As a business owner, utilizing an email marketing platform can make all the difference in growing your business and extending your presence amongst your customers. Therefore, it is important to choose the right solution for your business. This is not always an easy task, thus, our comparison of the Klaviyo vs ActiveCampaign will make the process easier as you choose between these two top solutions.
Whilst they are both effective email marketing solutions, ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo are built with distinct features that differentiate them from each other. Klaviyo is a solution that’s designed to serve eCommerce stores such as Shopify and Magento due to its easy integrations with such platforms. Using custom websites, it also integrates easily with B2B and B2C companies.
ActiveCampaign on the other end is a cloud-based email marketing solution for businesses that want to connect with and engage their customers. It highly specializes in email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM as a way to engage your customers. It also features up to 300+ integrations to make the process easier.
Still curious to know in detail what each of these marketing solutions has to offer? Stick around and read through the detailed comparison of Klaviyo vs ActiveCampaign to find out how your business can benefit from either platform.
Ease Of Use & Editor
Klaviyo triumphs in being extremely easy to use. The overall interface is quite simple. Yet, if you find it difficult to navigate, there are simple instructions to walk you through. This intuitive and easy user interface makes Klaviyo ideal for any business set up.
Whether you are a one-person business trying to manage all your customization or an enterprise entity with your marketing team, every set up has its piece of the pie. Its simplicity even allows the non-tech savvies to create complex flows and campaigns without any support. So, even when you are setting up email campaigns, you require only minimal coding.
ActiveCampaign is also fairly easy to use. However, prior knowledge of some concepts will work in your favor to speed up your transition into using it. For example, if you want to determine which lead receives more functions, prior basic knowledge of lead scoring will help smoothen the set up process.
ActiveCampaign features sometimes function co-dependently. This means that you have you set up one feature for the other one to work. This mechanism tends to slow down your tasks. A good example is when you are trying to set up a function such as lead scoring. You will not be able to do so unless you have set up a segment first.
Winner: Klaviyo takes the lead for ease of use. It is simple and straightforward. It also doesn’t come with any complications or feature co-dependency during set up.
Design and Flexibility
Klaviyo is designed with a large viewing interface to make all the important information easy to pick up. On the screen, you will be able to quickly pick up your overall revenue, revenue from automated emails, and revenue from other campaigns.
You will also be able to break down the values per automation and campaign, thus, allowing you to choose which automation to keep and which to leave out. Klaviyo also boasts up to 30 pre-designed templates to choose from.
ActiveCampaign on the other end is designed with a limited dashboard when it comes to eCommerce functionality. It offers you functions such as contact growth and activity. Yet, it is not as detailed with revenue and earnings when compared to Klaviyo.
However, ActiveCampaign does an excellent job in the template design area. With up to 40 pre-designed templates, ActiveCampaign also allows easy edits so you can reach more audience and match your brand. In the templates, you can edit the layouts and type in HTML.
Winner: Design and flexibility is a tie for both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo. Whilst ActiveCampaign offers more intuitive and responsive design templates, Klaviyo offers more eCommerce and revenue generation data.
Email Marketing Features
Both platforms hold many useful email marketing features, however, when we look at them in the light of Klaviyo vs ActiveCampaign, the latter solution offers more options. Remember, ActiveCampaign is designed to specialize in email automation and marketing. Therefore, it is only natural for it to bear more features in these areas.
Some of the key features that both platforms offer include;
- Contact tagging
- Powerful segmentation
- Multi-step automation and recipes
- Website forms
- Site and event tracking
- Drag and drop email designer
- Conditional content
- Split testing
Yet, ActiveCampaign boasts additional features that Klaviyo doesn’t have including;’
- Sales automation features such as sales CRM, mobile CRM, and pipeline management
- Automation split testing
- Contact scoring
- Start and stop automation
- Dynamic automation
- Automation maps
- Triggers
Winner: ActiveCampaign takes the lead thanks to its more comprehensively designed features. The software offers the flexibility to customize your email marketing and automation even further.
Registration Forms
Both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo offer registration forms. Using either solution, you can create customizable forms for your customers and visitors. Both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo also use website form builders to collect their customer and visitor data so you can improve your campaigns and marketing efforts.
With both platforms, a higher price plan gives you more options to enjoy. For example, with the ActiveCampaign premium plan, you can enjoy extra features such as modal pop-ups and inline forms. However, both platforms don’t offer extra perks such as video or photo inclusion in their forms.
Winner: When it comes to registration forms, ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo features are similar. Thus, this section is a tie.
Spam & Design Testing
Before you send out your emails, you want to ensure that your content will capture your customer’s attention and that the emails will make it to their inboxes. ActiveCampaign allows you to spam and design test your emails. The platform offers split testing, also known as A/B test campaigns so you can figure out which content works.
Additionally, ActiveCampaign will give you a pass/fail test results so you have a definite answer for each campaign. On its own Klaviyo doesn’t offer native spam and design testing features. However, you can use third party options such as Litmus to help spam check your emails.
You can even use email services such as Gmail, Outlook, and AOL to see if the emails get to the inbox and how they will look on your customer’s inbox. These third party services can be used by any platform, even ActiveCampaign.
Winner: ActiveCampaign is the winner as it uses its own spam and design testing features. Plus, it is compatible for testing with other third party services.
Reporting
Klaviyo is designed with a relatively new analytics feature that is extremely useful and powerful. You can choose to build a dashboard based on the data you want. Because, it is specially designed or eCommerce, it provides a lot of useful revenue data.
You can easily set up reports such as popular products by revenue, revenue collected based on campaigns, as well as subscription and unsubscribe numbers, just to mention a few. Based on your preferences, you can also customize the dashboard to create a viewing style that you want. The reporting interface is also live, giving you accurate live data at all times.
When it comes to reporting based on eCommerce, ActiveCampaign is limited. Whilst it boasts data-based reporting, most of the analytics is based on customer activity but not business growth activity. Thus, you will have data such as open rates, subscriptions, click rates, and other similar reports. However, you will not be able to link the analytics to your actual earnings and revenue.
Winner: Klaviyo takes the lead because it reports both on customer activity based on data such as subscriptions as well as business performance based on revenue data.
Deliverability
Similar to spam and design testing, email deliverability is also important to test before sending out your campaigns. Email deliverability measures the chances of your email campaigns reaching your subscriber’s inboxes. For your business campaigns, you want to ensure the rate of deliverability is high or else your efforts will be in vain; resulting in your emails ending up in spam folders or undelivered.
ActiveCampaign is equipped with a dedicated email deliverability team. This team comprises of real human beings who test the first few emails to ensure your campaigns will be delivered. Whilst Klaviyo doesn’t have a dedicated team, you can use third party services to check its email deliverability.
I used the same platform for both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo to ensure that my results were not biased. The overall deliverability rate for Klaviyo was 81% whilst ActiveCampaign received 92%. Additionally, 82% of Klaviyo emails made it to the primary inbox whilst 30% made it to promotions inbox for Gmail. For ActiveCampaign, the rates were 90% and 16% respectively.
Deliverability is also affected by the design and content of your emails. Hence, to improve deliverability, you should never skip the spam and design testing stage.
Winner: Both Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign do a great job of email deliverability. However, ActiveCampaign takes the leads as it maintains higher deliverability rates.
Integrations & Extras (Other Features)
When you are examining the integrations for both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo, you will come across what’s known as native integrations and third party integrations. Native integrations are direct integrations that require no extra expense. Third party integrations may require you to spend extra.
For example, if you integrate a service such as Zapier as a third party service, this means that you also have to pay for Zapier’s monthly subscriptions. Both ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo connect to Zapier as third party integration. However, the good news is that Zapier has a library packed with extra services that you will access to for free.
Klaviyo on its own is favored for eCommerce businesses because it also has up to 20,000 integrations with eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Klaviyo’s native integrations also include;
- Commerce cloud
- ReCharge
- YotPO
- Aftership
- Privy
ActiveCampaign also has up to 300+ integrations. Some of its native integrations include;
- Shopify
- Salesforce
- Typeform
- WordPress
- Google analytics
Winner: When it comes to integrations, Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign are a tie. Whilst Klaviyo offers many direct integrations with eCommerce services, ActiveCampaign offers a well rounded integration with eCommerce, CRM, and social media services.
Support
Klaviyo and Active campaign also do well in the area of customer support. Both platforms offer live chat and email support.
Klaviyo’s email support is available between 6 AM and 10 PM, Eastern Time on weekdays and 10 Am to 4 PM, Eastern Time during weekends. Live chat support is available between 9 AM to 5 PM, Eastern Time Monday through Thursdays and 9 AM to 4 PM, Eastern Time on Fridays. However, live chat support is only available to paid plan customers.
For ActiveCampaign, email support is available at any time whilst live chat support is timed. From Monday to Thursday, it is available from 8 AM to 12 PM and 6 PM to 11 PM, Central Standard Time.
From Friday to Sunday, it is available from 4 PM to 11 PM, Central Standard Time. Yet, ActiveCampaign also comes with the advantage of extra support resources such as free onboarding and migration services as well as free high quality training and seminars for groups or individuals.
Winner: ActiveCampaign takes the lead as it offers a versatile support arrangement.
Price
You should also consider the pricing when choosing an email marketing solution for your business. Make sure that the price matches the value that the platform brings for your business.
For example, Klaviyo may appear to be more expensive than ActiveCampaign, but based on your business, it may be worth spending an extra buck on Klaviyo because it offers favorable features. This is especially true if you run an eCommerce business.
The lowest price you can pay for Klaviyo is US$20 per month which gives you up to 500 subscribers and unlimited emails. ActiveCampaign on the other end charges US$15 for 500 subscribers and unlimited emails per month. Similar to ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo also offers a 14-day free basic trial to test out the platform.
Klaviyo also offers discounts with their plans. For example, if you enroll in the US$20 monthly plan with Klaviyo and choose to pay annually, you will only pay a total of US$17 per month.
Below is an extra comparison between the two marketing platforms based on the same plans.
| KlaviyoPlan /Month | ActiveCampaign Plus Plan/Month | |
| 2500 contacts + unlimited emails | $60 | $39 |
| 5000 contacts + unlimited emails | $100 | $69 |
| 10,000 contacts + unlimited emails | $150 | $111 |
Winner: ActiveCampaign takes the lead as it boasts lower prices.
Feature Comparison Table – Klaviyo Vs ActiveCampaign
In overall, ActiveCampaign outranks Klaviyo in favorable features. However, this is not to say that Klaviyo is not a good enough marketing solution for your business. ActiveCampaign surpasses Klaviyo with email marketing features, spam, and design testing, deliverability, support, and pricing.
However, the issue of pricing is debatable. The pricing outlook is affected by your business needs. For example, if you own an eCommerce business, it is wiser to spend the extra bucks to receive the full eCommerce feature package that Klaviyo offers rather than paying for ActiveCampaign which will not suffice your needs.
Additionally, Klaviyo also triumphs in its user friendly interface and reporting. Its reporting is not only data-based but also event-based to give you usable data to grow and improve your business – not only advertise and market it.
| Klaviyo | ActiveCampaign | |
| Ease of use and editor | 4.9 | 4.7 |
| Design and flexibility | 4.8 | 4.8 |
| Email marketing features | 4.4 | 4.7 |
| Registration forms | 4.5 | 4.5 |
| Email and spam testing | 4.0 | 4.8 |
| Reporting | 4.8 | 4.4 |
| Deliverability | 4.6 | 4.8 |
| Integration and other features | 4.8 | 4.8 |
| Support | 4.5 | 4.7 |
| Price | 4.4 | 4.5 |
| Overall Rating | 4.58 | 4.67 |
Klaviyo Vs ActiveCampaign – Which Is Better?
Looking at the Klaviyo vs ActiveCampaign comparison, both platforms perform extremely well in their own right. Yet, as much as they both bear superior features, you must decide which one works better for your business.
If you own an eCommerce business or online store that sells physical items, Klaviyo will work better for you. Its greatest advantage is the multiple native integrations it offers to many popular eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce.
Additionally, its reporting is designed to give you realistic analytics. You can know what activities generate revenue the most for you and which don’t. This ultimately, allows you to create proper systems to ensure your business is always generating profit.
ActiveCampaign on the other end also works for eCommerce however, it works for businesses that don’t do direct selling of physical items online. Remember that ActiveCampaign is specially designed to triumph in email marketing automation and CRM. So if these are a priority for your business, then, ActiveCampaign certainly is for you.
You can also opt for a 14-day trial for either platform to check out by yourself, which one works the best for your business.