Flodesk vs Klaviyo: A feature-by-feature comparison for 2024

The winner – Klaviyo

4.7

Life-changing superhero

What Klaviyo features are better than Flodesk?

Looking for a suitable email marketing platform for your business? This post focuses on two software solutions you may have considered, Flodesk and Klaviyo.

A well-known Klaviyo is made for ecommerce platforms and provides advanced automation, email building, and segmentation features to help online stores boost revenue.

Flodesk is a novice in the field and focuses on enabling content creators, authors, freelancers, etc, to send attractive newsletters and sell digital products.

Evidently, these two platforms target different markets. So, where does your business fit? 

This post takes a deeper dive into each tool’s features and pricing to help you make a confident choice.

Let’s get started.

Flodesk vs Klaviyo: Quick overview

Klaviyo is a more advanced tool than Flodesk, as it has more features and functionality. This makes it a good option for established businesses and experienced marketers. 

Also, since it’s a specialized ecommerce tool, Klaviyo would be too advanced for businesses looking to send generic newsletters. 

Flodesk is known for its ease of use and aesthetics. The platform has fewer features and a minimalistic interface that is extremely easy to navigate and beginner-friendly. Their beautiful email templates are also a huge bonus.

So, which tool will best meet the email marketing requirements of your business the best?

To begin this comparison, here is a table that gives you a quick overview of Flodesk vs Klaviyo features before getting into the details of how they compare.

Flodesk vs Klaviyo comparison: Feature by feature

Most of Flodesk’s features are simple, easy to use, and suitable for businesses looking to send generic newsletters. Conversely, Klaviyo is feature-rich with lots of ecommerce-focused functionalities.

Let’s now cover each of these features in more detail.

Ease of getting started

Both platforms have an easy signup process: no credit card is required, and very few questions to be answered.

Flodesk’s interface is minimalistic, and locating menu items is straightforward. The tool doesn’t provide a getting started wizard, though this doesn’t make it any less beginner-friendly. 

Klaviyo has a user-friendly interface, too, although some of its advanced features may need marketing experience to navigate fully.

Flodesk wins as it is simpler and easier to use than Klaviyo.

Building an email campaign

Both Klaviyo and Flodesk have an email-building tool similar to most top platforms, with an easy drag-and-drop feature. They both have a list of standard content blocks, including:

• Image
• Menu bars
• Social media elements, etc

Klaviyo’s product content block is specifically designed to help ecommerce businesses pull items directly from their product pages into your email campaign. Flodesk’s social media block, on the other hand, allows you to embed images directly from Instagram.

Flodesk’s email-building dashboard is well-organized with an easy-to-follow process. This involves picking a template, customizing the design, and then adding your email campaign details. 

Customizing templates on Klaviyo isn’t as smooth. We found that when adding elements, sometimes they fit the full width, while at other times they fit only in a column. This, however, depends on the structure of your template, which seems to be not so flexible.

Both Flodesk and Klaviyo provide beautiful and modern-looking email templates, but Flodesk’s templates are outstanding in terms of aesthetics. This is one of its biggest selling points. 

Klaviyo provides 90+ beautiful and occasion-ready templates you can customize for your campaigns.

Flodesk’s email campaign builder allows users to add stock images and change image opacity while editing their campaigns. This is a unique feature lacking in Klaviyo.

Klaviyo also has a few unique features of its own that Flodesk lacks. These include:

• Subject line assistant: This helps you generate subject lines using prompt AI technology
• Personalization button: Helps you add subscriber details like name, location, or product listings based on customer browsing history.

While Klaviyo’s builder is feature-packed and can be hard to understand, Flodesk has fewer features and a pretty basic email builder. This means it lacks some essential features such as ecommerce features, A/B testing, and auto-resending.

Klaviyo wins as it has a more advanced email campaign builder. 

Marketing automation

Klaviyo vs Flodest: which tool has better marketing automation capabilities? Let’s find out.

Flodesk’s automation feature is pretty basic compared to what you’ll find in Klaviyo. The workflows offered by Flodesk, however, are good enough for basic email marketing and digital sales needs.

This makes Flodesk the better option for bloggers, freelancers, content creators, etc.

Klaviyo’s automation is advanced with multiple triggers and features such as conditional splits and webhooks. Some of these require a bit of experience to navigate.

This makes Klaviyo’s automation better for established businesses.

Both tools offer prebuilt automated workflows with ready logic. Klaviyo, however, goes a step further to provide ready text for the workflows. Some of these series include:

• Welcome Series
• Abandoned Cart
• Browse Abandonment
• Customer Thank You
• Product Review 
• Cross-Sell
• Customer Win-back

Flodesk provides the following prebuilt templates, but you’ll need to edit text to make them customer-ready.

• Welcome sequence
• Sales sequence
• Nurture sequence
• Lead magnet delivery automation.

The one downside is that there’s only one trigger for the automation part available on Flodesk as of now, and that’s for when the subscriber enters the segment.

Unlike Flodesk, Klaviyo integrates with other marketing channels. These include SMS and app push notifications. This means that you can send SMS and email campaigns in a single workflow.

Klaviyo wins. Klaviyo’s marketing automation feature may not be necessary for smaller businesses, but it’s still more powerful than Flodesk’s. 

Signup forms and landing pages

Both platforms offer a collection of modern-looking, ready-to-go prebuilt signup forms with great functionality. 

Flodesk offers 40+ customizable templates. We found it useful that after a subscriber signs up, Flodesk can redirect them to a thank-you page or a specific landing page. 

Klaviyo’s forms can be highly targeted. You’ll have the option to show them to specific segments of your audience. For instance, you can have these shown to visitors on specific lists, from select locations, or new visitors only, and so forth. 

Both platforms provide analytics for your signup forms to help you track your list-building performance. You’ll be able to monitor metrics such as conversion rates, opt-ins, and subscriber growth over time. Klaviyo also allows you to A/B test your signup forms.

Some crucial list-building features are missing on Flodesk, e.g.:

• There’s no way to automatically launch the form feature on your website. You’d have to copy-paste the code snippet into your website’s source.
• The popup settings are limited.
• There are no lists, only segments.

With that being said, Flodesk offers beautiful landing pages that you can use to sell digital products and services on a simple checkout page. The platform refers to these landing pages as checkouts, which we found quite unusual. 

Klaviyo, on the other hand, doesn’t offer landing pages. However, if you have some marketing experience, you can set up your full-page signup forms into landing pages.

List management

Flodesk’s contact mapping and features are straightforward, just like in most email marketing platforms. So you’ll be able to upload your contacts with ease. The segment management feature is pretty basic, too.

Klaviyo’s list management is a bit more detailed, including lists and pre-built segments. 

It’s a tie. Both Flodesk and Klaviyo have distinct strengths and weaknesses. However, if your business needs landing pages with the possibility to check out, Flodesk might be a better option.

Segmentation

Segments help you send more targeted campaigns to relevant audiences. In this section of the Flodesk vs Klaviyo review, we’ll compare how both tools perform as far as segmentation goes.

Flodesk’s segmentation feature appears pretty basic compared to that provided by Klaviyo. You can create segments in the Audiences tab by using filters to find your subscribers based on a range of criteria.

These criteria include:

• Activity date
• Contact source, e.g., opt-in, CSV import, etc
• Status, e.g., if a subscriber is active or inactive
• Data field
• Segment

This is a bit different from what Klaviyo and most other tools in the market offer. For instance, Klaviyo provides seven prebuilt segments that are rules-ready. It also offers endless conditions and criteria that you can use to build segments. 

Some of these include:

• Based on customer activity 
• Subscriber’s personal details
• If someone is or is not within the EU (GDPR)
• Location or proximity to a location
• Based on existing lists
• Predictive analytics

The only downside to Klaviyo’s segmentation feature is that you may need prior experience to be able to fully enjoy it. 

Klaviyo wins for its advanced segmentation feature.

Analytics

This section of the Flodesk vs Klaviyo review focuses on the reports and insights you can get with each tool. You need an email marketing tool with great analytics to help you make data-driven decisions.

Klaviyo is a powerhouse when it comes to analytics. You can track just about anything from your usual campaign engagement metrics to more nuanced ecommerce performance metrics. 

For instance, you can view your conversion funnel over 90 days compared across different metrics such as site visits, purchases website visits, etc.

Flodesk’s analytics feature is simpler in comparison. The analytics tab is not streamlined, so you’d need to track your metrics by section. For instance, on the Automations tab, you can track items such as:

• Active subscribers
• Open rates
• Click rates
• Unsubscribers
• Entries, etc.

Similarly, in the checkout section, you can view your landing page reports and track metrics such as number of visits, total sales orders, etc. Other than that, Flodesk lacks some reports such as geolocation reports, ecommerce reports and click maps.

Klaviyo provides a few more advanced reporting capabilities including

• Predictive analytics tool: This helps ecommerce businesses predict items such as customer lifetime value, date of the next order, churning rates, customer spending capacity, and more.
• Scheduled custom reports: You can schedule to get up to 10 custom reports in your email per user account.
• Industry benchmark: This allows you to compare your email marketing performance with that of other players in the market.

The only downside, as with most other advanced Klaviyo features, is that you’ll need a bit of technical experience to dig into these reports. Also, some of these functionalities may not be necessary for beginners.

Klaviyo wins since it has a more advanced analytics tool compared to Flodesk.  

Customer support

For customer support, both Klaviyo and Flodesk provide a variety of options. You can reach both teams via their respective support email addresses and other DIY resources. These include: 

• An academy with free video tutorials
• A Help Center
• A community forum
• A blog

Klaviyo offers 24/5 email and chat support on paid plans and email support for the first 60 days on the free plan.

Klaviyo also offers live training and access to industry guides and benchmarks.

Both tools don’t offer phone support, and we found Klaviyo’s response to be a bit slower than other top email marketing platforms.

Klaviyo wins. While customer support is limited on the free plan, Klaviyo still provides more channels to reach their team. 

Integrations

Another one of Klaviyo’s strong suits is its multiple integration capabilities. As of now, Klaviyo has 300+ native integrations with different tech stack tools.

This includes a seamless integration with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. You can get a wide range of functionality with these integrations. 

Any other integrations that are not available natively on Klaviyo can be added through Zapier. 

Flodesk has very few native integrations and if you want to access other applications you’d have to do it through Zapier.  

Klaviyo wins for its long list of native integrations.

Compatibility with other marketing channels

When it comes to compatibility with other marketing channels, Klaviyo clearly outshines Flodesk.

Klaviyo has an SMS marketing functionality and an app push notifications feature. You can integrate both email and SMS and send automated campaigns in a single workflow.

Also with the right integration, you can send both Facebook and Google retargeting campaigns. 

Flodesk is not compatible with any other marketing channels, so you can only send email campaigns.

Klaviyo wins, as it’s compatible with a variety of marketing channels, unlike Flodesk. 

Generative AI tools

Klaviyo offers AI assistance for marketing automation, SMS and email copywriting, also some AI in reports. Meanwhile, Flodesk doesn’t have any AI tools integrated in the platform so far.

Flodesk doesn’t have what to offer so far.

Price Comparison

The next important section of this Flodesk vs Klaviyo review is the pricing comparison. Besides features and functionality, your marketing budget is a major factor to consider when picking a suitable ecommerce platform.

This section compares Klaviyo vs Flodesk prices, to see if they’re within your budget and if their features give you your money’s worth.

Let’s look at each in detail.

Free plans comparison

Flodesk provides a free Forms plan that lets you create unlimited forms and landing pages for your business. The free features you’ll get include:

• Analytics
• Segmentation
• Contact import
• “Brand” part – templates, custom fonts, link in bio.

Klaviyo’s free plan is great for users looking to try out the platform. Here’s what you can get:

• Access to most of the platform’s advanced features
• Up to 250 contacts
• 500 monthly email sends
• Email support for the first 60 days
• Mobile push notifications (in beta phase)
• 150 free monthly SMS credits which includes applicable carrier fees

Let’s take a look at the paid plans.

Paid plans comparison

So which tool gives you your money’s worth, Flodesk or Klaviyo?

Klaviyo’s pricing model is tiered and you’ll pay more as your email contact list grows. There are two paid plans: Email and Email and SMS.

Flodesk also offers two paid plans but with a flat rate pricing for unlimited subscribers. These include Email and Email & Checkout

Flodesk’s flat-rate pricing makes it cheaper and therefore suitable for businesses with large contact lists, unlike Klaviyo. Though cheaper at the beginning, Klaviyo’s prices can get expensive fast as your subscriber list grows.

One downside to Flodesk’s flat-rate pricing is its lack of flexibility, which can be great for businesses on a budget. $38 and $64 per month may appear expensive for businesses just starting out.

Flodesk vs Klaviyo: Which one wins?

Which one is better, Flodesk or Klaviyo? Before we give our verdict, here’s a quick recap of the two platforms’ features, pricing, pros, and cons.

Whether Flodesk and Klaviyo are suitable for your business depends on your needs.

Flodesk caters to the needs of beginner marketers and small business owners like bloggers, digital sellers, freelancers, and personal branding specialists. It helps businesses send newsletters and sell digital products online. 

Flodesk’s focus on visuals and ease of use also makes it a suitable software for this core market. It, however, lacks ecommerce marketing capabilities, which is where Klaviyo shines. 

Klaviyo is a specialized ecommerce marketing tool for established businesses. It provides advanced automation, segmentation, and analytics features. 

Klaviyo is generally easy to use, but its features can be too advanced for beginner marketers. It can also get too costly for small businesses. 

If this is the case for you, Omnisend is a great Klaviyo alternative as it provides a similar level of advanced functionality, but is cheaper.

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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.