If you’re running an e-commerce store and researching email marketing platforms, there are two names that will probably come up first for you: Klaviyo and Mailchimp. Mailchimp will come up because it is mostly where a lot of brands start before they realize there’s a better option for their e-commerce store. Both Mailchimp and Klaviyo are email marketing platforms that have strong reputations, loyal user bases, and the ability to help you reach your customers. But they were built with fundamentally different goals in mind, and understanding that difference is the key to choosing the right one for your store.
This isn’t even a close race or a tough decision for e-commerce brands in our opinion. But the context matters, and we get asked this question a lot in our business, so here we are. This breakdown will show you exactly where each email marketing platform excels, where it falls short, and which one deserves a place in your marketing stack.
The Foundational Difference
Mailchimp launched in 2001 as a general-purpose email marketing tool. It was designed to help any business from restaurants, bloggers, nonprofits, law firms, to online stores, send emails to their audience. That broad appeal has made Mailchimp one of the most recognized names in email marketing software.
Klaviyo launched in 2012 with a singular focus: to help e-commerce brands use customer data to send smarter email. It was built to serve online stores specifically, and every feature in the platform reflects that focus. Can service-based businesses use it? Yes. But the real power lies in the e-commerce marketing experience..
Mailchimp is versatile, but shallow when it comes to e-commerce-specific functionality. Klaviyo is specialized and deep. For a business that primarily sells online and where email is an important piece of the revenue pie, this distinction matters enormously and can mean a big difference in your email performance and revenue.
Automation: Where the Gap Between Klaviyo and Mailchimp Is Most Visible
Automation is arguably the most important feature in any e-commerce email platform because automated flows are where the majority of email revenue is generated. The Welcome Series greets new subscribers and offers a first time purchase discount. The Abandoned Cart email recovers potentially lost sales. The post-purchase sequence that turns one-time buyers into repeat customers.
Klaviyo’s flow builder is designed around exactly these scenarios. You can trigger automated emails based on virtually any customer behavior: a product view, a cart addition, a purchase, a lapse in ordering, a predicted churn risk. There are so many different ways to easily slice and dice the data that it is truly a marketer’s dream. The visual builder lets you create multi-step sequences with conditional branches — for example, sending a different follow-up to a customer who clicked your email versus one who ignored it. Klaviyo provides pre-built templates for the most common e-commerce flows so you’re not starting from scratch.
Mailchimp has automation too, and it has improved over the years. But it was built on top of a platform that wasn’t originally designed for behavioral e-commerce triggers. You can set up a Welcome Email or a basic Abandoned Cart reminder, but the depth of logic (the conditional splits, real-time behavioral triggers, the integration between purchase data and flow behavior) doesn’t even come close to what Klaviyo delivers. For stores serious about email revenue, this gap is significant.
Segmentation: Know Who You’re Talking To
Sending the right email to the right person is what separates a good email program from a great one. Both Mailchimp and Klaviyo offer segmentation, but the sophistication is different.
Klaviyo’s segmentation is built on your store’s behavioral data. You can create audiences based on what customers bought, how many times they’ve ordered, when they last purchased, which product categories they’ve browsed, how much they’ve spent over their lifetime, their predicted next order date, and dozens of other attributes. Segments update dynamically in real time as customer behavior changes. For example, your “purchased in the last 30 days” segment is always accurate, always current, and updates in real time.
Mailchimp allows segmentation based on contact properties, campaign engagement, and some purchase activity if your store is connected. But the granularity and real-time accuracy doesn’t match Klaviyo’s. As your list and your marketing strategy mature, the segmentation ceiling in Mailchimp becomes increasingly limiting.
The Shopify Situation
If your store runs on Shopify, read this section carefully. Back in the day there was an integration that allowed Mailchimp stores to connect directly to Shopify. However, in 2019, Mailchimp and Shopify ended their official partnership, and the native Shopify integration was removed from the Mailchimp app store. Third-party connectors have since emerged to bridge the gap, but they vary in reliability and don’t offer the same depth of data sync that a native integration provides.
Klaviyo has one of the most seamless Shopify integrations on the market. It connects in minutes and immediately begins syncing customer profiles, order history, product data, cart events, and browsing activity. That data is what powers every flow, segment, and campaign in your account. For Shopify stores, this integration alone is often the deciding factor. To put this simply, our team completed many migrations from Mailchimp to Shopify in 2019 and 2020 for this very reason.
Reporting and Revenue Clarity
A major advantage of Klaviyo over Mailchimp is how well it handles revenue attribution. Klaviyo shows you exactly how much money each flow, campaign, individual email generated, tracked from click to purchase with configurable attribution windows. This makes it straightforward to know what your email program is worth, what’s working, how much each recipient is worth, and where to focus your optimization efforts.
Mailchimp does offer revenue reporting when connected to an e-commerce store, but it’s less granular and less central to the platform experience. Getting a clear picture of email-driven revenue often requires more manual effort and cross-referencing with your store’s analytics.
Pricing: What You’re Actually Paying For
Mailchimp’s free plan allows up to 500 contacts with basic features, and paid plans scale from there based on list size. On the surface, it can appear more affordable than Klaviyo, especially at smaller contact counts.
Klaviyo’s free tier covers up to 250 contacts, and pricing scales by the number of active profiles in your account. At comparable list sizes, Klaviyo often costs more. But cost-per-contact isn’t the right measure. The question is revenue generated per dollar spent on the platform, and for e-commerce brands running proper flows and segmentation in Klaviyo, the ROI almost always justifies the price difference.
When Mailchimp Makes Sense
Mailchimp is a reasonable choice if your business isn’t primarily e-commerce. For service businesses, content creators, B2B companies, or brands at the very early stages with a small list and simple needs, Mailchimp’s ease of use and free tier make it a practical starting point.
It also works well for brands that simply need to send a newsletter. If behavioral automation, deep segmentation, and revenue attribution aren’t priorities yet, Mailchimp will handle the basics reliably. But if you’re an e-commerce store starting off on Mailchimp, you may find yourself migrating over to Klaivyo down the line.
The Verdict for E-Commerce
If you’re running an online store and email is (or should be) a meaningful revenue channel, Klaviyo is the right choice. The behavioral data model, the depth of automation, the Shopify integration, and the revenue transparency it provides are built specifically for how e-commerce works. Mailchimp wasn’t.
That said, Klaviyo’s power is only realized when it’s set up properly. The platform has a learning curve, and an account with no flows running and no list segmentation will underperform even a basic Mailchimp setup. Getting it right from the start — or auditing an existing account to find what’s been missed — is where the real gains are hiding.
If you’re not sure how your current email setup stacks up, or you’re ready to make the switch to Klaviyo and want to do it properly, we’re here to help. LTM Digital is a Klaviyo Gold Agency Partner.
Explore more in our email marketing hub: Email marketing ROI: What e-commerce brands can realistically expect and The 6 Klaviyo flows every e-commerce store needs.