Mailchimp vs. Klaviyo
When it comes to picking an email service provider, there are many options on the market. It can be difficult to know which one will suit your business.
WE’RE GOING TO ANALYZE TWO OF THE PLATFORMS WE USE THE MOST AND WHAT APPLICATIONS WE USE THEM FOR.
We love Klaviyo for its robust E-commerce tracking and integration capabilities, not to mention their top-tier customer support. A particular benefit to Klaviyo is that their free plan tends to cover small businesses just starting out with email marketing, it covers up to 250 subscribers and you’re able to use the full extent of their powerful flow functionality.
Note: Klaviyo’s “flows” mean automated email sequences, each email platform will call these a different term.
Oftentimes, email service providers will hide the more robust automations behind a paywall, we appreciate that you get the full use of the platform while using their free plan.
Another benefit we’ve found by using Klaviyo is their SMS capabilities. Their platform provides the ability to collect and send targeted SMS campaigns without using any additional apps or integrations.
We use Klaviyo when we build Shopify sites. Mailchimp is no longer easily supported by Shopify, you need a separate app to integrate the two platforms. If you have an existing email service provider – Klaviyo has their own integrations to sync all of the valuable data from your existing email lists.
We recommend using Klaviyo if your business is small or if you’re looking for strong E-commerce tracking and integration.
You can learn more about Klaviyo’s pricing here or reach out to us if you have any questions about the platform.
Since Shopify discontinued their support of Mailchimp, we most often use Mailchimp when we’re building Squarespace sites. In terms of E-Commerce tracking with Mailchimp, you’ll need to use a Squarespace extension with your commerce plan in order to collect that data.
When it comes to the free plan of Mailchimp, you’re allowed to have up to 2,000 subscribers – however, how you can target them is limited. You’re required to have only one list and you are limited to a certain number of campaign sends and automations.
Mailchimp is perfectly fine for a business that wants to do email marketing, but it isn’t a priority for the brand. Mailchimp will get your business up and running with minimal effort.
Moving to the paid plans of Mailchimp will allow you to access deeper automation functionality, they’ve recently come out with “Customer Journeys” which resemble the more robust flows of Klaviyo’s platform.
If you want to use SMS marketing with Mailchimp, you will need to use a separate app through their platform, so if your business wants to dive deeper into SMS, that is something to consider.
You can learn more about Mailchimp’s pricing tiers here or let us know if you have any questions about using the platform for your business.
In Conclusion
Email marketing is a key step for your business, it’s important to evaluate your business’s needs and priorities when it comes to your marketing strategy. From there, choosing the right email platform will come down to: 1) what your website platform is 2) your business’s goals in email marketing 3) the price you are willing to pay for an email marketing service.
We hope that this article will get you started thinking about your email service provider, and will prompt you to explore new features and services for your business.