When it comes to email marketing software, Klaviyo, and Emarsys are two industry-leading options trusted by thousands of small businesses worldwide. Choosing the right platform is critical for effectively engaging customers, driving sales, and growing your online presence.
In this comprehensive Klaviyo vs Emarsys comparison guide, we will evaluate how these two powerful solutions stack up across key criteria to help you determine the best choice for your unique needs.
We will analyze the market position and popularity, ease of use, design and customization, features and functionality, customer support and community, pricing, and reviews and reputation. By the end, you will have a clear understanding of the pros and cons of each platform to inform your decision.
1. Understanding the Basics
Klaviyo was founded in 2012 by Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen. It quickly became one of the most well-known and widely-used email marketing platforms, currently ranking as the 3rd most popular software in the industry. With over 20,000 customers globally, Klaviyo empowers both small businesses and enterprise-level companies to maximize sales through personalized communication.
Emarsys was launched in 2000 by Hagai Hartman and David Benshoam in Vienna. While not as widely known as other mainstream platforms, Emarsys caters to over 1,500 midmarket and enterprise-level clients in 140 countries. They differentiate themselves by leveraging AI and machine learning to enable smart, customized email marketing automation.
Both platforms have engaged Facebook communities which users often leverage for troubleshooting, feedback, and best practice advice:
When it comes to market position, Klaviyo edges out Emarsys given its expansive customer base, popularity, and strong reputation. However, Emarsys remains a long-trusted choice for larger brands ready to make a serious investment in advanced email personalization and automation. The right choice comes down to your business size, budget, and functionality needs.
2. Features and Functionality
Marketing Automation Software
Klaviyo
Klaviyo enables users to create multi-channel workflows with drag-and-drop simplicity. You can automate customized email series, SMS messages, web push notifications and more based on customer actions, characteristics, purchases, and more.
For example, you can set up automation to automatically enroll customers in an email nurture flow when they abandon their cart. Or you can create a birthday coupon automation personalized with each subscriber’s name. Their platform makes it fast and easy to get started with powerful marketing automation without coding.
Some standout automation features include:
- Email flows with dynamic segmentation – Tailor content with customized IF statements and filters based on detailed subscriber profiles and behaviors. You can send emails only to people who meet your defined criteria.
- SMS workflows – Create automated SMS campaigns synchronized with your email series. Leverage texting to for customer engagement and re-engage them with cart abandonment flows, shipping updates, personalized promos, and more.
- Intelligent exclusions – Prevent messaging fatigue by automatically excluding subscribers from future sends after they’ve received a set number of emails per campaign or period.
- Web push notifications – Reach subscribers beyond email by creating browser push notification flows based on their on-site behaviors.
- Social automation – Sync social posts from Instagram or Facebook to customizable email and SMS workflows.
Emarsys
Emarsys is renowned for its in-depth automation and AI capabilities geared toward enterprises ready to create highly personalized, omnichannel customer journeys.
The platform enables you to build complex triggers and automated scenarios using its extensive collection of pre-built automation templates or customized workflows. You can target customers based on predictive intelligence and send follow-ups tailored to each individual’s preferences and past behaviors.
Key automation functionality includes:
- Robust segmentation – Divide contacts into granular buckets using filters based on on-site activity, CRM data, purchase history, predicted lifetime value, and more. This allows messaging personalization at scale.
- AI-powered individualization – Leverage machine learning to dynamically serve customized content, product recommendations, incentives, and calls to action matched to each contact’s interests.
- Multi-channel messaging – Orchestrate consistent customer journeys spanning email, Android mobile push notifications, web pushes, direct mail, SMS, and more.
- Customer lifecycle scenarios – Take advantage of pre-built automation templates for customer win-back, reactivation, loyalty building, user conferences, lead nurturing, and other common scenarios tailored to different lifecycle stages.
- Omnichannel personalization – Pull in offline and cross-channel activity for full context, then leverage this data to tailor messaging across channels.
Winner: Emarsys
When it comes to robust and sophisticated capabilities for automating tailored customer journeys, Emarsys is the winner. The ability to leverage deep customer intelligence and create complex workflows with omnichannel personalization delivers major value for enterprises with large customer bases to manage.
Email Templates
Klaviyo
Klaviyo offers a wide variety of professionally designed, customizable email templates to choose from. You can select templates for welcome series, cart abandonment, promotions, newsletters, and more.
All templates are mobile responsive and optimized for inbox delivery across email clients. You can easily customize colors, fonts, content blocks, images, layouts, and code. Global header, footer, and branding edits can also be made for consistency.
Klaviyo provides a drag-and-drop editor making it easy to rearrange template sections without coding. It enables global customizations for changing header, footer, and colors site-wide. For advanced users, Custom CSS/HTML allows modification of template code.
There’s also a gallery of sections for mixing and matching banners, product grids, etc, and an image manager to sync images across messages. Finally, design collaboration permits other team members to view and suggest tweaks.
Emarsys
Emarsys enables designing new emails from hundreds of content block elements or choosing from pre-made template layouts organized by goal.
All templates are optimized mobile-first and tested for inboxing. You can update colors, images, content, and code. Branding and style changes can be rolled out globally to ensure consistency.
Emarsys offers mix-and-match content sections, pulls in dynamic personalized user content, provides A/B testing functionality to optimize email performance, leverages AI to generate quality copy, shows lifelike email renderings for proofing, and supports scheduling sends up to a year in advance.
Winner: Tie
Both platforms provide user-friendly email builders equipped with customizable templates and efficient design editing capabilities enabling anyone to create stellar emails. For core email template features, Klaviyo and Emarsys deliver equally robust options.
Segmentation
Klaviyo
Klaviyo serves as a powerful customer engagement platform, allowing you to divide your customer base into granular segments using custom filters and metrics based on profiles, behaviors, activity history, purchases, location, and more. You can then target these groups with tailored messaging.
Some key features include a drag-and-drop workflow builder to visually map subscriber segments for campaigns along with custom/default properties to capture detailed business data like email engagement, products purchased, and order frequency.
There are filters by device, email/SMS activity, order statuses, last patronized date ranges, customer data, and 100+ categories. Location targeting exists with country, state, and city granularity. Additionally, predictive modeling and machine learning recommend high-value lookalike audiences that match your proven best customers based on common attributes.
Emarsys
Emarsys is renowned for its robust segmentation powered by artificial intelligence. You can divide contacts into granular groups tailored to their behaviors, interests, predicted value, and purchase history. These custom clusters receive personalized content and offers.
Capabilities include integration with data from CRM, help desk, PoS, and other databases to build 360-degree customer profiles along with segmentation by interests, predicted churn risk, lifetime value, purchase categories, order frequency, and hundreds of other attributes.
There is AI re-evaluation that automatically moves customers into updated segments based on changes and contact clustering which analyzes all subscriber data and then intelligently groups similar contacts without needing segment definition from the user. Finally, predictive modeling automatically serves content matched to individuals’ preferences and trends.
Winner: Emarsys
When it comes to advanced, AI-powered segmentation tools for personalizing messaging, Emarsys emerges as the winner. The platform’s robust functionality for dividing contacts based on detailed attributes paired with predictive modeling and machine learning automation provides unmatched intelligent targeting capabilities.
Analytics
Klaviyo
Klaviyo offers powerful analytics to track email marketing performance. Dashboards provide high-level campaign reports and graphs covering opens, clicks, bounce rates, conversions, revenue, and more. All reports can be filtered by date ranges, segmented audiences, and specific metrics for deep analysis.
You can measure results across multiple campaigns or drill into individual messages to optimize content. Metrics like open locations, click heatmaps and scroll depth show subscriber engagement. Automated alerts notify you when send metrics reach specified thresholds.
Notable features include A/B testing to compare subject lines, content variants, designs, and online revenue tracking by campaign with multi-currency support.
There is also attribution modeling connecting conversions across devices to the right campaigns, cohort analysis showing how groups who share common traits respond over time, exportable raw data and custom reports for further processing, and Google Analytics integration.
Emarsys
Emarsys delivers advanced analytics leveraging AI to surface customer insights. Dashboards provide visibility into email effectiveness with engagement rates, open locations, click heatmaps, and more. All reports can be filtered by campaign, customer segment, date range, and other criteria.
Smart graphs showcase predicted vs actual conversion rates to optimize future strategy. Metrics showcase revenue directly attributed to platforms along with ROAI. Powerful segmentation helps assess which groups respond best.
Standout reporting functionality includes automated insights highlighting successes and underperforming areas along with A/B testing capabilities with ongoing performance optimization.
There is multivariate testing to determine ideal combinations of variables, and customer intelligence analytics revealing trends in channel preference, attrition risk, and purchase habits. Emarsys integrates with Google Analytics, Salesforce, and other databases. Finally, there is custom reporting with role-based access levels to reports and exports.
Winner: Emarsys
Both platforms provide robust analytics. However, the breadth of customer intelligence tools leveraging predictive AI for segmentation analysis makes Emarsys the winner. It empowers users not just to report results but unlock deep insights to continually tailor strategy.
Unique Features
Klaviyo
Some unique capabilities Klaviyo offers include back-in-stock alerts to automatically notify customers when out-of-stock products become available again. Customers can choose to get emails or texts when items are replenished. There are also referral rewards programs to incentivize existing customers to refer friends for special perks and track referrals and reward advocates.
Additionally, Klaviyo leverages machine learning for smart abandoned cart recovery to determine each abandoned cart’s “next best action” whether that’s an automated reminder email or SMS, optimizing for maximizing recoveries.
Finally, international features allow translating websites into local languages and currencies to successfully engage international site visitors so you can target foreign customers without added complexity.
Emarsys
Standout capabilities unique to Emarsys include triggered messages set up for real-time automated messages based on a customer’s on-site browsing. For example, exit intent triggers pull visitors back as they leave.
There is also a recommendation engine fueling product discovery with AI-generated personalized suggestions throughout the buying journey, not just post-purchase, to increase relevance. Emarsys enables the creation of tailored customer loyalty programs with points earned for different actions, customizing levels, groups, and benefits while tracking engagement.
Finally, predictive budget optimization allows planning campaign budgets and timelines based on sales forecasts and predictive models instead of previous rigid schedules to more efficiently use resources. All of this adds up to more successful campaigns and predictable and profitable growth.
Winner: Tie
Both platforms bring innovative, value-adding capabilities to their email marketing stacks. While their unique features differ, Klaviyo and Emarsys are equally matched when it comes to providing differentiators that wow customers.
3. Ease of Use
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is renowned for its intuitive interface and easy-to-use tools enabling users of any skill level to navigate the platform with ease. The dashboard features clear menus and configuration options using simple, descriptive language free of complex jargon.
Setting up campaigns, automation, and templates is straightforward with guided walkthroughs available. Klaviyo sections everything into clear tabs like Profiles, Segments, Campaigns, and more with logical workflows. Beginners appreciate the simple drag-and-drop builders for emails and landing pages.
The platform prioritizes usability through features like one-click imports, baked-in integrations, and customizable reporting dashboards visualized via graphs. You can easily segment contacts, personalize content blocks, and monitor results without advanced expertise.
Emarsys
Emarsys provides a robust feature set that caters more to technically skilled marketing teams rather than beginners. The extensive configuration menus and options for enterprise-level automation require an investment of time to master.
However, for established e-commerce brands already leveraging CRM data, the platform makes surprisingly fast work of building customer intelligence-driven campaigns thanks to smart predictive modeling. Recommendation engines, exit intent triggers, and loyalty programs unlock with simple toggling.
For less technical users, Emarsys offers an optional 1:1 guided onboarding program to ensure proper setup and impart best practices. Support articles and video tutorials provide additional training resources to smooth the learning curve.
Winner: Klaviyo
With intuitive navigation explicitly designed for usability by users across skill levels, Klaviyo emerges as the winner for the easiest email marketing platform to use. Their universally praised interface enables both sophisticated marketers and total beginners to quickly pick up effective strategies.
4. Email Deliverability
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is praised for exceptional customer service across channels. All pricing tiers get 24/7 live chat and email ticketing with the same phenomenal support rather than tiered systems. Average response times are sub-30 minutes.
The company status page provides real-time updates on system performance. Comprehensive self-serve support resources exist like help docs, video tutorials, webinars, and more. Users also often leverage the Klaviyo Community Facebook group of over 25K members to crowdsource answers from peers.
Emarsys
Emarsys focuses customer support on more high-touch, personalized service models better suited for mid-market and enterprise clients. All customers get an account management team for onboarding, ongoing optimization, and technical support.
Standard contacts also receive 24/7 access to live chat, phone assistance, and an online support ticketing portal with fairly fast response times. Emarsys has an active user community on Facebook where clients discuss best practices and feedback.
For self-help, Emarsys houses webinars, courses, developer docs, and other specialty training programs focusing specifically on leveraging their platform’s advanced capabilities like predictive intelligence. But phone support generally provides faster answers to complex questions.
Winner: Klaviyo
The breadth of robust customer service offerings and extremely short wait times for knowledgeable support make Klaviyo the winner. Their model caters seamlessly to customers of all sizes, unlike Emarsys’ more tailored enterprise approach. Both provide strong overall assistance, but Klaviyo’s cross-channel access and stellar responsiveness stand ahead.
5. Customer Support and Community
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is praised for exceptional customer service across channels, including email and live rep. All pricing tiers get 24/7 live chat and email ticketing with the same phenomenal support rather than tiered systems. The website has average response times of less than 30 minutes.
The company status page provides real-time updates on system performance. Comprehensive self-serve support resources exist like help docs, video tutorials, webinars, and more. Users also often leverage the Klaviyo Community Facebook group of over 25K members to crowdsource answers from peers.
Emarsys
Emarsys focuses customer support on more high-touch, personalized service models better suited for mid-market and enterprise clients. All customers get an account management team for onboarding, ongoing optimization, and technical support.
Standard contacts also receive 24/7 access to live chat, phone assistance, and an online support ticketing portal with fairly fast response times. Emarsys has an active user community on Facebook where clients discuss best practices and feedback.
For self-help, Emarsys houses webinars, courses, developer docs, and other specialty training programs focusing specifically on leveraging their platform’s advanced capabilities like predictive intelligence. But phone support generally provides faster answers to complex questions.
Winner: Klaviyo
The breadth of robust customer service offerings and extremely short wait times for knowledgeable support make Klaviyo the winner. Their model caters seamlessly to customers of all sizes, unlike Emarsys’ more tailored enterprise approach. Employees of both companies provide strong overall assistance, but Klaviyo’s cross-channel access and stellar responsiveness stand ahead.
6. Integrations
Klaviyo
Klaviyo seamlessly connects with 100+ leading apps relevant to e-commerce like Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, and popular CRM systems. You can build complex, omnichannel workflows combining email with platforms like SMS, Facebook, web push notifications, and more.
Two-way technology syncing keeps all your data automatically up to date across channels. Klaviyo’s APIs and Zapier connectivity also let you easily integrate with marketing, analytics, help desk, and other operational systems no matter the size of your stack.
Notable integrations include CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics along with commerce platforms such as Magento, and BigCommerce. There is also deployment with marketing tools like MailChimp, and Constant Contact and analytics tools like Google Analytics. Finally, ad platforms like Facebook and Instagram integrate.
Emarsys
As an enterprise platform, Emarsys supports deep integration with vital databases like SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics driving complete personalization. Custom APIs enable connecting seamlessly with any existing infrastructure eliminating the hassle.
The software is particularly tailored towards established brands leveraging ERP and CRM systems with robust catalogs of customer intelligence data ready to sync. This allows you to connect with AI-powered predictive segmentation and messaging workflows.
You can still integrate popular applications like social platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter along with analytics tools like Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics. There is also connectivity with marketing platforms Marketo and Eloqua. However, native compatibility for mid-market focused tools common with small businesses is less extensive compared to Klaviyo.
Winner: Tie
Klaviyo provides the best box support for small business martech stacks through extensive app marketplace integrations while Emarsys wins for deep enterprise software connectivity leveraging custom APIs. It’s better-suited to a large organization or brand. So, we’ll call this one a tie.
7. Pricing
Klaviyo
Klaviyo offers transparent, competitive pricing suited for small to mid-sized businesses. Plans scale from free up to $1,250/month supporting unlimited contacts and emails. Custom enterprise quotes are also available. All tiers include full platform functionality – the only limit is the number of contacts.
Pricing is primarily based on number of contacts and volume of emails sent per month. For example, the Email plan costs $45/month for up to 1,500 contacts and 15K monthly emails. This accessibility enables any business to leverage advanced email marketing and automation.
Emarsys
As an enterprise solution, Emarsys pricing reflects the expanded capabilities, customization, and top-notch support larger brands demand. Complete costs require direct quotes as packages deal in annual contracts rather than monthly terms.
The price depends on the expected number of monthly emails sent, predicted automation complexity, desired integrations, required data storage, and tailored services. Minimums often start around $5,000 annually for starter packages and then scale up significantly from there making it prohibitive for anyone but established companies.
The investment brings capabilities to drive truly 1:1 personalized, AI-optimized marketing those high revenues warrant sufficient ROI capable of justifying costs long term compared to Klaviyo’s SMB-friendly rates.
Winner: Klaviyo
Klaviyo decisively beats Emarsys for value provided at extremely reasonable prices for any level small or medium-sized business. Their scalable transparent rates encourage email marketing adoption through affordability – a stark contrast from enterprise packages geared only towards high-spending major brands.
8. Reviews and Reputation
Klaviyo
Klaviyo earns outstanding reviews across channels like G2Crowd (4.7/5 stars), Capterra (4.5/5 stars), and the Shopify App Store (4.9/5 stars) cementing its status as a leader.
Users consistently praise the intuitive interface, excellent deliverability, robust analytics, and top-notch customer service. Many mention Klaviyo stands far above competitors in ease of use enabling the creation of effective email campaigns and automation even for beginners.
The most common complaints touch on some of the advanced segmentation features not being as complex for ultra-high volume or enterprise needs. But for small to mid-sized e-commerce businesses, reviews reaffirm Klaviyo as an invaluable growth engine.
See Klaviyo Reviews on G2and Capterra
Emarsys
Emarsys garners excellent reviews on platforms like Gartner and TrustRadius among enterprise contacts to whom their platform best caters. Overall sentiment affirms the software unleashes customized 1:1 omnichannel personalization.
Brands routinely highlight outstanding predictive intelligence capabilities that drive measurable conversions and revenue once properly launched. Emarsys’ ability to ingest cross-channel CRM data into tailored models receives consistent praise.
However, one particular person on the review site notes frustration with complexity out of the gates for small teams with more basic needs. But larger businesses praise automated AI features and emphasis on customer intelligence – two clear differentiators in standing apart from mass email providers.
See Emarsys Reviews on G2
Winner: Klaviyo
With near-universal acclaim for ease of use even at smaller customer tiers, Klaviyo claims the winner spot for reviews and reputation. Emarsys does provide better-tailored solutions to enterprise-level needs. But Klaviyo’s broader accessibility and outstanding support make it the preferred choice for the majority of modern online brands.
9. FAQ’s
Klaviyo FAQs
- What types of email campaigns can you create?
Klaviyo enables sending automated emails like abandoned cart recovery sequences, browse abandonment flows, customized welcome series, weekly digest campaigns highlighting popular products, promotional newsletters, back-in-stock alerts, and more. - How does pricing work?
Klaviyo offers pay-as-you-go pricing starting at $45/mo for up to 1,500 contacts. volume discounts at higher tiers. Custom enterprise quotes are available for high-volume needs. - What metrics can you track?
Robust analytics cover opens, clicks, conversions, revenue, ROI, engagement over time, location-based performance, and more. Real-time visibility optimizes campaigns. - What level of customization is available?
Fully customizable templates, and drag-and-drop builders for emails, landing pages, and forms. Address dynamic content, images, code, and styles. Global header/footer control.
Emarsys FAQs
- What automation comes built-in?
Pre-built scenarios for win-backs, re-engagement, user conferences, and loyalty programs. Smart triggers for on-site behaviors like exit intent. AI product recommendations. - What level of personalization can you achieve?
Robust segmentation paired with AI predictive modeling enables fully individualized messaging tailored to each contact’s preferences and engagement history. - What systems can Emarsys integrate with?
CRM, POS and e-commerce data, custom databases, email clients, web analytics, Facebook, and SMS providers. Flexible API integration options are available. - Who is Emarsys best suited for?
Mid-market and enterprise-level brands who want deep personalization and have existing datasets driving omnichannel engagement across complex sales funnels.
Final Thoughts
Choose Klaviyo if…
Klaviyo is the ideal choice for small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses looking for an easy-to-use, extremely powerful email marketing and automation platform.
Beginners love the intuitive drag-and-drop interface, top-notch templates, and robust feature set accessible even at the lowest pricing tier under $50 a month. As your needs scale, Klaviyo grows with you while maintaining accessibility through transparent, simple pricing.
Choose Emarsys if…
Emarsys best caters to established mid-market and enterprise e-commerce brands ready to heavily invest in dedicated account management and advanced automation leveraging AI.
Companies with large databases in existing CRM and sales systems thrive with Emarsys’ seamless integrations and predictive intelligence transforming scattered data into actionable insights fueling hyper-personalized omni-channel campaigns. Expect strategic guidance maximizing 1:1 engagement.
Choosing the right email and marketing automation platform tailored to your business’s size, resources, and functionality needs can tremendously impact revenue growth and unlock greater efficiency. We urge you to request demos, identify your must-have use cases, and ask us any questions in the comments below if you need help determining the best solution for your brand’s future success.