Mailchimp vs Klaviyo: Pricing, Features and Fit for Ecommerce

In the Mailchimp vs Klaviyo comparison, Klaviyo is the stronger choice for online stores that segment customers by purchase behavior, while Mailchimp is the easier option for simple newsletters and small lists. Pricing is the catch, because Mailchimp bills by contacts and Klaviyo by active profiles, and the published cost figures disagree, so price your own list on both calculators before you choose.

This comparison is desk research. It draws on both vendors' pricing pages, G2 and Capterra, trade press and comparison guides. Open Developer did not use either product, and every number below is attributed to the source that reported it. Many of the comparison guides are published by companies that sell competing email tools, so this page treats their pricing figures as estimates, not as settled facts.

Klaviyo vs Mailchimp at a glance

The free plan figures come from each vendor's pricing page. The positioning and learning curve come from G2's May 2026 comparison article and other 2026 comparison pages.

Klaviyo or Mailchimp: who each platform is for

Mailchimp is a marketing tool that suits quick, simple campaigns and people who are new to email marketing, which makes it a better fit for newer email marketers. Klaviyo suits segmentation-heavy work, ecommerce brands and multichannel email and SMS programs, at the price of a steeper learning curve.

G2's own scorecard, published May 19, 2026, names Klaviyo the winner for segment building and for its template library, and splits the remaining categories between the two products. G2's author says she tested both, but covered introductory features and free plans only, and did not send a live campaign because the final send required domain verification. Treat that as a limited test and not a full trial.

MarTech's advice to Mailchimp customers, published May 22, 2026, is a useful rule from the other direction. Stay on Mailchimp for simple newsletters, basic automations, a small stable list and the drag-and-drop builder. Evaluate alternatives when you need complex behavioral segmentation, a fast-growing list, SMS or multichannel messaging, a built-in CRM, or when you keep hitting automation limits.

Pricing

Pricing is where the Mailchimp debate gets muddy, because Mailchimp charges by contacts, Klaviyo charges by active profiles, and the published price figures conflict. Each platform counts a different thing, so the same email list can produce two different bills.

Free plans

Both free plans cover 250 contacts or profiles and 500 email sends a month. Mailchimp's page also limits each email send to a daily cap of 250 and includes one seat. Klaviyo's free plan adds $5 of mobile messages and $5 of Composer usage a month, and it does offer email support for the first 60 days. One third-party source describes Mailchimp's free tier as 1,000 sends a month, which conflicts with Mailchimp's own page.

Mailchimp plans

Mailchimp lists four plans:

• Free: 1 seat.
• Essentials: 3 seats, with monthly sends of 10 times your contact count.
• Standard: 5 seats, sends of 12 times your contacts, generative AI included.
• Premium: unlimited seats, sends of 15 times your contacts, up to 150,000 sends, generative AI included.

Mailchimp offers 15% off at 10,000 or more contacts on a 12-month commitment, and lists a 14-day trial on Essentials and Standard. Third-party guides from Sendx and TheCMO put entry prices at about $13 a month for Essentials and about $20 a month for Standard, and Premium from $350 a month at 10,000 contacts. Sources disagree with one another on the lower tiers, so check the current figure for your contact count on Mailchimp's calculator.

Klaviyo plans

Klaviyo's pricing page lists Free, Marketing (email, SMS, forms and a mobile app), Data and Analytics, Service (a helpdesk), Composer (an AI agent) and Customer Agent, plus sales-led Professional Services and Enterprise. Paid prices sit behind a calculator. Sources describe the plan structure differently: most describe Free, Email and Email plus SMS, while one describes Free, Starter, Growth and Pro.

Klaviyo bills by active profiles, not by sends. Spoks, a vendor in an adjacent market, says the move to that model came in February 2025 and effectively raised prices for many users. Tinycommand and Sendx report this ladder for the Email plan:

Sendx reports that email plus SMS starts around $35. Sources disagree on whether features such as A/B testing and predictive analytics are limited to paid tiers.

Klaviyo vs Mailchimp cost estimates

Every head-to-head figure available comes from a competing vendor or an aggregator, so read these as estimates. At 10,000 contacts, Sendx, OnVoard and similar guides report Klaviyo Email at about $150 a month, against $109 to $110 for Mailchimp Essentials, $135 for Standard and $350 for Premium. In those guides Klaviyo costs more at this size on every Mailchimp tier except Premium. OnVoard sells a competing product.

At 100,000 contacts, one comparison lists Mailchimp Standard at $800 and Klaviyo Email at $1,380 and calls that 73% more. That percentage is the source's own inference.

Two billing details can change the real bill. Guides including Activepieces say a Mailchimp account counts unsubscribed and pending contacts as billable, though that has not been checked against Mailchimp's terms. A Shopify-focused guide from Kanal says Klaviyo counts active profiles only, so the same list can bill differently on each platform.

Email marketing features

Email editor and templates

G2 gives Klaviyo the edge on template library, and MarTech names Mailchimp's drag-and-drop builder as a reason to stay. For a plain newsletter, the Mailchimp email builder is the lower-friction email tool. Klaviyo's email templates and flows matter more when emails are triggered by shopping behavior.

Segmentation and automation

Market segmentation is the clearest gap. Klaviyo gives you Segments AI, which builds a segment from a plain-language description and is available to all paying customers. Klaviyo also covers automation, SMS marketing and forms in one platform, and a third-party guide from eesel.ai describes predictive analytics for customer lifetime value, churn risk and next order date. That mix of marketing automation and behavioral data is what the ecommerce-focused sources point to when they favor it.

AI features

Mailchimp includes generative AI at no extra cost on Standard and Premium, but does not offer it on Free or Essentials. Intuit Assist is in beta for some Premium, Standard and legacy accounts. Klaviyo introduced Composer in March 2026, which drafts email campaigns and flows from a single prompt, and Klaviyo offers a Customer Agent that handles order tracking, returns and subscription edits, which reaches beyond email into customer service.

Shopify and ecommerce platforms

For a Shopify store, comparison guides consistently favor Klaviyo, and some of them describe Mailchimp's Shopify integration as basic. Those descriptions are third-party claims that have not been verified, so treat them as a directional signal, not a measured result. Klaviyo's own positioning is as an e-commerce specialist built around store data, and review sites repeat the same split. If your revenue depends on abandoned cart, post-purchase and replenishment flows, Klaviyo is the stronger match on every source reviewed, and a store that tracks email revenue by flow will find it the best match.

What users say

On user ratings, Klaviyo scores slightly higher than Mailchimp, and users of Mailchimp and Klaviyo share the same main complaint, which is cost. On G2 Learn's May 2026 snapshot, Klaviyo scores 4.6 out of 5 and Mailchimp 4.4. Of reviewers, 96% of Klaviyo users and 94% of Mailchimp users give 4 or 5 stars. "Expensive" appears as a theme 69 times for Klaviyo and 45 times for Mailchimp.

Ratings shift by listing. G2's seller and Email Marketing listings show Mailchimp at 4.3, with about 12,853 reviews on the Email Marketing listing, while the All-in-One Marketing Platform listing shows 4.4 from about 5,368. Klaviyo has roughly 1,348 reviews on G2 and about 528 on Capterra. Because the listings differ, review counts are not directly comparable between the two products.

Company risk at Mailchimp

Mailchimp is owned by Intuit, which announced a cut of about 17% of its global workforce on May 20, 2026, reported as more than 3,000 jobs. In a memo, CEO Sasan Goodarzi said Intuit is "reducing investments in areas including Mailchimp." Intuit has not said how many of the cuts affect Mailchimp. Coverage differs on the reason, with some outlets citing organizational simplification and others tying the cuts to AI.

This is not evidence that Mailchimp is shutting down. It is a reason to weigh product investment when you pick a platform for the next few years.

When Klaviyo wins and when Mailchimp wins

Choose Mailchimp if:

• You send newsletters and a handful of basic automations to a small, stable list.
• You want the simplest editor and a free plan to start on.
• You do not need SMS or behavior-based segmentation.

Choose Klaviyo if:

• You run an ecommerce store or ecommerce brand, especially on Shopify, and want segments built on purchase behavior.
• You plan to combine email and SMS in one platform.
• You accept a steeper learning curve and a bill that scales with active profiles.

Price your own list on both calculators before deciding. The published comparisons disagree, and your count of unsubscribed contacts, engaged profiles and monthly sends changes the result.

Moving from Mailchimp to Klaviyo

The move means rebuilding flows and segments, not just exporting a list. Because Klaviyo bills on active profiles and Mailchimp reportedly bills on all contacts including unsubscribed ones, clean your list first and compare the bill on the cleaned count.

Frequently asked questions

Is Klaviyo better than Mailchimp?

For ecommerce, the sources reviewed say yes, and they name Klaviyo as the best email platform for a store. For simple newsletters and beginners, Mailchimp is the easier tool. G2's scorecard favors Klaviyo on segment building and templates and splits the other categories.

Is Klaviyo more expensive than Mailchimp?

At 10,000 contacts, the competitor guides cited above report Klaviyo Email at about $150 a month and Mailchimp Essentials and Standard between $109 and $135. Billing units differ, so the gap on your own list may be smaller or larger.

Does Mailchimp work for Shopify stores?

It connects, and it works for basic campaigns. Some third-party comparison guides call the integration basic compared with Klaviyo's, a claim this page has not verified.

Can Mailchimp replace Klaviyo?

For a store with simple email needs, it can. For stores relying on behavioral segments, SMS and predictive analytics, the reviewed sources point to Klaviyo.

Next step

Browse the other reviewed options on the email automation tools hub, and read the methodology to see how Open Developer scores tools from public evidence.