Klaviyo vs Omnisend

Quick Overview

Unified customer data depth vs guided ecommerce execution

The biggest difference between Klaviyo and Omnisend is what they treat as the “center” of marketing: Klaviyo is built around a unified customer data foundation that fuels deeper segmentation and personalization across channels, while Omnisend prioritizes an ecommerce-first marketing workflow that bundles core omnichannel execution into a more guided toolkit. If your strategy depends on maximizing what you can do with behavioral and transactional signals, the split shows up quickly.

That tradeoff exists because Klaviyo’s product bet is on owning and continuously updating rich customer profiles in real time, positioning the platform as a combined data + marketing system, whereas Omnisend’s product bet is on packaging the most common ecommerce campaign and automation motions into a single, streamlined environment. In practice, Klaviyo’s emphasis on data depth pushes toward more granular targeting and orchestration, while Omnisend’s emphasis on packaged workflows pushes toward faster setup and simpler day-to-day execution.

For buyers, the stakes are less about “email vs SMS” and more about how you want your lifecycle engine to run: how much segmentation complexity you’ll maintain, how connected your channels feel, and how much effort you’ll invest to keep data, audiences, and reporting aligned. The rest of this comparison unpacks what changes as you scale automation depth, expand channel reach, and balance operational overhead against personalization ambition.

Quick Comparison

At a Glance

Category	Klaviyo	Omnisend
Best for	B2C marketers using CRM	Ecommerce merchants and shop owners
Core strength	Built-in customer data platform	Omnichannel ecommerce messaging suite
Automation depth	Cross-channel flows with splits	No-code automation with splits
Pricing model	Usage-based, contact-based billing	Subscription, contact-based billing
Learning curve	Short learning curve reported	Straightforward setup and workflows

Vendor Snapshot

Company Snapshot

Background data gathered from our market research (founding year, HQ, team size, specialties, etc.).

Klaviyo

Visit website

K

13+ years operating Team 1001-5000

Founded: 2012
HQ: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Team: 1001-5000
Industry: Marketing Services

Klaviyo is a B2C CRM powered by a built-in data platform and AI. It combines marketing automation, analytics, and customer service into one unified solution to help B2C brands deliver 1:1 experiences at scale and drive revenue.

Omnisend

Visit website

O

11+ years operating Team 201-500

Founded: 2014
Team: 201-500
Industry: Technology, Information And Internet

Omnisend is a SaaS marketing automation platform focused on ecommerce, supporting channels like email, SMS, and web push. The company positions the product as an intuitive, reliable platform with 24/7 support designed to help ecommerce brands send relevant, personalized messages.

Why These Platforms Feel So Different

Klaviyo started in 2012 as a customer database meant to help consumer brands use their own customer information. Omnisend began in 2014 as Soundest, built first as an email marketing tool with ecommerce marketers as the primary constraint. Those starting points pushed Klaviyo toward a data foundation, while Omnisend leaned into marketer workflows inside store platforms.

Because Klaviyo was built to solve a “customer data problem,” it prioritizes collecting and unifying events into durable customer profiles. This leads to tradeoffs in setup effort, since value depends on connecting sources and maintaining data quality. One visible outcome is its long arc from database (2012) to email (2013), then attribution (2018) and later channel expansion.

Because Omnisend began as an email product for ecommerce teams, it prioritizes channel execution tied closely to commerce systems. This leads to tradeoffs in how far the underlying model stretches beyond commerce-native use cases. One concrete signal is its early platform shift from Soundest to Omnisend in 2017, followed by adding SMS in 2018 as it widened the channel mix.

These origin choices still shape how each product grows and where complexity tends to live. The next sections surface the practical consequences of those early priorities and constraints.

Feature Analysis

Feature Explanation: How These Capabilities Differ in Practice

You’ve already seen what each tool includes. This section clarifies how the key features behave day-to-day once you start building and measuring campaigns.

#1 Automation & Flows

Klaviyo flows can branch using conditional splits and trigger splits based on the triggering event details. It supports flow branching on predictive analytics, random samples, and event data like cart value.

Omnisend uses a visual drag-and-drop automation builder with multi-step journeys, split paths, and conditional logic. It also supports exit conditions, frequency capping, and event-based triggers for ecommerce workflows.

#2 Customer Segmentation

Klaviyo segments update in real time and can use all-time event data, plus custom properties from integrations and APIs. It also supports predictive analytics fields (e.g., churn risk, CLV) for segment filters.

Omnisend builds dynamic segments from ecommerce and engagement data like orders, email/SMS activity, tags, and custom properties. Segments update in real time as customers meet or stop meeting rules.

#3 Multichannel Messaging

Klaviyo supports email, SMS, push, and WhatsApp, and can coordinate them in a unified flow or campaign. WhatsApp activity is added to customer profiles for segmentation and reporting.

Omnisend supports email, SMS, and web push notifications within the same workflows. It does not offer native WhatsApp messaging as a channel on its platform pages.

#4 Analytics & Attribution

Klaviyo reporting includes pre-built dashboards and customizable reports, with attribution settings that can be adjusted and applied retroactively. It supports multi-touch attribution options in its omnichannel analytics content.

Omnisend provides sales reports plus campaign and automation reports, including workflow step-level performance metrics. It also supports flexible attribution windows and touchpoints that recalculate automatically.

#5 Ecommerce Data Sync & Triggers

Klaviyo uses integrations to bring onsite and ecommerce events into profiles for segmentation and flow triggers. Its flow logic can use event details from triggers like cart abandonment and browse abandonment.

Omnisend emphasizes real-time sync from ecommerce platforms so customer, order, and product data updates instantly for segments and automations. Automations can trigger immediately on actions like viewing a product or placing an order.

#6 Experimentation / Testing

Klaviyo flows can route traffic using random sample splits for A/B testing within a flow. It also describes multi-channel testing and attribution capabilities in its product materials.

Omnisend supports A/B testing within automations and provides A/B testing data in automation analytics. It also lists A/B split testing for workflows across channels and message variations.

Pricing

Pricing & Plans

Compare tiers, caps, and upgrade paths at a glance.

Klaviyo

Per contact Free tier Volume pricing

Pricing scales by contact (active profile) count with published tiers up to 100,000 and custom pricing at higher volumes.

Free contacts: 250

Omnisend

Per contact Free tier Volume pricing

Pricing scales by contact (active subscriber/profile) count with published tiers and custom pricing at the highest volumes.

Free contacts: 250
Free monthly emails: 500

Contact tier

Klaviyo

Omnisend

1,000 contacts

PLAN

$30

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 10,000 emails
✓ Email marketing based on contact volume
✓ SMS messaging available as an add-on channel
✓ Subscriber management and segmentation

Limitations

• SMS is available but typically requires separate SMS setup/credits beyond the email plan.

PLAN

$20

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 12,000 emails
✓ Email marketing with published send allowance by tier
✓ SMS available via separate SMS credits subscription
✓ Web push notifications available (plan-dependent)

Limitations

• SMS requires a separate SMS credits subscription to buy more credits.

10,000 contacts

PLAN

$150

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 100,000 emails
✓ Higher monthly email allowance tied to contact tier
✓ Audience segmentation and campaign personalization
✓ Reporting and performance insights

Limitations

• Email sending is limited to the tier’s included monthly email volume.

PLAN

$132

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 120,000 emails
✓ Email volume increases with contact tier
✓ Billing based on active subscribers (counted once across channels when overlapping)
✓ Automation and campaign sending at mid-market scale

Limitations

• If you exceed your email sending limit on certain plans, the platform may prompt an upgrade option.

50,000 contacts

PLAN

$720

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 500,000 emails
✓ Scaled email volume for larger lists
✓ Automation workflows for lifecycle messaging
✓ Advanced segmentation for targeting

Limitations

• At higher volumes, teams may need deliverability/process reviews to support increased throughput.

PLAN

$413

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 600,000 emails
✓ High-volume email allowance for larger lists
✓ Subscriber counting avoids duplicates across segments
✓ Cross-channel marketing with SMS available

Limitations

• If you import more contacts than your paid tier allows, the system will prompt an upgrade to the next billing tier.

100,000 contacts

PLAN

$1,380

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 1,000,000 emails
✓ High-volume email sends aligned to contact tier
✓ Automation and personalization at scale
✓ Reporting for performance tracking

Limitations

• Scaling beyond published tiers typically requires moving to a custom agreement.

PLAN

$900

per month

What's included

✓ Includes 1,200,000 emails
✓ Scaled email sending aligned to contact tier
✓ Active-subscriber billing across channels when overlapping
✓ Cross-channel support (email + SMS available)

Limitations

• Dedicated onboarding/account expert support is tied to higher monthly spend thresholds (e.g., $400/month or higher referenced).

500,000 contacts

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

✓ Custom enterprise packaging
✓ SMS messaging available
✓ Higher-volume infrastructure alignment
✓ Potential for tailored support and onboarding

Limitations

• Contact Sales required (custom pricing/contract).

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

✓ Custom enterprise pricing
✓ Negotiated sending capacity and terms
✓ SMS available via credits/subscription
✓ Potential for dedicated onboarding/support (terms-dependent)

Limitations

• Contact Sales required (custom pricing/contract).

1,000,000 contacts

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

✓ Custom enterprise packaging for very large databases
✓ SMS messaging available
✓ Potentially negotiated email volume and terms
✓ Operational requirements aligned to large-scale sending

Limitations

• Contact Sales required (custom pricing/contract).

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

✓ Custom enterprise pricing for very large databases
✓ Negotiated sending capacity and operational terms
✓ SMS available via credits/subscription
✓ Support and onboarding arrangements set by contract

Limitations

• Contact Sales required (custom pricing/contract).

Customer Voices

Reviews & Ratings

See how Klaviyo vs Omnisend compare based on verified customer reviews (pros, cons, sentiment).

Klaviyo

4.6 / 5.0

Based on 512 reviews

Positive sentiment

Top Pros

• Powerful segmentation for targeted messaging
• Easy to build automated flows
• Strong eCommerce integrations, especially Shopify
• Good analytics and performance tracking

Top Cons

• Pricing rises fast as lists grow
• Pricing structure feels confusing
• Frequent glitches and slowdowns in editor
• Some integrations need heavy implementation work

Omnisend

4.7 / 5.0

Based on 834 reviews

Positive sentiment

Top Pros

• Clean, easy-to-use email builder
• Automations are simple to set up
• Shopify integration feels tight and reliable
• Support is responsive and helpful

Top Cons

• Editor feels limited for advanced designs
• UI can be cluttered or hard to navigate
• Hard to start from a blank campaign
• Some users report emails landing in spam

Real-World Scenarios

How Klaviyo and Omnisend behave in real marketing workflows

Seeing the feature list is useful, but day-to-day differences show up in how teams run recurring workflows and make ongoing adjustments. These scenarios translate capabilities into operational behavior.

#1 Lifecycle campaign cadence

Klaviyo: Teams run ongoing lifecycle programs with frequent tweaks, reviewing performance weekly and adjusting messaging in bursts as behavior shifts.

Omnisend: Teams keep lifecycle messaging steady, updating on a recurring schedule and making simpler adjustments during seasonal pushes or short bursts.

#2 Audience refresh and targeting changes

Klaviyo: Targeting updates happen daily as audiences refresh, letting teams coordinate handoffs between planning and execution without pausing active workflows.

Omnisend: Targeting changes are handled in a more set-and-check rhythm, with weekly reviews and fewer mid-flight adjustments across active sends.

#3 Multichannel coordination in a launch

Klaviyo: Launches are coordinated as staggered waves, with email and SMS timing adjusted midweek based on early signals and team feedback.

Omnisend: Launches run as packaged sequences, keeping timing consistent across channels and relying on scheduled checkpoints rather than frequent rerouting.

#4 Personalization during ongoing campaigns

Klaviyo: Teams personalize continuously, updating messages as customer behavior changes and revisiting segments weekly to keep campaigns aligned with current activity.

Omnisend: Teams personalize in recurring cycles, refreshing content during planned updates and keeping day-to-day execution simpler for consistent sends.

#5 Performance visibility and optimization rhythm

Klaviyo: Reporting supports an optimization cadence, with teams checking trends frequently and making ongoing adjustments across multiple campaigns without waiting for month-end.

Omnisend: Visibility supports routine monitoring, with teams reviewing outcomes weekly and applying changes in batches to keep workflows predictable.

#6 List growth and signup workflow management

Klaviyo: Signup workflows are managed as iterative experiments, with teams adjusting capture and follow-up sequences frequently as list quality shifts over time.

Omnisend: Signup workflows run as steady playbooks, with teams updating forms and follow-ups during planned cycles rather than constant experimentation.

Need-to-know

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about comparing these platforms.

If I’m already live, how painful is it to migrate lists, segments, and automations from Omnisend to Klaviyo (or the other way around)?

Expect to move contacts and key fields first (email, phone, consent status, tags/custom properties), then rebuild automations and forms because flow logic and trigger events don’t transfer 1:1 between Klaviyo and Omnisend.

Historical engagement data may import as contact properties or limited event history depending on the source format, so you typically validate with a small batch, then cut over by gradually shifting sends to the new platform.

What happens if we switch to Klaviyo or Omnisend and realize a month later we need to switch back—can we reverse it cleanly?

Reversing is mainly about exporting your current audience state (subscribed/unsubscribed, suppression lists, SMS consent, and key properties) and recreating automations in the prior tool; the automation builds themselves won’t “roll back” automatically.

To avoid gaps, many teams run Klaviyo and Omnisend in parallel briefly, freeze sign-up sources to one system, then reconcile suppressions so opt-outs captured during the test period are honored in both platforms.

Do we actually own our data, and can we export everything we put into Klaviyo or Omnisend whenever we want?

You can export core data like contacts and many profile fields from both Klaviyo and Omnisend, and you can export suppression/unsubscribe lists so you can maintain compliance after leaving.

What’s not always exportable in a single portable package is “platform-native” structure such as automation/flow configurations, template layouts, and some event/attribution views, which typically need to be recreated in the destination tool.

How do Klaviyo and Omnisend handle GDPR and consent requirements—especially if we have EU traffic and need proof of opt-in?

Both platforms support storing consent-related fields and honoring unsubscribe/opt-out states, but you still need to ensure your signup forms capture the right consent language and that your ecommerce/checkout integration passes consent status into Klaviyo or Omnisend.

For audits, keep a consistent record of where consent was collected (form, checkout, import) and avoid importing contacts without a lawful basis; the platform can store the status, but your collection workflow is what creates defensible proof.

We operate multiple stores/brands—can one account handle that without mixing audiences or sending the wrong messages?

Both Klaviyo and Omnisend can support multi-store scenarios, but the practical challenge is keeping data partitioned: you’ll need clear rules for how profiles map to each store and how shared customers are handled.

If brands must be fully separated (different consent, different sender domains, different suppressions), teams often choose separate workspaces/accounts and then coordinate reporting and UTM conventions across Klaviyo or Omnisend to prevent cross-brand targeting errors.

Are there API limits or integration constraints that can break our workflows if we send lots of events from our site?

Yes—both Klaviyo and Omnisend rely on APIs and event ingestion for real-time triggers, and high-volume stores can hit rate limits or require batching and retry logic in custom integrations.

If you send many custom events (e.g., product views, onsite actions), you should monitor ingestion errors and latency, and design your integration so critical events (checkout, purchase, unsubscribe) are prioritized and retried when the API throttles.

If we want SMS, what regional rules or carrier restrictions could stop messages from going out in Klaviyo or Omnisend?

SMS availability and rules vary by country, including required opt-in language, sender ID types, quiet hours, and carrier filtering; Klaviyo and Omnisend can enforce opt-out keywords and consent flags, but they can’t override regional regulations.

Before launching, confirm the countries you’ll message, what sender identity is permitted there, and whether you need separate consent capture per region; otherwise campaigns may be blocked or filtered even when your list is clean.

How do we protect deliverability if a campaign goes wrong—can we control send rates, suppress risky segments, or pause quickly?

Both Klaviyo and Omnisend provide suppression/unsubscribe handling and allow you to pause scheduled sends and automations; the key safeguard is using segmentation to exclude unengaged or recently imported contacts until they’re validated.

For higher risk sends, you can throttle by splitting segments into smaller batches, warming new domains/senders gradually, and monitoring bounce/complaint signals so you can stop the send before reputation damage compounds.

What should we expect from support if something breaks during migration or a big send—are responses immediate?

Support responsiveness depends on your plan and the channel (ticket, chat, etc.), and neither Klaviyo nor Omnisend should be treated as an instant incident-response team unless you’ve confirmed the SLA on your specific subscription.

For time-sensitive launches, document your rollback plan (pause sends, revert forms, switch DNS/authentication back if needed) so you’re not blocked waiting for a reply when a critical workflow misfires.

If we grow fast, are there scaling ceilings—like contact volume, event volume, or automation complexity—that force operational workarounds?

At scale, the ceiling is often operational: very large segments, heavy event tracking, and many concurrent automations can increase processing time, review overhead, and the chance of conflicting rules in both Klaviyo and Omnisend.

To prevent bottlenecks, standardize event naming, limit redundant triggers, archive unused automations, and periodically audit segments so the system remains predictable as contact and event volumes grow.

Final Thoughts

Our Recommendation

This choice is about which operating model your team can run every week without friction: tightly coordinated lifecycle execution or a lighter, repeatable marketing rhythm.

Choose Klaviyo when you manage a fast cadence across multiple segments and channels, and you can sustain ongoing coordination between marketing, data, and creative. It fits teams that accept operational overhead to keep iteration continuous and tightly governed.

Choose Omnisend when you need a straightforward workflow that stays predictable with limited headcount. It works best for teams that want to launch, monitor, and repeat without building a heavy coordination layer or frequent process changes.

Map the decision to your internal tempo and how much orchestration you can realistically maintain, and the answer becomes clear. Pick Klaviyo for coordinated iteration; pick Omnisend for simple execution.

Unified customer data depth vs guided ecommerce execution

At a Glance

Company Snapshot

Klaviyo

Omnisend

Why These Platforms Feel So Different

Key Differences

Ecommerce depth vs ecommerce simplicity

Email-first vs multi-channel-first

Granular logic vs guided workflows

Advanced segmentation vs simpler audiences

Deeper analysis vs faster insights

Broader ecosystem vs core-store integrations

Feature-by-feature comparison

Feature Explanation: How These Capabilities Differ in Practice

#1 Automation & Flows

#2 Customer Segmentation

#3 Multichannel Messaging

#4 Analytics & Attribution

#5 Ecommerce Data Sync & Triggers

#6 Experimentation / Testing

Pricing & Plans

Klaviyo

Omnisend

Reviews & Ratings

How Klaviyo and Omnisend behave in real marketing workflows

#1 Lifecycle campaign cadence

#2 Audience refresh and targeting changes

#3 Multichannel coordination in a launch

#4 Personalization during ongoing campaigns

#5 Performance visibility and optimization rhythm

#6 List growth and signup workflow management

Which Platform Should You Choose?

Klaviyo

Omnisend

Frequently Asked Questions

Our Recommendation