tools beyond just email. In recent years, Mailchimp has added landing pages, basic CRM features, social posting, postcards, and yes—even SMS—to its arsenal (SMS was introduced via an add-on and is being integrated more now that Mailchimp is under Intuit). If you’re a small business or startup feeling that Klaviyo is overkill or too costly, Mailchimp might be the comfortable, budget-friendly alternative.

Mailchimp’s style is very much “marketing for everyone.” You don’t need to be techy to make it work. There are tons of templates, a very visual editor, and helpful tips at every corner. It’s designed to get you up and running with email campaigns in minutes.

Key Features:

Email Campaign Builder: Drag-and-drop editor with one of the largest template libraries around. Mailchimp also offers an “AI Content Assistant” to help generate copy or designs—handy for non-designers.
Audience Management: At its core Mailchimp manages lists (now called audiences). It has basic segmentation and grouping features, and recently introduced customer lifetime value and product purchase likelihood predictions for e-commerce (if you’re on a higher plan).
Marketing Channels: Aside from email, you can create Facebook and Instagram ads inside Mailchimp, post to social media, and even send printed postcards to customers. They’ve also started offering SMS marketing in beta/limited form (or via integrations) to complement emails.
Automation: Mailchimp has simpler automation compared to Klaviyo. It covers basics like welcome series, birthday emails, and date-based or action-based triggers (e.g., send an email when someone joins a list, or a follow-up X days after purchase). These are easy to set up with pre-made recipes, but not as advanced branching logic as some others.
Analytics: You get open/click reports, geolocation data, e-commerce tracking (if you connect your store, you can see sales from campaigns), and even benchmarking to see how your stats compare to industry averages. Mailchimp’s reports are straightforward, good for a quick health check of your campaigns.

Mailchimp’s email dashboard

Strengths and Weaknesses

Mailchimp’s strength is its accessibility and breadth. It’s like the Swiss Army knife for a small marketing team: one tool that can handle a bit of everything. Need to send 100 emails to your initial customers? Launch a quick Facebook ad? Post an update to Twitter? Mailchimp has your back. The interface guides you step by step, and there’s a huge knowledge base and community since it’s so widely used.

Another strength is the free plan—Mailchimp’s forever-free tier (up to 500 contacts now) is an excellent testing ground for new businesses to build an email list without any cost. Even the paid tiers are reasonably priced for what you get, and you’re not locked into an annual contract.

Brand recognition and trust are also in Mailchimp’s favor. Many people just feel comfortable with it. And if design matters, Mailchimp’s email templates and content blocks (like Product grids, Promo codes, etc.) are polished and easy to use.

On the downside, Mailchimp is not as specialized for e-commerce as Klaviyo or others. Its automation capabilities, while improving, are relatively basic. For example, setting up a multi-step abandoned cart series in Mailchimp is possible but not as straightforward or rich in data use (Mailchimp can trigger off an abandoned cart if you connect your store, but Klaviyo or Maestra will do it more intelligently and allow more nuanced filters like cart value, etc.). Also, Mailchimp’s segmentation is more list-based and doesn’t update in real-time as fluidly. You might have to rely on tagging and manual list management for very specific targeting.

Another weakness is that as your list grows, Mailchimp’s pricing can escalate quickly and sometimes ends up comparable to Klaviyo without the same depth of features. They also count subscribers in each audience separately (in the past, Mailchimp was notorious for double-counting if the same email was in two lists—they introduced “audiences” to mitigate this, but many small businesses still end up with multiple audiences). Also, Mailchimp historically had some limitations like no live chat support on standard plans (mostly email support unless you’re premium).

Finally, the lack of in-depth ecommerce focus means no native product recommendations engine, no sophisticated revenue attribution per segment, and limited event tracking beyond the basics. If you outgrow the basics, you might feel Mailchimp is holding you back in analytics or automation complexity.

Compared to Klaviyo

Mailchimp is simpler and more generalist compared to Klaviyo’s laser focus on ecommerce. For a newcomer to email marketing, Mailchimp’s learning curve is gentler—you can create a campaign quickly, whereas Klaviyo might overwhelm with its segmentation and flow builders meant for data-savvy users. Mailchimp also bundles things like social posting and landing pages which Klaviyo doesn’t do.

However, Klaviyo offers far more sophisticated trigger options, especially with Shopify or other store data. One key difference: Klaviyo’s integration will automatically pull in product catalog, browse behavior, etc., enabling advanced flows (browse abandonment, product-specific recommendations) that Mailchimp either can’t do or requires clunky workarounds for. Also, Klaviyo’s core is segmentation by behavior; Mailchimp can segment by purchase activity too, but it’s not as dynamic.

In terms of cost, Mailchimp starts cheaper (and has a free plan) which is appealing, but for larger lists Klaviyo might justify its price by driving more revenue with its advanced tactics. If you’re a marketer who wants plug-and-play ROI tracking and optimization for an online store, Klaviyo will feel more powerful. But if you just need to “get the word out” via email and maybe some simple automation, Mailchimp is the friendlier, cheaper choice.

Compared to Maestra

Maestra and Mailchimp are almost on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of target audience. Mailchimp is for the masses—small business owners, indie creators, etc., who need an easy tool. Maestra is for serious mid-market and up e-commerce players who want enterprise-grade capabilities.

For example, Mailchimp can’t do on-site personalization or loyalty programs; Maestra does those in its sleep. Mailchimp’s strength is ease and low cost; Maestra’s strength is depth and comprehensive strategy. In practical terms, a business might start on Mailchimp and graduate to Maestra when they reach a certain scale or sophistication.

If you need just a solid email/SMS sender with some extras and are small, Mailchimp is great. If you need a platform that will squeeze every drop of value from customer data and coordinate complex campaigns, you’re in Maestra territory.

Tool #5: Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Best Klaviyo alternative for affordable email & SMS marketing

Brevo’s automation builder

Brevo, known until recently as Sendinblue, has made a name as one of the most cost-effective email marketing platforms that still offers robust functionality. It’s especially popular among budget-conscious businesses and startups that need to send a lot of emails without breaking the bank.

Brevo offers unlimited contacts on all plans (you’re charged by emails sent, not number of subscribers), which immediately sets it apart from Klaviyo’s model. If Klaviyo’s monthly bill has you sweating, Brevo might be the relief you’re looking for.

Despite its lower price point, Brevo isn’t just bare-bones. It provides email marketing, SMS campaigns, a basic CRM, live chat widget for your site, and even simple marketing automation. It’s like a mini-suite of tools geared towards helping small businesses grow, all under one roof.

Key Features:

Email Marketing with Unlimited Contacts: You can have as many subscribers as you want in Brevo and the plans scale by email volume. The email editor is drag-and-drop and user-friendly, with a decent template selection.
SMS Marketing: Brevo has SMS built in as well. You can buy SMS credits and send texts to your contacts, even automate SMS as part of workflows (useful for order confirmations or promo alerts).
Automation Workflows: It supports multi-step automations (not as advanced as Klaviyo/ActiveCampaign, but enough for welcome series, simple conditionals like “if contact opens email, send X, else send Y”). Good for nurturing sequences and basic cart abandonment emails.
Basic CRM & Live Chat: There’s a simple CRM to manage contacts and deals, and you can install a live chat on your website that integrates with Brevo (chat conversations get logged to contact profiles). It’s not a full Salesforce, but it’s nice to have these extras if you need light sales/support features.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Brevo’s standout strength is value for money. It’s hard to find a reputable platform that gives you free emailing (up to 300 emails/day) and then a paid plan at just $25/month for 20,000 emails (for example). For businesses with large lists that might not be highly active or that are more newsletter-focused, this pricing model is gold. You don’t get penalized for list size—you pay based on how many emails you actually send. This often works out much cheaper than Klaviyo for large audiences.

Additionally, Brevo’s features cover a lot of ground: you can do pretty sophisticated campaigns, SMS, and automations that address many common marketing scenarios. Users often praise Brevo’s deliverability and the fact that even with low costs, you’re not sacrificing inbox placement. The platform also supports multiple languages (it’s originally a French company) and is GDPR-friendly, making it popular in Europe as well as North America.

On the weak side, Brevo can sometimes feel a bit “industrial”—it’s not as shiny or specialized as some competitors. The templates and UI are decent but not the flashiest. Some advanced e-commerce capabilities (like in-depth Shopify integration, product recommendations, or revenue-based reporting) are lacking.

Brevo isn’t an e-commerce specialist, so while you can integrate it with your store, it doesn’t automatically pull in product catalogs or do things like Klaviyo’s abandoned cart by default (you might have to configure their API or use a plugin to trigger certain e-comm emails). The automation builder is somewhat limited compared to higher-end tools—you have the basics (trigger, condition, action), but not the array of triggers/conditions Klaviyo offers with all its e-commerce events.

Support on Brevo’s free tier is basically none (understandably), and on paid plans it’s decent but not always lightning-fast; priority support comes only on higher plans. Also, because Brevo does a lot (email, SMS, chat, CRM), some of its components are not as deep. The CRM, for instance, is fine for small teams but not something a sales org would use heavily.

Finally, Brevo’s analytics are more campaign-level (opens, clicks, etc.) and not as marketing ROI-driven as Klaviyo’s. You might have to do more manual work to figure out who bought what and how much revenue an email drove, whereas Klaviyo would show you that in the dashboard.

Compared to Klaviyo

Brevo is essentially the budget-friendly alternative to Klaviyo. For small businesses that find Klaviyo’s costs hard to justify, Brevo offers a similar core result: send emails and SMS that reach your customers. However, Klaviyo outshines Brevo in tailored e-commerce features and deeper insights. Klaviyo’s templates and automation library for e-commerce events are much richer. With Brevo, you might need to manually set up an abandoned cart email, whereas Klaviyo has it ready to toggle on.

On the analytics side, Klaviyo will directly attribute sales to emails and help you segment top spenders, etc.—Brevo will tell you who opened or clicked, but tying that to purchase requires more effort or integration.

That said, many users switching to Brevo do so because they can achieve similar email/SMS engagement at a fraction of the cost. If you’re not utilizing all of Klaviyo’s bells and whistles, Brevo can appear almost equivalent in everyday use. Also, Brevo’s allowance for unlimited contacts means you can keep historical data or larger audiences loaded without watching your bill skyrocket, whereas Klaviyo can get expensive as contacts add up.

In summary: Klaviyo is more powerful for driving revenue per contact, but Brevo can drastically cut cost per contact. The choice might come down to budget and how advanced your e-com marketing needs are.

Compared to Maestra

When comparing Brevo to Maestra, it’s very much good enough vs. best-in-class. Brevo provides the essentials of email and SMS, with some automation—perfectly “good enough” for many basic marketing needs, especially if budget is tight. Maestra provides an all-singing, all-dancing platform with real-time data and personalization. Maestra would be overkill for a tiny business, but for a mid-size brand looking to maximize customer LTV, Brevo would likely fall short in capabilities.

Maestra’s strengths like real-time triggers, integrated loyalty, and web personalization are not present in Brevo. Additionally, Maestra’s service model (with a Customer Success Manager guiding strategy) is a very different experience from mostly do-it-yourself on Brevo. Essentially, Brevo is about efficiency and cost-saving, while Maestra is about effectiveness and revenue-maximizing. They cater to different needs: Brevo to the marketer who says “I just need to send emails cheaply,” Maestra to the marketer who says “I want to leverage data to its fullest to drive growth.”

If budget were no issue, Maestra would objectively outperform Brevo in results; but not everyone needs a Ferrari when a reliable sedan will do the job.

Tool #6: Drip

Best Klaviyo alternative for ecommerce customer engagement

Drip’s email templates

Drip is a marketing platform specifically designed for e-commerce brands and digital entrepreneurs, with a strong focus on personalized email marketing. Often pitched as “your e-commerce CRM”, Drip aims to give smaller online brands the kind of sophisticated marketing tools that big players have—without needing an army of developers. If you want something more advanced than Mailchimp but not as enterprise-heavy as some others, Drip is a solid middle-ground choice.

Drip shines in how it handles customer data and segmentation for online stores. It captures detailed events (like product page views, add-to-cart, purchase history) and makes it easy to build segments and automations around those. It also prides itself on a clean, approachable interface—kind of like a friendly layer on top of complex data.

Key Features:

E-commerce CRM & Segmentation: Drip provides a single view of each customer with all their events and attributes. You can filter and segment by things like “total money spent”, “last product viewed”, or “number of orders >= X”, etc. It’s like having a lightweight customer database geared for retail behaviors.
Email and SMS Automation: You can create multi-channel workflows similar to Klaviyo. Drip offers pre-built playbooks for common flows (welcome series, cart abandonment, post-purchase upsell). You can incorporate SMS as steps in these flows as well (SMS is a newer addition to Drip, reflecting the industry trend).
Personalization and Dynamic Content: Drip lets you easily insert personalized product recommendations into emails, or use liquid-like templating to customize content. For example, you can pull in the last item someone viewed into an email, or show different offers to VIPs vs new customers.
Integrations: It integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and others. The Shopify integration, for instance, is quite deep: it syncs customer, order, and product data continuously. Drip also connects with Facebook Custom Audiences, allowing you to sync segments for ad targeting.
Analytics & Reporting: Drip has visual dashboards that show overall revenue attribution, average order values, and even customer lifetime value over time. It also offers per-campaign revenue stats so you can see how much money each email in a flow is generating—similar to Klaviyo’s ROI focus.

Drip’s email revenue dashboard

Strengths and Weaknesses

Drip’s strength is that it’s purpose-built for e-commerce, but still easy to use. Users often comment that Drip’s UI is more intuitive and modern-feeling than Klaviyo’s, and that it strikes a nice balance between power and simplicity. Drip offers a lot of the same e-commerce events and triggers as Klaviyo, so you can achieve comparable sophisticated targeting (like sending win-back emails when predicted time to next order lapses, etc.).

The platform is quite nimble in adding features that online sellers need—for example, they jumped on SMS integration and improved their templates to include branded layouts for product feeds, etc. Additionally, Drip’s customer support is known to be responsive and focused; since Drip’s whole business is e-commerce email, their support folks understand use cases on a practical level.

Pricing with Drip is also relatively straightforward: it starts at $39/month for up to 2,500 contacts (unlimited email sends), then scales by contact count. For what it offers, many find this competitive—it often comes in a bit lower than Klaviyo for similar list sizes. Drip doesn’t charge extra for features as you scale; all customers get the same capabilities, just different contact quotas.

On the downside, Drip can be seen as “email and SMS only”—it doesn’t have additional modules like social posting or push notifications (yet). It’s narrower in scope compared to some multi-channel platforms. If you needed built-in loyalty programs or on-site personalization, Drip would require external tools for those. Also, while Drip’s analytics are good, they might not be as extensive as an enterprise solution; very granular or custom reports might require exporting data.

Another weakness is Drip’s templates and visual email builder, while decent, might not have as many fancy widgets as say Mailchimp. Some users have wanted more design flexibility or an easier way to do complex layouts (though you can import custom HTML). Additionally, if you’re not on Shopify or a major platform, integrating Drip could be a bit more legwork (Klaviyo, by contrast, has many native integrations too).

Lastly, Drip isn’t as widely known a brand as Mailchimp or Klaviyo, so finding community tips or third-party tutorials might be slightly harder (though their own documentation is good).

Compared to Klaviyo

Drip and Klaviyo are direct competitors in the e-commerce email automation space. Both give you the key ingredients: segmentation, automation flows, email + SMS, and integration with your shopping cart. Klaviyo has a bit more brand recognition and perhaps a few more built-in features (like its new benchmarks, or its push for predictive analytics), while Drip often wins on usability and customer support approachability.

Price-wise, Drip can be more cost-effective depending on your list size—Klaviyo’s pricing for 5,000 contacts, for example, might be higher than Drip’s, and Klaviyo’s email+SMS combo plans can add cost.

One notable difference: Drip markets itself as providing an “e-commerce CRM,” highlighting its focus on customer lifetime value and repeat sales, whereas Klaviyo tends to market more on immediate campaign ROI and segmentation prowess. In practice, their features overlap a lot. If one finds Klaviyo too complex or too pricey, Drip is a natural alternative that will feel familiar but possibly simpler. On the flip side, if someone on Drip craves even deeper analytics or more integrations, they might eye Klaviyo.

Both are strong—it’s a bit like choosing Coke vs Pepsi; preference might come down to subtle UI feel or pricing in your specific case.

Compared to Maestra

Drip is a specialized tool for email/SMS in e-commerce; Maestra is a broader platform covering the whole marketing spectrum for retailers. If you just need to execute great email campaigns and basic flows, Drip has you covered. But Maestra would bring in extra layers like connecting those emails with on-site personalization, incorporating loyalty incentives directly, and orchestrating across channels beyond email/SMS (like web push, ad retargeting, etc.).

Maestra also has a real-time engine—for instance, reacting immediately to on-site behavior—whereas Drip’s triggers usually depend on events as they come in from integration (fast, but not in-session personalizations).

For a growing online brand that doesn’t need all that omni-channel jazz yet, Drip is a cost-effective choice to drive email revenue. As that brand grows, they might consider Maestra to unify additional channels and strategies.

Essentially, Drip is focused depth in email/SMS for online stores, and Maestra is wide breadth across customer touchpoints.

Tool #7: HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best Klaviyo alternative for all-in-one inbound marketing

HubSpot: customer’s record

HubSpot vs Klaviyo vs Maestra: Choosing Your Ideal Marketing Platform

HubSpot is a heavyweight in the marketing world, known for its comprehensive platform that combines marketing, sales, and customer service tools all on one CRM. While HubSpot isn’t e-commerce-specific, it’s often considered by growing businesses (including online retailers) that want to centralize their marketing and have capabilities beyond just emailing customers.

If your business needs not just email and SMS, but also things like blog publishing, SEO tools, ads management, and a robust CRM, HubSpot’s Marketing Hub enters the conversation.

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub includes email marketing, marketing automation, social media management, landing pages, ad tracking, and more, all tied to a built-in CRM where every lead and customer’s interactions are recorded. The idea is to create a unified experience where, for example, a visitor downloading an eBook from your site, subscribing to your newsletter, and eventually making a purchase can be tracked through one system.

Key Features:

Email & Automation: HubSpot offers a powerful email editor (with personalization tokens, smart content, etc.) and a workflow builder that can get quite advanced. You can automate email sequences and also other actions (like assigning a lead to sales, or adjusting contact properties) in the same flow. Triggers can be based on website behavior, form submissions, email interactions, and more.
SMS Integration: While not native initially, HubSpot now has an SMS marketing add-on in Marketing Hub (especially with the rise of conversational marketing). You can automate SMS via workflows and even use HubSpot’s Conversations inbox to respond if customers reply by text. It’s an add-on feature that integrates into the HubSpot CRM timeline.
CRM and Database: Every contact’s data is stored in the CRM. This means you get 360° view of a contact: not just marketing emails, but also any sales activities, support tickets (if using Service Hub), website visits, etc. Klaviyo, by contrast, isn’t a full CRM.
Other Channels: HubSpot covers forms, landing pages, blog posting (with SEO recommendations), social media scheduling, and even has a ads management tool (to run Google, Facebook ads and see ROI). It’s very much an inbound marketing toolkit—attracting and nurturing leads through content and then converting them.
Analytics: Extensive dashboards, including website analytics, campaign analytics that attribute leads and customers to original sources, and funnel reports. You can track things like which blog post or ad led to the most customers. For e-commerce, if integrated (there’s a Shopify-HubSpot integration, for example), you can track revenue and product sales too, though HubSpot’s analytics shine more in lead gen scenarios.

Hubspot’s marketing dashboard

Strengths and Weaknesses

HubSpot’s major strength is unification and depth. Instead of stitching together a bunch of tools (email software, a form builder, an analytics suite, a CRM, etc.), HubSpot gives you one ecosystem. Data flows seamlessly between marketing activities and sales follow-ups. For businesses that do a mix of online marketing—content, email, ads—HubSpot provides a single source of truth and very polished tools for each.

The platform is also renowned for its user-friendly interface given how much it can do. Their drag-and-drop page builder, email editor, and workflow builder are all top-notch. And HubSpot has excellent educational content and support; they basically invented the concept of “Inbound Marketing” and their methodologies are well-regarded.

Another strength is how HubSpot scales. You can start with free CRM and a modest email capability, and gradually add more features as you need (though costs rise quickly, which leads to weaknesses). HubSpot’s marketplace of integrations is also huge, so you can connect other apps if needed (though many things are built-in).

However, all this comes at a price. HubSpot can be expensive—notoriously so at the professional and enterprise tiers. The starter plan (around $50/month for 1,000 contacts) is reasonable, but it has limited automation. As soon as you need the good stuff (like omnichannel automation, A/B testing of emails, more advanced analytics), you’re looking at Professional tier which starts ~$800-$900/month (with 2,000 contacts included). That price climbs further if your contact list grows. Many companies find themselves investing heavily in HubSpot as they grow—it’s an entire platform, not just an email tool.

Another weakness in context of direct Klaviyo comparison: HubSpot is not specialized for e-commerce promotions like Klaviyo is. You might need to put in more work to set up abandoned cart emails or integrate your product catalog. HubSpot’s focus is more on lead nurturing than flash sales or cart recovery by default. The Shopify integration helps, but HubSpot will feel heavy if all you need are sales funnels for a storefront. It’s like using a swiss army knife when you really need a scalpel for one job.

Also, HubSpot’s SMS capability is relatively new and may not be as feature-rich as Klaviyo’s or a dedicated SMS tool (it might require add-on costs too). And because HubSpot does so much, if you only utilize 20% of its features, you might be overpaying relative to a leaner solution that focuses only on that 20%.

Compared to Klaviyo

Comparing HubSpot to Klaviyo is almost comparing apples to oranges in terms of scope. Klaviyo is laser-focused on e-commerce email/SMS, whereas HubSpot is an all-encompassing marketing and CRM platform.

If your business has a content strategy, does lead nurturing, and wants to align marketing closely with a sales team, HubSpot offers huge advantages—Klaviyo doesn’t even play in that field (no built-in CRM for sales, limited content management). On the other hand, if your primary need is to send targeted promotional emails and texts to shoppers and track store sales, Klaviyo is far more out-of-the-box and cost-effective for that purpose.

For an online retail brand choosing between them: Klaviyo will likely drive higher ROI on email/SMS due to its specialized features (and at a lower cost up to a point), but HubSpot might drive more holistic business growth by combining channels and giving you a full pipeline view (especially if that brand also does wholesale, has a sales-driven component, or a lot of content marketing).

Some companies actually use them together (using Klaviyo for ecommerce comms and HubSpot for overall CRM and other marketing), but that can be overcomplicated. In short: choose Klaviyo for ecommerce communication excellence, choose HubSpot for centralized marketing + CRM alignment.

Compared to Maestra

Maestra vs HubSpot is interesting: Maestra focuses on omnichannel personalized marketing for e-commerce, HubSpot focuses on inbound marketing and CRM which spans industries.

Maestra gives you things like loyalty management and on-site personalization—HubSpot doesn’t natively do. HubSpot gives you things like a blog engine and SEO tools, which Maestra doesn’t.

If you’re primarily an online retailer, Maestra covers your needs more directly (customer journeys, loyalty, etc.). If you’re a B2B or hybrid company doing content and longer sales cycles, HubSpot might be more aligned.

Cost-wise, both can target mid-market/enterprise, but HubSpot’s pricing ramps up by contacts and users significantly, whereas Maestra has high flat starting costs but then it’s more all-inclusive.

One key difference: dedicated support—Maestra includes a CSM to actively help you (almost like an extension of your team), while HubSpot gives you the tools to do it yourself (with support and a huge knowledge base, but not a dedicated strategist unless you pay for consulting). For a marketing team that wants high-touch guidance in execution, Maestra is appealing. For a team that wants an integrated toolkit to execute their own strategy, HubSpot is built for that.

In essence, HubSpot = broad inbound ecosystem, Maestra = deep ecom-focused ecosystem. The better fit depends on whether your growth comes from blasting sales and personalizing offers (Maestra’s forte) or from nurturing leads and content-driven conversion (HubSpot’s forte).

Tool #8: Braze

Best Klaviyo alternative for enterprise cross-channel engagement

Braze’s Canvas tool

Braze vs Klaviyo vs Maestra: Choosing the Best E‑Commerce Marketing Platform

Braze is a customer engagement platform often favored by large or rapidly scaling brands, especially those with mobile apps or complex cross-channel needs. It’s designed to handle massive volumes of data and messaging in real-time, orchestrating campaigns across email, SMS, mobile push notifications, in-app messages, web, and more.

lf Klaviyo ever feels like it’s not handling your scale or you need channels Klaviyo can’t do (like in-app messages or a sophisticated mobile push strategy), Braze is usually on the shortlist.

Braze operates a bit more at the enterprise level—think big retailers, telecoms, fintech apps, etc., that require instant triggers and intricate personalization. They emphasize their ability to use streaming data to engage users “in the moments that matter.” It’s a step up in complexity and capability, and typically requires a more technically savvy team to implement fully.

Key Features:

Cross-Channel Journeys: Braze allows you to build customer journeys that can branch into many channels. E.g., a user might get a push notification, then an email, then see an in-app message, all coordinated as part of one campaign. Their Canvas visual workflow tool is quite powerful for mapping these.
Real-Time Data Stream & Personalization: Braze processes user data in real time, enabling things like sending a notification to a user seconds after they complete a specific action in your app or on your site. Personalization can draw on a wide array of user attributes and event data on the fly.
Mobile Focus & SDKs: Braze’s mobile SDK is a big strength—it’s how it collects behavioral data from apps and delivers in-app messages/push. This makes it popular for companies with strong mobile user bases. For pure email, Braze is good, but its differentiation is really when you use multiple channels including mobile.
API and Integration Flexibility: Braze is built API-first. It can ingest data from your systems and export to them. It doesn’t force you into a rigid data model—instead it’s happy to sit connected to your data warehouse or customer data platform. This means it can play nicely in a sophisticated data ecosystem.
Liquid Templating & Dynamic Content: Braze supports complex logic in message templates. Marketers can craft very tailored messages (like “if user did X, show this text, else show that text”) within a single campaign without needing engineering help, once data is flowing in

Creating a segment in Braze

Strengths and Weaknesses

Braze’s strength is power at scale. It’s known to reliably send huge volumes of messages (we’re talking millions) triggered by real-time events. For a global brand with tens of millions of customers, Braze can handle the load where something like Klaviyo might struggle or limit throughput.

It’s also extremely flexible in terms of channel—few platforms let you manage email, SMS, push, in-app, and even new channels like WhatsApp or OTT notifications in one place with coherent orchestration. For companies that want a unified strategy across mobile and web, Braze is top-tier. Additionally, Braze’s analytics and experimentation capabilities are robust: you can do multivariate tests, holdout groups (to measure true lift), and retention analyses.

However, Braze comes with downsides as well. Complexity and resources required are one—you typically need developers to implement the SDKs and feed data, and skilled marketers to build the logic. It’s not as plug-and-play as Klaviyo for a Shopify store; Braze assumes you have engineering resources to integrate deeply.

Cost is another major factor: Braze is enterprise-priced (no public pricing, custom quotes), often running into six or seven figures annually for large user bases. It’s usually out of reach for small businesses.

Also, Braze doesn’t provide certain out-of-the-box e-commerce features like loyalty programs or product recommendations—it expects you to have those systems and just connect them. So you might still need additional tools or custom solutions for those specifics.

In essence, Braze’s weakness is that it’s an enterprise tool; if you’re not ready to fully utilize it, it can be overkill (and you’ll pay for a lot of capacity/features you might not use). Some users also mention that while Braze’s interface is powerful, it can be less intuitive than simpler platforms—training is needed to master it.

Compared to Klaviyo

Braze vs Klaviyo can be summed up as enterprise vs SMB, omnichannel vs primarily email/SMS, flexible integration vs plug-and-play. Braze excels in large scale, multi-channel engagement beyond just email and text. If a company has a mobile app and wants to coordinate messaging everywhere, Braze offers that (Klaviyo doesn’t do in-app messaging or push).

Braze also doesn’t impose contact or email send limits in the same way—it’s more about overall usage and messages. But Klaviyo shines in being purpose-built for an e-commerce marketer without heavy dev support; it has all these templates, built-in ecom flows, and a simpler onboarding.

Also, Klaviyo is transparent in pricing and accessible to small teams; Braze is a committed investment. One might say Klaviyo is best for small to mid e-commerce retailers, Braze is best for huge brands or apps. In fact, some D2C companies might graduate: start on Klaviyo, and if they become like an Uber or Nike, they might end up on Braze for the expanded capabilities.

It’s also worth noting that Braze lacks built-in loyalty or review management (similar to Klaviyo in that sense), so both would need complements for those features. But Braze’s philosophy is to integrate with best-of-breed tools for those, rather than provide them itself.

Compared to Maestra

Braze and Maestra both target sophisticated, growing brands but from different angles. Maestra positions itself as an all-in-one specifically for commerce—including loyalty and on-site personalization—with a concierge level of support. Braze is a do-it-all messaging platform that requires you to bring your own data and possibly other tools (like a separate loyalty system).

One notable distinction: Maestra includes a real-time CDP and loyalty engine internally, whereas Braze notably does not include a CDP or loyalty out-of-the-box. Companies using Braze often pair it with a separate CDP (like Segment) to handle data unification. Maestra tries to simplify that by having the unified data layer built in.

In terms of channels, Braze and Maestra overlap on email, SMS, push. Maestra adds web personalization and loyalty. Braze might be stronger if an app is core to your business. Maestra might be stronger if you want a one-stop shop with services included.

Pricing wise, both are premium, but Braze could be even higher. If a brand values having a dedicated success manager and a platform tailored to retail, Maestra is very appealing. If a brand has the tech muscle and wants ultimate control and maybe has non-retail use cases too, Braze offers that raw power.

In summary, Maestra = power + guidance for commerce; Braze = power + flexibility for those who can wield it.

Tool #9: Sendlane

Best Klaviyo alternative for DTC brands seeking high-touch support

Sendlane’s flow builder

Sendlane is an email and SMS marketing platform that has been gaining traction particularly among direct-to-consumer (DTC) and e-commerce brands. It differentiates itself by offering a combination of advanced features and a very hands-on customer support ethos. In other words, Sendlane tries to give you Klaviyo-like capabilities but with more guidance and done-for-you assistance, which can be attractive if you’re not an expert email marketer.

Sendlane’s platform covers the usual suspects: email campaigns, automation flows, segmentation, and SMS marketing. One of its calling cards is an emphasis on behavioral targeting and multi-channel funnels, and they highlight their focus on driving e-commerce revenue and high deliverability.

Key Features:

Multi-Channel Automation: Like others, you can build workflows that send emails, SMS, or even sync to Facebook Audiences. They provide templates for common flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, etc.).
Behavior-Based Segmentation: Sendlane tracks site visits (with a tracking script), link clicks, purchase history, etc., to let you segment and trigger based on those behaviors. For example, you can target people who clicked an email but didn’t buy, or who have a VIP customer tag.
One-click Integrations: Sendlane integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and others pretty smoothly—pulling purchase data and product info into Sendlane. It also has a native integration with ClickFunnels and other tools DTC businesses might use.
Dedicated Onboarding & Deliverability Help: Every new customer (even at lower tiers) often gets a bit of white-glove treatment, including help with migrating lists, warming up IPs for deliverability, and setting up initial automations.
Transactional Email Included: They allow you to send order confirmations and other transactional emails through the same platform if you want (some platforms separate these)

Sendlane’s email editor

Strengths and Weaknesses

One of Sendlane’s strengths is indeed its customer support and onboarding. They market that heavily—not just tech support, but strategic support. For businesses who feel a bit lost setting up flows or improving performance, Sendlane’s team often steps in to guide or even build things out with you. This is something you wouldn’t get with Klaviyo unless you hire a consultant. In that sense, Sendlane tries to be a “partner” more than just a tool.

They also tout their deliverability; having started in 2017 focusing on automated emails, they’ve put a lot into mail server infrastructure to maintain good sender reputations.

Sendlane’s platform itself is fairly robust, close to Klaviyo in many ways. It even has some nice UI touches, like a central hub showing real-time customer activity. They also often innovate on quality-of-life features (like a recent one: “Solo” feature to easily resend campaigns to those who missed it, etc.).

However, there are weaknesses.

Pricing can be on the higher side at entry—Sendlane doesn’t really cater to very small lists. In fact, they have a minimum of 5,000 contacts on their plans (that starts around $99/month). So if you have fewer contacts, you’re paying a baseline that could be more than Klaviyo’s cost for that size.

Essentially, Sendlane positions itself for businesses that have grown a bit and are making enough revenue to invest ~$100 a month. Also, their pricing includes a certain email send limit (say 50k emails/month) and some SMS credits, rather than unlimited sending—if you exceed, you pay more.

Another weakness is brand maturity: Sendlane is less known than Klaviyo or Mailchimp, so its community and integrations, while decent, aren’t as extensive. For example, if you use a more obscure e-commerce platform, there might not be an off-the-shelf integration like Klaviyo often has. You might rely on Zapier or custom API work.

Feature-wise, while Sendlane covers most needs, it may lack some of the extreme fine-tuning options a Klaviyo power-user might want. For instance, Klaviyo’s predictive analytics (like churn risk, etc.) or the very granular segmentation by any metric—Sendlane might not have those yet. Also, Sendlane’s SMS is US-centric, similar to Klaviyo’s initial rollout, so global SMS might require a separate solution.

Compared to Klaviyo

Sendlane is often pitched as a Klaviyo alternative with better support. In terms of functionality, they’re close: both have strong e-commerce integrations, email + SMS, and marketing automation. Klaviyo might have an edge in very detailed analytics or slightly more polished segmentation UI, while Sendlane may innovate with user-friendly tweaks and absolutely tries to match Klaviyo feature-for-feature.

One notable difference is the pricing structure: Klaviyo charges by number of contacts (and separate for email vs SMS usage), Sendlane charges by tier of contacts and includes a certain amount of email sends. Some users find Sendlane’s approach easier to predict if they send a lot of emails to a moderate list.

Also, as mentioned, Sendlane’s entry point is higher—it’s not for tiny startups, whereas Klaviyo even has a free tier up to 250 contacts to get you in. If you’re already at 5k-10k contacts and looking for a more service-oriented provider, Sendlane shines. They literally emphasize that they’ll handle migrating you from Klaviyo “headache free”, which appeals to those who aren’t deeply technical.

Feature-wise, for most practical purposes a marketer could achieve similar campaigns in both. It might come down to what you value: Klaviyo’s brand and slightly more mature feature set, versus Sendlane’s hands-on help and possibly better pricing at higher volumes (or at least no surprise charges).

Also, some anecdotal reports say Sendlane’s campaign builder and template management can be simpler, whereas Klaviyo can feel complex—again that ease-of-use vs depth tradeoff.

Compared to Maestra

Sendlane is more directly comparable to Klaviyo than to Maestra. Maestra is a larger solution encompassing more channels (like web personalization, loyalty, etc.) and comes with a premium price tag and dedicated manager. Sendlane is more in the SMB-to-mid market bracket, focusing on email/SMS. If a brand considered Maestra, they are likely beyond the need for the level of support Sendlane provides and looking for an integrated platform that can do everything including on-site experiences.

Sendlane doesn’t do on-site personalization or loyalty; it would need to integrate with external tools for that (like Yotpo or Smile for loyalty). Also, Sendlane, while supportive, doesn’t embed a team member with you the way Maestra’s CSM might strategize and consult continuously.

In short, Sendlane is a step up from Klaviyo in support, but Maestra is a leap into a different all-in-one paradigm. If cost is a concern and you don’t need the whole Maestra suite, Sendlane could be a “halfway” solution—better guidance than Klaviyo, less spend than Maestra.

But if maximum multi-channel sophistication is the goal, Maestra has features Sendlane simply doesn’t offer (CDP, loyalty engine, AI product recs, etc.). It’s really a matter of scale: Sendlane for mid-sized DTC brands, Maestra for larger brands or those wanting to invest heavily in unified marketing.

Conclusion

After reviewing these top Klaviyo alternatives, it’s clear that the “best” choice depends on your business’s size, tech resources, and growth strategy. Each platform has its unique strengths:

Budget-friendly and simple: Platforms like Brevo and Mailchimp win for affordability and ease, perfect for small teams starting out.
E-commerce focused with power: Omnisend, Drip, and Sendlane cater to online sellers who want robust email/SMS capabilities without jumping to enterprise-level complexity.
All-in-one ecosystems: HubSpot offers a broad marketing suite for those who want to integrate email with content, CRM, and more.
Enterprise omnichannel: Braze is unmatched for large-scale, real-time cross-channel needs (if you have the resources to harness it).
High-touch partnership: Maestra stands out by combining advanced capabilities with dedicated guidance—ideal for brands ready to invest in a full-funnel transformation.

Why Start with Maestra?

With so many options, one platform emerges as a compelling starting point for brands aiming not just to meet the status quo, but to elevate their marketing: Maestra.

It’s not just an email/SMS tool—it’s a unified growth engine. Maestra’s real-time CDP powers hyper-personalized flows and loyalty programs that are tough to replicate with cobbled-together systems. The fact that you get a dedicated Customer Success Manager means you’re not going it alone; you have an expert partner helping tailor the platform to your strategy.

For a brand serious about turning customer data into delightful, revenue-driving experiences across every channel, Maestra provides that “all-in-one” solution and the strategic help to maximize it.

Choosing the right platform can transform your customer experience and propel long-term growth. It’s tempting to settle for “good enough” due to cost or habit, but remember: the tools you use shape the results you get. If Klaviyo is leaving you with blind spots or limitations, consider these alternatives and what they offer.

Start with Maestra—book a demo today and see how turning your data into personalized, omnichannel campaigns can revolutionize your customer engagement and ROI. Your customers’ attention is precious; with the right platform, you won’t just capture it, you’ll keep it.