Klaviyo vs Mailchimp: pricing, ecommerce features and which to choose

Klaviyo and Mailchimp are the two names most store owners see first when they look for email marketing. Both are mature, both connect to Shopify, and both have a free plan. They come from different places, though. Klaviyo was built around ecommerce data. Mailchimp started as a general newsletter tool and grew into a broad marketing platform for small businesses.

This guide puts the two side by side so you can decide quickly. Every fact about Klaviyo and Mailchimp comes from their own websites and help centers, read in October 2026. Plans change often, so check both pricing pages with your own list size before you commit.

Klaviyo vs Mailchimp at a glance

The short version: Klaviyo goes deeper on ecommerce data and automation. Mailchimp is easier to start with and covers more general marketing jobs. Most of the decision comes down to how much your store depends on automated, data-driven email.

Pricing: how each one bills

The biggest practical difference is not the headline price but what you pay for.

How Klaviyo bills

Klaviyo prices its email plans by active profiles, with a monthly email send allowance included in each tier. Its help center defines an active profile as any profile that can be emailed through Klaviyo, regardless of consent status. Suppressed profiles (for example, people who unsubscribed or hard-bounced) don't count toward the bill. A profile with only a phone number doesn't count toward the email plan either.

A few rules worth knowing, as of October 2026:

• Free plan: up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus a small monthly allowance for mobile messages and for Composer, Klaviyo's AI agent.
• Going over: on a paid plan, Klaviyo doesn't stop you adding profiles. You are notified and moved to a higher tier for the next billing cycle. On the free plan, sending stops until you are back under the limit.
• Send peaks: if you run out of sends in a cycle, you can buy a one-time overage, upgrade, or stop sending until the next cycle.
• SMS: text messaging is billed separately from the email plan, as prepaid spend or credits.

Klaviyo's pricing page doesn't print a fixed price list. It uses a calculator where you enter your profile count, so the only way to get your real number is to try it there.

How Mailchimp bills

Mailchimp bills by contacts and plan tier, and each tier has a monthly send limit tied to your contact limit. One detail surprises people: Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your total. Only archived, cleaned and deleted contacts are excluded.

As of October 2026, from Mailchimp's pricing page and help center:

• Free: up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with a daily limit of 250.
• Essentials: send limit of 10 times your contact limit.
• Standard: send limit of 12 times your contact limit.
• Premium: send limit of 15 times your contact limit, starting from a 10,000-contact base.
• Going over: if you exceed your contact limit, sending continues but you see an extra charge on your bill. On the free plan, sending is put on hold.

Mailchimp also offers a Pay As You Go option that charges by email credits instead of a monthly fee, with Essentials features. Its pricing page shows introductory discounts that change often, so we won't quote a paid price here.

What this means for your bill

Both tools charge more as your list grows, whether or not you email everyone often. The difference is in who counts:

• With Klaviyo, unsubscribed and suppressed profiles drop out of the bill.
• With Mailchimp, unsubscribed contacts still count until you archive them. Archiving people you no longer email is the simplest way to keep a Mailchimp bill in check.

If your list is large but you email it only a few times a month, contact-based pricing in either tool can feel expensive. That is worth keeping in mind for the last section.

Ecommerce and Shopify depth

Both tools have an official Shopify app. The difference is how much of your store's data each one uses.

Klaviyo and Shopify

Klaviyo's Shopify integration syncs the last 90 days of data first, then runs a full historical sync. After that, new data arrives in real time. It creates a profile for every customer and records events such as Placed Order and Ordered Product, along with delivery data. With the app embed turned on in your theme, it also tracks onsite behavior like Viewed Product and Active on Site, and optionally Added to Cart.

That data feeds everything else: segments, flows, product recommendations and predictive analytics. Klaviyo can also sync some data back to Shopify, such as subscription status and custom profile properties.

For new stores, Klaviyo now has a guided setup inside the Shopify admin that helps you publish a signup form and turn on a welcome email and an abandoned checkout email.

Mailchimp and Shopify

Mailchimp for Shopify syncs customers with their subscription status, order and company data, and discount codes. It also shares customer activity events such as product and collection views, searches, cart actions and checkout steps, which can trigger automations. Most fields sync in near real time; discount codes sync every few hours.

Mailchimp supports abandoned cart automations for connected stores, and it adds the shopper's cart to the email automatically.

Which goes deeper?

Klaviyo treats store data as the center of the product. Mailchimp treats it as one important input among many. For a Shopify store where most email revenue comes from automated flows, Klaviyo's depth matters. For a store that mainly sends a newsletter and a couple of automations, Mailchimp's integration is usually enough.

If you're weighing more than these two, our guide to the best email marketing apps for Shopify covers Shopify Messaging (formerly Shopify Email) and Omnisend too, and Shopify email marketing explains the flows most stores start with.

Automation and segmentation

Klaviyo

Klaviyo calls its automations flows. They are triggered by behavior, and Klaviyo provides templates for the core ecommerce flows: welcome, browse abandonment, cart abandonment, post-purchase and win-back.

Klaviyo's segments are dynamic. They update in close to real time and can use all-time data, so a customer who places a second order moves into the right segment without anyone rebuilding a list.

Klaviyo also offers predictive analytics: predicted customer lifetime value, churn risk and expected date of next order. These need enough history to work. Klaviyo's help center lists the requirements: at least 500 customers who have placed an order, an ecommerce integration or orders sent through the API, at least 180 days of order history with orders in the last 30 days, and some customers with three or more orders. Smaller stores won't see these features until they get there.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp's automations are called Marketing Automation Flows. How much you can build depends on the plan, as of October 2026:

• Free: no automation flows.
• Essentials: flows of up to 4 steps.
• Standard and Premium: up to 200 flows, including enhanced automations.

Mailchimp's AI features page also lists generated segments, which build audiences from behavior and engagement, and predicted attributes that forecast what a customer is likely to do. Pre-built flows with AI-written emails are available to review, edit and schedule.

The practical difference

For simple automations like a welcome email and an abandoned cart reminder, both tools work. Once you want branching flows, segments built from order history, or predictions about who is about to churn, Klaviyo is built for that. On Mailchimp, plan for Standard or higher if automation matters to you.

AI features

Both companies have invested heavily in AI. Here is what each one says its AI does, from its own pages.

Klaviyo AI (K:AI)

Klaviyo groups its AI under K:AI and describes two main agents:

• Composer, a marketing agent that helps turn an idea into a campaign or flow through conversation, and builds marketing for your review. The free plan includes a small monthly allowance of Composer usage.
• Customer Agent, which answers customer questions and handles support tasks using what Klaviyo knows about each customer. Klaviyo's billing documentation lists it as a separately priced product.

Klaviyo also lists AI campaign optimization and personalized send time among its AI capabilities, plus an MCP server and apps for Claude and ChatGPT so you can use Klaviyo data in AI tools. Klaviyo describes K:AI as working with humans in the loop.

Mailchimp's Intuit AI and Intuit Assist

Mailchimp's AI comes from its parent company, Intuit. As of October 2026, Mailchimp's pages describe:

• Write with AI, which drafts and edits email copy inside the editor, adjusting phrasing, length and tone. It's a beta feature included with Standard and higher, available to accounts with a primary address in Australia, Canada, the UK or the US.
• Intuit Intelligence / Intuit Assist (beta), available at no extra cost to certain users on Standard, Premium and Legacy plans.
• Analytics AI, which explains in plain language which campaigns and automations drive revenue, on Standard or Premium.
• Generated segments, send-time optimization and predicted attributes.
• Connectors for ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants on Standard and Premium.

The free and Essentials plans don't include Mailchimp's generative AI features.

How to read this

Both tools let AI help with writing, audiences and timing. Klaviyo is pushing toward agents that plan and build whole campaigns and flows. Mailchimp's AI focuses more on helping inside the editor and explaining results. In both, AI is a part of a larger product, and much of it sits on paid tiers or is still in beta, so check what your plan includes.

Deliverability basics both require

Whichever tool you choose, the inbox rules are the same, and neither tool can fix a domain that skips them. Before your first campaign:

1. Authenticate your sending domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Your email platform gives you the records to add.
2. Send from your own domain, not a free address like @gmail.com.
3. Make unsubscribing easy, with a one-click unsubscribe header and a clear footer link.
4. Keep spam complaints below 0.1%, and never let them reach 0.3%.
5. Only email people who asked. Never import a bought or scraped list.

Gmail and Yahoo enforce these for bulk senders. Our email deliverability guide explains the signals behind inbox placement, and Gmail and Yahoo sender requirements lists the exact rules.

Which should you choose?

There is no single winner. The right pick depends on your store and how you work.

Choose Klaviyo if

• You run a Shopify (or other ecommerce) store and expect automated flows to drive a large share of email revenue.
• You want segments built from orders, products and browsing, updated in real time.
• You have, or will soon have, enough order history to use predictive analytics.
• You want email and SMS in one place and are happy to pay for SMS separately.
• You have someone on the team with time to learn a deep tool.

Choose Mailchimp if

• You mainly send newsletters and announcements, with a few simple automations.
• You want one familiar tool for email and general small-business marketing.
• Your business isn't only ecommerce, or you sell on more than one platform.
• You prefer a gentler learning curve and a well-known editor.
• You're happy to move to Standard once automation and AI matter to you.

By store size

• Just starting (under a few hundred subscribers): both free plans cap you at 250 profiles or contacts and 500 sends a month. Pick the one whose editor you like; you'll outgrow either free plan quickly.
• Growing store with steady orders: this is where Klaviyo's flows and segments tend to earn their cost, especially for abandoned checkout and post-purchase email.
• Large list, infrequent sends: look closely at how each tool counts your list. Clean out unengaged contacts first, and compare the real monthly cost with your numbers.

A third option: EterMail

EterMail is our product, so weigh this section with that in mind. It's a different approach rather than a cheaper copy of either tool.

• AI writes from your brand. EterMail learns your voice, products and positioning from your website and store, then drafts campaigns and flows: welcome, browse abandonment, abandoned checkout, post-purchase, win-back and custom events.
• Every send needs approval. AI only drafts. A person approves before anything goes out, and an approved email is locked. Owners can choose to let a trusted AI app skip approval for some actions.
• You pay per email, not per contact. 1,000 credits cost $1. A marketing email is 2 credits, about $2 per 1,000 emails; a cold email is 5 credits (not charged per send on Ultra). Plans are Free ($0, 1,000 credits a month, up to 1,000 contacts), Starter $19, Growth $49, Pro $149 and Ultra $299.
• More than marketing email. Cold outreach from your own mailboxes and a shared reply inbox are included.
• Read-only Shopify connection that syncs customers, consent, orders, products and open checkouts every 15 minutes.

Where it falls short: EterMail has no SMS, and it isn't in the Shopify App Store yet. You connect your store with a read-only custom app, using our step-by-step guide. If SMS or Klaviyo-level predictive analytics matter to you, Klaviyo is the better fit today.

For a direct comparison, see EterMail as a Klaviyo alternative and EterMail as a Mailchimp alternative.

FAQ

Is Mailchimp better than Klaviyo?

It depends on what you need. Mailchimp is often easier for newsletters and general small-business marketing. Klaviyo goes deeper on ecommerce data, flows and segmentation, which usually matters more for Shopify stores that rely on automation.

Why is Klaviyo so expensive?

Klaviyo charges by active profiles, so the price rises as your emailable list grows, even if you send rarely. SMS and products like Customer Agent are billed separately on top. Keeping your list clean, so unengaged people are suppressed, is the main lever you control.

What are the weaknesses of Klaviyo?

There is a lot to learn, and getting full value from flows and segments takes time. Costs grow with your list, and predictive analytics only appear once you have enough order history (Klaviyo's threshold starts at 500 customers with orders). For a simple newsletter, it can be more tool than you need.

Why are people leaving Mailchimp?

Reasons stores commonly give include contact-based pricing that also counts unsubscribed contacts, automation and AI features that need the Standard plan or higher, and wanting deeper ecommerce automation. Many small businesses still find it a good fit for newsletters and general marketing.

Who is Klaviyo's biggest competitor?

Mailchimp is one of the tools Klaviyo is most often compared with. For Shopify stores, Shopify Messaging (formerly Shopify Email) and Omnisend are also common alternatives. Which one is "biggest" depends on whether you mean all small businesses or ecommerce stores specifically.