Let's get straight to it. Your Klaviyo bill isn't a single, fixed number. It’s a moving target. The cost depends on your active profiles and how much you use SMS.
A brand with 10,000 contacts might start around $150 per month for email. But that's just the baseline. The real cost is often much higher.
What Drives Your Klaviyo Cost
Your Klaviyo invoice boils down to two things. How many people are on your list, and how you reach them. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it subscription.
As your brand grows, so does your bill. You need to understand the mechanics from the start.
The core of your monthly cost is tied to active profiles. This is a crucial detail. An active profile isn't just someone who gets your emails. It's anyone you can message, including contacts who only receive SMS.
You pay for them every single month. Even if you don't send them a single campaign.
Key Pricing Factors
This model is a big change. Klaviyo shook things up in early 2024. They shifted from a model based on email volume to one based on contact list size.
This directly hit the wallets of DTC brands focused on scaling their lists. You now pay to store profiles, engaged or not.
Here’s a quick look at their email pricing tiers.
The costs ramp up in tiers. You’ll see big jumps as your list grows.
Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect to pay for the Email plan.
Klaviyo Email Plan Costs at a Glance
This table shows the standard monthly cost for Klaviyo's Email plan. It's based on the number of active profiles. Use this to estimate your base cost.
The costs climb steadily as your list expands. This is why regular list cleaning isn't just good practice. It's a direct lever on your monthly expenses.
Understanding what you’re paying for is everything. Klaviyo is powerful for email marketing with Klaviyo. No doubt.
But the tool is just one part of the equation. Your total investment includes the strategy and execution needed to turn sends into revenue. If you're not sure how that adds up, learn how to calculate your marketing ROI in our guide.
How Your Subscriber List Directly Impacts Your Bill
Your subscriber list is the single biggest driver of your Klaviyo cost. But the price doesn't inch up smoothly. The jumps between pricing tiers are sharp. They can catch you off guard.
Think of your list size as an engine. Your bill is the fuel it burns. As that engine gets bigger, it starts guzzling fuel at a much faster rate. That’s exactly how Klaviyo’s pricing works.
A brand with 5,000 contacts pays one price. A solid holiday season pushes that list to 50,000. The bill doesn't just double. It multiplies.
The Aggressive Scaling Tiers
This aggressive scaling trips up most founders. You’re focused on growth. But each new subscriber milestone smacks your budget with a significant price hike.
Let’s look at the real numbers. Klaviyo’s pricing often outpaces other tools. This is especially true for Shopify brands hitting that $1M-$10M revenue mark.
It starts free for your first 250 profiles. The climb is steep from there:
5,000 profiles will cost you $100 per month.
10,000 profiles jump to $150 per month.
25,000 profiles hit $375 per month.
50,000 profiles will run you $700 per month.
And 100,000 profiles comes with a $1,200 per month price tag.
For brands in pet, food, or lifestyle, your bill can balloon from $100 to $700 a month just by hitting growth targets. And that's before you even touch SMS costs.
Why Forecasting Your Klaviyo Cost Matters
Most brands budget for their current list size. This is a mistake. You need to budget for the list size you plan to have in six months.
Otherwise, a successful campaign can lead to a surprise invoice. That can throw your entire marketing budget out of whack.
According to McKinsey, "Personalization can lift revenues by 5-15% and increase marketing spend efficiency by 10-30%." Not forecasting costs makes this efficiency impossible.
Think about your growth goals for the next two quarters.
Are you planning a big Black Friday push?
Launching a new product line?
Scaling up your ad spend?
Each of these initiatives will grow your list. You need to map that projected growth to Klaviyo’s pricing tiers. This flips your bill from a reactive expense into a predictable part of your growth strategy.
For brands looking to maximize their outreach, it's worth exploring the best Shopify email marketing apps to ensure you're using the right tool for your specific stage of growth.
The Hidden Costs Of SMS And Other Add-Ons
Think of your email plan as the base ticket price. The real cost of Klaviyo often shows up in the add-ons. The biggest wildcard by far is SMS.
This isn’t a neat, bundled feature. It’s a separate, pay-as-you-go expense. It can send your monthly bill on a rollercoaster ride.
Unlike the predictable tiers for email profiles, SMS runs on a credit system. You purchase credits, and every text you send uses them up. It sounds straightforward, but the costs add up shockingly fast.
A single SMS campaign can easily tack on hundreds of dollars to your invoice. You aren't just paying for the message but also for carrier fees. That variability makes budgeting a headache.
How SMS Credits Can Blow Up Your Bill
Let's walk through a real-world scenario. You’re a DTC brand running a weekend flash sale. You decide to hit your list of 10,000 subscribers with two SMS blasts.
Here’s a rough idea of what that costs:
Initial Announcement: Sending one SMS to 10,000 contacts will likely run you somewhere between $100 and $150.
Final Reminder: Firing off that second "last chance" message adds another $100 to $150.
Just like that, your weekend campaign has added an extra $200 to $300 to your monthly bill. And that’s on top of your email plan. As soon as SMS enters the picture, your bill becomes a moving target.
Let’s see how this plays out across different list sizes. The table below shows your base email plan cost versus the total cost once you add a fairly standard SMS package.
Klaviyo Base Plan vs. Total Cost with SMS
Adding SMS can increase your monthly spend by 60% to 75%. And that's before you run any major sales events that require extra sends.
Beyond SMS: The Other Ancillary Costs
While SMS is the biggest line item, other expenses can inflate your real spending. These aren't direct fees from Klaviyo, but they're necessary for a high-performing program.
"A common mistake I see brands make...is not following up with customers after the purchase has been made," says Lindsey Arellano, Director of Email and SMS at Curio. "[They] fail to recognize the importance of the post-purchase experience."
To create those pivotal moments, the tool alone isn't enough. You need to account for these other potential costs:
Integration Fees: Third-party apps you connect with Klaviyo often have their own monthly fees.
Custom Template Design: For truly on-brand templates, you’ll probably need to hire a designer or developer.
Agency or Freelancer Support: Managing advanced segmentation, complex flows, and testing takes time and expertise. Many brands end up hiring help, which is a significant added expense.
Getting a clear handle on these factors is crucial. The sticker price for the email plan is almost never the final number for any ecommerce marketing automation software.
Practical Ways To Reduce Your Klaviyo Spend
Here's the hard truth: paying for contacts who never open your emails is like setting cash on fire. Every unengaged profile on your list actively drives up your Klaviyo bill. It adds zero value.
Getting that bill under control isn’t about slashing your list. It’s about building a leaner, more effective email program.
The goal is simple: only pay for contacts who are likely to buy from you. Everything else is a liability on your marketing budget.
Implement Ruthless List Cleaning
Not every subscriber is a good subscriber. A big, bloated list full of disengaged profiles hurts your deliverability and inflates your costs. Regular list cleaning is non-negotiable.
Here’s a simple process to get started:
Identify Inactive Profiles: Create a segment of subscribers who haven't opened or clicked an email in the last 90-120 days.
Launch a Re-engagement Campaign: Send this segment one last, compelling offer to try and win them back. A simple "Is this goodbye?" campaign can work wonders.
Suppress the Unresponsive: Anyone who doesn’t engage with that final campaign needs to be suppressed. They're costing you money.
This keeps your list healthy. It ensures your monthly Klaviyo bill reflects engaged, potential customers, not just vanity metrics. Klaviyo's own data shows that post-purchase emails see open rates nearly 17% higher than average automations. That shows the value of focusing on an audience that actually cares.
Master Your Segmentation
Blasting your entire list with every campaign is a rookie mistake. It’s expensive, lazy, and annoys your subscribers. Smart segmentation is the single best tool for cutting send volume while making emails more profitable.
Stop sending to "All Subscribers." Start building targeted segments.
According to a Mailchimp study, segmented campaigns get 14.31% higher open rates and 100.95% higher click-through rates than non-segmented campaigns.
Treat your subscribers based on their actual behavior.
For example, build out segments for:
Recent Purchasers: Send them post-purchase care tips or complementary product suggestions.
VIP Customers: Give them early access to sales or exclusive offers.
Cart Abandoners: Hit them with specific reminders. Our guide on Shopify abandoned cart emails goes deep on this tactic.
Specific Product Viewers: Show them more of what they're already interested in.
This targeted approach boosts campaign performance. It also helps manage SMS costs by ensuring you only text the most relevant people. This keeps your total Klaviyo spend in check.
The Agency Cost: The Other Half Of The Equation
Klaviyo is just the tool. Someone still has to run it. For many brands, that means hiring an agency. This is where the real cost of email marketing often hides.
Your software subscription is only half the story. The other half is the human cost needed to turn those features into revenue. A good email program needs strategy, non-stop creative production, and day-to-day management.
Most traditional marketing agencies charge a hefty monthly retainer for this. You can easily expect to pay $5,000 to $10,000 a month just for them to handle your email and SMS.
Suddenly, that $700 Klaviyo subscription feels like a rounding error.
How Traditional Agencies Structure Fees
When you’re adding up the total cost of running Klaviyo, you have to look at how agencies bill. Their pricing models are almost always built around human hours.
You're paying for salaries, overhead, and the manual grind of building campaigns from scratch. This usually looks like one of three models:
Monthly Retainers: A fixed fee for a set amount of work.
Percentage of Revenue: Some agencies will take a cut of your email-generated revenue.
Project-Based Fees: One-off charges for big lifts, like building out your core flows.
The problem is you end up paying a premium for repetitive tasks. Your agency spends hours setting up campaigns and pulling lists. You're paying specialist rates for entry-level work.
A Different Model For Managing Klaviyo
We saw this broken model and decided there had to be a better way. At Needle, we use AI to handle all the manual, repetitive work that bloats agency bills.
This means things like campaign setup, creating assets, and analyzing data get done in a fraction of the time.
This frees up our human strategists to focus on what actually matters: understanding your brand and making smart decisions. The AI handles the execution.
This hybrid approach lets brands get agency-level strategy without the crazy agency overhead. It shifts your budget from paying for busywork to paying for results.
The result is a totally different cost structure. Instead of a massive retainer, our pricing is about 20% of your ad spend. A brand spending $5,000 a month on ads pays us around $1,000 a month. That single fee covers the entire creative and email process.
It's all about making your total marketing spend more efficient. You get better output, faster turnarounds, and a much lower bill. If you're curious how this works, check out our guide on what to look for in a Klaviyo agency.
FAQ: Your Klaviyo Cost Questions Answered
We get the same questions from founders trying to nail down their Klaviyo budget. Here are the straight answers.
What does "active profile" actually mean?
An active profile is anyone on your list who can receive a message from you. If they aren't suppressed, you're paying for them. It doesn't matter if you email them this month or not. If they're in your account and haven't unsubscribed or hard bounced, they count toward your bill.
Does Klaviyo offer an annual discount?
No. Klaviyo does not offer discounts for annual commitments. Every plan is strictly month-to-month. This gives you flexibility but means you can't lock in a lower rate. Your bill adjusts automatically as your list size changes.
How can I forecast my Klaviyo spending?
Start with your current number of active profiles. Make a realistic projection for your monthly list growth. Then, use Klaviyo's pricing calculator to see where your projections land you. A successful campaign can easily bump you into a more expensive pricing tier. Always factor that in. And don't forget to add an estimate for your monthly SMS sends.
Is Klaviyo worth it for a smaller brand?
It depends on where you're at. For brands doing under $1M a year, the price can feel heavy. It’s tough to justify if you’re only using basic features. The native Shopify integration is its biggest selling point. But remember, the tool itself doesn't make you money. The strategy you run with it does. Look at the total investment—the subscription plus the cost to manage it—to figure out if it makes sense for your business.
At Needle, we combine AI efficiency with expert human strategy to manage your entire email and creative process for a fraction of the cost of a traditional agency. We turn your Klaviyo spend into a powerful, revenue-generating machine. See how we do it at https://www.askneedle.com.