When it comes to choosing an email marketing platform, Klaviyo and Sendinblue stand out as two of the top solutions on the market. With a crowded software space filled with options, it can be challenging for business owners and marketers to select the right platform that aligns with their individual business needs. An informed, side-by-side comparison is key.
In this Klaviyo vs Sendinblue comparison, we evaluate the two platforms across several important criteria to provide an impartial analysis. Focusing on market position, ease of use, features and functionality, performance, customer support, pricing, and reputation, we aim to arm readers with the details they require to confidently choose between the two solutions.
Understanding nuances in areas from built-in e-commerce capabilities to analytics will empower entrepreneurs to pick a platform that enables them to effectively execute campaigns, analyze results, and grow their customer base.
1. Understanding the Basics
Founded in 2012 by Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen, Klaviyo is a leading email marketing and automation platform built for e-commerce businesses. With over $200 million in funding and tens of thousands of customers, Klaviyo has quickly become one of the most widely-used Shopify apps.
Sendinblue got its start in 2012 as well. Founded by Armand Thiberge, the France-based platform (now known as Brevo) also serves e-commerce merchants primarily. Claiming over 300,000 users, Sendinblue has raised over $160 million in outside funding.
While both platforms now have an established presence in the market, Klaviyo edges out Sendinblue in popularity and market position. This is evidenced by Klaviyo’s larger customer base and higher amount of total funding raised. However, with double-digit growth, Sendinblue is rapidly gaining traction.
2. Features and Functionality
Automation
Klaviyo
Klaviyo offers a robust set of automation tools and workflows that help streamline email campaigns and messaging. Key features include automated welcome emails, abandoned cart flows, win-back sequences, and more.
With this email marketing automation software, users can create multi-step workflows with conditional logic that trigger emails based on customer behaviors and attributes. For example, you can set up a 5-email nurture sequence for high-value customers who haven’t purchased in 30 days or configure a win-back series for those with expired trials. Klaviyo makes it easy to customize triggers and adapt flows over time.
Additional capabilities include scheduled and RSS-synced email campaigns, allowing you to build sequences set to deploy on specific dates or that pull in blog/news content automatically. RSS campaigns save effort on updating email copy manually.
While Klaviyo requires more hands-on setup upfront, its sophistication enables advanced personalization powered by customer profiling. With granular segmentation, tailored dynamic content, and automatic lists, users can target customers with messaging tailored to interests and actions for better results.
Sendinblue
As an alternative, Sendinblue also provides ample automation features for creating workflows tailored to business goals. Users can build unlimited multi-step automation with if/then logic to deploy emails based on customer behaviors. Options include sign-up funnels, browse abandonment flows, order updates, webinar reminders, and more.
Drag-and-drop workflow building makes it simple to craft campaigns without coding. Sendinblue’s visual editor enables easy linking of triggers, delays, conditional steps, and customer data filtering to customize sequences. With 300+ available triggers, the flexibility is immense.
While Klaviyo edges out in some areas like predictive sending based on purchase propensity, Sendinblue matches well for core workflow functionality. Its broad trigger selection and intuitive creation tools make automation accessible for users at any skill level. Strong analytics also help inform campaign optimization.
Winner: Klaviyo
With sophisticated segmentation capabilities and predictive modeling driving personalization, Klaviyo wins for overall automation and campaigns. Its ability to hyper-target users and dynamically tailor messaging gives that extra edge.
However, Sendinblue offers compelling built-in automation for less complex use cases. For shops without large customer data volume or advanced analytics needs, Sendinblue provides ample streamlining.
Email Templates
Klaviyo
Klaviyo offers a template gallery with 100+ professionally designed, customizable email templates that cover common e-commerce use cases. Options range from welcome series to browse abandonment flows, cart reminders, order updates, and more. Users can easily edit and tweak templates to match branding needs.
While template selection is not as robust as some platforms, the designs span layout, content, and stylistic varieties for versatility. Templates are also optimized for mobile and responsive across devices. Those preferring to design emails from scratch can utilize Klaviyo’s drag-and-drop builder or custom code using HTML.
For further personalization, Klaviyo’s template editor enables easy merging of customer data fields. Users can pull in first names, past purchase details, browsing behaviors, and other attributes to tailor messaging. Dynamic content helps boost engagement and conversion rates.
Advanced users can also leverage Klaviyo’s powerful Liquid templating language to design fully customized, dynamic email templates using conditional logic and custom variables for unmatched personalization.
Sendinblue
In comparison, Sendinblue boasts a vast template library with over 700 free, pre-designed email templates across 50+ categories. Options suit every business vertical from ecommerce to travel, healthcare, real estate, and beyond. Filters and search functionality make finding relevant templates simple.
While Klaviyo provides more overall customization capability, Sendinblue’s volume of designed templates enables easy startup for those wanting plug-and-play options. The templates are stylish, mobile-optimized, and easily adapted while also supporting dynamic content insertion.
For further edits, users can access the template builder’s drag-and-drop editor, image library, and style formatting tools or export HTML/CSS code. Sendinblue also offers a transactional email option to design unique order/shipping confirmations, invoices, password resets, and more.
Winner: Sendinblue
With a library spanning over 700 templates, Sendinblue wins when it comes to out-of-the-box design choice variety. While Klaviyo offers robust overall customization and personalization power, Sendinblue’s range of pre-made templates provides ample selection for narrowing usage needs in a flexible editor. For shop owners focused on quickly launching attractive campaigns, Sendinblue allows modifying on-brand templates with ease.
Segmentation
Klaviyo
With advanced customer profiling and data infrastructure, Klaviyo enables powerful behavioral segmentation and contact management features to target users precisely. Beyond basic options like location, purchase history, and email activity, Klaviyo offers custom attributes and granular filtering to build highly specific lists.
For example, users can group customers who purchased certain products, read specific blog content, have high lifetime value, abandon carts, click on ads, attend webinars, and more based on any detail tracked. Dynamic and custom segments automatically update too as data changes.
Klaviyo also enables predictive filtering options based on machine learning models. This allows the creation of segments of customers likely to purchase soon, churn and disengage, or those that represent untapped potential for cross-selling. The predictive intelligence helps preemptively craft targeted campaigns.
With unlimited customizable segments, Klaviyo provides advanced segmentation unmatched in specificity for hyper-personalization. Real-time syncing across all integrated platforms like the web and apps also keeps profiles updated.
Sendinblue
While Klaviyo surpasses in segmentation depth, Sendinblue still empowers targeting flexibility with its range of filters. Beyond basic attributes, users can build segments based on email engagement metrics, purchase activity, order value, active status, and other CRM data tracked over time.
Easy drag-and-drop functionality also enables stringing together multiple attributes with AND/OR logic to define segments. However, Sendinblue lacks more complex behavioral filtering, predictive modeling, and custom field creation offered by Klaviyo.
Still, basic purchase history, geolocation, demographic, and user activity filtering provide ample options for personalization without heavy data science lifting. Sendinblue also automatically syncs customer information across integrated platforms.
Winner: Klaviyo
With the ability to track unlimited custom data points and combine that data into dynamic segments filtered by predictive intelligence, Klaviyo leads in advanced segmentation capabilities. The depth of profiling and automation enables hyper-personalized messaging neither matched by ease of use nor breadth of integrations alone. Klaviyo’s granularity wins for maximizing the impact of campaigns.
Analytics
Klaviyo
Klaviyo stands out for its powerful analytics that provides deep visibility into email and SMS campaign performance. Beyond high-level engagement metrics, users gain access to customer-centric analytics revealing granular behavioral trends and insights.
Features include engagement scoring for subscriber levels, cohort analysis tracking groups over time, multi-variant testing, and custom dashboards. Klaviyo also offers visualization of metrics across devices, traffic sources, individual links, dynamic content, and more for deep evaluation.
Notable tools include Klaviyo’s Flow Metrics enabling drill-down analysis into each step of workflows to identify drop-off. Their Segment Compare charts campaign metrics for different customer groups, while their Predictive Sends Report reveals trends in purchasing propensity. Such capabilities advance optimization.
For benchmarking, Klaviyo provides curated reports with aggregated platform averages for open/click rates. Users can filter reports by industry, company size, location, and campaign type for relevant comparison. Overall, the analytics toolset delivers the actionable intelligence needed to improve personalization.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue also empowers strong analytics with an interactive dashboard tracking email engagement, conversions, ROI, traffic source, browser data, and more. Users can drill down into campaign and audience-level metrics for insights.
Key features include A/B testing, heat mapping to identify on-page click depths, email rendering across inbox providers, and real-time campaign reporting with scheduling. However, Sendinblue lacks the deep behavioral analytics and predictive intelligence that Klaviyo offers.
Still, for ease-of-use Sendinblue dashboards provide the key statistical overview many users need without intensive number crunching. The visualizations and custom tables make tracking campaign impact simple for general optimization needs. Segment filtering also enables some persona analysis.
Winner: Klaviyo
With multi-dimensional statistical modeling, predictive analytics, and the ability to segment metrics by granular custom profiles, Klaviyo wins for enabling deep optimization powered by customer intelligence. The breadth of behavioral analysis simply provides more actionable insight than Sendinblue’s still competitive offering. For simpler reporting needs though, Sendinblue certainly delivers ample intelligence.
Unique Features
Klaviyo
Beyond robust analytics, Klaviyo enables additional unique features like AI-powered SMS and integration with paid platforms. Klaviyo SMS leverages natural language processing to automatically respond to common consumer questions, route inquiries, and trigger workflows. This provides instant support while capturing mobile contacts.
Klaviyo also integrates directly with Facebook and Instagram ads, allowing marketers to build targeted audiences and personalize creativity on the platform. Combined with automated flows distributing different content to segments, Klaviyo empowers advanced paid expansion powered by email/SMS data.
Finally, Klaviyo stands out with its lightning-fast proprietary data pipeline known as Recharge. The volume/velocity of this CDC-powered infrastructure enables immense speed and scale, underpinning the accuracy of analytics and predictive models that surpass competitors.
Sendinblue
Distinct options with Sendinblue include multichannel campaign management bringing email, SMS, chat, and ad channels together for unified communication. Automated messages can deploy across platforms with centralized tracking.
Sendinblue also provides a built-in landing page/form building to easily capture leads from websites, ads, and emails. Users can select templates, edit content, and embed forms or pages without coding. This helps consolidate platform needs for small businesses and ecommerce businesses rather than relying on third-party tools.
For customer data access, Sendinblue enables user exports, real-time streams to data warehouses like BigQuery, and APIs for analyst use. This allows deeper insights beyond the admin dashboard for power users. Sendinblue also offers add-on Chatbot tools.
Winner: Tie
With Klaviyo’s email marketing software, you get strong predictive analytics/personalization while Sendinblue focuses on multichannel delivery/built-ins. However, both platforms offer varying exclusive functionalities ideal for different users to send targeted email campaigns.
Klaviyo suits data-driven teams with complex email marketing strategies, while Sendinblue offers more app-based consolidation for simpler business models – making this a tie. The needs assessment should guide which proprietary features matter most.
3. Ease of Use
Klaviyo
Klaviyo provides a clean, modern user interface with sleek dashboards that simplify launching campaigns, visualizing data, and tracking results. While the platform is feature-packed, intuitive navigation makes core tools easily accessible without confusing menus.
For onboarding, Klaviyo offers tailored flows based on business types to automatically set up relevant campaigns and templates. Useful tooltip overlays also explain key pages and steps for getting started. This helps smooth the initial setup.
However, this email marketing tool does cater more to technical users versed in advanced segmentation, custom coding, and analytics. Leveraging the platform’s full capabilities requires comfortability with in-depth data work. Less experienced users may find the platform overwhelming despite handy guides.
Overall though, Klaviyo accelerates email marketing productivity for savvy e-commerce shops through automation. Easy template customization, straightforward dashboard creation, and integrated platforms streamline execution for users with growth-oriented skill sets.
Sendinblue
Alternatively, Sendinblue opts for simplification over customization breadth. The intuitive drag-and-drop builder, abundant templates, and preset automation options enable rapid campaign creation for users of any level.
Sendinblue also offers thorough onboarding checklists, video tutorials, webinars, and multi-channel Slack community support. These resources help overcome the initial learning curve. Sendinblue caters strongly to beginners.
However, more advanced users may find Sendinblue limiting. Less workflow flexibility, coding access, and analytics hinder sophisticated strategies. But those wanting basic professional emails, newsletters, and Facebook ad promotion can quickly succeed with Sendinblue.
Winner: Sendinblue
For non-technical users focused on launching campaigns swiftly, Sendinblue’s simplicity and automation assistance win for onboarding ease and easy management of contact details. Klaviyo undoubtedly empowers deeper personalization for savvy marketers but demands more specialization. Sendinblue strikes the right balance of approachability and impact for less experienced owners.
4. Email Deliverability
Klaviyo
Klaviyo prioritizes deliverability through proprietary methods and partnerships. By leveraging dedicated IP pools instead of shared ones, each customer sends from their IP reputation, avoiding issues from mass sender impacts. Rigorous sending infrastructure also maintains whitelist status across ISPs.
Additionally, Klaviyo’s featuring scoping technology enables uniquely customizable and dynamic content while protecting sender reputation, unlike merge tag-reliant platforms. Furthermore, granular subscriber targeting communicates appropriate message frequency for engaged subscribers rather than overwhelming all contacts.
For inbox placement testing, Klaviyo checks each campaign against major email providers and throttles deployment as needed to land sender domains in primary tabs. Overall, the technology stack ensures strong deliverability.
Sendinblue
Comparably, Sendinblue also focuses heavily on reliable email delivery and inboxing via managed IP sharing, sending infrastructure scaling, and partnerships with major ESPs. Sendinblue domains maintain reliable reputations to avoid spam folder filtering.
Easy subscriber management also enables cleaning invalid email addresses to protect placement. For further optimization, an inbox placement tool provides feedback on improving open rates across email clients. Sendinblue also allows directly integrating custom sender domains.
However, Sendinblue lacks proprietary deliverability technology for curbing subscriber fatigue or enabling personalized dynamic content at Klaviyo’s scale. However, its email infrastructure still empowers reliable campaign deployment.
Winner: Klaviyo
Both marketing tools have lot to offer, but with scoping technology uniquely providing personalized content while protecting subscriber engagement metrics, Klaviyo edges out Sendinblue for deliverability. Klaviyo also sends higher email volume with better placement rates. Both platforms offer reliable emailing, but Klaviyo’s proprietary innovations better inbox messaging while avoiding fatigue.
5. Customer Support and Community
Klaviyo
Klaviyo provides 24/7 live chat, email ticketing, and phone support in addition to an online knowledge base packed with articles, ebooks, documentation, walkthroughs, and training videos. Users gain access to a robust self-serve resource library.
For community support, Klaviyo offers an exclusive online community with discussion forums and events across customer personas from marketers to developers. Members network and access topic experts for best practices.
However, their largest community resides on Facebook where 34,000+ Klaviyo users congregate to discuss tactics, implementation challenges, new features, and more. Whether you need help with landing pages, sales automation, or sign-up forms, the group provides crowd-sourced guidance beyond formal channels.
With multi-channel free user support as well as engaged expert groups, Klaviyo customers receive assistance tailored to their knowledge gaps and network needs. Hands-on resources drive success.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue also provides phone, chat, email, and web ticketing options with 24/7 availability along with an online library of tutorials, docs, ebooks, and getting-started guides convenient for self-education. For quick assistance, in-platform live message bubbles proactively offer help.
However, Sendinblue’s community lives primarily through its lively Facebook group of 180,000+ users rather than standalone forums. Group members share use cases, best practices, and feedback, and access additional training. Sendinblue also hosts regular workshops and meetups globally.
Their expansive following generates increased engagement but lacks Klaviyo’s visibility into expert discussions. Sendinblue casts a wider net to crowd-source solutions from vocal power users instead.
Winner: Tie
With Klaviyo leveraging insider communities and Sendinblue sustaining high-volume user groups, both platforms foster valuable avenues for support tailored to different customer preferences around discussion exclusivity versus mass participation. Distinct approaches drive aligned success.
6. Integrations
Klaviyo
Klaviyo connects with hundreds of popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce for turnkey email integration with online stores. User data, orders, and customer activity flow automatically to instantly build detailed subscriber profiles and trigger event-based campaigns.
CRM synchronization also enables managing contacts, tracking custom data points, creating segments, and personalizing campaigns directly by leveraging Salesforce, Hubspot, and other databases.
Notable app integrations include analytics tools (Google Analytics, Mixpanel), Shopify powers like Kit for abandoned cart recovery, and platforms like Slack, Zapier, and Adroll supporting complete martech stacks.
With Klaviyo’s extensiveness, technical teams can unify critical marketing and analytics systems using Klaviyo as the hub receiving inputs for building rich customer profiles that drive hyper-personalization. 300+ and growing options minimize work.
Sendinblue
Comparatively, Sendinblue connects 70+ apps spanning social media, e-commerce, CRM, accounting, payments, and more – though with limitations around analytics and advertising expansion present with Klaviyo.
Sendinblue easily facilitates centralizing email subscribers and customer data from shopping carts like WooCommerce, product review sites like YotPo, and even webinar registrations from GoToWebinar – enabling consolidated outreach campaigns.
Zapier integration facilitates connecting unsupported niche apps, though may require more manual setup of data flows. Sendinblue covers the core library for easily merging user information from a stacked martech collection into synced data streams.
Winner: Klaviyo
With double the integrations spanning more categories critical for execution like analytics and advertising, Klaviyo surpasses Sendinblue for platform extensibility – especially for technically advanced marketers. Klaviyo’s breadth and exclusives power complete, automated, insights-driven campaigns. Sendinblue still impresses for essentials.
7. Pricing
Klaviyo
Klaviyo offers a free plan covering up to 500 contacts including basic features like email building, automation, and dashboards. Paid tiers scale up to handle larger contact volumes and advanced functionality based on e-commerce metrics.
The Email plan at $45/month suits most small e-commerce shops, supporting 1,500 contacts, unlimited emails, targeted sequences, A/B testing, and CRM integrations. The Email and SMS plan starts at $60/month lifting limits to 15,000 emails while Enterprise offers custom quotes. Add-ons like SMS cost extra per message.
Overall, dynamic pricing based on store sales volume rather than arbitrary contact count makes cost align intelligently with business growth. Higher-volume B2C brands may find greater long-term value compared to paying for static contacts even if needing Enterprise support. But transacting lower volumes can still use core features affordably.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue (Brevo) offers the following pricing plans:
- Basic – Brevo’s free plan lets you send up to 300 emails a day
- Starter – This paid plan costs $25/month for 20K emails/month
- Business – $65/month for 5,000 contacts and marketing automation features.
- BrevoPlus – Custom pricing for unlimited contacts.
The Basic plan provides core features like email marketing, forms, reports, and automation. Starter unlocks advanced options like A/B testing and API access.
At the Business tier, capabilities expand further with features like custom CSS, multi-user logins, and product recommendations for e-commerce.
Storage, bandwidth, and contacts scale with each tier, with the highest-priced plan offering unlimited marketing automation. Overall, Brevo is positioned at the lower end of industry pricing but delivers robust capabilities even at low tiers.
Winner: Klaviyo
With cost growing in direct proportion to store transaction volume, Klaviyo’s pricing model works smarter for e-commerce brands compared to arbitrary contact tiers. There’s less risk of overpaying or needing sudden expensive upgrades after outgrowing rigid plans if sales spike. Dynamic value pricing nets greater savings long-term.
8. Reviews and Reputation
Klaviyo
Klaviyo earns widespread praise for providing sophisticated analytics coupled with powerful segmentation and personalization capabilities for optimized email marketing campaigns. Many users highlight Klaviyo as an invaluable growth tool for e-commerce.
Positive reviews on platforms like G2 and Capterra highlight exceptional features for targeted workflows, granular customization, and actionable insights that drive sales. Some technical users rate Klaviyo as having a steep learning curve but consider conquering it well worth the effort.
Negative feedback focuses on high pricing at higher tiers as well as occasional bugs with integrations that disrupt workflows. But most critics still admit core functionality delivers tremendous value, even if wanting simpler usability or more affordable enterprise scaling.
With a 4.7/5 average across reviewers, Klaviyo ranks well for facilitating serious email marketing growth when users invest the time to leverage advanced capabilities.
Sendinblue
Alternatively, Sendinblue earns praise as an easy-to-use ESP enabling efficient email communication through templates, automation, and intuitive campaign builders requiring no technical skills. Users highlight exceptional customer support and active community forums as well.
Many reviews cite Sendinblue as the ideal affordable solution for launching well-designed email marketing without complex segmentation or coding. However, more advanced users lament limitations around flexibility, customization, and scalability compared to alternatives like Klaviyo.
With a 4.5/5 average rating, Sendinblue offers streamlined functionality for basic email outreach goals. However, those desiring more sophisticated capabilities, larger contact volumes, and tighter platform integration eventually look elsewhere. But simplicity stands out.
Winner: Klaviyo
With nearly flawless ratings around delivering sophisticated personalization that drives measurable business growth once mastered, Klaviyo edges out Sendinblue as the platform of choice for serious e-commerce marketers despite demands on initial learning and enterprise pricing.
It becomes a centralized hub for customer intelligence powering email to accelerate revenue. For simpler needs, Sendinblue excels on ease of use but trails in depth.
9. FAQ’s
Klaviyo FAQs
- What types of email campaigns can you create with Klaviyo?
Klaviyo enables welcome flows, abandoned cart sequences, win-back messages, birthday promotions, SMS messaging, and more – with the ability to set up unlimited multi-channel automation customized to business goals. - Does Klaviyo have e-commerce capabilities?
Yes, Klaviyo integrates directly with all major shopping carts to track online store data like purchases, browsing, cart additions, wish lists, and more – powering behavioral personalization. - Is Klaviyo GDPR-compliant?
Klaviyo provides full support for global data privacy regulations including GDPR compliance features like data access/deletion, lawful data collection notices, children’s data protections, and localization.
Sendinblue FAQs
- What types of templates come with Sendinblue?
Sendinblue offers 700+ responsive email templates spanning categories like promotions, shipping updates, newsletters, invitations, announcements, and holiday designs – all easily customizable. - Can I view email analytics on mobile?
Yes, Sendiblue’s mobile app enables accessing real-time campaign statistics and engagement metrics from iOS and Android devices. - Is there a limit on contacts?
Sendinblue contact limits scale up to 500,000 contacts on premium plans, after which custom enterprise quotes apply – making growth easy.
Final Thoughts
Choose Klaviyo If…
Klaviyo is the premier email and SMS marketing platform for e-commerce brands focused on advanced personalization and automation fueled by customer data insights.
With unmatched segmentation, customization flexibility, and analytics depth, Klaviyo powers targeted messaging that drives growth for online retailers invested in leveraging data science capabilities. The expansive platform does demand more technical specialization for maximizing potential. But revenue impact earns Klaviyo industry leader status.
You can also consider some Klaviyo alternatives if you feel this email marketing tool isn’t the best choice for you.
Choose Sendinblue If…
Sendinblue offers an approachable ESP for SMBs prioritizing simplicity over complexity in deploying professional email campaigns, newsletters, Facebook ads, and SMS blasts using beautiful templates. Easy automation, built-in analytics, and ample integrations help consolidate marketing tasks without overwhelming novices.
While Sendinblue trails leaders in areas like customization, its beginner-friendly toolkit brings ample impact for modest needs.
Choosing the ideal platform comes down to aligning differentiating strengths to business models, resources, and goals. Well-informed assessment of must-have functionality compared to unnecessary tools for current initiatives protects budgets while allowing room for future growth into platforms’ fuller ranges.
Don’t hesitate to ask below if you need any help determining the best email and SMS marketing solution for unlocking your earning potential through customer engagement!