MailerLite vs Klaviyo: Which Email Marketing Tool Fits Your Business in 2025?

EmailTooltester is supported by readers like yourself. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links. Of course, this won't increase the cost for you.

Choosing the right email marketing platform is no small decision. For many small businesses, freelancers, and bloggers, the choice often comes down to a balance of price, usability, and deliverability.

For ecommerce businesses, the decision hinges more on automation, segmentation, and integrations with online stores.

That’s where MailerLite and Klaviyo stand out – but for very different reasons.

MailerLite has built its reputation as one of the most user-friendly and affordable tools on the market. It’s especially popular with beginners thanks to its clean interface, reliable deliverability, and a free plan that includes up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails. It’s not the most advanced platform, but for small businesses and creators, it covers almost everything you need.

Klaviyo, by contrast, has become the go-to platform for ecommerce stores. Backed partly by Shopify, it’s designed for data-driven marketing: predictive analytics, personalized product recommendations, and real-time syncing with store data. It’s more expensive and more complex, but the payoff for online retailers can be pretty substantial.

If you’re trying to decide between MailerLite and Klaviyo, the good news is you can’t really go wrong. But the best choice depends heavily on your business model.

MailerLite vs Klaviyo: Main Differences

• Target audience: MailerLite is best for beginners and small businesses on a budget. Klaviyo is built for ecommerce stores that want advanced revenue-driving features.
• Ease of use: MailerLite’s interface is simpler and more beginner-friendly. Klaviyo is more powerful but comes with a steeper learning curve.
• Features: Both tools offer ecommerce automations like abandoned cart emails. Klaviyo, however, takes things further with predictive analytics, AI-driven recommendations, and advanced lifecycle flows.
• Pricing: MailerLite is significantly cheaper, with one of the best free plans around. Klaviyo gets expensive as your list grows.
• Integrations: Both offer good integrations, but Klaviyo’s Shopify and WooCommerce sync is deeper and real-time.

MailerLite vs Klaviyo: Pros and Cons

MailerLite Pros

MailerLite Cons

Klaviyo Pros

Klaviyo Cons

Let’s break each tool down, category by category.

Ease of Use and Editor

MailerLite’s interface is one of the cleanest and simplest in the market. The dashboard is uncluttered, and navigation is intuitive, with clear sections for campaigns, subscribers, forms, automations, and websites.

MailerLite's email editor

The drag-and-drop editor is fast and easy to use, with a range of content blocks (images, text, buttons, countdown timers, video, etc.).

Even the automation setup is straightforward. You choose a trigger (e.g., new subscriber), then add emails, delays, and conditions. For beginners, this is one of the smoothest ways to get started with automation without feeling overwhelmed.

Klaviyo’s UI is also modern and sleek, but it feels much denser. The dashboard greets you with a flood of ecommerce data – revenue metrics, predictive analytics, and customer lifetime value estimates. For an ecommerce marketer, this is exciting; for a beginner, it can be intimidating.

Klaviyo's dashboard

The email editor itself is similar to MailerLite’s drag-and-drop approach, but it includes ecommerce-specific blocks like product feeds, recommended items, and dynamically populated content.

Winner: MailerLite. While both tools have polished interfaces, MailerLite is far easier for beginners to learn. (Not to mention, we awarded it our Ease of Use award 2 years in a row!)

Score: MailerLite 1 – Klaviyo 0

Design and Flexibility

MailerLite gives you access to around 100 professionally designed, modern-looking email templates. The catch? They’re only available on paid plans, something not many other providers do. If you’re on the free plan, you’ll need to build your campaigns from scratch using the drag-and-drop editor.

MailerLite's email templates

That said, the editor itself makes up for it. You can save and reuse custom content blocks (like headers, banners, or product showcases), which is a big time saver if you send recurring campaigns.

Another neat feature is the ability to apply global styles, so your fonts, colors, and design rules are automatically applied across templates. This consistency helps maintain a strong brand identity without manual tweaking every time.

Beyond emails, MailerLite also provides landing page and website templates, which extend the design flexibility well beyond newsletters.

Klaviyo's email templates

Klaviyo has over 100 campaign templates, many of them tailored to ecommerce promotions and product showcases. But it doesn’t stop there. Klaviyo also includes a wide range of transactional templates, such as order confirmations, shipping updates, refunds, cancellations, password resets, and back-in-stock alerts. For Shopify or WooCommerce, or other ecommerce store owners, this means you don’t have to build these essential customer communications from scratch – Klaviyo has them ready to go for you!

On top of that, Klaviyo offers 70+ automation (flow) templates and around 70 signup form templates, giving you starting points across nearly every aspect of email marketing. Its editor is also highly customizable, letting you reorder sections, insert ecommerce product blocks, or dynamically personalize templates with customer names and browsing history.

Winner: Klaviyo – MailerLite’s editor is intuitive and versatile, especially if you want to design emails, landing pages, or even a simple website. But when it comes to sheer choice and ready-made options, Klaviyo takes the lead with its extensive template library spanning campaigns, flows, and sign-up forms. For ecommerce businesses in particular, this makes it the stronger option.

Score: MailerLite 1 – Klaviyo 1

Marketing Automation

MailerLite gives you a solid starting point for automating your campaigns. You’ll find around 15 pre-built automation templates (welcome emails, anniversaries, re-engagement, etc.), plus a simple drag-and-drop workflow editor.

Automations can be triggered by events such as email link clicks or subscriber activity, and you can automatically move contacts between groups. Ecommerce integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and others also unlock abandoned cart workflows, so you can recover lost sales directly within MailerLite without needing extra tools.

You can even split test emails within an automation to see which performs better — a nice touch many budget-friendly platforms don’t offer.

That said, MailerLite doesn’t go too deep into advanced automation. Automations based on email opens, website tracking and lead scoring aren’t available, and there’s no built-in CRM functionality to update deals or sales pipelines.

MailerLite's automation builder

For small businesses, it’s enough to cover the essentials, but it’s not on the same level as Klaviyo’s ecommerce-centric features.

Now let’s look at Klaviyo’s email automation capabilities (or “flows,” as they call them). Let’s just say this is one of its biggest strengths. The platform offers a flow library of over 60 pre-built automations, covering everything from classic abandoned cart sequences to replenishment reminders, customer birthdays, VIP rewards, and sunset flows to clean inactive subscribers.

What makes Klaviyo stand out is how deeply these automations tie into ecommerce data. You can trigger flows based on purchase history, browsing behavior, predicted churn risk, or even AI-generated predictions about when a customer is likely to buy again. Dynamic product feeds can be dropped right into emails, so each customer sees tailored recommendations.

Klaviyo flows

On top of that, Klaviyo integrates with CRMs and supports RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) segmentation to build lead-scoring-based workflows – although some of these advanced features require paid add-ons.

Winner: Klaviyo – MailerLite offers a straightforward, beginner-friendly automation system that will get most small businesses up and running quickly. But Klaviyo is in a league of its own when it comes to ecommerce-focused automation, predictive AI, and customer lifecycle marketing.

Score: MailerLite 1 – Klaviyo 2

Registration Forms

MailerLite makes it quick to set up sign-up forms, whether you want pop-ups, embeds, or entire landing pages. Templates are modern and simple to tweak, and you can run A/B tests to boost conversions. Beginners will appreciate how fast it is to launch a form without needing technical skills.

MailerLite's form templates

Customization is a bit more limited (adding dropdowns and custom fields isn’t as smooth), but for small businesses, it covers the essentials perfectly.

Klaviyo goes all in on advanced form building, offering 70+ templates and targeting options based on location, behavior, cart contents, and more. You can run A/B tests, display customer reviews, or even use fun gamified options like “Spin the Wheel” to capture leads.

Klaviyo's form templates

On the downside, embedding options are restricted, and CAPTCHA can’t be manually activated.

Winner: MailerLite. Klaviyo’s forms are more advanced, but MailerLite’s are faster, easier, and more accessible – which is exactly what many small teams need.

Score: MailerLite 2 – Klaviyo 2

Reporting and Analytics

MailerLite’s reports cover the basics: open and click rates, unsubscribes, link tracking, and heatmaps. You can also track purchases through integrations. It’s clear and functional, but not overly advanced. It’s also not possible to filter out bot clicks or Apple MPP opens, meaning your results may be inflated.

MailerLite's Reports

With Klaviyo, reporting is much more detailed, especially for ecommerce. You can see revenue per campaign, customer lifetime value, churn predictions, and segment-based performance. This allows for much more precise optimization.

Klaviyo campaign reports

Winner: Klaviyo. Klaviyo’s analytics are among the best in the industry for ecommerce.

Score: MailerLite 2 – Klaviyo 3

Integrations and Extras

MailerLite integrates with popular platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Squarespace, plus thousands more via Zapier. It also includes a lightweight website builder and blog tool, useful if you want everything in one place.

MailerLite's integrations

Klaviyo has best-in-class ecommerce integrations. Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento sync in real time, ensuring product and customer data is always current. Extras include predictive analytics and SMS campaigns built directly into the platform.

Klaviyo's integrations

Winner: Klaviyo. For ecommerce, Klaviyo’s integrations are simply deeper and more powerful.

Score: MailerLite 2 – Klaviyo 4

Customer Support

Klaviyo takes a longer-term approach. On the free plan, you get email support for 60 days after signup, which gives you two full months to get comfortable. After that, free users rely on the Help Center, Klaviyo Community Forum, and training resources.

On paid plans, support steps up to 24/7 email, and depending on your tier, live chat as well.

Klaviyo also runs live training sessions and has one of the most active ecommerce-focused user communities, which can be invaluable when troubleshooting or sharing best practices.

MailerLite’s support is great, but the 14-day limit is tough if you’re still experimenting. Klaviyo’s 60-day free plan support window, paired with 24/7 support on paid plans and a strong knowledge base, makes it the more supportive option overall.

Winner: Klaviyo

Score: MailerLite 2 – Klaviyo 4

Pricing

Now let’s talk pricing.

MailerLite keeps things affordable with simple, transparent plans that work well for small businesses and creators. Klaviyo, on the other hand, is built for ecommerce and charges based on both contacts and email volume, which makes it considerably more expensive as your list grows.

Compared to other tools, Klaviyo isn’t outrageously priced for the features it offers, but when matched against MailerLite, it looks steep.

Here’s how their entry-level plans compare:

	Klaviyo (Email only plan)	Mailerlite (Growing business)
Free plan	250 contacts and 500 emails per month	1,000 contacts for free and 12,000 emails/month
5,000 subscribers	$100 50,000 emails	$39 Unlimited emails
10,000 subscribers	$150 100,000 emails	$73 Unlimited emails
50,000 subscribers	$720 500,000 emails	$289 Unlimited emails
100,000 subscribers	$800 1,200,000 emails	$440 Unlimited emails

MailerLite is one of the most affordable email marketing platforms out there. Its free plan is especially attractive: you get up to 1,000 contacts and a monthly allowance of 12,000 emails — more than enough for many small businesses and creators just starting. Even as you scale, the paid tiers remain budget-friendly and predictable, with costs rising gently as your list grows.

Klaviyo’s pricing is aimed squarely at ecommerce businesses. The free plan is limited to 250 contacts and 500 monthly email sends, though it does include 150 SMS credits, which can be useful if you’re planning multichannel campaigns. The real drawback comes when your list grows: at 5,000 subscribers, Klaviyo already costs more than double MailerLite, and by 10,000 subscribers, the gap widens even further.

Winner: MailerLite is much more affordable at every tier, offering one of the most generous free plans in the industry and transparent, predictable pricing as your audience grows.

Score: MailerLite 3 – Klaviyo 4

List Management

With Mailerlite, contacts can be imported via CSV or synced from platforms like Mailchimp. A big plus is that subscribers can appear in multiple lists without counting twice, something Mailchimp and other tools often penalize you for. Tags can be added manually, through forms, or via workflows, making segmentation easy to set up.

Inactive subscribers are also easy to spot thanks to a dedicated tab. For small to mid-sized businesses, it’s clean, simple, and highly practical.

MailerLite Subscribers

On the other hand, Klaviyo shines with advanced segmentation. You can build detailed groups based on purchase history, browsing behavior, or predictive data. There’s no limit to how many conditions you add, though the interface does throw in some technical jargon (Boolean logic, anyone?).

Klaviyo segments and lists

It’s powerful, but more complex than MailerLite’s approach.

Winner: It’s a draw. MailerLite wins for ease and practicality, but Klaviyo’s segmentation depth makes it the better fit for data-driven ecommerce businesses.

Score: MailerLite 4 – Klaviyo 5

Email Deliverability Features

At EmailTooltester, we now measure deliverability by the features they offer to their users, looking at five key areas: authentication, spam complaint handling, dedicated deliverability support, list hygiene, and IP reputation.

Overall, MailerLite does well across the board, scoring 4 out of 5 points in our Deliverability Rating criteria. Authentication is enforced with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and a built-in wizard helps you set them up. Spam complaints, unsubscribes, and bounces are automatically suppressed.

While there isn’t a dedicated deliverability dashboard, MailerLite integrates with list cleaning services and offers dedicated IPs on higher tiers. All in all, MailerLite is safe and reliable for small businesses.

When it comes to deliverability features, Klaviyo ticks every single box. Authentication is simple to set up, spam complaints and bounces are automatically handled, and their dedicated deliverability team provides expert guidance when needed.

Klaviyo deliverability dashboard

On top of that, Klaviyo tightly monitors shared IP pools and offers dedicated IPs with proper warmup support. What sets it apart, though, is its dedicated deliverability dashboard and health/deliverability score, helping their users to stay on top of their deliverability.

Winner: Klaviyo

MailerLite is solid, but Klaviyo’s combination of advanced infrastructure, expert support, and ecommerce-linked deliverability insights earns it a perfect 5/5 score in our system.

Score: MailerLite 4 – Klaviyo 6

Final Thoughts: Mailerlite vs Klaviyo

So, who wins the Klaviyo vs Mailerlite comparison?

Looking at the scores, Klaviyo comes out on top with 6 – 4, but the “winner” really depends on your business.

MailerLite is the clear choice if you’re a beginner, freelancer, or small business looking for an easy-to-use, affordable platform. It offers one of the best free plans around, intuitive forms, and solid deliverability, all at a fraction of the cost of most competitors. For creators and small teams, MailerLite keeps things simple without cutting corners where it counts.

Klaviyo, on the other hand, is built for ecommerce brands that want to push personalization and automation to the next level. Its deep integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce, predictive analytics, and dedicated deliverability tools make it one of the most powerful email marketing platforms available – though that power comes with higher pricing and a steeper learning curve.

In short:

• Choose MailerLite if ease of use, budget, and simplicity are your priorities.
• Choose Klaviyo if you run an ecommerce store and want advanced, data-driven marketing that can directly boost revenue.

Either way, both platforms are strong, well-supported, and capable of driving growth — it just comes down to which strengths match your business best.

> Try Klaviyo for free

> Try MailerLite for free

The author

Learn more about us

Charlotte Evans

Content Manager

Hey, I'm Charlotte! I've always been enthusiastic about helping others. After working for various tech startups and eCommerce businesses, I developed a strong passion for email marketing. Now, at EmailTooltester, I'm putting this knowledge to good use by recommending the very best digital tools for your business. I have a lot of experience with tools like Klaviyo, Omnisend, MailerLite, and Drip, so feel free to ask me your questions!

Learn more about us