Klaviyo’s bill follows active-profile brackets, with included email sends fixed at 10x the bracket ceiling. At the same contacts and sends, OnVoard, Mailchimp, Omnisend and MailerLite expose where that mechanic changes. OnVoard publishes this comparison.
Klaviyo pricing checked September 4, 2026. Klaviyo sets its own prices and can change them any time.
100,000 sends included, fixed to this bracket.
$15/mo for the contacts, plus about $20 for the email at this volume.
Both sides resolved at the same contacts and the same sends, both at list price. Want every OnVoard app rather than email alone? All-In-One runs about $59.80/mo here.
Most of the pressure to leave comes from the bill, not the product. Klaviyo prices a single “Marketing (Email)” plan purely on active-profile brackets, and the included sends are pinned to a flat 10x ratio you cannot adjust independently of your profile count. Cross a bracket ceiling and the account auto-upgrades to the next one; there is no published way to hold a cheaper bracket once you cross it.
The other reason is scope, not depth. Klaviyo is a messaging and data platform: email, SMS, WhatsApp, mobile push, on-site sign-up forms and its own Reviews product, unified by a customer data layer. Its Customer Hub can surface points, VIP tier and redemption from a loyalty program, but the program itself still runs on a connected platform such as Smile.io or Yotpo. A store already paying for one of those keeps paying for it; Klaviyo displays that data, it does not replace what generates it.
The curves show where each vendor’s monthly bill jumps as the contact ladder changes. Switch a vendor off in the legend to isolate two lines.
The dotted line marks 10,000 contacts, and each price beside a vendor above is that vendor at that point. Lines show the monthly list price at 2 emails per contact a month. A line that stops has run past that vendor’s own published ladder; nothing here is extrapolated. Move the calculator further down the page and the marked position moves with it.
What each one is, and roughly what it costs at the workload above. The full case for each is below.
Ecommerce brands who want email priced separately from send volume, where the highest setting is unlimited.
Small lists that want a genuinely free plan, or teams who also want landing pages and social ad tools in one login.
Ecommerce stores that want native SMS alongside email and are comfortable reading a promo price as a promo.
Budget-conscious lists that still want automation without paying for a full ecommerce suite.
OnVoard changes the pricing mechanic, Mailchimp gates automation, Omnisend adds SMS as its own metered line, and MailerLite trades a lower bill for fair-use language.
OnVoard uses 2 independent settings: $15 per 10,000 contacts, plus a send setting from 1x to 8x at $1 per 1,000 sends. The top setting, 8x, is unlimited sends at the same price 8x already cost. That removes the bracket-crossing mechanic both Klaviyo and Mailchimp use: there is no ceiling to cross, only a setting to raise. OnVoard publishes this comparison, so weigh that finding with the disclosure in mind.
The rate stays flat inside a bracket, then moves to the next published price.
OnVoard exposes contacts and the email send setting as separate inputs, while Klaviyo's published ladder stays flat inside a contact bracket and jumps when the next rung is crossed.
OnVoard published Marketing Platform rates and Klaviyo's pricing ladder; Klaviyo's ladder captured 4 September 2026.
It is also a younger product. There is no native SMS channel and no predictive analytics layer to match Klaviyo’s, and the agency and integration ecosystem behind it is smaller because the product itself is newer. A merchant weighing years of Klaviyo-specific setup against a lower bill is weighing something real on both sides.
2 things about Mailchimp are true regardless of price. It is the only vendor on this page that also sells landing pages, social ad management and direct-mail postcards from the same login, and its free plan runs to 250 contacts and about 500 sends a month with no time limit, which is a standing plan rather than a trial.
What is easy to miss is that Mailchimp gates its own automation by plan, not only by contact count. Its published plan comparison lists no automation flows at all on Free, up to 4 flow steps on Essentials, and up to 200 flows only on Standard and Premium; predictive segmentation is restricted the same way, to Standard and Premium only, per Mailchimp’s own plan-comparison footnotes. A merchant who buys Essentials for the lower list price is buying a plan that cannot build the kind of multi-step, branching flow most Klaviyo tiers allow.
Essentials is measured in flow steps; Standard and Premium are listed in flows.
Mailchimp does not make automation depth a generic paid-plan feature: Free has no flow access, Essentials stops at 4 flow steps, and the 200-flow ceiling appears only on Standard and Premium.
Mailchimp's plan-comparison table, checked 9 September 2026.
None of that shows up in the sticker price this page compares, because published plan pricing does not itemise automation depth on its own. If the reason you are looking at alternatives is the depth of Klaviyo’s flows and segments rather than the bill, Mailchimp’s cheaper tiers are not a like-for-like replacement; only Standard and Premium are.
Omnisend’s real differentiator is native SMS in the same account as email, so a store already planning to add texting gets one vendor relationship instead of 2. SMS itself is not on the contact ladder above: it is a separate, volume-based per-message rate that starts near a cent per message and varies by country, so texting is an added line on the bill, not a bundled one. Its Pro plan also publishes unlimited sends once you are past 2,500 contacts, though the figure is not published at all below that threshold.
The headline price on omnisend.com is a 3-month prepay promo, not the list price; it reverts once the prepay period ends, and there is no self-serve annual plan to compare it against.
MailerLite’s story here is mostly the sticker price: at this page’s own workload it is the cheapest of the four, and its free plan includes 2,500 sends a month against 500 for the other three. The one thing to check before assuming that holds at scale is that Power’s “unlimited” sending is stated as fair-use, not a published numeric ceiling, so it is a promise rather than a number you can hold it to.
Every free plan in this comparison, with its 2 published limits and the one that runs out first.
| Free plan | Contacts | Emails a month | What runs out first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Klaviyo | 250 | 500 | Sending, at 2 emails per contact a month. |
| Mailchimp | 250 | 500 | Sending, at 2 emails per contact a month. |
| Omnisend | 250 | 500 | Sending, at 2 emails per contact a month. |
| MailerLite | 250 | 2,500 | Sending, at 10 emails per contact a month. |
| OnVoard | No limit | 500 | Sending. No contact limit, so 500 emails a month is the only ceiling. |
Contacts and emails are each vendor’s own published free-plan limits. “What runs out first” is the two of them divided, nothing else: a free plan at its full contact ceiling buys that many emails per contact a month before it stops. OnVoard’s free plan is the shape that differs: no contact limit at all, and 500 email sends a month.
Change contacts or sends and each row resolves the published list price for that workload, with promos and missing data kept visible.
The buttons above fill this in from your contact count. 4x means 4 emails a month per contact.
We use the audience number entered above as the billable contact, profile or subscriber count for each platform. Vendors define billable audiences differently, and a real count after migration can differ.
| Vendor | Estimated price | Plan | Fits workload | Pricing basis | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OnVoardLowest cost | $35.00/mo | Marketing Platform | Fits | By contacts + sends | |
How this number was worked out
What makes this bill go up nextGrows to $45.00/mo at 30,000 emails a month. VerificationNo capture date is published for this figure.
| |||||
| MailchimpPromo available | $85.38/mo | Essentials | Fits | By contacts | |
How this number was worked out
What makes this bill go up nextGrows to $148.05/mo at 15,000 contacts. Promo available$72.57/mo promotional price. "Save 15%": 15% off the monthly base price at 10,000+ contacts, first 12 months, new customers only (or Free customers within 90 days of account creation). Ends immediately if contacts drop below 10,000. 1 per account. List price with the published 15% discount applied. Not compared above: promo prices never sort and never earn the lowest-cost badge. VerificationChecked September 7, 2026. | |||||
| MailerLite | $89.00/mo | Comfort | Fits | By contacts | |
How this number was worked out
What makes this bill go up nextGrows to $129/mo at 15,000 contacts. VerificationChecked September 4, 2026. | |||||
| OmnisendPromo availablePartially verified | $132.00/mo | Standard | Fits | By contacts | |
How this number was worked out
What makes this bill go up nextGrows to $150/mo at 10,500 contacts. Promo available$92.40/mo promotional price. 30% off with 3-month prepay, first upgrade only, once per account. Not compared above: promo prices never sort and never earn the lowest-cost badge. | |||||
| Klaviyo | $150.00/mo | Marketing (Email) | Fits | By contacts | |
How this number was worked out
What makes this bill go up nextGrows to $175/mo at 10,500 contacts. VerificationChecked September 4, 2026. | |||||
Pricing is not feature equivalence. These estimates show what each platform charges for the workload you entered. Plans can include different automation, segmentation, SMS, support, ecommerce, and other features.
See Klaviyo’s full pricing ladder against OnVoard, or use the full standalone calculator.
3 real reasons to stay, each with what to actually go check before you decide.
Centred on the 10,000-contact tier used above; expand for the rest.
At 10,000 contacts and 20,000 sends a month, MailerLite’s Comfort plan ($89/mo) and OnVoard’s Marketing Platform ($35/mo) both price under Klaviyo’s $150/mo; the exact ranking changes at other contact and send counts, which is why the calculator on this page recomputes instead of naming one fixed winner.
Klaviyo itself is free up to 250 contacts. Mailchimp, Omnisend and MailerLite each publish a free plan at the same size or better: MailerLite’s covers 2,500 emails a month where the others cover 500. OnVoard's own free plan works the other way round: no limit on contacts, capped at 500 email sends a month. The free-plan table above compares all 5 side by side.
If Klaviyo’s automation, deliverability, or integrations are working for you and the bill is not the problem, there is no case here for switching; see “What Klaviyo still does better” below.
Set your contacts and sends in the calculator above, or start OnVoard free and find out.