EMAIL MARKETING REVIEW · 2026

Klaviyo review

A $20 entry price that becomes $150 a month at 10,000 contacts, billed on every profile you store whether you email them or not.

Ratings from G2 (1,361 reviews), Capterra (537) and Trustpilot (367), pricing verified August 2026.

The verdict

Klaviyo is the platform ecommerce brands name first when the subject is email revenue, and its G2 profile claims more than 170,000 businesses on the product. The marketplace scores back that reputation up: 4.6/5 on G2 across 1,361 reviews and 4.6/5 on Capterra across 537, with Capterra sub-scores of 4.6 for features and 4.5 for ease of use. The paid entry point is $20 per month for 251 to 500 active profiles, which sounds like the same territory as budget tools. It is not, and the reason is the billing model rather than the sticker price.

Since February 18, 2025, Klaviyo requires every account to sit on a plan that matches its total active profile count. You pay for every emailable contact in the database, whether you send to them or not, and the change was applied to existing customers automatically. When your profile count crosses a tier boundary, the vendor’s own FAQ states the plan will “automatically upgrade to the next tier” at the start of the next billing cycle. There is an auto-downgrade, but only as an opt-in billing preference for credit-card customers. In practice, your Klaviyo bill is a function of how fast your list grows, not how much you send.

At 10,000 active profiles the live pricing calculator showed $150 per month email-only when we read it in August 2026, roughly $1,800 per year, with a generous 100,000 email sends per month included. The problem sits just above that: 11,500 profiles costs $225 per month, a 50 percent price jump for 15 percent more contacts, and 13,000 profiles costs $300. SMS is always extra and usage-based, there is no advertised annual discount to lock any of this in, and the add-ons carry limited-time intro pricing that steps up later.

We score Klaviyo 7.4. The capability is real and the included send volume is unusually generous, which keeps it clearly above Mailchimp (6.8), a tool with similar cost-at-scale problems and less depth. But the active-profile billing, the tier cliffs, and a 1.7/5 Trustpilot score across 367 consumer reviews keep it well below value leaders like MailerLite (9.2). Klaviyo is a strong product that you should only buy with a pruned list and a spreadsheet open.

What Klaviyo really costs at scale

Klaviyo prices on one axis: active profiles, meaning every contact in your account you could email. Send volume is effectively a non-issue, because every email tier includes monthly sends equal to 10 times your profile count — 5,000 emails at the $20 entry tier, 100,000 emails at the 10,000-profile tier. That is a genuinely generous allowance; most brands emailing a 10,000-contact list twice a week will never touch the ceiling. The ladder we read off the live klaviyo.com/pricing calculator in August 2026: $20 at 251-500 profiles, $45 at 1,500, $100 at 5,000, $150 at 10,000, $225 at 11,500, $400 at 25,000, $860 at 60,000, $1,205 at 85,000, and $1,495 at 110,000.

Read that ladder as a multiplier, not a list. The distance from the $20 signup tier to the 10,000-profile tier is 7.5x; to the 25,000-profile tier it is 20x. None of that is a complaint on its own — profile-based pricing is common — but it means the entry price tells you almost nothing about what you will actually pay in year two. A store adding 500 subscribers a month crosses four tier boundaries in its first two years, and each crossing happens automatically at the next billing cycle. The number that belongs in your budget is the tier your list will occupy twelve months from now, not the one it occupies today.

Two structural notes before the table. First, there is no annual plan advertised anywhere on the pricing page — payment is month-to-month by credit card, so there is no discount for commitment and no rate lock against future increases. Second, SMS never rides along inside the email price: the combined Email + SMS entry plan is $35 per month and includes only 150 SMS/MMS credits, after which US toll-free SMS runs $0.01 plus carrier fees per send. The vendor’s own calculator priced 2,900 SMS at roughly $40 per month.

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per mo)	What you get
Free	$0	n/a (monthly billing only)	Up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends/month, $5 of mobile message credit/month, 10,000 Composer AI credits; email support for the first 60 days only
Email (Marketing)	From $20 (251-500 profiles); $100 @ 5,000; $150 @ 10,000; $400 @ 25,000; $1,495 @ 110,000	n/a (no annual discount advertised)	Priced by active profiles; includes email sends equal to 10x profile count per month; auto-upgrades to the next tier as your list grows
Email + SMS	From $35 (includes 150 SMS/MMS credits); then usage-based, $0.01 + carrier fees per US toll-free SMS	n/a	SMS/MMS billed per send by volume and destination, carrier fees on top; email and SMS tiers upgrade independently
Add-ons (Composer AI, Social, Reviews)	Composer $157 (intro $110); Social $50 @ 10,000 profiles (intro $38 through 09/30/2026); Reviews $25 @ 250 orders/mo	n/a	All intro discounts are limited-time; Social and Reviews scale with profiles and order volume

Annualized, the email-only cost at 10,000 profiles is about $1,800; at 25,000 it is $4,800; at 110,000 it is $17,940 — before a single text message or add-on. The shape of the ladder matters as much as the numbers. Below 10,000 profiles the steps are reasonably smooth. Above it, they are not: crossing from 10,000 to 11,500 profiles adds $75 per month, and reaching 13,000 doubles the 10,000-profile price. Because upgrades are automatic and triggered by profile count alone, a good month of list growth can raise your bill before you have sent those new subscribers anything. You can model your own list size and growth rate against these tiers in our real cost calculator.

The hidden costs

You pay for contacts you never email. This is the big one. Since February 18, 2025, Klaviyo bills on total active profiles and requires accounts to sit on a profile-compliant plan (Klaviyo Help Center, article 33136281415451). The change applied to existing customers automatically, and third-party coverage at the time reported first-month increases were capped at 25 percent. A cap on the first month is not a cap on the second. If a third of your list has not opened an email in a year, you are still paying full rate to store them.

Upgrades are automatic; downgrades are opt-in. When active profiles exceed your tier, the vendor FAQ says the plan will “automatically upgrade to the next tier” at the next billing cycle. Moving back down does not happen by default — auto-downgrade exists only as a billing preference that credit-card customers must switch on. The asymmetry is worth noticing: the system is built to ratchet your bill upward on its own and to reduce it only when you ask.

The tier cliffs above 10,000 profiles. $150 at 10,000 becomes $225 at 11,500 and $300 at 13,000 on the live calculator. That is a 50 percent price increase for a 15 percent larger list at the first step. Brands hovering near a boundary have a real financial incentive to suppress and prune aggressively, which is workable but is also unpaid list-hygiene labor that the pricing model forces on you.

SMS is never in the headline price. The $150-at-10,000 figure everyone quotes is email only. US toll-free SMS costs $0.01 plus carrier fees per send, with those carrier fees added on top of the advertised rate, and the entry Email + SMS plan at $35 per month includes just 150 SMS/MMS credits. At the vendor calculator’s own example, 2,900 monthly sends ran about $40 per month. A brand doing serious SMS should budget it as a second subscription, not a line item.

The support clock and the intro-price clock. On the free plan, email support ends after 60 days — after that you are on your own until you pay. Meanwhile the add-ons are advertised at discounts that expire: Composer AI lists at $157 per month for 16,000 credits with a 30 percent intro price of $110, and Social marketing’s 25 percent discount ($38 instead of $50 at 10,000 profiles) is dated through 09/30/2026. Budget on the list price, not the launch price.

No annual pricing means no rate protection. Month-to-month billing is flexible, but it also means nothing stops the ladder from moving under you. Customers who lived through the February 2025 billing change already know what that looks like in practice.

Features that matter

The reason Klaviyo commands these prices is that the paid product is one of the most complete B2C marketing platforms on the market. It covers email, SMS/MMS, RCS, WhatsApp, push notifications, social, and reviews in a single tool, and email and SMS upgrade independently, so a brand heavy on one channel is not forced to over-buy the other. Klaviyo advertises more than 350 integrations, with the ecommerce core — Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento — being where it is strongest. Paid plans include revenue attribution, predictive analytics, and real-time segmentation, which is the actual pitch: knowing which flow, campaign, and segment produced which dollars.

The included send volume deserves its own mention because it removes a whole category of overage anxiety. Ten times your profile count per month — 100,000 emails at the 10,000-profile tier — is more than most senders will use, so unlike platforms that meter sends, Klaviyo’s variable cost pressure comes entirely from list growth.

The free plan is genuinely functional rather than decorative: 250 active profiles, 500 email sends per month, $5 of mobile message credit, 10,000 Composer AI credits, and built-in reporting, with no time limit on the plan itself. For a very small store it is a real evaluation path, with the caveat that human email support disappears after 60 days. The Composer AI agent sits behind a separate add-on at scale ($157 per month list for 16,000 credits, $110 at the intro price), so treat the free credits as a taste, not the product.

The review-site split is the one data point that resists a tidy summary. Software marketplaces, where buyers and practitioners review the product, rate it 4.6/5 on both G2 and Capterra. Trustpilot, where anyone can post, has it at 1.7/5 across 367 reviews, 57 percent of them one star. Our reading: the product earns its marketplace scores, and the billing and account experience generates the Trustpilot anger. Both signals are real.

Who should choose Klaviyo

Ecommerce brands with meaningful revenue per contact are the clear fit. If your list is on Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce, your email program is flows-and-campaigns driven, and each subscriber is worth dollars per year rather than cents, the $150-per-month price at 10,000 profiles buys attribution, prediction, and segmentation depth that cheaper tools do not match. The math also favors brands that already practice list hygiene: a pruned 9,500-profile list pays $150; a lazy 13,000-profile list with the same engaged core pays $300 for identical results.

Brands that want email and SMS under one roof, with the two channels billed and scaled independently, are the other strong case. Just go in with the SMS line item modeled separately, because the headline plan price will never include it.

Who should look elsewhere

Newsletter publishers, content creators, and anyone whose list is large but lightly monetized should not be here. Paying per stored profile punishes exactly that shape of business, and the tier cliffs above 10,000 profiles make growth itself expensive. MailerLite (9.2, our current top score) delivers far better price-to-value for straightforward sending, and Brevo (8.4) is our pick when contact-count-based billing is the specific thing you are trying to escape.

B2B teams shopping for automation depth rather than ecommerce attribution should read our ActiveCampaign review (8.7) instead — Klaviyo’s center of gravity is consumer commerce, and you would be paying for revenue-attribution machinery built around order data you do not have. And if you are here because Klaviyo feels expensive but familiar, note that Mailchimp (6.8) is not the escape hatch; it shares the contact-based cost problem. The full field is ranked on our best email marketing software page.

FAQ

How much does Klaviyo cost for 10,000 contacts?

$150 per month email-only, about $1,800 per year, including 100,000 email sends per month — read directly from the klaviyo.com/pricing calculator in August 2026. SMS is extra and usage-based. Watch the boundary above you: 11,500 profiles costs $225 per month and 13,000 costs $300.

Does Klaviyo have a free plan?

Yes, and it has no expiry: up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends per month, $5 of mobile message credit, 10,000 Composer AI credits, and built-in reporting. The one time limit is support — email support ends after your first 60 days on the free plan.

Does Klaviyo charge for contacts you don’t email?

Yes. Since February 18, 2025, Klaviyo bills on total active profiles and requires your plan to match that count, whether or not you send to those contacts. When profiles exceed your tier, the plan auto-upgrades at the next billing cycle; auto-downgrade is opt-in for credit-card customers. Regular list pruning directly lowers the bill.

Is SMS included in Klaviyo’s email pricing?

No. The combined Email + SMS plan starts at $35 per month with 150 SMS/MMS credits included; beyond that, US toll-free SMS costs $0.01 plus carrier fees per send, billed by volume and destination. The vendor’s calculator priced 2,900 monthly SMS at roughly $40 per month on top of email.

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