Explained: How to Navigate Klaviyo’s Pricing Update in 2025

Klaviyo’s latest pricing update has spread like wildfire across the marketing community. 

Let’s not panic! Over 146,000 companies like you use Klaviyo for email and SMS marketing. Being a Klaviyo partner ourselves, the update has affected our clients as well. Users are full of questions, people are frantically trying to figure out the implications of this update, and not a few are in fact pondering migrations. 

In this blog post, our Klaviyo expert is setting the record straight. Let us first review the facts before anything else. 

Understanding the challenge

How can you reduce your Klaviyo bill?

Why Klaviyo increased their price

Understanding the challenge 

Now, here’s how Andrew Bialecki, co-founder of Klaviyo, puts it: “We are increasing prices on email plans for our higher tiers of active profiles—which essentially means a smaller volume discount for those large tiers. Your monthly email volume is 10x the number of customer profiles you have. For example, if you have 45,000 customer profiles, you can send 450,000 emails per month.”

The keyword in that statement is ‘active profiles.“ (In Klaviyo, an active profile is “any profile that can be emailed through Klaviyo.” An active profile is not called so by virtue of any recent activity; any contact who subscribed to your list at any point in the past, and is not suppressed, is an active profile.) Two points: 

• Previously, you were billed on the basis of the number of contacts you had been emailing.
  
• Post-update, you will be billed on the basis of the number of active profiles you have, irrespective of whether or not those contacts are engaging with your emails. 

This means that if you have more active profiles than the current plan allows, your account will be upgraded to a higher plan. At present, if you happen to cross the profile limit, the price increase will not exceed 25% of your current subscription costs. 

For instance, previously, a business on a paid plan could use the platform at $400 per month for 25,000 active profiles. But now, if you cross the set limit, the monthly cost will jump by 25% to $500 in the next billing cycle. If you are also using multiple marketing channels like SMS services, or running advanced segmentation on Klaviyo, the price hike also increases the SMS costs if paired with a separate SMS plan or MMS campaigns. 

In a nutshell then, here are the key takeaways from the update: 

• Klaviyo will start billing you on the basis of the total active profiles, not just engaged contacts. The pricing update will particularly affect small businesses/brands with large contact lists or inconsistent customer engagement.
  
• Previously, you were paying $400 per month for 25,000 active profiles. Post-update, it stands at $500 per month— +25% if your contact list is not optimized.
  
• Your account will be automatically upgraded or downgraded based on a rise or fall in the number of active profiles.
  
• In addition, Klaviyo is doing away with their unlimited email sending feature. Post-update, you can only send emails up to 10X the number of active profiles in your account. 

Note that the changes will be enforced starting from February 18, 2025. 

How can you reduce your Klaviyo bill?

In light of the Klaviyo pricing update, list cleaning has assumed renewed significance. List management must be part of your email marketing strategy, but with Klaviyo’s update, you should be doubling down on it. 

Migration to another platform is also potentially useful. But let’s consider both the solutions in some detail: 

1. List cleaning:

Proactive list management is more necessary than ever. Create your sunset and winback segments if you haven’t already. These lapsed customers have not engaged outside your standard time between purchase windows. In the absence of purchase and engagement over a period of 12 months, as well as considering how sunset campaigns can improve your deliverability owing to a clean, engaged list, these segments can help you cut costs. So you can build the following segment:

– If someone can or cannot receive marketing > can receive email marketing

AND

– What someone has done or not done > Received at least 10 emails in the last 365 days

AND

– What someone has done or not done > Opened email 0 times over all time (where Apple privacy = false)

AND

– What someone has done or not done > Clicked email 0 times over all time

AND

– What someone has done or not done > Viewed Product 0 times over all time

AND

– What someone has done or not done > Placed Order 0 times over all time

(Ideally, you should suppress contacts toward the end of your current billing cycle.) 

Speaking of sunsetting, as we hinted in a recent blog post on the subject, it is not synonymous with re-engagement. Email sunsetting is a process of phasing out inactive subscribers. Its chief end is to clean and optimize your list. Now that Klaviyo has thrown list optimization into sharp relief, users who have been historically prone to neglecting it stand to enjoy a dual benefit: reduced price and improved deliverability. With only engaged subscribers on your list, you can now commit to building lasting relationships with your audience, which is the summum bonum of email marketing in the first place. 

Also, consider exporting your master list so that Klaviyo is not your data centre. You can utilize that list, specifically the unengaged audience, via paid marketing in order to rekindle their interest, and bring them back in as active subscribers.

2. ESP Migration:

This is a potential solution, although one we would not recommend. For one thing, it’s a very big step. Secondly, switching providers on the basis of just one factor—price, in this case—is not realistic. Now, as migration experts ourselves, we would emphasize the importance of due diligence before you consider switching platforms. Besides, if you have been using Klaviyo for some time, you needn’t be re-sold on the sheer value the platform provides. You’ve seen it for yourself; Klaviyo is one of the best.

But if you still want to migrate to another platform, below is a list of alternatives to Klaviyo:

• Omnisend: Powerful automation, SMS integration, and e-commerce-specific features.
  
• Yotpo: all-in-one platform that combines email, loyalty, SMS, and reviews into a very well-integrated customer engagement ecosystem.
  
• Attentive: Outperforms Klaviyo in SMS-first marketing, offering superior SMS automation, compliance, and personalized text messaging for higher engagement and conversions, AI-driven segmentation in both email and SMS being their forte. 

In closing, some additional thoughts in our final section. 

Why Klaviyo increased their price

Speculations are already rife as to why Klaviyo chose to mark up. Objectively, two potential reasons seem to suggest themselves: 

1. Klaviyo may not have seen any significant negative customer reaction to their 2023 price hike. This is in line with the fact that increasingly, customers are less sensitive to price rise.
   
2. Klaviyo may be struggling to expand into newer sectors, and the price hike is a short-term profit maximization measure. 

Regardless of whether or not the above reasons hold water, if you have found Klaviyo useful for your business so far, their latest price update shouldn’t lead to a knee-jerk reaction on your part. 

Your friend’s partner is your friend — all your Klaviyo marketing needs sorted!    

With over 30 Klaviyo experts, 1,000+ campaigns and automations each year, and more than 100 Klaviyo clients to date, we can be your most trusted voice on Klaviyo. From campaign management to automation to migration to email and SMS marketing — just tell us your needs, and we can kick off with our six-tier marketing framework (see below) to illuminate the way forward. 

So then, get in touch with Klaviyo marketing experts today! 

Or feel free to check out our expert guide on Klaviyo AI for email marketing.