If you run a Shopify store, you have probably been told a hundred times that you need Klaviyo. It is the default recommendation in every Shopify Facebook group, every YouTube tutorial, and every marketing agency pitch. And Klaviyo IS excellent. But it is not the only excellent option, and for many stores, it is not actually the best option.
What’s in This Article
Omnisend is the other serious contender for Shopify email marketing, and it deserves genuine consideration. It is significantly more affordable at every subscriber tier, easier to set up and use, and includes SMS marketing in a way that is more seamlessly integrated than Klaviyo’s bolt-on approach.
This is not a “one is clearly better” comparison. Both platforms are genuinely excellent for Shopify stores. The right choice depends on your store size, your marketing sophistication, your budget, and whether you have a dedicated marketing person or are doing everything yourself. Let us break it down honestly.
The Quick Answer: Who Should Choose Which
If you want the short answer before the detailed comparison: Choose Omnisend if you are a solo operator or small team, your revenue is under $50K/month, you want the fastest setup with good-enough features, you need SMS and email in one affordable platform, or your budget for email tools is under $150/month.
Choose Klaviyo if you have a dedicated marketing person (or agency), your revenue is over $100K/month, you need advanced segmentation and predictive analytics, you want maximum customisation of flows and campaigns, or you plan to build a sophisticated data-driven marketing operation.
If you are in the $50K-100K/month range, either platform works well. This is the zone where the decision comes down to personal preference, budget constraints, and growth trajectory. If you are scaling fast and expect to hit $200K+/month within a year, start with Klaviyo to avoid migration later. If budget is tight and you need every dollar working hard, Omnisend delivers outstanding results at a fraction of the cost.
Email Flows and Automation: Both Excellent, Klaviyo Edges Ahead
Both platforms support all the essential ecommerce flows: welcome series, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, post-purchase, win-back, and custom event-triggered flows. Both provide pre-built templates for these flows that you can customise and launch quickly.
Where Klaviyo pulls ahead is in the depth of flow customisation. Klaviyo’s flow builder allows more complex branching logic, more conditional splits (based on virtually any customer property or event), and more sophisticated timing controls. If you want a flow that behaves differently based on whether the customer is a VIP, has purchased in the last 30 days, AND viewed a specific product category, Klaviyo handles this elegantly. Omnisend can do some of this but hits complexity limits sooner.
For most stores with 5-8 standard flows, both platforms perform equally well. The difference only becomes meaningful when you are building 15+ flows with complex conditional logic, which is typically stores doing $100K+/month with a dedicated marketing person managing the email program.
Segmentation: Klaviyo’s Clear Advantage
This is where Klaviyo genuinely outshines Omnisend. Klaviyo’s segmentation engine is arguably the best in the ecommerce email space. You can segment on virtually any combination of purchase behaviour, browsing behaviour, email engagement, custom properties, predicted lifetime value, churn risk, and more. Segments update in real-time and can be used as triggers for flows.
Omnisend’s segmentation is good, above average compared to most email platforms, but it does not match Klaviyo’s depth. Omnisend handles the essential segments well (purchase history, engagement level, location, lifecycle stage) but struggles with complex multi-condition segments and real-time behavioural triggers.
If segmentation is the foundation of your email strategy (as it should be for mature programs), Klaviyo gives you significantly more granularity and flexibility. If your segmentation needs are straightforward (which they are for most stores under $50K/month), Omnisend handles them perfectly.
Pricing: Omnisend Wins Decisively
Pricing is where Omnisend has a massive advantage. At every subscriber tier, Omnisend is 40-55% cheaper than Klaviyo. And the gap widens as your list grows:
At 2,500 subscribers: Klaviyo costs roughly $60/month, Omnisend $35/month. At 10,000 subscribers: Klaviyo is $175/month, Omnisend is $100/month. At 25,000 subscribers: Klaviyo is $400/month, Omnisend is $200/month. At 50,000 subscribers: Klaviyo is $720/month, Omnisend is $330/month.
That pricing difference is significant. At 25,000 subscribers, you save $2,400 per year with Omnisend. At 50,000 subscribers, you save $4,680 per year. For a bootstrapped Shopify store, that is real money that can go toward ads, inventory, or team.
Both platforms include SMS in their higher-tier plans, but SMS credits are priced separately. Omnisend’s SMS integration feels more native, it is built into the same flow builder and segmentation tools. Klaviyo’s SMS works well but feels like a separate product bolted on.
Ease of Use: Omnisend is More Accessible
Omnisend was designed for non-technical store owners who do not have a marketing degree. The interface is cleaner, the email builder is more intuitive, and the pre-built templates require less customisation to look good. A solo operator can set up their core flows in Omnisend within a few days.
Klaviyo is more powerful but has a steeper learning curve. The interface is denser, the flow builder has more options (which means more complexity), and getting the most out of Klaviyo requires understanding concepts like custom events, predictive analytics, and advanced segmentation logic. It is absolutely learnable, but expect 2-3 weeks to feel confident rather than Omnisend’s 1-2 weeks.
For stores with a dedicated email marketing person (or agency), Klaviyo’s complexity is a feature, it gives them the tools to build sophisticated programs. For store owners managing everything themselves, Omnisend’s simplicity means they actually use the platform effectively rather than underutilising a more powerful tool.
Deliverability: Both Perform Well
Email deliverability, whether your emails actually reach the inbox versus landing in spam, is critical. Both Klaviyo and Omnisend have strong deliverability reputations with dedicated IP options, authentication support (DKIM, SPF, DMARC), and list hygiene tools.
In practice, deliverability is more about your sending practices (list hygiene, engagement, sending frequency) than the platform itself. Both platforms give you the tools to maintain excellent deliverability. Neither has a meaningful advantage here.
The Verdict: Match the Tool to Your Stage
The honest answer is that both platforms will serve most Shopify stores well. You will generate more revenue with either Klaviyo or Omnisend than with no email platform or a generic tool like Mailchimp. The platform matters less than the strategy, a well-built welcome series and abandoned cart flow will perform brilliantly on either platform.
If budget is a concern (and it should be for growing businesses), Omnisend delivers 90% of Klaviyo’s functionality at 50-60% of the cost. The features you miss are advanced segmentation, predictive analytics, and deep customisation, features that most stores under $100K/month rarely use anyway.
If you are building a marketing operation with dedicated staff and data-driven strategies, Klaviyo’s advanced capabilities justify the premium. The depth of segmentation, the predictive features, and the customisation flexibility become genuinely valuable at scale.
Real Pricing at Real List Sizes, in AUD
Pricing pages are designed to be hard to compare. Here is the practical version, converted to rough AUD so you can budget honestly. Both platforms price on contacts and send volume, and both get materially more expensive as your list grows.
- 1,000 contacts: Klaviyo lands around $45 to $70 AUD a month. Omnisend sits closer to $25 to $40. Omnisend also keeps a genuinely usable free tier at very small volumes, which matters if you are pre-revenue.
- 5,000 contacts: Klaviyo runs roughly $110 to $150. Omnisend roughly $95 to $120. The gap narrows here and platform capability starts to matter more than price.
- 15,000 contacts: Klaviyo is commonly $350 to $450. Omnisend is commonly $250 to $330. That is $1,200 to $1,800 a year of difference, which is a real number for a lean brand.
- 50,000 contacts: Klaviyo pushes well past $1,000 a month. At this size you should be negotiating, and both vendors will discount for annual commitment.
Two things founders miss. First, you are billed on contacts you can email, not contacts who open. A list where 40% have not engaged in 12 months means you are paying to store dead weight. Suppress or clean them and the bill often drops a tier overnight. Second, SMS is priced separately on both platforms, so a “cheaper” plan can end up dearer once you turn SMS on.
The honest test is revenue per contact, not cost per contact. Email should be driving 25 to 35% of total store revenue for a healthy Aussie DTC brand. If you are at 12% on the cheaper platform and 30% on the dearer one, the dearer one is free. If you are at 12% on both, the platform is not your problem.
What Migrating Between Platforms Actually Takes
People switch platforms far more often than they should, usually chasing a feature they were never going to use. If you have decided a move is right, go in with clear eyes about the work involved.
- Contacts and consent: straightforward, usually a day. Export, import, preserve subscribe dates and consent records. Do not import unsubscribes as active.
- Flows: the real work. A store with welcome, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, post-purchase and win-back is rebuilding 25 to 40 individual emails plus the logic between them. Budget 20 to 40 hours or $2,500 to $5,000 if you outsource it.
- Templates and brand styling: 5 to 10 hours. Templates never transfer cleanly between platforms.
- Segments: rebuild rather than replicate. This is a good opportunity to delete the 30 segments nobody uses.
- Deliverability warm-up: 2 to 4 weeks of gradually increasing send volume on the new sending infrastructure. Skip this and you will see open rates fall 20 to 40% for a month.
- Historical revenue attribution: it does not come with you. Export your reporting before you cancel, because you will want the comparison later.
Run both platforms in parallel for two to three weeks. Pay twice for a month rather than discovering a broken cart flow with live customers in it. And do not migrate in November. Moving email platforms six weeks out from Black Friday is one of the more expensive mistakes we see. Before you go anywhere, read the Shopify Email Deliverability Playbook, because a migration is exactly when deliverability problems surface.
The Flows That Matter Far More Than the Platform
Here is the uncomfortable truth after years of looking at member accounts. The platform is responsible for maybe 15% of your email results. The other 85% is whether the right flows exist and whether the copy is any good.
These five flows do the heavy lifting on almost every Aussie DTC store, and both Klaviyo and Omnisend build all five perfectly well.
- Welcome series: should convert 5 to 10% of new subscribers and typically drives 15 to 25% of total flow revenue. Five to six emails, not one. See the Shopify Welcome Email Flow Playbook.
- Abandoned cart: roughly 70% of carts are abandoned, and a well-built three to four email sequence recovers 10 to 15% of them. Our abandoned cart recovery playbook has the timing.
- Browse abandonment: lower volume, surprisingly high intent. Expect 2 to 4% conversion on sends.
- Post-purchase: the most under-built flow in ecommerce. Drives repeat rate, reviews and referrals rather than immediate revenue.
- Win-back: targets customers 90 to 180 days quiet. Recovers 3 to 8% of lapsed buyers at near-zero acquisition cost.
Layer proper segmentation over the top and the same flows perform better on either platform. Sending everything to everybody is the single most common reason email underperforms, and it has nothing to do with which logo is on the dashboard. The Shopify Customer Segmentation Playbook covers the segments worth building first. Fix the flows before you switch the platform, and you may find you no longer want to switch.
Inside the eCommerce Circle we work with members on both platforms, because the coaching is about strategy: the flows, the segments and the campaigns that actually drive revenue. Whichever platform you land on, the work is the same. If you are unsure which one fits your stage, let’s talk and we will look at your numbers before you commit to anything.
