ConvertKit and Klaviyo are both seasoned players in the email marketing industry. Launched a decade ago, both platforms established themselves as go-to email marketing tools.
ConvertKit caters to the needs of content creators, while Klaviyo excels at serving the ecommerce sector with its robust ecommerce marketing features.
This review compares their functionalities and limitations based on hands-on interactions with these tools and provides an impartial recommendation for your business.
ConvertKit vs Klaviyo: Quick overview
ConvertKit and Klaviyo have garnered plenty of positive reviews from users.
On the Shopify App Store, Klaviyo has a rating of 3.9, while ConvertKit has yet to get any reviews on the platform. However, this is insufficient to determine whether Klaviyo or ConvertKit is the most suitable choice for your needs.
To make an informed decision between ConvertKit and Klaviyo, it is important to thoroughly analyze their respective marketing features, user-friendliness, AI capabilities, customer support services, integration capabilities, and pricing structures.
This comparative analysis delves into the various features of ConvertKit vs Klaviyo. By the end of this analysis, you’ll thoroughly understand where each platform excels over the other.
First, here’s a quick summary.
According to this summary, both tools offer similar functionalities. However, we’ll examine how these functionalities differ in the following section.
ConvertKit vs Klaviyo comparison: Feature by feature
Both ConvertKit and Klaviyo provide critical marketing features.
However, significant differences in each feature’s capabilities and usability impact your results.
Let’s get into these details.
Ease of getting started
The signup process for both ConvertKit and Klaviyo is simple. Neither of the tools needs a credit card during the signup process.
Configuring both ConvertKit and Klaviyo settings is easy as well. The process of changing the initial information is effortless. However, things get a little different in the navigation area. In Klaviyo, it is similar to other popular email marketing platforms.
With ConvertKit, the navigation isn’t standard. The titles and the logic aren’t similar to other platforms. However, it didn’t take long for us to figure the menu out.
From ConvertKit’s interface, we could tell that it’s not a generic email marketing platform. It targets creators using unique features like:
- The Tip Jar
- Creator Network
- ConvertKit Commerce
Navigating Klaviyo is easy, but some advanced features require prior experience. For instance, we faced a few hiccups when mapping data for contact import. The exact process goes smoothly on other platforms like Omnisend and Mailchimp.
Klaviyo takes the lead in this round. Klaviyo’s navigation is comparable to other tools, meaning getting started is less challenging.
Building an email campaign
Using the email-building wizard at ConvertKit isn’t troublesome. Tasks like naming the campaign and adding the preheader feel straightforward. The only challenge we experienced was changing images in the email–it was hard to align them.
However, if you prefer a drag-and-drop email builder, you’ll find it on Klaviyo, not its competitor’s platform.
You’ll also appreciate Klaviyo’s product content block. It lets you pull products directly from the store, similar to what you find at Omnisend and Mailchimp. You can use it to add static or dynamic product recommendations, depending on the nature of your campaign.
Both Klaviyo and ConvertKit offer email templates.
ConvertKit has 15 templates. This is limited, considering Klaviyo offers over 90 templates for different occasions.
As for the email types, both ConvertKit and Klaviyo let you send regular and automated campaigns. With Klaviyo, however, you can create omnichannel campaigns with SMS and mobile push notifications.
Do the tools offer A/B test capabilities?
ConvertKit lets you test the subject line only. Whereas Klaviyo goes further than this, enabling users to test the following:
- CTA
- Send time
- Subject line
- Preview text
- Senders’ name
- Content organization
Personalization is available in both tools. The customization on ConvertKit is basic. Using merge tags, you can add the subscribers’ names to the email content.
With Klaviyo, you can take personalization to a higher level. You can provide personalized product recommendations based on recently browsed or liked products.
Both tools have shown a commitment to offering distinct features.
Klaviyo offers an AI-powered subject line assistant to create more effective subject lines. This feature includes an integrated learning tool with tips to make the subject line more compelling.
ConvertKit has:
- Digital product cards to sell digital products directly from emails
- Interactive elements like countdown timers
- A resend to unopeners functionality
Klaviyo wins again. The drag-and-drop builder, advanced personalization, robust A/B testing, and omnichannel capabilities make it the better choice.
Marketing automation
In this section, we’ll analyze their automation capabilities.
The marketing automation builder in Klaviyo is very powerful, and UX is similar to what you’ll find on other leading email marketing platforms.
On ConvertKit, we needed some time to figure out differences between the “Automate” section and “Sequences.”
This aside, we were impressed with the automation flexibility offered by ConvertKit. You can build custom paths for your subscribers with multiple entry points and many other valuable functionality.
Whether you use ConvertKit or Klaviyo, you can set up conditional splits in your flow. Klaviyo also lets you add webhooks, but this feature isn’t very user-friendly.
Klaviyo stands out with its advanced behavior-triggered personalization capabilities, and lets you combine SMS and email in a single flow. ConvertKit only supports email.
There’s a bit of a difference in their email automation templates. While ConvertKit offers 28, Klaviyo offers 10.
ConvertKit’s templates are mainly for content creators, such as:
- Pitch your book with a free chapter
- Pitch your new album with a new song
- Invite subscribers to a fan club
- Welcome subscribers to your podcast
Klaviyo’s templates are more ecommerce-focused like:
- Welcome series
- Abandoned cart
- Browse abandonment
- Order updates
Klaviyo wins. The advanced personalization capabilities and inclusion of SMS in communication workflows are valuable features for ecommerce store owners.
Signup forms and landing pages
Both Klaviyo and ConvertKit offer customizable, modern, and responsive signup form templates.
ConvertKit offers nine templates in a variety of display formats, including:
- Inline embeds
- Modal (popup)
- Slide-in
- Sticky bars
With ConvertKit, you can add dropdowns or checkboxes and utilize opt-in incentives to inspire action. However, it doesn’t let you publish the forms directly on your site. You have to use an embed code.
Conversely, Klaviyo lets you publish your form automatically on your website by clicking ‘Publish.’
Klaviyo also offers over 50 templates that include:
- Multi-step forms
- Popups
- Fly-outs
- Teasers
- Full-page forms
- Embedded forms
Klaviyo lets you use on-site activity and other customer data to make your forms highly targeted. You can also conduct A/B tests on the forms, a feature its rival lacks.
Both tools provide analytics that let you see which forms bring the most signups. With Klaviyo, you can also check out visitors’ devices.
Regarding landing pages, ConvertKit offers over 50 templates you can use to create fully responsive landing pages. Klaviyo, on the other hand, lacks a landing page builder, but you can get creative with the full-page signup form and turn it into a landing page. However, it will only be for email capture, not for selling products, like ConvertKit.
It’s a tie. Klaviyo wins in the area of signup forms. Users can create hyper-targeted, multi-step forms and conduct A/B tests on them. ConvertKit wins in the area of landing pages. It’s an important feature that Klaviyolacks entirely.
Segmentation
In this section, we’ll explore Convertkit vs Klaviyo segmentation functionality.
There are seven pre-built segments on Klaviyo. For ConvertKit, you need to create your own from scratch.
However, this doesn’t mean the segmentation functionality in ConvertKit is weak. It offers several powerful segmentation capabilities, such as:
- Tags
- A filtering system
- Engagement scoring
We discovered that ConvertKit provides numerous location-based segmentation options to make your segments more precise, such as:
- City
- Distance from the city
- Country
- Postal code
These segmentation options make it easy to target local markets.
Klaviyo, on the other hand, lets you create as many segments as you need based on factors like:
- Location, including whether they’re within the EU (GDPR) and proximity to a specific location
- Purchase history
- Products viewed
- Tendency to use discounts
- Engagement
- Customer lifetime value
- Churn risk
- Average order value
However, you need prior experience with Kalviyo to navigate its diverse segmentation capabilities effectively.
In this segmentation battle of ConvertKit vs Kalviyo, Klaviyo wins. The ability to segment based on advanced filters like predictive analytics and on-site behavior is impressive.
Analytics
Both Klaviyo and ConvertKit offer analytics. However, Klaviyo’s analytics are more extensive than ConvertKit’s.
ConvertKit’s analytics include:
- Email engagement rates
- Transaction report
- Creator’s Network report
- Advanced deliverability report
- List growth report
- Automation report
In Klaviyo, you get ten custom reports delivered to your email. If you need more, the support team is ready to help.
Klaviyo provides the following analytics:
- Campaign engagement metrics
- Conversion metrics
- Website visits
- Conversion funnel report to compare conversion metrics across different campaigns
Klaviyo offers predictive analytics as well. You can predict a customer’s next order, spending capacity, lifetime value, probability of churning, and more.
Additionally, there’s a benchmarking feature that lets you compare the performance of your campaigns against other players in the field.
Although Klaviyo’s extensive analytics can be overwhelming for beginners, knowing they’re available if needed is comforting.
Klaviyo outdoes its rival again. The wide range of analytics provides substantial insights into ways you can improve your marketing campaigns.
Customer support
Next in this ConvertKit vs Klaviyo comparison is the level of customer support available.
ConvertKit offers 24/7 live chat and email support to customers on paid plans. However, users on the free plan only get community support but no email, chat or phone support.
We’re impressed with the efficiency of ConvertKit’s support team. In under 3 minutes, we had a response to our query.
ConvertKit’s support team provides other support resources, like:
- ConvertKit community forum
- Creator university
- Knowledge base
- Educational videos
- Blog
- Podcasts
Klaviyo offers email support to free plan users, but it’s only available for the first 60 days.
Customers subscribed to the paid plans receive chat and email support services 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. However, our evaluation indicates that the response time of these support channels is slow.
Much like ConvertKit, Klaviyo doesn’t provide phone support.
Other support resources from Klaviyo include:
- Klaviyo academy
- Customer education and live training
- Klaviyo community
- Blog
ConvertKit takes a big win here. Its customer support is 24/7 and very fast.
Integrations
Which tool offers better integration capabilities, ConvertKit or Klaviyo?
ConvertKit supports over 120 integrations, including Shopify. Klaviyo supports over 300 integrations, including Shopify and Wix.
They both offer the capability to integrate more tools using Zapier.
In the battle of integrations, Klaviyo vs ConvertKit, the result is a tie. Both tools offer a wide range of integrations for ecommerce, and Zapier is available to help you integrate almost any app you need.
Compatibility with other channels
Which tool is best suited for an omnichannel marketing approach, ConvertKit or Klaviyo? Find out in the section below.
In addition to email marketing, ConvertKit only offers Facebook custom audiences to help with ad targeting.
This can be limiting for businesses looking for a comprehensive and effective approach to reaching and engaging their target market.
Klaviyo lets you send emails, SMS, and app push notifications. Facebook and Google retargeting are also available, but only through integrations.
Klaviyo takes the win. It supports an omnichannel marketing approach.
Generative AI tools
This Convertkit vs Klaviyo comparison would be incomplete without comparing their generative AI capabilities. Sadly, ConvertKit doesn’t provide any generative AI features.
Meanwhile, Klaviyo has incorporated generative AI capabilities in the form of:
- SMS assistant: Generates a variety of compliant SMS copies
- Subject line assistant: Provides engaging subject line ideas
- Suggested text responses: Evaluates incoming text messages and recommends a response
Klaviyo wins unmatched. It offers various generative AI tools to create effective content based on the desired outcomes.
Price comparison
This ConvertKit vs Klaviyo comparison is complete with analyzing their prices. Both tools have free and premium plans, which we’ll compare in the following section.
Free plans comparison
ConvertKit’s free plan supports 1,000 subscribers, while Klaviyo’s free plan supports 250 contacts.
However, there’s quite a limit to the features available on ConvertKit’s free plan.
In contrast, Klaviyo’s free plan is quite generous. Users get all the features that paid plan users get.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison.
- Send unlimited email broadcasts to 1,000 subscribers
- Unlimited landing pages
- Free recommendations
- Audience tagging and segmentation
- Unlimited forms
- Capability to sell digital products and recommendations
- Community support
- Send 500 emails to 500 subscribers and 150 free SMS and MMS credits (US, CA, UK, AUS, NZ)
- Automation builder
- Personalized benchmarks
- Advanced segmentation
- Unlimited forms
- Personalized product recommendations
- 60 days email support
Paid plans comparison
Which tool offers a better paid plan, Klaviyo or ConvertKit? We’ll explore the paid plans in the following section.
ConvertKit offers two paid plans, Creator and Creator Pro, each with a 14-day free trial period. This allows users to explore the platform before subscribing to a plan.
For Klaviyo, once your contact list exceeds 250, you can choose from two paid plans—Email and SMS.
This ConvertKit vs Klaviyo comparison table provides a clearer comparison of their pricing.
The main difference in Klaviyo’s paid plans is that the Email and SMS plan offers more capacity to send SMS campaigns. Meanwhile, the Email plan offers only 150 free monthly SMS/MMS credits.
ConvertKit’s Creator Pro plan is almost twice the price of the Creator plan, offering advanced features critical to growing an ecommerce business.
Klaviyo’s Email and SMS plans are ideal for conducting comprehensive omnichannel marketing campaigns.
If you only want to execute simple email campaigns, ConvertKit’s Creator Pro supports unlimited emails.
Summary: Which one wins?
Which tool wins in this ConvertKit vs Klaviyo comparison?
Before we get started, here’s a quick overview of ConvertKit vs Klaviyo features.
3.8
4.6
Up to 500 – $29
Up to 1,000 – $29
Up to 5,000 – $79
Up to 10,000 – $119
Up to 50,000 – $379
Up to 100,000 – $679
500 subscribers – $20
1000 subscribers – $30
5000 subscribers – $100
10,000 subscribers – $150
50,000 subscribers – $720
100,000 subscribers – $1,380
- Up to 1,000 subscribers
- Unlimited landing pages
- Unlimited forms
- Unlimited broadcasts
- Audience tagging and segmentation
- Selling of digital products and subscriptions
- Community support
- Free recommendations
- Up to 250 contacts
- 500 monthly email sends
- The vast majority of platform features
- Mobile push notifications (beta)
- Built-in CDP
- 150 free monthly SMS/MMS credits (including applicable SMS carrier fees)
- Email support for the first 60 days
- A lot of features for creators
- Templates and automation tailored for creators
- Great support
- Pre-built signup forms and automation workflows that can work out of the box
- Beautiful email templates
- Very good analytics and reports
- Outstanding segmentation
- Unusual interface
- No AI tools
- No other channels
- Expensive
- It doesn’t have unique coupon codes
- There are no marketing gamification options
- This tool gets expensive very quickly
- For beginners, the learning curve might be too steep. It’s more suitable for advanced users
- It’s best for online creators like bloggers, freelancers, educators, etc.
- It’s best for Ecommerce, advanced users
- Ecommerce brands
- Email marketing beginners, marketers on a budget, and non-profit organizations
From this ConvertKit vs Klaviyo comparison, it’s evident that both tools target different markets.
If you’re a content creator, ConvertKit can be perfect for you. For ecommerce business owners or marketers, Klaviyo is a more suitable choice.
However, if you’re on a budget and aim to sell digital products, go for Flodesk or tinyEmail. If you have little experience using email marketing software, but aim to do ecommerce marketing, go for Omnisend.
Omnisend offers the same capabilities as Klaviyo, and you’ll get other solid features like gamification and unique coupon codes. The user interface is also beginner-friendly, and the price is more budget-friendly.
Read full reviews
Our team strives to be accurate and unbiased in reviewing email tools. However, we recognize that mistakes can happen, and it’s essential for us to stay up to date. If you come across any errors or things that need to be reviewed again, please let us know.
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