There are numerous email marketing platforms you can choose from these days. However, not all offer the same features and benefits, and not all are suitable for every type of business. Drip and Klaviyo are two powerful tools you can consider. Discover which one is suitable for you in this Klaviyo vs Drip comparison.
Written by Ria du Plessis - Digital Marketing Expert Updated 9/2/2021 |
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Score | 8.2/10 | 8/10 |
Summary | Klaviyo is an intuitive platform that offers good email templates, reliable reporting, and multiple automations. | Drip is a robust tool that offers good automation, reporting, and eCommerce integrations. |
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Pros |
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Cons |
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Key Features |
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Pricing |
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Support |
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Ease of Use |
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Best fit for | eCommerce, marketers looking for advanced reporting | eCommerce, B2C companies |
Let’s start by comparing the email editors and email design options each platform provides.
Klaviyo offers quite an intuitive drag-and-drop email builder. Once you set up and start creating campaigns, the platform’s wizard provides the option to configure your brand’s colors and use them in your emails. There is a good selection of email templates you can choose and start personalizing. You can also create new ones from scratch with the HTML builder.
Drip offers few email templates and layout options. You can create an email using the HTML editor or plan text and preview it. If you like to keep things simple, you will appreciate this approach. However, experienced marketers usually look for more options in terms of design and style. One of the advantages is that the fluid email builder helps you set up a campaign in minutes.
Winner
Klaviyo offers more options.
Discover the different segmentation features each one of these platforms has to offer.
Klaviyo offers a relatively intuitive list segmentation feature based on behavioral criteria. You can also segment contacts depending on how they have interacted with your campaigns. Some of the prevailing segmentation criteria you can use include past purchases, website visits, searches. It is also easy to import your list if you have been using a different provider.
Drip allows you to segment your audience without effort. This helps you create highly personalized campaigns. Drip's intuitive segmentation process is based on tags and events. You can apply tags automatically, depending on how contacts interact with automated workflows, or manually. Drip makes behavioral tagging simple by allowing you to choose different triggers from a menu.
Winner
Drip seems more efficient.
Automated email sequences allow you to keep your contacts constantly engaged without having to send each email campaign separately.
This platform offers advanced automation features that are particularly suitable for eCommerce companies. For example, you get an optimized abandoned cart, product review, special occasion, or post-purchase ready-made email workflows. All you need to do is personalize these flows with your content. Welcome series are also available. Moreover, the platform’s advanced tracking features allow you to understand the workflow's engagement without effort. If you decide to create flows from zero, there are many triggers to choose from.
Drip also offers excellent automation features. You can either build a workflow or apply rules to create automated email sequences. The first option implies setting up flows from a visual, user-friendly automation builder by using conditions. Rules provide an easy and fast way to automate emails by configuring specific actions that trigger the following email of the sequence.
Winner
Both platforms offer reliable automations.
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Both email marketing platforms offer several testing features that can help you test your emails to improve their performance.
This platform allows you to A/B test your campaigns. With this platform, you can split test subject lines and email content (email design and URL parameters). You can access the testing features from the Campaigns section and edit the sender names, email added, and the preview text during configuration. You can only use one factor at a time to test and compare your campaigns. You can also test send times.
Drip's split testing tools are available in the Analytics section. There are several criteria you can focus on to split test your campaign. They include subject lines, sender names, delivery times. Unfortunately, with this tool, you can't test your email content.
Winner
Klaviyo, because it also allows you to test your campaigns’ content.
Forms are critical lead generation tools most online businesses use these days to collect contacts. Here are the different options you get with Klaviyo vs Drip.
Klaviyo offers the possibility to create pop-up forms. However, its form builder provides limited functionality. An integration with a third party might help you carry out the job better. Klaviyo's forms are available as standard pop-us, hosted, or embedded forms. You can choose how and when to display forms based on your visitors' actions, for example, the scroll percentage, the time they spent reading your page, or their intention to leave the page.
Drip offers a flexible form builder that allows you to change almost all the elements of your forms. Several main options featured in the builder allow for such flexibility: orientation, appearance, behavior, and visibility. You can choose from detailed settings to decide when to make the forms appear on your website and what triggers to use to make them pop up (e.g. a user's intent to leave the page). Forms are available as flyouts, pop-ups, side tab forms, embedded, hosted, or widgets.
Winner
None of these tools offers outstanding form design options, but Drip seems to provide more flexibility.
Usability is one of the main factors to look for when choosing an email marketing platform. Determine how easy it is to work with Klaviyo vs Drip.
Overall, Klaviyo is a simple platform. As soon as you log into your account, you get all the main features at a glance. It offers a smooth onboarding process: the drag-and-drop functionality allows you to create and customize your campaigns with little effort. The integrations are also easy to access and leverage. Reports are displayed in a neat and logical way.
Drip manages to combine robust and complex automations with usability. Setting up workflows doesn't take long. The visual automation builder enables you to get a birds-eye view of what your sequence looks like. Segmenting your audience by using tags also comes easily. The plain email editor is another feature that contributes to the platform’s intuitive approach.
Winner
It’s a tie.
Let’s see what pricing options each one of these platforms provides and which one is more affordable.
The price you have to pay for a Klaviyo subscription varies based on your contact list and the number of contacts you want to use for the SMS marketing feature. You can use a free plan, but it is limited to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month.
The prices start at $20 for 500 contacts, with a plan that includes unlimited emails and chat support. For 1,000 contacts, the price is $30 and keeps on rising with every 500 contacts you add to the list.
Drip allows you to use its platform for free during a 14-days trial. Afterward, you have to get a paid subscription. The minimum price is $19 for 500 contacts. For 1,000 contacts, you need to pay $15. For 2,500 contacts, the price is $49. The price continues to grow with your contact list.
Winner
Drip is slightly more affordable.
To know how your campaigns can get better results, it is important to track their progress through reporting. Discover Klaviyo vs Drip's reports.
Klaviyo offers segmented email reporting, which enables you to accurately track different aspects of your email campaigns. One of the areas where this platform stands out is eCommerce. Since this platform offers efficient integrations with online stores, you can easily track your transactions’ history. There are also numerous campaign metrics you can get (opens, clicked links, etc.). You can customize your reports and choose what information you want to view.
In the main menu on your dashboard, you can see a thorough breakdown of your email campaign metrics, as well as different website analytics. Email opens, clicked links, new subscribers, page visits, conversion reports are just some of the reports available. If you move to the Broadcast section, you can see individual email campaign reports. The Reports section brings additional options such as subscriber growth reports, hard bounces, or detailed stats on when your emails were opened.
Winner
Drip seems to focus more on email marketing reporting.
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Integrations allow you to link different other accounts to your email marketing platform and facilitate your marketing processes.
Klaviyo offers a wide array of integrations with major eCommerce platforms, content management or marketing tools, as well as numerous social media integrations. Some of its most popular integrations include Zendesk, WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce, ReCharge, Facebook, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, ShopSync, SimpleTexting, Linkedin. Overall, the platform offers around 70 native integrations.
Drip offers a few dozen native integrations with some of the most popular marketing, content management, and eCommerce platforms. Some of the most notable integrations include Shopify, Magento, WisePopos, WooCommerce, Gobot, Poptin, Privy, Mailfloss.
Winner
Both platforms offer good integrations.
Customer support is always an essential factor to take into account when trying to choose an email marketing platform for your business.
Klaviyo offers live chat support during standard business hours, as well as email support and phone support. The support channel you can use depends on your subscription plan, in other words, on how many contacts you have. A comprehensive FAQ section is also available, as well as a community forum.
Drip provides support via email (through a customer form). If you send a message to the support team, they will answer within 24-48 hours. However, the free plan comes with limited email support. A Facebook community of over 16,000 members is also available, as well as live training webinars. Paying customers can also access live chat support.
Winner
Klaviyo, because it also offers phone support.
Each one of these platforms might be suitable for you, depending on your needs.
Drip is a good choice for beginners since it offers all the basic array of features needed to create email marketing campaigns with little effort. The interface is clear and straightforward, and the learning curve is less steep than what you can expect with other platforms. The intended audience of this platform is B2B companies.
Klaviyo mainly targets eCommerce businesses that require reliable integrations with online stores, a variety of useful templates for this niche, and transactional reports. Klaviyo offers powerful automation and reporting features that can also benefit all other types of online businesses. Given its ease of use, this tool is also suitable for beginners.
Here is a summary of the main pros and cons of Klaviyo vs Drip.
Drip offers an intuitive tag-based segmentation process, advanced campaign and website tracking features, and a robust visual workflow builder. However, the form-building capabilities are not very advanced, and the templates are limited.
Klaviyo is a powerful email marketing automation platform. It features excellent templates, a simple platform, good customer support, and plenty of flexibility in terms of email design. On the other hand, this platform requires a learning curve and provides only limited testing.
If you are looking for alternatives for Klaviyo or Drip, here are two options:
is ideal for bloggers. It features a user-friendly editor, many email design options, numerous sign-up forms and landing pages, and good A/B testing.
is a fine choice for those looking for a free plan. The platform offers numerous customizable templates and a robust automation builder.
Both platforms offer similar features. However, Klaviyo is the final winner as it provides more email campaign options, excellent customer support, and several testing options.
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