Klaviyo vs Metrilo
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentMetrilo compared with Klaviyo
The most consequential comparison for any DTC brand. Klaviyo does email, SMS, and behavioral segmentation with deep ecommerce integrations and enormous market share. Metrilo offers a more analytical customer database and cross-platform support, but overlaps heavily and costs a real premium alongside it. Running both is usually duplication, so this is a choice rather than a pairing, and most Shopify brands will find Klaviyo the safer default.
Choose Klaviyo if
Direct-to-consumer and ecommerce brands on Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce doing enough revenue that abandoned-cart and post-purchase flows pay for the subscription several times over, and who want segmentation driven by purchase behavior rather than by tags they maintain by hand.
Choose Metrilo if
Direct-to-consumer brands, particularly outside Shopify, that want a real customer database with behavioral segmentation, retention cohorts, and email in one platform rather than assembling an analytics app, a segmentation app, and an ESP with three different definitions of a customer.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Klaviyo | Metrilo |
|---|---|---|
| Category | ESPs | Segmentation |
| Starting price | $0 (free up to 250 profiles), then roughly $30/mo at 1,000 active profiles (free plan available) | $199 per month, about $165 billed annually |
| Pricing model | Self-serve tiers priced by active (marketable) profile count, with a monthly email send allowance of roughly ten times the profile count; SMS is sold as a higher Email plus SMS plan with its own message credits, and the newer data, service, and AI product lines meter separately. | Flat monthly subscription in three tiers, discounted about seventeen percent on annual billing, with the CRM, segmentation, and retention layers arriving on the middle tier. |
| Free plan | Up to 250 profiles, 500 emails per month, $5 of mobile messages per month, and 10,000 Composer credits, with email support limited to the first 60 days. | No |
| Free trial | No fixed-length trial; the free tier up to 250 profiles is the evaluation path | No |
| Best for | Direct-to-consumer and ecommerce brands on Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce doing enough revenue that abandoned-cart and post-purchase flows pay for the subscription several times over, and who want segmentation driven by purchase behavior rather than by tags they maintain by hand. | Direct-to-consumer brands, particularly outside Shopify, that want a real customer database with behavioral segmentation, retention cohorts, and email in one platform rather than assembling an analytics app, a segmentation app, and an ESP with three different definitions of a customer. |
| Setup time | An afternoon for a Shopify store to be sending. The store connector installs in one click and backfills order history, the onsite snippet goes on automatically, and the prebuilt flows can be turned on with default content the same day. Getting the flows genuinely good, with branded templates and considered branching, is a two to four week project. | Connection to the store is quick, but the value depends on historical data loading and on behavioral tracking accumulating, so plan a few weeks before segmentation reflects a full picture rather than only recent activity. |
| Learning curve | Moderate and front-loaded. The flow builder and campaign sending are approachable, but segment logic over event properties is where people get stuck, because it asks you to think in terms of events and their metadata rather than in terms of lists. Anyone who has only used tag-based ESPs will need a week to stop fighting the model. | Moderate. There is more surface here than in a single-purpose segmentation app: analytics, a customer database, retention analysis, and email each have their own conventions. The upside is that unlimited seats let a team learn it together rather than through one gatekeeper. |
| Platforms | Web application, iOS and Android apps for reporting, Mobile SDKs for push, Onsite JavaScript library | Web app, Multiple ecommerce platform integrations |
| Compliance | SOC 2, GDPR with a data processing agreement, CCPA | Holds individual customer profiles including browsing behavior, so GDPR and equivalent obligations sit squarely with the store, Email sending inside the platform carries the store's own consent and unsubscribe obligations, Owned by Brevo, a European company, which is relevant to data protection posture for EU brands |
| Founded | 2012 | 2014 |
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, United States | Sofia, Bulgaria |
| Ownership | Publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker KVYO | Owned by Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, since 2021 |
Strengths and limitations
Klaviyo
Strengths
- The data model is the real product: live segments over order history, browsing behavior, and predicted values give you targeting no tag-based ESP can express.
- Revenue attribution per flow and campaign is credible because Klaviyo already holds the order events, which makes the subscription defensible to whoever signs off on spend.
- Suppressed profiles stop counting toward the bill, so unsubscribes and bounces reduce cost rather than becoming permanent dead weight.
- Prebuilt ecommerce flows mean a new store can have abandoned cart, welcome, browse abandonment, and post-purchase live in days rather than designing automation from a blank canvas.
Limitations
- Expensive at scale. Roughly $720 a month at 50,000 profiles is several times what Brevo, Omnisend, or MailerLite charge for comparable list sizes, and the per-profile rate does not improve as you grow.
- The send allowance of about ten times your profile count constrains high-frequency senders, so a daily-mailing brand can be forced into a higher band by volume rather than by list growth.
- No advertised annual discount on self-serve plans, removing a lever that almost every competitor offers.
- The email editor is functional rather than delightful; teams coming from MailerLite or Kit usually find it a step down aesthetically.
Metrilo
Strengths
- A genuine customer database rather than a reporting layer, with individual profiles carrying browsing and purchase history.
- Works across multiple ecommerce platforms rather than being locked to Shopify, which is rare in this category.
- Segmentation, retention analysis, and email in one product, removing the problem of maintaining the same audience in several tools.
- Cohort comparisons and lifetime metrics that make retention a property of specific customer groups rather than one company-wide number.
Limitations
- The customer database and segmentation start on the $379 Pro tier, so the $199 entry price is misleading for segmentation buyers.
- No syncing of segments to Meta, Google Ads, or TikTok as advertising audiences.
- Several times more expensive than the Shopify segmentation apps that cover the same core job.
- Heavy overlap with Klaviyo for brands already committed to it, particularly on email and behavioral segmentation.
Pricing compared
Klaviyo
Self-serve tiers priced by active (marketable) profile count, with a monthly email send allowance of roughly ten times the profile count; SMS is sold as a higher Email plus SMS plan with its own message credits, and the newer data, service, and AI product lines meter separately.
- Free$0
- Email (1,000 profiles)Approximately $30
- Email (10,000 profiles)Approximately $150
- Email (50,000 profiles)Approximately $720
- Enterprise and additional product linesQuoted
For a store with real order volume, Klaviyo at 1,000 or 10,000 profiles is straightforwardly good value, because the four standard flows typically return several multiples of the subscription and the attribution report proves it in a currency the founder already thinks in. The suppression policy is a genuine and underrated saving, since you are not paying rent on people who left. Value collapses in two situations: a large list without commerce revenue behind it, where $720 a month at 50,000 profiles buys reporting you cannot monetize, and a business that lets the SMS, reviews, and data product lines accumulate until the email tool costs enterprise money. Judged strictly as ecommerce email, it is expensive and worth it; judged as a general-purpose ESP, it is the wrong shape at the wrong price.
Metrilo
Flat monthly subscription in three tiers, discounted about seventeen percent on annual billing, with the CRM, segmentation, and retention layers arriving on the middle tier.
- Essential$199
- Pro$379
- PremiumFrom $599
Priced against the Shopify segmentation apps, Metrilo looks expensive: $379 for the tier with segmentation, against $19 for By the Numbers or $149 for Tresl. Priced against what it replaces, it looks different, because it is analytics, a customer database, and email in one product with unlimited seats and no platform lock to Shopify. The decision comes down to two questions. If you are on Shopify and already use Klaviyo, most of this is duplicated and the specialists are far cheaper. If you are on another platform, or you want one system rather than three, there are very few alternatives at any price.
Editorial verdict on each
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is the correct default for an ecommerce brand with enough order volume that automated flows are a revenue line rather than a nice-to-have. The customer database underneath, the live segmentation over purchase and browsing behavior, and the revenue attribution that makes the spend defensible are genuinely a class above what general-purpose ESPs offer, and billing only for marketable profiles is a fairer meter than most of the category uses. The costs are real: no annual discount, a send allowance tied to list size, a per-profile rate that never improves with scale, and a growing set of adjacent products that each want their own line on the invoice. Buy it if a checkout produces your revenue and you intend to run serious flows. Do not buy it for a newsletter, a service business, or a big list with thin margins, where you will pay ecommerce prices for reporting you cannot cash.
Read the full Klaviyo profileMetrilo
Metrilo is the option for DTC brands that want to own the customer database rather than rent a view of it, and for the many brands whose platform is not Shopify and who therefore cannot use most of this category. Individual behavioral profiles, cohort retention analysis, and email in one system solve a real coordination problem, and unlimited seats mean the whole team can work in it. Two things should decide the purchase. The price of the capability is $379, not the $199 on the pricing page, because segmentation starts on the Pro tier. And if you are a Shopify store already running Klaviyo, most of what this does is duplicated for far less money by the specialists in this category. Off Shopify, or consolidating three tools into one, it earns the premium.
Read the full Metrilo profileKlaviyo profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Metrilo last reviewed 2026-09-02. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.