What is Klaviyo, and is it worth it for your store

Klaviyo is a marketing platform for ecommerce brands that sends email, SMS and other messages based on what each customer does in your store. It connects to Shopify and similar platforms, pulls in every order, product and visit, and uses that data to decide who gets which message and when. Klaviyo describes itself as a B2C CRM: one customer database with the marketing tools built on top of it.

Whether it is worth it depends less on the tool than on your store. Below is what it does, how it charges you, and the cases where we would recommend it and where we would not.

A note before we start: we are a Klaviyo partner and it is the platform we use in most of the accounts we run. That is why every feature and condition below comes from Klaviyo's own pages, checked on October 5, 2026, and linked at the end. We also say where it is not the right choice.

Klaviyo is a customer database first, an email tool second

Most email tools start from a list of addresses. Klaviyo starts from a profile: one record per person with everything they have done in your store. Pages viewed, products added to the cart, orders, amount spent, emails opened. Messages are the last step, not the first.

That changes how you work. You do not send "to the list". You send to "people who bought twice and have not ordered in 90 days", and that group updates itself every time someone buys.

Klaviyo's about page says it was founded in 2012 by Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen and has over 205,000 paying customers in more than 100 countries.

What Klaviyo does in practice

These are the parts an ecommerce brand actually uses day to day.

Email. Campaigns (one-off sends, like a launch or a sale) and flows (automatic sequences triggered by an action). Klaviyo lists over 160 templates and more than 70 pre-built flows on its email page.

SMS and other channels. SMS lives in the same flows as email, so one abandoned cart sequence can mix both. Klaviyo also offers mobile push, WhatsApp and RCS, although most brands start and stay with email and SMS.

Flows. This is where the money is. Welcome, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, browse abandonment, post-purchase, back in stock. Each one starts on its own when a customer does something, and runs every day without anyone pressing send.

Segmentation. Segments built from any mix of behavior and purchase data, updated in real time. This is what lets you send less and better: fewer campaigns to everyone, more to the right group.

Prediction. For each customer, Klaviyo estimates predicted lifetime value, churn risk and the expected date of their next order. It only switches on with enough history: at least 500 customers with an order, 180 days of order history, orders in the last 30 days and some customers with three or more orders.

Reviews, service and AI. Klaviyo also sells product reviews, a customer service agent and Composer, an AI tool that drafts campaigns from a prompt. Useful extras, but not the reason to choose the platform.

How it connects to Shopify

The Shopify integration is the reason many stores pick Klaviyo. Once installed, it syncs customer profiles, orders and the product catalog. With the Klaviyo app embed turned on in your theme, it also tracks behavior on the site: viewed product, added to cart, viewed collection and site searches.

Subscribers sync both ways. Someone who accepts email marketing at checkout lands in Klaviyo, and email and SMS consent changes flow back to Shopify.

One detail catches a lot of stores out: if the app embed is off, the browsing and cart events do not arrive, and the flows that depend on them never fire. It is the first thing we check when we audit an account.

Klaviyo also connects to BigCommerce, Magento and other platforms, and to more than 350 apps. Shopify is simply where the integration is deepest.

How Klaviyo charges you

Klaviyo bills by active profiles: any profile that can receive a message. Unsubscribed, suppressed and deleted profiles do not count. That is a real difference from tools that bill every contact in your account, unsubscribes included.

The free plan covers up to 250 active profiles, 500 emails a month and $5 of mobile messages a month. When you go over either limit, the account stops sending until the next billing cycle or until you upgrade.

Paid plans go up in tiers by number of active profiles, and SMS is billed on top if you use it. We do not repeat the tiers here: our Klaviyo pricing calculator has all of them and shows the monthly price for your profile count.

The useful habit, whatever plan you are on, is to remove or suppress profiles that never engage. You stop paying for them, and your deliverability improves.

When Klaviyo makes sense and when it does not

This is the table we use in a first call with a brand.

If you are weighing it against the obvious alternative, our Klaviyo vs Mailchimp comparison goes through prices, which contacts each one bills and where each one wins.

What we set up first in a new account

When a brand moves to Klaviyo, the order matters more than the number of things you build.

1. Sending domain authenticated. SPF, DKIM and DMARC in place before the first send. You can check yours with our email deliverability checker.
2. Shopify connected with the app embed on. Otherwise half the flows have nothing to trigger them.
3. A sign-up form. Klaviyo can only email people it can identify. The more visitors you identify, the more carts and browsing sessions you can follow up.
4. The four core flows. Welcome, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout and post-purchase. We explain the cart one in detail in our abandoned cart email guide, and you can start the first one from our welcome flow template.
5. Campaigns last. Once the flows are running, campaigns are the layer on top, not the foundation.

Prediction, reviews and the AI tools come after, when there is history to work with.

Sources

Checked on October 5, 2026.

• Klaviyo home page and about Klaviyo
• Klaviyo email marketing
• Klaviyo pricing and free plan
• What an active profile is
• Klaviyo predictive analytics
• Getting started with the Shopify integration