Concerned about Klaviyo Pricing?

Klaviyo Price Increased on September 1, 2022. How does it impact you?

Did you receive one of the emails about Klaviyo’s new pricing? If you have concerns after reading it, you’re not alone! Klaviyo is one of the most popular email marketing tools available for brands and over 100,000 customers use it. Klaviyo announced on July 18, 2022 that their pricing would be increasing across the board by September 1, 2022.  Since then, Klaviyo’s own customers and even their most ardent supporters said a lot about Klaviyo’s pricing:

So, does Klaviyo pricing still fit your store’s needs today?  Is Klaviyo still the best option for you?  Let’s dig in and find out.

Klaviyo’s Pricing Model Today

Klaviyo’s bases their pricing on several things:

• The number of contacts you have in your database
• The number of emails you send to them per month
• The number of SMS messages you send (if you use their SMS package)

Klaviyo pricing tiers look like this today:

Klaviyo charges you depending on what you use:

There are several aspects of Klaviyo’s pricing that are confusing and frustrating to consumers, including:

• Email pricing is based solely on contacts, whether you are sending to them or not.  This number never goes down over time, so unless you are diligently cleaning your email contacts out every 90 days, you’re being charged for contacts you’re not using.
• You have strict limits on the number of emails you can send to a particular contact, even at the highest Klaviyo pricing tiers.  Most tiers have a limit of sending 5 emails per month to a single email address.  This becomes frustrating to anyone who has complex flows and multiple promotions going on at any time.
• If you want to store more than 250 contacts, you’re forced to upgrade to a paid plan.

None of this includes the enterprise plan Klaviyo One, which is 20% of your monthly spend if you’re paying more than $10,000/month with Klaviyo.

Which Klaviyo Pricing Plan is best?

Great question.  Let’s discuss each of the tiers and who they might be a good fit for.

Klaviyo’s Free Tier

What you get: 250 contacts, up to 500 emails sent (2 email sends per contact).  150 SMS/MMS credits.  Custom email template creation, import and account creation.

Best for: Brands getting started who already know Klaviyo’s workflow tool and don’t mind managing the complex setup themselves.

Not a fit for: Anyone with over 250 contacts.

Limits that you should watch for: The 500 emails sent (2 per contact) is very easy to hit, and once you do hit that limit, unless you upgrade, all of your email sends will stop until the next month rolls around.  SMS/MMS credits are also easy to exhaust if you’re not sending to US-based contacts (e.g. UK contacts require 5 credits/send).  There’s no live chat customer support available at this tier.

Klaviyo’s Email Tier

What you get: Up to 150,000 contacts.  Sends start at 5,000 emails/month, but you still have limits on how many emails each contact can receive in a month (10).  Live chat and email customer support available.

Best for: Good for small-to-medium-businesses (SMBs) that are established and know Klaviyo or are working with an agency that knows it.  Still more expensive than other options on the market.

Not a fit for: Brands that are growing very quickly and can’t afford a fast-increasing email marketing bill.  Brands that don’t have the time to invest in creating all required flows for their store.

Limits that you should watch for: Klaviyo will auto-upgrade your account as your usage goes up (sending more emails, getting more contacts, etc).  Auto-upgrading can increase your Klaviyo prices quite a bit if you hit a high traffic period (e.g. a sale promotion, a successful paid ad campaign, or a holiday event like Black Friday).  Klaviyo does NOT auto-downgrade your account when the traffic or sales go down, so you will remain at the HIGHEST PRICE until you manually change it.  This can result in overcharging.

Klaviyo’s Email + SMS Tier

What you get: Up to 150,000 contacts.  Sends start at 5,000 emails/month, but you still have limits on how many emails each contact can receive in a month (10).  SMS scales up to 450,000 messages per month at a relatively high cost.  Live chat and email customer support available.

Best for: Brands making more than $3+ million a year.  Brands with enterprise scale and needs.  Brands working with high end agencies that are well-versed in Klaviyo.

Not a fit for: Brands making less than $1 million a year.  Hard to get the value from this tier unless your business complexity is a certain size and level.  Better options exist with less complexity and more value for your money.

Limits that you should watch for: This plan is the most expensive option for brands, so be prepared to pull out your highest limit credit cards.  As mentioned above, Klaviyo will auto-upgrade your account as your usage goes up (sending more emails or SMS, getting more contacts, etc).  Auto-upgrading can increase your Klaviyo prices quite a bit if you hit a high traffic period (e.g. a sale promotion, a successful paid ad campaign, or a holiday event like Black Friday).  Klaviyo does NOT auto-downgrade your account when the traffic or sales go down, so you will remain at the HIGHEST PRICE until you manually change it.  This can result in overcharging.  SMS/MMS credits are quite expensive, even when purchased at this level.

How does Klaviyo compare to Recapture?

We have a full article that compares Klaviyo vs. Recapture in terms of features.  Here are a few highlights that might be of interest to you when considering Klaviyo pricing vs. Recapture pricing.

Klaviyo Pricing vs. Recapture Pricing table

Klaviyo and Recapture have a lot in common. Both offer drag and drop email builders and many customization options. Both platforms support triggered email automations for both email and SMS campaigns. And, of course, they both support a variety of third party integrations.

But when it comes to pricing, Recapture wins the day.

With Recapture, you have three pricing plans to choose from:

• Cart Recovery: Free up to $500 revenue recovered for your store.  Each tier allows you to recover more revenue, starting at $29/month.  Includes abandoned cart recovery, winbacks, and post purchase emails along with popups and Recapture’s famous customer support and Live Cart Feed.
• Email + Cart Recovery: Everything on Cart Recovery plus the ability to send promotional (broadcast) emails, too.  Starts at $48/month.
• Email + Cart Recovery + SMS: Everything on Cart Recovery and Email, plus the ability to send SMS recovery texts and order updates, too.  Starts at $49/month.

Recapture is less expensive than Klaviyo in virtually every plan. Just check out the chart below:

Recapture’s pricing is value-based and scales with your business.

• If your store does well one month, and then has a slowdown the next, Recapture will scale our price accordingly and you won’t be charged more during your slow times.  You also don’t need to manually change our pricing plans–we’ll do it automatically.
• Klaviyo’s auto-upgrading is one way.  Once you’re on a higher plan, you’ll always remain on that higher plan unless you manually downgrade it.

Recapture is quick to set up, simple to manage and easy to understand

• Recapture makes it easy for brands that are managing their own email marketing to get email marketing they need for their store.  No lengthy training required.  No expensive agencies to hire.  Get a clear picture of how Recapture is performing with clear graphs and reports.  No PhD required.
• Klaviyo is powerful, but to unleash that power requires expensive freelancers or agencies that will have to set up and manage it for you because it’s complicated and unintuitive.  Managing Klaviyo for smaller brands can be a full time job on its own.

Recapture has Customer Success Managers available for paid accounts at any tier.

• Recapture’s mission is to make your store more successful with our service.  We will always help any account with suggestions about emails to send, how to improve your content or to get on a call and make sure you’re getting the most out of Recapture.  All at no additional cost to you!  Your success is our success.
• Klaviyo will only assist you with a CSM if you’re paying $2,000 a month or more.

Recapture’s customer service is unbeatable

• Recapture customers rave about our support:  high-quality, personal and helpful.  We have live chat, phone and email support, all very responsive and dedicated to making your store successful.
• Klaviyo has a history of customer support issues and live chat isn’t available at the lowest tiers.

Current Klaviyo users can migrate to Recapture for free — regardless of their monthly spend. We’ll help you recreate your existing segments, automations, and popups. We’ll have you up and running in no time at all.  Concierge migration is done at no charge to you.

Apart from the price, Recapture offers a lot of valuable features that Klaviyo no longer has due to its most recent pricing update.

• All paid accounts at Recapture can benefit from a Customer Success Manager, no matter your spend with us. At Klaviyo, you have to spend $2,000+ to get someone’s attention.
• Recapture supports unlimited email sends with our fixed-price sending plans. Unlike Klaviyo, your brand can scale worry-free once it finds its stride.
• Recapture will actively scrub and warm up large lists to avoid deliverability issues–a common complaint that Klaviyo doesn’t address.
• Recapture also offers you views into your customer’s real-time behavior with our Live Cart Feed, a feature not available on any other platform.

Recapture might be a better option for your store

To sweeten the deal, we’ll give you 30% off your first three months with Recapture if you migrate from Klaviyo.  Just contact us to let us know that you’re switching and we’ll get you set up with the discount, no problem.

If you’re using Klaviyo for email marketing and unhappy about the pricing changes, Recapture can help you drop your monthly bill in a matter of minutes. And with a 30% off discount along with free concierge migration, your migration is risk free.  You can start on whatever plan works best for you.Ready to give us a try for your email marketing campaigns? Make the switch today — or try Recapture for free.

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