ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo (2021): Which Email Marketing Software Should You Use?

4.48 billion. This is the projected number of email users by 2024, according to Statista. This is just one of the many reasons why email marketing plays a crucial role in connecting and engaging with customers and growing your business. To help you choose the right email marketing tool for your business, we’re comparing two of the most recommended platforms today: ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo.

Klaviyo is the go-to email marketing tool for most e-commerce businesses that use platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Meanwhile, ActiveCampaign appears to be more popular among bloggers, service-based entrepreneurs, and digital marketers for its marketing automation features. To learn more about their specific features and which ones can address your business needs, keep reading our in-depth comparison below.

ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo Comparison Chart

Model	ActiveCampaign	Klaviyo
Price	Check Price at ActiveCampaign.com	Check Price at Klaviyo.com
Contact Tagging & Segmentation	Yes	Yes
Lead Scoring	Yes	No
Marketing Automation	Yes	Yes
Email Newsletters	Yes	Yes
Email Templates	Around 40	Around 30
Automation Recipes	270+	34+
A/B Testing	Yes	Yes
Spam Check	Yes	No
Website Form Builder	Yes	Yes
Landing Page Builder	Yes	No
Native Integrations	300+	70+
Free Trial	14 days	Free up to 250 subscribers

Pricing

ActiveCampaign has slightly more affordable base plan pricing, but Klaviyo offers a free plan for up to 250 subscribers and has a straightforward pricing

While pricing should not be the sole consideration when deciding on an email marketing tool, understanding the pricing plans and tiers of both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo will give you an idea of how much to allocate every month.

At a glance, ActiveCampaign may seem like the more affordable option, but you may end up having to upgrade to its higher-tier plans if you want to use features such as split automation, marketing attributions, conversion reporting, and landing pages. If you do need these functionalities, ActiveCampaign becomes a lot more expensive. Its second-tier plan actually costs almost five times its base plan.

On the other hand, Klaviyo’s pricing is more straightforward and is only based on the number of subscribers. You’ll get all its features no matter which plan you’re on and they don’t even offer a cheaper annual contract. Klaviyo also offers SMS marketing, which costs slightly higher than the email only plan, but is still way more affordable than ActiveCampaign’s. For 500 contacts, Klaviyo’s Email + SMS plan starts at $20 (goes slightly higher depending on the number of SMS messages you send), while ActiveCampaign’s starts at $49/month when billed annually and $70/month when billed monthly.

Email Marketing Features

ActiveCampaign offers more marketing features than Klaviyo, but Klaviyo remains the better option for e-commerce-focused businesses

Both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo are excellent email marketing tools, and boast the following features:

• Subscriber tagging
• Segmentation
• Split testing
• Automation and sequences
• Flow builder
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Email designer and responsive templates
• Opt-in forms
• Analytics

We recommend e-commerce businesses, especially smaller ones, to use Klaviyo instead of ActiveCampaign as it features ROI reporting in all its plans. With Klaviyo, you can easily see which campaigns or specific products performed well. With ActiveCampaign, conversion reporting is only available in its higher-tier plans. Another issue with ActiveCampaign is it will capture the customer’s email even if their payment did not go through (e.g. card was declined). This means you might end up paying for contacts that actually did not end up purchasing from you.

While Klaviyo may be better for e-commerce businesses in our opinion, other digital businesses who need qualified leads will benefit from ActiveCampaign’s robust marketing and sales automation features. ActiveCampaign lets you manage your contacts and see where they are in the funnel, so you have a better idea of how to engage with them or nurture your leads.

Here are some of the features that ActiveCampaign have that Klaviyo doesn’t:

• Lead scoring
• Split automations
• If/Else conditions
• Dynamic automations
• Sales CRM
• Pipeline management
• Spam check (a handy tool that lets you know if your email may end up in the spam folder)

Design and Ease of Use

Both platforms are friendly for non-tech savvy users, but ActiveCampaign boasts a larger library of automation recipes than Klaviyo

While both email marketing tools are user-friendly and intuitive, Klaviyo has a slight edge over ActiveCampaign when it comes to ease of use. As we mentioned earlier, ActiveCampaign has more robust automation options, but more complex automations also come with a higher learning curve. Klaviyo’s dashboard and interface is also easier to navigate and use than ActiveCampaign’s.

Where ActiveCampaign shines is the wealth of automation recipes and pre-built email templates available for you to use. It boasts more than 270 automation recipes, including automation for blogging, e-commerce, healthcare, non-profit, publishing, online education, and more industries. There are also around 40 templates for email newsletters that you can customize. Meanwhile, Klaviyo only has around 30 email templates and 34 automation recipes.

Integrations

Both integrate with major third-party online tools, but ActiveCampaign has more native integrations than Klaviyo

ActiveCampaign edges out Klaviyo when it comes to available native integrations. From e-commerce to lead generation tools such as Bonjoro, Deadline Funnel, ActiveCampaign can easily connect them in one click.

Meanwhile, Klaviyo may not boast as many integrations, but it connects with major platforms. These include Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, OrderDesk, Refersion, Salesforce, Zoho, Volusion, and more. Other non-native integrations can still be automated using Zapier.

Verdict

ActiveCampaign is better for digital businesses, while Klaviyo is recommended for e-commerce stores

ActiveCampaign

Best for digital businesses

Klaviyo

Best for e-commerce stores

We can’t exactly say one is better over the other, despite the fact that ActiveCampaign does offer more features, integrations, and pre-built templates. Choosing between the two depends on your business, and sometimes, you may even need both. If your business is focused on lead generation and nurturing these leads, ActiveCampaign is the better fit for you as it delivers more complex marketing and sales automation solutions.

If you’re in e-commerce, however, Klaviyo better suits your needs as its features are more e-commerce friendly. Its ROI analytics makes it easier for you to understand which of your campaigns or products are generating revenues. Some business owners actually end up using Klaviyo for the e-commerce side of their business and another email marketing platform such as ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit for their blogging or digital business.

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