Key facts
- Klaviyo's free tier covers up to 250 profiles, 500 emails a month, and $5 of mobile messaging plus $5 of Composer usage a month, with email support limited to your first 60 days, per klaviyo.com.
- Mailchimp's free tier covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (capped at 250 a day); its paid Essentials plan starts at $18 a month for 501 to 1,500 contacts, per mailchimp.com's published pricing.
- Klaviyo documents 350+ integrations, weighted toward e-commerce platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Magento, BigCommerce, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, plus advertising, shipping, point-of-sale, loyalty, and subscription categories, per klaviyo.com.
- Mailchimp's documented integrations include Salesforce, Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, QuickBooks Online, WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace Commerce, alongside its own built-in marketing CRM, per mailchimp.com.
- Once a Klaviyo free account exceeds its message or profile limits, klaviyo.com states the account cannot send further emails or messages until the next billing cycle or an upgrade; Mailchimp's free plan enforces its own daily and monthly send caps the same way.
The job: emailing and texting people who already know you
A local service business, a dentist, a gym, a landscaper, does not have a product catalog with thousands of SKUs. It has a client list, appointment reminders, seasonal offers, and maybe a referral push. The email tool needs to segment that list, automate a few sequences, and not charge e-commerce-scale fees for a small contact count.
Klaviyo and Mailchimp both start free under 250 contacts, but they were built for different shapes of business. Klaviyo grew up tracking product views, cart abandons, and order history for online stores. Mailchimp has always served a broader mix of small businesses, including ones that never sell a product online at all.
Integrations, side by side
Klaviyo's own integrations page lists 350+ connections, and the categories it highlights, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, advertising platforms, shipping, point of sale, are almost all e-commerce infrastructure. Its segmentation and flows are strongest when they have order and product data to key off, which a service business without an online store or booking-to-order sync will not generate.
Mailchimp's integration list runs wider for non-catalog businesses: Salesforce, Square, QuickBooks Online, WordPress, Wix, and its own built-in marketing CRM sit alongside the same e-commerce platforms Klaviyo covers. A gym or clinic booking through a scheduling tool rather than an online store has more to connect to on Mailchimp's list without needing a workaround.
Pricing and what happens at the limit
Both tools start free under 250 contacts. Klaviyo's free tier bundles 500 emails a month with $5 of mobile messaging credit and $5 of Composer usage, but email support only runs for your first 60 days, per klaviyo.com. Mailchimp's free tier allows 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, with one audience and one user seat, per mailchimp.com.
Above the free tier, Mailchimp publishes clear contact-based pricing: Essentials starts at $18 a month for 501 to 1,500 contacts, Standard runs $28 to $32 a month with up to 200 automation flows, and Premium reaches $495 a month with unlimited contacts and phone support. Klaviyo's pricing page names its plan tiers (Marketing, Data + Analytics, Service, Composer, Customer Agent) but did not display specific paid dollar amounts on the page reviewed; you enter your list size to see a quote. Both vendors state that exceeding your plan's sending limit stops further sends until the next billing cycle or an upgrade.
Choose Klaviyo when, choose Mailchimp when
Choose Klaviyo when you run an online store on Shopify or WooCommerce and want flows triggered by browsing and purchase behavior, or when you sell both products and services and the product side is big enough to justify the setup.
Choose Mailchimp when your business runs on appointments, jobs, or memberships rather than an online product catalog, and you want one tool that also handles a basic CRM, sign-up forms, and general newsletter sends without needing order data behind every automation.
Related questions
You can, but you lose Klaviyo's core strength: automated flows built on order and product behavior. Klaviyo's own integrations lean heavily on e-commerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento), so a service business without a store is left using segmentation and email sends without the purchase-history triggers the tool is designed around.
Both are free under 250 contacts. Above that, Mailchimp publishes contact-tier pricing starting at $18 a month for Essentials (501 to 1,500 contacts), per mailchimp.com. Klaviyo's pricing page shows free-tier limits clearly but did not display specific paid-tier dollar amounts on the page reviewed, so get a quote before assuming which is cheaper at your contact count.
Neither vendor's page reviewed for this comparison spelled out a formal export or list-ownership policy in the sections we checked. Before committing, export a copy of your list on a routine basis regardless of which tool you use, so you are never dependent on the vendor for your own contact data.
Klaviyo's free tier includes $5 of mobile messaging credit alongside email, and its flows are built to combine email and SMS in the same automation, per klaviyo.com. Mailchimp's core plans are email-first; SMS and broader automation depth scale up through its higher contact tiers.
It can. Klaviyo's integrations and flow logic pay off more as order volume grows, which usually means growing e-commerce, not just a growing local client list. A local service business whose list grows through referrals and repeat bookings, without a matching growth in online orders, generally keeps getting more out of a general-purpose tool like Mailchimp.
Sources
- Klaviyo: Pricing (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Klaviyo: Features (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Mailchimp: Pricing (accessed 2026-09-23)
- Mailchimp: Features (accessed 2026-09-23)
desk research from vendor documentation; no affiliate relationship; where we have implemented a tool for clients we say so.
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