If you're reading this, you're probably annoyed at a Klaviyo bill, not actually looking to lose what you've already built. Fair. Here's the honest rundown of what each real alternative costs on a Shopify store, what it's missing compared to Klaviyo, and when switching is worth the rebuild. We make JetFlow, an add-on that generates on-brand campaigns from your store data, so we have a stake in you staying productive on whatever platform you land on, not in which ESP you choose.
The short version: Omnisend is the closest like-for-like swap for ecommerce. Brevo has the best free plan. Mailchimp is the easiest to learn. ActiveCampaign goes deepest on automation and CRM. Shopify Email is free and already in your admin. None of them fully replace Klaviyo's predictive analytics or review volume, so match the pick to your actual reason for looking, not the sticker price.
Why are you actually looking for a Klaviyo alternative?
"Klaviyo alternative" covers a few different problems. Pick the one that matches you:
- The bill grew faster than your list did. Klaviyo's per-profile pricing climbs with contact count. Look at Omnisend or Brevo.
- You want SMS without paying for a separate add-on. Brevo includes SMS as pay-as-you-go credits on every plan, including free. Omnisend locks SMS to its Pro tier.
- You're brand new and don't want to pay for email yet. Shopify Email is free up to 10,000 sends a month and lives in your Shopify admin already.
- Klaviyo feels like more tool than you need. Mailchimp has a gentler interface if you're not running complex flows.
- You want marketing automation tied to a full CRM, not just email. ActiveCampaign is built around that, with a sales pipeline attached.
- You're on Shopify Plus with six-figure monthly email revenue. Honestly, stay on Klaviyo. Keep reading for why.
Omnisend: the closest ecommerce-first swap
Omnisend's Standard plan runs $16 a month for 500 contacts (Omnisend's pricing page often headlines a 30%-off first-period rate of $11.20/month, which reverts to $16 after). The free plan covers 250 contacts, 500 emails, and 500 web push notifications a month. It has the same core ecommerce triggers as Klaviyo (abandoned cart, browse abandonment, order follow-up) built around Shopify order and customer data.
The catch: SMS isn't available on the free or Standard plan. You need the Pro tier before SMS is available at all, at $0.007 and up per message depending on country and volume. If you picked Omnisend specifically to get email and SMS in one cheaper tool, check that math before you commit. On the Shopify App Store, Omnisend sits at 4.7 stars across roughly 3,200 reviews, right behind Klaviyo. See our full Omnisend vs Klaviyo breakdown for flow-by-flow detail.
Brevo: the most generous free plan
Brevo (the company behind the Shopify app "Brevo PushOwl: Email, Push, SMS") has the best free tier of the group: up to 100,000 stored contacts and 300 emails a day, free, with no credit card required. SMS is available as pay-as-you-go credits on every plan including free, which is unusual. WhatsApp campaigns are reserved for the Professional plan and up.
Paid plans start around $9 a month ($8.08 billed annually) for 500 contacts and 5,000 emails. The Shopify app itself holds a 4.8-star rating across roughly 2,300 reviews. Brevo's ecommerce-specific triggers (abandoned cart, back-in-stock, price-drop alerts) are real but newer and less deeply refined than Klaviyo's or Omnisend's, since Brevo grew out of general marketing and transactional email rather than ecommerce specifically.
Mailchimp: the easiest learning curve
Mailchimp's Essentials plan starts at $13 a month for 500 contacts, the cheapest paid entry point of the bunch, and the interface is the one most non-technical store owners already recognize. The free plan was cut further in 2026: it now caps out at 250 contacts and 500 emails a month (250 a day), with no automation flows and no A/B testing. You don't get a real automation builder until Essentials, and even there it's capped at four steps per flow.
Mailchimp's Shopify app rates 4.8 stars across about 1,570 reviews. If your flows are simple (a welcome email, an abandoned cart nudge) this is enough. If you're running multi-step win-back sequences or heavy segmentation, you'll feel the ceiling. Our Klaviyo vs Mailchimp comparison goes deeper on where each one wins.
ActiveCampaign: the most automation and CRM depth
ActiveCampaign's Starter plan is $15 a month billed yearly for 1,000 contacts, double Klaviyo's starting contact allowance for a similar price. It's built around automation workflows and a built-in sales CRM, which matters if you sell on Shopify but also chase leads or wholesale deals outside the storefront. Its Shopify app holds a 4.5-star rating across roughly 255 reviews, notably fewer than the others here, since it's used across far more industries than just ecommerce.
The ecommerce-specific triggers (cart abandonment, post-purchase flows) exist but are more generic than Klaviyo's or Omnisend's store-data-driven versions. Full rundown in our Klaviyo vs ActiveCampaign comparison.
Shopify Email: the free option already in your admin
Shopify Email sends up to 10,000 manual or automated emails a month for free, then $1 per additional 1,000 sends. It lives inside Shopify admin under Apps > Messaging, with pre-built automation templates for welcome series, win-back, and upsell emails that you can customize with Shopify's Liquid templating.
It's genuinely fine for a store doing a few campaigns a month. It's not built for serious segmentation, predictive sending, or the kind of multi-channel flows Klaviyo and Omnisend specialize in. We cover the exact gap in Shopify Email vs Klaviyo.
What you actually give up if you leave Klaviyo
A few things the cheaper options don't fully match yet:
- Predictive analytics. Klaviyo's customer lifetime value and churn predictions are a real differentiator; most of the options above don't offer the same depth.
- Review volume and track record on Shopify. Klaviyo's Shopify App Store listing sits at 4.7 stars across roughly 3,430 reviews, the most of any app named here, which matters if you're risk-averse about switching your main revenue channel.
- Free AI usage already built in. Klaviyo's free plan includes $5 a month of Composer (its AI agent) usage at no extra cost; most alternatives' AI features are either less mature or gated to higher tiers.
None of that means you should stay out of inertia. It means the honest comparison isn't just the sticker price on page one of each pricing page.
Switching ESPs doesn't fix the blank-page problem
Whichever platform you land on, someone still has to write and design every campaign and flow email, on brand, every single month. That's the actual bottleneck for most one-person marketing teams, and it exists on Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp, or anywhere else. JetFlow reads your Shopify store's products, images, and brand colors and generates complete campaigns and flows for you to review, rather than starting from a blank template each time.
To be straightforward about scope: JetFlow exports directly into Klaviyo today. Mailchimp and Omnisend connections are listed as integrations in the works but aren't live yet, so if you switch ESPs this month, plan to copy generated content over manually until that lands. Pricing is $99 a month ($59 billed annually) for the Scale plan or $249 a month ($149 billed annually) for Pro, with a free plan available on the Shopify App Store. If you're staying on Klaviyo and just want to get more out of it, our best Klaviyo add-ons for Shopify roundup is the next thing to read.