Shopify merchants have two primary options for email marketing: Shopify’s native Email (built into the Shopify platform) and Klaviyo (a dedicated email/SMS marketing platform). This article provides an objective comparison of the two, highlighting key differences in data tracking, automation, analytics, and scalability. While Shopify Email is free and easy to start with, we’ll see why Klaviyo is generally the superior long-term solution for growing DTC brands – a conclusion even Shopify itself implicitly supports through its partnership and investment in Klaviyo.
In 2022, Shopify invested $100 million in Klaviyo and announced a strategic partnership making Klaviyo the recommended email solution for Shopify Plus. This deal gave Shopify an 11% ownership stake in Klaviyo. In other words, the platform that created Shopify Email is quite literally betting on Klaviyo as the future of email/SMS marketing for its merchants.
With that context in mind, let’s examine how the two tools stack up on the features that matter for ecommerce growth.
Data collection & segmentation
Klaviyo: Rich behavioral tracking with Klaviyo.js
Klaviyo provides a JavaScript tracking snippet that, once added to your Shopify store, monitors visitors’ behavior (product views, add-to-cart events, purchase history, etc.). These actions are tied to rich, unified customer profiles, letting you send highly personalized campaigns.
With Klaviyo’s anonymous visitor activity backfill, you can capture a visitor’s on-site events before they even identify themselves. Once they are identified, their profile will be enriched with a full history of actions they’ve taken on your site. This depth of data means you can build segments that reflect complete customer journeys, not just basic attributes.
Shopify Email: Limited to customer account data
If a shopper isn’t logged in or hasn’t identified their email, Shopify can’t send them any behavior-triggered emails. Segmentation in Shopify Email is therefore limited to simple attributes. Without deeper behavioral insights, it’s hard to target customers beyond broad groups or to personalize content based on browsing activity.
Impact: Data collection & segmentation
Klaviyo’s ability to capture comprehensive data (even from anonymous visitors) means you can target a much larger and more detailed audience, leading to more meaningful communication and more conversions. Shopify Email leaves valuable opportunities untapped, especially when customers don’t log in or switch devices.
Automation & triggers
Klaviyo: Sophisticated, multi-step flows with endless triggers
Klaviyo offers 60+ pre-built flows covering every stage of the customer journey: welcome, browse/cart abandonment, post-purchase follow-ups, replenishment, win-backs, and more. Each flow can branch into conditional paths, include delays, and test content variations—all within an intuitive drag-and-drop builder.
Shopify Email: Single-message automations
Shopify provides around 9 basic automations out of the box. Most are single-message flows (e.g. one abandoned checkout reminder) and have limited re-triggering flexibility, meaning customers may never get follow-ups if they abandon carts more than once.
Impact: Automation & triggers
Klaviyo enables brands to automate far more of the customer lifecycle, with messages tailored to specific behaviors and segments. Shopify Email’s limited options restrict marketers to surface-level engagement, making it difficult to scale or optimize customer touchpoints.
Reach of flows & audience engagement
Klaviyo: Casts a wider net
Klaviyo’s tracking allows flows to reach a much larger share of site visitors, not just those who enter their email at checkout. That means abandoned cart and browse abandonment flows can target customers who’ve interacted before—even if they don’t log in. On average, our audits show that moving to Klaviyo increases eligible recipients by 3–5x for abandonment flows, without making any other changes other than where they are sending from.
Shopify Email: Smaller reach
By default, Shopify only sends abandoned checkout emails to customers who entered their email and opted into marketing. There is no native flow for someone who merely browsed products without completing the purchase. As a result, a large segment of high-intent visitors never receive any follow-up email.
Impact: Reach of flows & audience engagement
Klaviyo’s wider net directly drives more sales. In 2024, automated emails made up only ~2% of sends but delivered 37% of email revenue. More triggers and multi-step series mean more touchpoints, more recovered carts, and ultimately more revenue opportunities.
Analytics & deliverability insights
Klaviyo: Deep analytics and deliverability tools
Klaviyo gives marketers granular reporting at both campaign and flow levels. You can measure opens, clicks, revenue per recipient, and even industry benchmarks. Klaviyo also provides deliverability health insights and dedicated sending options to protect inbox placement.
Shopify Email: Basic reporting and few deliverability controls
Shopify Email includes only basic metrics like opens, clicks, and last-click conversions. It lacks visibility into deliverability and can even shut off automations if it detects an issue—without offering much diagnostic detail.
Impact: Analytics & deliverability insights
Klaviyo’s rich reporting and deliverability insights provide full transparency into how your emails are performing and reaching inboxes. That means you can confidently optimize your marketing with data-backed certainty. This level of insight translates to more predictable growth and fewer unpleasant surprises (like finding out an important series was quietly not sending).
Attribution models & flow performance accuracy
Klaviyo: Multi-touch attribution window (5-day open/click)
Klaviyo uses a 5-day open or click attribution model, and it supports multi-touch reporting. That means if an email contributes to a sale—even indirectly—it still gets credit. You can also customize attribution windows to match your business model.
Shopify Email: Last-click attribution
Shopify uses a last non-direct click model, meaning only the final channel before purchase gets credit. It also reports flow conversions inaccurately, often calculating conversion rate as purchases divided by clicks instead of total recipients. For example, 1 order from 100 sends might be shown as 10% conversion if 10 people clicked, when the real rate is 1%.
Impact: Attribution models & flow performance accuracy
Accurate attribution matters. Klaviyo shows a fuller, more accurate picture of email’s influence on revenue, while Shopify’s model risks undercounting performance. With better data, you can make smarter investment decisions and prove (and improve) the impact of your retention marketing.
Klaviyo’s ROI vs Shopify Email’s “free” appeal
Klaviyo: Built for growth
Though it has a monthly cost starting at $45 for 15,000 emails, Klaviyo is built for scale. Shopify stores typically see an average of $85 in revenue for every $1 spent on Klaviyo. Its advanced automations and segmentation mean the value compounds as your list and customer base grow.
Shopify Email: Get what you don’t pay for
Shopify’s native tool is free up to 10,000 emails/month, then $1 per every 1,000 additional emails you send. This makes it appealing for early-stage brands with small lists and basic needs.
Shopify Email’s feature set is bare-bones compared to Klaviyo. It lacks advanced segmentation, nearly all the automations beyond the basics, any A/B testing (aside from maybe subject line testing via a separate app), and the rich analytics we discussed. For a growing brand, these limitations can directly translate to missed revenue opportunities that far exceed the cost of a Klaviyo subscription.
Impact: ROI & scalability
Free email isn’t free if it leaves revenue behind. Serious DTC brands quickly outgrow Shopify Email and benefit more from Klaviyo’s advanced capabilities. With the right strategy and execution, Klaviyo pays for itself many times over.
Even Shopify has mentioned that many Shopify merchants start with the built-in email but switch to Klaviyo as they scale, which aligns with Klaviyo being Shopify’s preferred partner for email/SMS on Shopify Plus. And with Shopify investing in Klaviyo and earning equity from its success, the “free” Shopify Email starts to look more like a stepping stone than a final destination.
Conclusion
Klaviyo: The preferred choice for scaling Shopify brands
Klaviyo offers power, flexibility, and scale. It unlocks deeper customer data and personalization, enabling brands to send the right message to the right customer at the right time. It automates revenue-generating touchpoints that Shopify Email doesn’t even touch (browse abandonment, multi-step cart recovery sequences, win-back campaigns, etc.).
It provides analytics to truly understand and improve marketing performance, versus Shopify’s set-and-forget approach. And importantly, Klaviyo has a whole ecosystem – from its integration with Shopify to its vast array of other integrations, to its community of agencies and experts (such as Fuel Made) who specialize in optimizing Klaviyo for merchants. All of this support means that as your business grows, Klaviyo grows with you, helping you maximize customer lifetime value and retention.
Shopify Email: An entry-level tool
Shopify Email may meet the needs of a very small store or a brand just starting out with email marketing. It’s simple, free (or very cheap at scale), and handles the rudiments of sending newsletters and a couple of single-step automations. However, as soon as a brand wants to intensify its retention marketing and drive substantial revenue from email/SMS, Shopify Email will hit its limits.
TL;DR
Shopify Email is like a free sample – good to try, but not a meal. Klaviyo is the full-course service that feeds your brand’s growth. Shopify itself chose Klaviyo as a partner because it delivers the best results for its merchants.
Our agency has deep expertise in both Klaviyo and Shopify. If you’re ready to unlock the full ROI potential of Klaviyo, chat with our team and get a free email marketing audit.
