Every Shopify email roundup hands you a list of ten apps and lets you guess. Here is the shortcut. Almost all of them send email competently, so the real decision comes down to two things: how much automation you need, and how you plan to actually write the campaigns. If you only send the occasional newsletter, Shopify's own Shopify Email is free for your first 10,000 emails a month and lives inside your admin. If you want abandoned-cart flows, segmentation and reporting, you are really choosing between Omnisend and Klaviyo. And if writing the emails is what stalls you, the app you pick barely matters, which is the part these lists never say out loud.
Below is the honest version: the apps grouped by the job they do, the free tiers checked live, and a way to pick that takes about two minutes.
What actually separates one Shopify email app from another?
Most roundups compare feature checklists, which makes every app look roughly the same. It is more useful to sort them into three groups, because they do different jobs.
Native senders. Shopify Email and Seguno live inside Shopify and are built to send a nice-looking campaign quickly. Light automation, cheap, almost no setup. Great for a store that emails now and then.
Full ecommerce platforms. Omnisend, Klaviyo, MailerLite and Mailchimp are proper email service providers. They run automated flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back), segment your list by behavior, and report on revenue per email. This is where you go when email becomes a channel you actually plan around.
The part that gets skipped: who writes the campaigns. Every app above gives you a blank editor. None of them decide what to send this week, write the copy in your brand voice, or lay out the design for you. That is a separate job, and for most one-person stores it is the real bottleneck, not the sending. More on that below.
Pick your category first. Then the specific app is an easy call.
Which email marketing app should I use for my Shopify store?
Prices below were checked in August 2026. Always confirm the current numbers on each app's own pricing page before you commit, since tiers change.
Shopify Email, for stores that just need to send. It is already in your admin, so there is nothing to install and no separate login. Your first 10,000 marketing emails each month are free, then pricing starts at about $1 per 1,000 emails. Automation and segmentation are basic. If you send a monthly newsletter or a launch announcement and nothing more, this is the obvious starting point and it costs you almost nothing.
Omnisend, the easiest full platform for a growing store. Built for ecommerce, with prebuilt flows and email, SMS and push in one place. The free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, and the Standard plan starts around $11.20 a month. It tends to stay cheaper than Klaviyo as your list grows, and the automation is friendly enough to set up in an afternoon. A strong default for a store that wants real flows without a steep learning curve.
Klaviyo, for data-heavy stores that live in their reports. The deepest segmentation and the best revenue reporting of the group, with a Shopify integration that pulls in order and browsing data cleanly. The free plan covers up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month; paid plans begin once you pass that and scale with your contact count. The trade-off is a real learning curve. If you want to slice your list a dozen ways and attribute revenue precisely, Klaviyo rewards the effort. If you just want to send, it is more than you need.
MailerLite, for the simplest builder at a low price. Not ecommerce-first the way Omnisend and Klaviyo are, but the editor is the friendliest here and the pricing is gentle. The free plan covers 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, and the paid Comfort plan starts around $12 a month. Good for a content-led store or a brand that leans on newsletters more than on complex flows.
Mailchimp and Seguno, the honorable mentions. Mailchimp is a capable general-purpose email tool, but it is not Shopify-first, and most of the ecommerce-specific features you want live in the platforms above. It is fine if you already use it. Seguno is a Shopify-native app in the same lane as Shopify Email: simple, quick, light on automation.
Here is the same information at a glance:
App Free tier Paid starts at Best for
-------------- ---------------------------- ----------------- -----------------------------
Shopify Email 10,000 emails / month ~$1 per 1,000 Just sending, zero setup
Omnisend 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo ~$11.20 / month Easy flows, growing store
Klaviyo 250 profiles, 500 sends/mo Scales w/ contacts Deep data + segmentation
MailerLite 250 subs, 2,500 emails/mo ~$12 / month Simplest builder, low price
What about the part these roundups skip: who writes the emails?
You can pick the perfect app and still send nothing. Open Klaviyo, stare at a blank template, write something generic, and hit send. That is the loop most stores get stuck in, and no ESP fixes it, because their job ends at delivery.
This is the gap JetFlow fills, and it is worth being precise about what that means. JetFlow is not another place to send from. It reads your store's real products, colors and brand voice, then writes and designs the actual campaigns and flows, and exports them straight into Klaviyo with the segments and templates already set up. You still send through your ESP. JetFlow removes the blank page in front of it.
So the two decisions are separate. First pick where email gets sent, using the guide above. Then decide how the campaigns get made: hire an agency, write them yourself every week, or generate them on brand and edit before they ship. For a lean team, that second decision is usually the one that determines whether email becomes a real channel or stays a good intention. If Klaviyo is where you are headed, our Klaviyo abandoned cart flow guide walks through building the highest-earning flow by hand, and the AI email marketing tools comparison goes deeper on the generation side.
So how do I actually choose?
Match the app to where your store is right now, not where you hope it will be.
- You send occasionally and want zero setup. Shopify Email. Free for your first 10,000 sends, already in your admin.
- You are ready for real flows and want it simple. Omnisend. Prebuilt automations, fair pricing as you scale, email plus SMS in one place.
- Your list is large and you live in the data. Klaviyo. The segmentation and reporting are worth the learning curve at that size.
- You want the friendliest editor at the lowest price. MailerLite.
- You already have an app and the problem is producing campaigns. The app is not your bottleneck. Fix the writing and design step instead, whether that is an agency, a weekly writing habit, or on-brand generation.
The stores that win at email are rarely the ones with the fanciest platform. They are the ones that actually send good campaigns, consistently. Pick the app that gets out of your way, then put your energy where it counts: on the emails themselves. A quick next step is to look at what you would send first, like a set of abandoned cart subject lines you can put to work this week.