Mailchimp vs Klaviyo, okay let’s settle this

The mailchimp vs klaviyo question comes up more than almost anything else I get asked. Usually from a business that’s been on Mailchimp for a few years, not unhappy with it, but keeps hearing that Klaviyo is better and wants to know if they’re missing something.

The honest answer isn’t really about the platforms.

What the mailchimp vs klaviyo debate is actually about

Most comparisons between the two come down to features. Klaviyo has more powerful segmentation. Klaviyo’s automation logic is more flexible. Klaviyo integrates more deeply with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, pulling in purchase data, browse behaviour, cart activity. Mailchimp does some of this too, but not with the same depth.

What those comparisons often skip is the question of whether any of that extra power is actually going to get used. Klaviyo’s pricing scales with list size and it gets expensive at volume. The advanced features take time to set up properly. And if the business doesn’t have the data, the workflows, or the bandwidth to use them, they’re paying for capability that sits idle.

Mailchimp is easier to get started with. The interface is more forgiving. For a business that sends a monthly newsletter and the occasional promotion, it does the job.

Where Klaviyo earns the switch

The clearest case for Klaviyo is when email needs to respond to what customers are actually doing. Abandoned cart sequences. Post-purchase flows that change based on what was bought. Win-back campaigns triggered by time since last order. Browse abandonment. All of that requires the platform to be talking to the store in real time, not just receiving a list export once a week.

I set up a Klaviyo account for a business running a WooCommerce store last year. The abandoned cart flow alone recovered enough in the first thirty days to make the platform cost feel irrelevant. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s the kind of thing that becomes possible when the data is actually flowing.

Mailchimp can do abandoned cart emails too, but the logic is simpler and the integration requires more manual upkeep. For a store processing a lot of orders with customers at different stages, that gap matters.

When Mailchimp is still the right call

Not every business needs behavioural automation. A service-based business with a newsletter and a few campaigns a year is not going to get a return on the time and cost that a proper Klaviyo setup requires. A small list that isn’t connected to an ecommerce platform is the same situation.

Mailchimp also has a free tier that covers a lot of ground for businesses just starting with email. There’s real value in getting the habit of sending before worrying about the sophistication of the tool doing the sending.

I had a business stay on Mailchimp last month. Their list was under two thousand people, they weren’t running an online store, and they sent reliably every couple of weeks. Moving to Klaviyo would have cost more, required a migration, and given them features they had no use for. That’s not a platform problem. That’s just the wrong tool for what they’re actually doing.

The thing that matters more than the platform

I’ve seen well-configured Mailchimp accounts outperform neglected Klaviyo setups. The platform creates the conditions. What happens inside it still depends on whether the emails are actually good, whether the list is clean, whether the automations are set up with some thought behind them.

Most of the time when someone asks me mailchimp vs klaviyo, what they’re really asking is whether their current setup is working as well as it could. Sometimes it is and the platform is fine. Sometimes it isn’t and the platform is the least of the problems.

Worth figuring out which one it is before deciding anything about the tool.

The same question comes up with websites. When I audited 10 Aussie websites, the bottleneck was rarely what anyone had assumed.

If you want someone to look at what you’ve got and tell you what’s actually going on, that’s the kind of thing I do.