Brevo vs Klaviyo: A No-BS Comparison for Email Marketing

Brevo and Klaviyo are both solid email marketing platforms, but they're built for different businesses. The short version: Klaviyo is the ecommerce specialist with deep Shopify integration and predictive analytics. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the budget-friendly generalist with multi-channel capabilities.

Let's break down exactly what you're getting with each so you can make the right call.

The Quick Verdict

Choose Brevo if: You're a small-to-medium business watching your budget, have a large contact list you don't email frequently, or need multi-channel marketing (email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat) in one platform.

Choose Klaviyo if: You run an ecommerce store (especially on Shopify), want advanced segmentation and predictive analytics, and are willing to pay more for deeper data insights and automation.

Pricing: The Biggest Difference

This is where Brevo and Klaviyo fundamentally differ. Brevo charges based on emails sent. Klaviyo charges based on active contacts. This pricing model difference can mean massive cost differences depending on your business.

Brevo Pricing

Key add-on costs to watch:

Brevo offers a 10% discount on annual plans. The platform's pricing is remarkably transparent-you pay for what you send, not what you store. For businesses with seasonal email patterns or those who maintain large lists but don't email everyone frequently, this model is a game-changer.

For more details on Brevo's pricing structure, check out our complete Brevo pricing breakdown.

Klaviyo Pricing

Here's how Klaviyo scales with contact growth:

Critical billing change you need to know: In February, Klaviyo enforced a major billing policy change. Previously, you were only charged for contacts you actively emailed. Now, you're billed for ALL active profiles in your account-even if you never email them.

This means if you have 25,000 active profiles but only email 10,000 of them, you're still paying for all 25,000. Your plan will automatically upgrade if you exceed your contact limit, with no opt-out option. However, Klaviyo caps the first auto-upgrade at a 25% price increase for existing customers.

There's also a 90-day suppression lock: once you unsuppress a profile (reactivate it), you cannot suppress it again for 90 days. This means you're committed to paying for that profile for three billing cycles, even if they don't engage.

Klaviyo does offer an auto-downgrade feature, but it's off by default and cannot be used simultaneously with auto-upgrade. You must choose one or the other.

Real Cost Comparison

Let's say you have 25,000 contacts and send 5 emails per person per month (125,000 total emails):

That's a 3-4x price difference. One case study showed a business with 25,000 contacts dropping from $300/month on Klaviyo to $45/month on Brevo-an 85% savings. However, the question is whether Klaviyo's advanced features justify the premium for your specific use case.

For businesses with 100,000 contacts who email moderately:

The cost gap widens significantly as your list grows. Klaviyo becomes exponentially more expensive with scale, while Brevo's pricing increases linearly with actual usage.

Features Comparison

Email Marketing Basics

Both platforms cover the fundamentals well:

Brevo has a slight edge in ease of use with G2 users rating it 9.0 for usability versus Klaviyo's 8.7. Klaviyo has a steeper learning curve but offers more depth once you master it. The interface is more data-heavy, which appeals to analytical marketers but can overwhelm beginners.

Where Klaviyo Excels

Ecommerce Integration: Klaviyo was built for ecommerce from the ground up. It integrates deeply with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and other platforms. The Shopify integration is particularly impressive-it syncs data in sub-200 milliseconds, meaning every message and insight reflects what's happening in your store in real-time.

Customer profiles, order history, browsing behavior, cart contents, product views, and collection interactions all flow automatically into Klaviyo. This data synchronization happens seamlessly through a one-click integration in the Shopify App Store. Over 117,000 brands use Klaviyo with Shopify specifically because the integration is so robust.

Predictive Analytics: Klaviyo's AI can predict customer lifetime value (CLV), expected next purchase dates, and churn risk. This lets you target customers who are likely to buy again or reach out before they leave. You can build segments around predictive metrics like "high predicted CLV" or "at risk of churning" to focus your marketing budget where it matters most. Brevo doesn't offer this level of predictive capability.

Product Recommendations: Klaviyo automatically analyzes purchase history and browsing behavior to suggest relevant products in your emails. The recommendations are dynamically generated based on individual customer data, not just generic "best sellers." This is table stakes for serious ecommerce operations and can significantly boost average order value.

Revenue Attribution: Klaviyo connects email metrics directly to revenue, showing exactly which campaigns and flows drive sales. You can see the dollar value of every email you send, track attributed revenue over time periods, and understand which automated flows (abandoned cart, welcome series, post-purchase) generate the most revenue. This direct connection to your bottom line makes it easy to justify email marketing spend.

350+ Integrations: While Brevo has solid integrations (330+), Klaviyo's integration library is slightly larger at 350+, and it's much deeper for ecommerce tools. This includes loyalty programs (Smile.io, Yotpo), review platforms (Stamped, Judge.me), subscription management (Recharge, Bold), and dozens of Shopify apps that feed additional customer data into Klaviyo.

Advanced Segmentation: Klaviyo allows you to build extremely sophisticated segments based on behavioral data, predicted metrics, and custom properties. You can segment on virtually any data point-including nested product properties, custom event data, and calculated fields. The segment builder supports complex logic with AND/OR conditions and nested conditions.

Customer Data Platform: Klaviyo functions as a unified customer data platform (CDP), storing comprehensive profiles with unlimited event history. Every customer interaction-email opens, SMS clicks, site visits, purchases, refunds-is stored indefinitely and accessible for segmentation. This creates a "single source of truth" for customer data.

Where Brevo Excels

Multi-Channel in One Platform: Brevo combines email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, push notifications, and even Facebook Ads in a single dashboard. Klaviyo focuses primarily on email and SMS-you won't get native WhatsApp campaigns, live chat functionality, or ad management. For businesses that want to consolidate tools, Brevo's breadth is a major advantage.

Landing Pages: Brevo includes a landing page builder on Standard plans and above (Professional tier includes up to 20 landing pages). You can create sign-up pages, promotional pages, and product pages without needing a separate tool. Klaviyo doesn't offer native landing page functionality at all-just basic sign-up forms and pop-ups.

Built-in CRM: Brevo includes a lightweight CRM for managing contacts, deals, pipelines, and sales activities. The Sales Platform includes pipeline management, deal tracking, tasks, and company/contact management. This makes Brevo suitable for B2B businesses or companies with longer sales cycles. Klaviyo is purely marketing-focused and doesn't include CRM functionality.

Transactional Emails: All Brevo plans include robust transactional email capabilities with RESTful APIs, SMTP relay, outbound webhooks, and unlimited log retention. You can send order confirmations, password resets, shipping notifications, and other critical communications through the same platform. While Klaviyo supports transactional emails, they're treated separately from marketing functionality.

Support on Free Plan: Brevo offers email support to all users, including free plan users, with personalized responses (not canned replies). Klaviyo only provides email support for the first 60 days on the free plan, then you're limited to community forums and documentation. After 60 days, free users have no direct support channel.

Multi-User Access: Brevo's Professional plan supports multiple users with different permission levels, making it suitable for teams. The platform allows up to 10 users on Professional (each additional user costs $12/month). Klaviyo includes multi-user access on all paid plans without additional charges.

Generous Free Plan: Brevo's free plan is significantly more generous-300 emails per day (9,000/month) with up to 100,000 contact storage. Klaviyo's free plan only allows 250 contacts and 500 emails per month total. For businesses just starting out or testing email marketing, Brevo provides much more room to experiment.

Automation Capabilities

Both platforms offer solid automation, but with different strengths and approaches:

Klaviyo's automation is ecommerce-centric with 60+ pre-built flows designed specifically for online stores. These include abandoned cart recovery, browse abandonment, welcome series, post-purchase follow-ups, winback campaigns, VIP customer nurturing, and back-in-stock alerts. The flows can trigger based on deep behavioral data-like triggering an email when someone views a specific product category three times, or when their predicted next order date passes without a purchase.

Klaviyo's automation builder supports complex branching logic, time delays based on business hours or time zones, conditional splits based on any data point, and A/B testing within flows. You can also use AI-powered send time optimization to deliver messages when each individual is most likely to open them.

Brevo's automation is more general-purpose but still capable. You get behavior-based triggers, website tracking events, and multi-step workflows with branching logic. The automation builder is more visual and arguably easier to use than Klaviyo's. However, the Starter plan limits automation to 2,000 contacts, which can restrict growth. Standard and higher plans remove this limit.

Brevo's automation works across multiple channels-you can create workflows that combine email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages in a single automation. This omnichannel capability is powerful for businesses that want coordinated messaging across platforms.

One key difference: Klaviyo's automations are tightly coupled to ecommerce events (orders, products viewed, cart value), while Brevo's automations are more versatile for non-ecommerce use cases like lead nurturing, appointment reminders, and customer onboarding.

Deliverability: Who Gets Your Emails to the Inbox?

Both platforms have decent deliverability infrastructure, but there are meaningful differences in support and tooling:

Klaviyo's deliverability features:

Brevo's deliverability features:

Klaviyo generally offers more comprehensive deliverability support, especially at higher plan tiers. The platform provides more detailed sender reputation monitoring and more hands-on deliverability consulting. However, Brevo's deliverability is still solid-especially given the price point.

Important note: Neither platform supports full SPF alignment on shared IPs. However, both support DKIM alignment, which is sufficient for passing DMARC checks and maintaining good deliverability. This is an industry-standard limitation, not unique to these platforms.

The truth is that deliverability depends more on your sending practices than your platform choice. List hygiene, engagement rates, content quality, and proper authentication matter far more than whether you use Brevo or Klaviyo. Both platforms deliver your emails reliably when you follow best practices.

SMS Marketing

Both platforms offer SMS, but with different pricing models and capabilities:

Brevo SMS: Pay-as-you-go credits that never expire. Pricing varies by destination country. For example, SMS to US/Canada costs around $0.008-0.01 per message depending on volume purchased. You can buy credits in packages (starting from 100 SMS credits) and use them whenever needed. SMS is available as an add-on on all plans.

Brevo's SMS features include:

Klaviyo SMS: Credit-based system included with paid plans. The Email plan includes 150 SMS credits; the Email + SMS plan at $20/month includes 150 credits, or $35/month for 1,250 credits. Additional credits can be purchased. Like Brevo, pricing varies by destination country, but credits don't roll over month-to-month-use them or lose them.

Klaviyo's SMS features include:

The key difference: Klaviyo's SMS integrates more tightly with its email automation and ecommerce data, allowing for sophisticated cross-channel campaigns. You can build flows that intelligently switch between email and SMS based on engagement, or send coordinated email+SMS campaigns to high-value segments.

Brevo's SMS is capable but less sophisticated-it functions more as a separate channel rather than a deeply integrated part of the marketing mix. However, Brevo's credits never expire, which is a major advantage if you use SMS sporadically.

Email Templates and Design

Klaviyo offers 150+ pre-built email templates designed specifically for ecommerce. These templates are organized by campaign type (promotional, transactional, seasonal) and are optimized for conversions. The template library is larger and more varied than Brevo's, with modern designs that look professional out of the box.

Klaviyo's drag-and-drop editor is powerful but can feel complex initially. It offers granular control over every element-spacing, padding, fonts, colors, borders-which gives you design flexibility but requires more time to master. The editor supports dynamic content blocks that show different content based on customer data.

Brevo offers 40+ email templates that cover basic needs-newsletters, promotions, transactional emails, event invitations. The template library is smaller and less specialized than Klaviyo's, but the templates are clean and mobile-responsive.

Brevo's drag-and-drop editor is notably easier to use. It's more intuitive for beginners, with a simpler interface and fewer options to navigate. You can build attractive emails quickly without getting overwhelmed by settings. The editor also supports dynamic content and personalization.

Both platforms allow custom HTML/CSS coding if you want complete design control. Both support image libraries, dynamic product blocks (for ecommerce), and mobile preview modes.

AI Features

Both platforms have jumped on the AI bandwagon, but with different implementations:

Klaviyo AI focuses on ecommerce performance optimization:

Klaviyo's AI is more mature and deeply integrated into the platform's core functionality. The predictive analytics are particularly powerful-they use machine learning models trained on your specific customer data to generate accurate predictions.

Brevo's Aura AI emphasizes accessibility and productivity:

Brevo's AI is newer and less sophisticated, but it's useful for smaller teams who need to work faster. The content generation can help overcome writer's block, and the automated segmentation saves time on list management.

Verdict: Klaviyo's AI is more powerful for driving ecommerce conversions and revenue. Brevo's AI helps smaller teams be more productive. If AI-driven personalization and predictive analytics are core to your strategy, Klaviyo wins. If you just want AI assistance with routine tasks, Brevo is sufficient.

Integration Ecosystem

Both platforms offer extensive integration options, though with different emphases:

Klaviyo offers 350+ integrations, heavily weighted toward ecommerce tools:

The depth of Klaviyo's ecommerce integrations is unmatched. The Shopify integration in particular syncs hundreds of data points and supports complex workflows that would be impossible otherwise.

Brevo offers 330+ integrations with broader business focus:

Brevo's integrations are more diverse across business types-not just ecommerce-focused. The platform integrates well with B2B tools, content management systems, and lead generation platforms.

Both platforms offer Zapier integration, which unlocks thousands of additional connection possibilities. Both also provide REST APIs for custom integrations if you have development resources.

Reporting and Analytics

Klaviyo's analytics are comprehensive and revenue-focused:

Klaviyo's reporting directly connects marketing activities to revenue. You can see exactly how much money each email campaign generated, which flows drive the most revenue, and which customer segments are most valuable. This revenue-first approach makes it easy to calculate ROI and justify marketing spend.

Brevo's analytics are solid but less sophisticated:

Brevo's Standard plan includes advanced analytics; the Starter plan only provides basic reporting. The analytics are sufficient for understanding email performance but don't offer the depth of behavioral analysis or revenue attribution that Klaviyo provides.

If you're data-driven and want detailed insights into customer behavior and revenue impact, Klaviyo is superior. If you just need to understand basic email metrics, Brevo is adequate.

Customer Support

Support quality can make or break your experience with an email platform:

Klaviyo support:

Klaviyo's support is generally responsive and knowledgeable, especially for ecommerce-specific questions. However, free plan users only get email support for the first 60 days-after that, you're limited to self-service resources.

Brevo support:

Brevo's support is notable for being available to free users-and users report receiving personalized, non-canned responses even on the free plan. However, some users report slower response times compared to Klaviyo, and deliverability support is limited (Professional plan users get only 3 hours annually with a deliverability specialist).

The consensus: Klaviyo has more comprehensive support for paid customers, but Brevo is more generous with free users. For ecommerce-specific issues, Klaviyo's team generally has deeper expertise.

Ease of Use and Learning Curve

Brevo wins on ease of use. The interface is cleaner, more intuitive, and easier to navigate. New users can typically get up and running within a day, creating campaigns and basic automations without extensive training. The simplified interface means fewer features to learn, which is a blessing for small teams or solo marketers.

G2 users rate Brevo 9.0 out of 10 for ease of use-one of the highest scores in the category. Common feedback: "straightforward," "user-friendly," "quick to learn."

Klaviyo has a steeper learning curve. The interface is more complex and data-heavy, with multiple tabs, sections, and options to navigate. New users often feel overwhelmed initially. However, this complexity reflects the platform's power-once you learn the system, you have access to incredibly sophisticated capabilities.

G2 users rate Klaviyo 8.7 out of 10 for ease of use-still good, but noticeably lower than Brevo. Common feedback: "powerful but complex," "takes time to master," "worth the learning curve."

Klaviyo offers extensive Academy courses and documentation to help with onboarding. Many users hire Klaviyo-certified agencies to handle setup and management, which adds cost but reduces the learning burden.

If you want to start quickly with minimal training, Brevo is the better choice. If you're willing to invest time learning a more complex system for greater capabilities, Klaviyo's learning curve pays dividends.

Compliance and Data Privacy

Both platforms take compliance seriously, but with different approaches:

Klaviyo is SOC 2 Type II certified and offers:

Klaviyo handles customer data responsibly and provides tools to manage consent and privacy preferences. The platform is particularly strong for businesses selling in the EU or California.

Brevo is also GDPR compliant and offers:

Brevo's European roots give it an edge for EU-based businesses. The company is headquartered in Paris and maintains servers in Europe, which can simplify GDPR compliance for European senders.

Both platforms support SMS compliance features like automatic STOP/HELP keyword handling, opt-in/opt-out management, and quiet hours enforcement.

Migration and Switching Platforms

If you're considering switching between these platforms (or from another platform to either):

Migrating to Klaviyo: Klaviyo provides detailed migration guides and offers data import tools for contacts, historical data, and segments. However, you'll need to manually recreate automation workflows and email templates. Klaviyo's migration support is thorough, with dedicated resources for larger accounts. Plan for 2-4 weeks of setup time depending on complexity.

Migrating to Brevo: Brevo offers migration assistance for Professional plan users and above, including help transferring contacts and recreating campaigns. Brevo also offers a free Klaviyo integration in their App Store to help migrate data. Like Klaviyo, automation workflows and email designs need manual recreation. Expect 2-4 weeks for full migration.

Both platforms support CSV imports for contact data, making it easy to move your email lists. Historical engagement data (past opens, clicks, purchases) is harder to migrate and may require API work or manual CSV imports.

Important: Test thoroughly before fully switching. Both platforms offer free plans or trials, so you can build out campaigns in the new platform before decommissioning your old one.

Scalability and Enterprise Features

How do these platforms handle growth?

Klaviyo is built for scale. The platform handles high-volume senders effortlessly, with customers sending millions of emails monthly. Klaviyo One (the enterprise tier) offers:

Klaviyo One costs an additional 20% on top of your base plan costs and becomes mandatory if you spend over $10,000/month on your plan.

Brevo Enterprise offers scalability with custom pricing:

Both platforms can handle enterprise-level sending, but Klaviyo is more commonly used by high-volume ecommerce brands ($10M+ revenue), while Brevo tends to serve SMBs and mid-market companies.

Use Case Scenarios

Let's walk through specific scenarios to see which platform fits better:

Scenario 1: Shopify Store Doing $500K/Year

You have 15,000 email subscribers, growing by 500/month. You send 4-5 emails per month to most of your list, plus automated flows (abandoned cart, welcome series, post-purchase).

Klaviyo cost: ~$200/month
Brevo cost: ~$60-80/month

Recommendation: Klaviyo. The cost difference is significant, but the revenue attribution, predictive analytics, and deep Shopify integration will likely pay for themselves. At this revenue level, understanding which customers are high-value and optimizing for repeat purchases becomes critical. Klaviyo's tools are worth the investment.

Scenario 2: B2B SaaS Company with 50,000 Contacts

You send weekly newsletters, monthly product updates, and nurture sequences. Most contacts are leads or trial users; only 5,000 are paying customers.

Klaviyo cost: ~$700/month
Brevo cost: ~$150-250/month

Recommendation: Brevo. You're not running an ecommerce store, so Klaviyo's ecommerce-specific features provide little value. You'll appreciate Brevo's built-in CRM for managing leads and deals, the landing page builder for lead capture, and the significantly lower cost. The money saved can go toward other growth initiatives.

Scenario 3: Small Etsy Seller with 2,000 Contacts

You're just starting email marketing, sending occasional promotional emails and abandoned cart reminders.

Klaviyo cost: ~$40/month
Brevo cost: $9-18/month

Recommendation: Brevo. At this stage, you're better off keeping costs low while you learn email marketing. Brevo's simplicity will let you get started faster, and the cost savings are meaningful when you're bootstrapping. You can always migrate to Klaviyo later as you scale.

Scenario 4: Multi-Channel Digital Agency

You manage email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns for clients. You need to manage multiple brands from one account.

Klaviyo cost: Varies by client; requires separate accounts per client
Brevo cost: Enterprise plan with sub-accounts

Recommendation: Brevo. The multi-channel capabilities (email + SMS + WhatsApp + chat) and sub-account management make Brevo ideal for agencies. Klaviyo doesn't offer native WhatsApp or live chat, and managing multiple client accounts is more cumbersome.

Scenario 5: Established Shopify Store with $5M+ Revenue

You have 100,000+ active customers, sophisticated segmentation needs, and a dedicated email marketing team. Email drives 30%+ of revenue.

Klaviyo cost: $1,200-2,000+/month
Brevo cost: ~$500-800/month

Recommendation: Klaviyo. At this scale, the advanced features justify the cost. Predictive analytics help identify high-CLV customers for retention campaigns. Revenue attribution proves ROI to executives. The dedicated customer success manager provides strategic guidance. Brevo would save money but lacks the sophistication needed at this level.

Real User Experiences

Here's what actual users say about switching between platforms or choosing one over the other:

Reddit user (250K subscribers, Shopify store): "I moved from ActiveCampaign to Klaviyo. The Shopify integration is worth it alone-everything syncs perfectly. Yes, it's expensive, but I can actually see which emails make money. That visibility changed how I think about email marketing."

G2 review (Brevo user): "We switched from Klaviyo to Brevo and cut our costs by 75%. We're not an ecommerce business, so most of Klaviyo's features were wasted on us. Brevo does everything we need-newsletters, automation, SMS-at a fraction of the price."

Shopify App Store review (Klaviyo): "Klaviyo has been awesome for our store. Super easy to use once you learn it, segmentation is spot-on, and we've seen better engagement and conversions. The analytics are clear, and the automations are powerful. Highly recommend!"

Capterra review (Brevo): "Brevo's pricing is refreshingly straightforward compared to other tools. I love that I only pay for emails sent rather than contact list size. This saves us a ton as our business grows. Great value for the features included!"

Email from Klaviyo customer (Reddit): "Heads up-Klaviyo just auto-upgraded my plan because my 'active profiles' exceeded my limit. I wasn't even emailing half of them. Now I'm paying 40% more per month. Make sure you understand the new billing before you get surprised like I did."

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake 1: Choosing based solely on price. Yes, Brevo is cheaper. But if you're running a Shopify store doing $1M+/year, the ROI from Klaviyo's features likely justifies the cost. Don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Mistake 2: Not cleaning your list regularly. With Klaviyo's active profile billing, maintaining a bloated list with inactive contacts will kill your budget. Suppress or delete disengaged profiles regularly-aim to do this monthly before your billing cycle renews.

Mistake 3: Ignoring the 90-day suppression lock. Don't casually unsuppress contacts in Klaviyo without understanding you're committing to pay for them for 90 days. Plan reactivation campaigns carefully.

Mistake 4: Underestimating the learning curve. Klaviyo is powerful but complex. If you don't have time to learn it properly, you won't get value from the advanced features. Factor in training time or budget for hiring help.

Mistake 5: Not enabling auto-downgrade in Klaviyo. If your list shrinks seasonally, make sure auto-downgrade is enabled (it's off by default). Otherwise, you'll keep paying for a higher tier unnecessarily.

Mistake 6: Overlooking add-on costs. Brevo's base prices look great, but add-ons (remove branding, extra users, dedicated IP, SMS credits) can increase costs significantly. Calculate total cost of ownership, not just the base plan price.

Who Should Use Each Platform

Brevo Is Best For:

Klaviyo Is Best For:

The Bottom Line

Brevo is the smart choice if you want solid email marketing without breaking the bank. It's particularly appealing if you have a large list, send emails occasionally, or need multi-channel capabilities like WhatsApp and live chat. The platform's ease of use makes it accessible for small teams, and the pricing model rewards efficient email marketers who maintain clean lists and send strategically.

Klaviyo is worth the premium if you're running a serious ecommerce operation and will actually use the advanced features. The predictive analytics, deep Shopify integration, and revenue tracking can pay for themselves if you're selling products online. But if you're just sending newsletters to a B2B list, Klaviyo is overkill-and overpriced.

The decision ultimately comes down to three factors:

1. Budget: Can you afford 3-4x more for email marketing? If not, Brevo is the obvious choice.
2. Use case: Are you running an ecommerce store where advanced segmentation and analytics drive revenue? If yes, Klaviyo justifies its cost.
3. Complexity: Do you have the time and resources to learn a sophisticated platform? If no, Brevo's simplicity is a major advantage.

Both platforms are excellent at what they do. Choose based on your specific needs, not generic "best email platform" recommendations. The right tool is the one that fits your business model, budget, and capabilities.

For more email marketing platform comparisons and pricing guides, check out our best email marketing software roundup and our detailed Brevo review.