Email marketers and businesses already use or know of Klaviyo and Mailchimp. Many of us use these highly competitive tools to achieve our email marketing goals. But the truth is that most of you are busy raging the ongoing battle of Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp when you should be looking for a tool that is worth investing your time and money in! That tool is SendHive.

Before I explain why SendHive trumps these tools (on two huge metrics), let’s dive deeper into the Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp debate.

Klaviyo and Mailchimp often take digs at each other to get users to switch over to their platform. I wouldn’t lie - they do make some good points as well. Mailchimp claims that it offers extensive functionality and is cheaper than Klaviyo. While Klaviyo hits back with the low-blow, stating that Mailchimp is only good for sending emails, but Klaviyo will help you make money.

As an email marketer or eCommerce business, you should be able to cut through the BS and understand the difference between these two tools. It will help you make an informed decision for your company. It will also help you understand why my earlier claim about SendHive is correct.

Having used these platforms, I can give you an overview of their features and elaborate on what works and what doesn’t.

Klaviyo Main Features

Klaviyo is a lot more data-driven than Mailchimp. It will offer your company some top-tier data analytics to grow your business, regardless of your industry. Klaviyo can also help you communicate effortlessly with your customers and offer them a personalized user experience. With Klaviyo, you can grow your contact lists

To understand the Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp debate, let’s explore Klaviyo’s main features:

Real-Time Customer Data

Klaviyo’s native integrations will help you view, organize, and manage all the data related to your customers on your eCommerce platform. The vast integration directory with varied platforms will help you manage customer data the way you need to manage it.

Klaviyo also has an advanced CRM to help you delve through heaps of data on each contact. You can use this CRM to understand customer behavior and actions.

Next comes predictive analytics. As an email marketer, you need to offer personalized experiences to your prospective clients. Predictive analytics will help you cater to the specific needs of each customer. It runs the data via AI.

Here’s how it can help your business grow:

• Predict a customer’s next purchase date
• Determine a customer’s future spending amount
• Predict the number of upcoming purchases
• Calculate customers’ lifetime value to your brand
• Determine the probability of a customer churn
• Predict the average time between a customer’s orders
• Predict various customer characteristics, such as age, gender, and more

With this futuristic tech and predictive data, you can create personalized campaigns with Klaviyo and ultimately grow your business.

Segmentation

With the analytic and predictive magic, you can use the platform to segment your contact list based on various characteristics. Segmentation works wonders. It makes it easier for you to send targeted and relevant emails to customers based on their actions. Plus, targeted emails are a lot more cost-effective than non-targeted emails as they go out to all customers regardless of their engagement percentage with your content/website.

Automation

Automation is another impressive feature that will help you design the ideal customer experience. With effective email automation, you can essentially layout your buyers’ journey on your website and send triggered or behavioral emails based on specific criteria. Now what the F are triggered emails, you ask? Well, these emails essentially help you guide your website users to navigate your site more efficiently.

With this impressive automation, you can boost user engagement, which is all anyone wants. Test out different subject lines or content and send our emails at various times of the day to figure out which combination works like magic for you. Collect the behavioral data you need through these tests and use it to generate more effective email marketing campaigns.

Klaviyo Pros and Cons

Let’s explore the positives first:

Transparency/No Hidden Costs or Fees

If there’s one thing I have learned to appreciate, it’s TRANSPARENCY. While Klaviyo might be charging you more than Mailchimp, it’s upfront about it and promises to give you your money’s due. Plus, it doesn’t rack up the charges through annoying additional charges or fees. All you have to do is join the platform to avail its features.

Here are the additional features you benefit from if you go for the monthly subscription:

• Unique coupon codes 
• Back-in-stock automation 
• Advanced pop-ups 
• Segmentation 
• Multivariate testing 
• Zapier integration – end-users to integrate the web apps you use with the platform

Mind you, Mailchimp’s subscription does not include these features.

Integration with Shopify

If you’re looking for a solid plus, you’ve got it right here. Klaviyo offers impressive integration with Shopify – yes, the leading eCommerce platform for online businesses and retail point-of-sale systems. This seamless integration will allow you to use valuable customer data to grow your business.

Here comes the kicker, though:

With every $1 spent on Klaviyo, a Shopify merchant will earn $85! Plus, with this tool, you can effectively boost your online conversion rate via social media and targeted email marketing.

Wide Customer Reach

Klaviyo will boost your engagement rate. It helps you use multiple channels to engage with highly targeted prospective customers and leads. These channels include the web, social media, email, and more. So, you can funnel users from varied platforms with Klaviyo.

Onboarding Support

Klaviyo’s offers merchants with more than 12,500 ecommerce contacts a devoted customer success manager. This person will offer you impeccable onboard support, store-expanding help, and strategic advice.

Klaviyo Cons

Now, let’s explore the areas where Klaviyo lacks as an email marketing platform:

Higher Cost

As I’ve mentioned above, Klaviyo is undoubtedly super costly. Even though you can create a free account and import your data to the platform, you will need its monthly subscription to get things truly kicking. The platform allows you to send 250 contacts a maximum of 500 emails free of cost.

But once you reach 251 contacts, you will have to purchase its monthly subscription, which is $51 more than Mailchimp’s monthly subscription.

• Klaviyo: $150/month
• Mailchimp: $99/month 

To be fair, Klaviyo does offer some additional features in its subscription that Mailchimp does not. These include SMS text messages, unlimited monthly email sends, phone push notifications, segmentation reports, and more. But it ends up making the subscription costly. And not everyone is willing to cough up the larger monthly sum.

Support

F-. They have the worst support ever. You open a ticket and get Tier-1. They don’t know anything. Except to get some copy-pasta from their internal wiki. It will neither answer your question nor help you in any way. Complain again, after you try rebooting your computer (only half joking here) and you might luck out with a Tier-2 support agent that has some remote knowledge of your issue.

Deliverability

B. It’s pretty good. If you go to promo, don’t expect them to fix it for you…cause THEY AIN’T GONNA! Again, if you luck out with GOOD deliverability, don’t worry about this one. If at one point you start having issues, call a priest for your last rites because you are stuck with their F- support (Mailchimp BARELY beats them on this metric!)

Mailchimp Main Features

Now, let’s talk about Mailchimp and what makes it different from Klaviyo. Right off the bat – many users feel that Mailchimp is easier to use and less data-driven than Klaviyo. But the real challenge lies in understanding which one you should use for which type of eCommerce.

As competitors, these platforms offer many similar features which can confuse you further regarding the ultimate Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp battle.

So, let’s explore Mailchimp’s main features:

Manage Audience Data with Tags

Mailchimp also uses a central location to store customer data. You can use the data center to gain key insights about your audience. As explored earlier, Klaviyo uses segmentation to help you label your customers. On the flipside, Mailchimp allows you to create relevant customer tags to manage your audience and create email campaigns.

Segmentation

Much like with Klaviyo, people use Mailchimp to segment their contacts. But the segmentation is determined by different data sets that your site collects. This data can include user engagement, location, and sign-up information.

Taking things up a notch, Mailchimp offers in-built segments based on relevant data. This can include campaign activity, purchase history, and more. It sorts your customers into these relevant segments. It helps you reach and target contacts with similar results. Plus, with this type of advanced segmentation, you can use nested conditions. In layman terms, you can combine your data to create a detailed or comprehensive segment for high-level personalization.

Automation

Mailchimp has an automated customer journey builder. It essentially helps you chat with your customers, and the conversation continues automatically. These automated customer journey builders include data or behavior-based automation, welcome automation, and more. Mailchimp also offers more automation features to retarget customers who abandon their carts.

You will also benefit from automated order notifications and product recommendations based on key segmentation. Again, it’s all about personalization. I CANNOT STRESS ON IT ENOUGH. Mailchimp uses data on customer behavior, actions, engagement, interaction, and predicted characteristics to generate relevant and personalized emails.

Mailchimp Pros and Cons

If you want more clarity on the Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp war, take a look at Mailchimp’s pros and cons.

Mailchimp Pros

Let’s explore the positives first:

Numerous Integration Options

While Klaviyo has its ace, i.e., Shopify in the race, Mailchimp has many more integration options. Klaviyo offers 100 integrations, but Mailchimp beats the platform with its whopping 250 integration options. But it does not include Shopify. So, if you’re a Shopify merchant, you should consider looking for better affordable email marketing tools.

Affordability

I’ve talked about how costly Klaviyo can be. On the flipside, Mailchimp’s subscription is a lot more affordable. Mailchimp’s primary purpose is to help you generate highly personalized emails to impress your contacts. It does so fairly well for the monthly sum it demands. But if you want more data-driven and predictive features, Klaviyo is better suited for you. However, if you don’t want to pay so much, you will need to look for a different platform.

Mailchimp Cons

Now, let’s see why Mailchimp is not the best of the best out there:

No Shopify Integration

You must have seen this one coming – Mailchimp doesn’t offer Shopify integration. So, its affordable rate is not worth its salt for a Shopify merchant. If you use the platform nonetheless, you will need a third-party provider to connect your Shopify store with your Mailchimp account, defeating the purpose of making things effortless and more convenient.

Limited Automation Options

Since Mailchimp is highly focused on providing an effective email marketing service, it can lack in other departments. These include analytics, data science, and automation tools. Many users feel that its email automation is basic at best as it includes abandoned cart emails and retargeting. Klaviyo offers a more data-driven email automation system.

Support

F+. Seriously, they are too big to care about you. If you aren’t bringing them in 50k+/month (obvious exaggeration is obvious), you aren’t on their radar. Maybe you don’t care.

Deliverability

C. Plan on hitting promos. If you don’t like that, remember their F class support. They are the big guys. Don’t expect much in this department.

SendHive – Rebel with the Best in the Business

Now that you have explored both sides of the Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp argument, let’s get to the real stuff.

The truth is that both Mailchimp and Klaviyo offer features that the other platform lacks. Some businesses will continue to prefer Klaviyo, while others will swear by Mailchimp. But what both these bigwigs lack is the attention to detail and collaborative support team their clients need.

It’s where things get interesting.

I bring your attention to an alternative email marketing platform for your e-commerce business – SendHive.

What makes SendHive stand out among established giants like Mailchimp and Klaviyo is its exceptional service and support to its clients. It gives you the chance to remove yourself from the never-ending Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp debate and use an accessible platform for all businesses – regardless of their location or scale.

It offers brilliant one-on-one support. It will understand your business model and present you with solutions to help you grow. If you face any glitches with the platform, the support team will work with you directly to fix them.

SendHive is the email marketing platform that has given rise to an e-commerce email marketing rebellion against industry bigwigs like Klaviyo and Mailchimp. These platforms are too big to give individual attention to their clients. You will keep running in circles without getting the right answers from them.

On the flipside, SendHive has got your back! Aside from providing solid support, the platform will also connect you with resourceful people that will help you. For instance, if you’re an e-commerce shop, SendHive will connect you with another e-commerce company that can help you. It takes pride in going beyond the usual customer service practices to help its clients.

So, if you’re tired of the Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp debate (because I certainly am), register on SendHive to join a platform that will serve all your needs!