Best email marketing tools for ecommerce

Email marketing tools for ecommerce: the quick answer

If you run a store, the best email marketing tools for ecommerce are Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Brevo, and ActiveCampaign. Klaviyo wins if you're on Shopify and want flows built on real order and browsing data. Brevo wins on cost once your list is large but you don't email it often. Mailchimp is the easiest switch if your list is small and you already know the tool. ActiveCampaign fits if you want a CRM and sales pipeline bundled with your automation. The tool that fits you depends less on features and more on how each one bills as your list grows.

How the four compare

Prices are current on each vendor's pricing page as of the dates in our tool profiles. Confirm your own quote before you buy, since real cost depends on your list size and send volume.

Flows: who automates on real store data

Klaviyo is built around ecommerce data first. It pulls orders, browsing, and cart activity straight from your store platform, so a flow like "browsed but didn't buy" or "bought once, never again" runs off real purchase history rather than email opens alone. Every Email and Email+SMS tier gets the same flow-building features, so upgrading is about list size, not new features.

Mailchimp covers similar ground for Shopify, WooCommerce, and Wix stores, with built-in revenue tracking and generative AI tools on the Standard and Premium plans. The catch is that full branching automation is capped at four steps on the Essentials plan; you need Standard or above for real flow depth.

Brevo and ActiveCampaign both connect to Shopify, but neither pulls order and browsing data as deeply as Klaviyo does out of the box. ActiveCampaign's strength is its own automation builder, which handles branching and multi-condition logic well. It runs off your own event setup, not a native commerce sync.

SMS: what's bundled

Klaviyo splits Email and Email+SMS into separate plans. Email alone starts at $20/month for 251-500 active profiles; add SMS and the same tier starts at $35/month, with extra SMS/MMS billed as credits priced by country and message type.

Brevo bundles SMS and WhatsApp access into every plan, including the free one, though sending volume beyond what's included is priced separately.

Mailchimp lists SMS as part of its platform but doesn't publish a separate SMS price breakdown on its core tiers.

ActiveCampaign treats SMS and WhatsApp as add-ons on top of its core email and automation plans, with its own WhatsApp-specific plans starting at $99/month (billed annually) for a 5,000-contact baseline.

Cost as your list scales

This is where the four tools genuinely diverge, and it matters more than any single feature.

Klaviyo bills by total active profiles: every contact you could email, whether or not you message them regularly. A large, quiet list costs the same as an actively-emailed one of the same size. Since February 18, 2025, this has applied to all active profiles rather than only recently-emailed contacts, though legacy accounts get a discount capping any increase at 25% of their prior cost.

Mailchimp also bills by contact count, and subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts all count against your limit unless you manually archive them. The advertised starting prices assume a small list; the real bill climbs as contacts grow, even on the same plan.

Brevo is the outlier: it bills by how many emails you send each month, not by list size. A store with 50,000 contacts that emails twice a month can cost far less than the same list on a per-contact tool.

ActiveCampaign prices on two axes at once, plan tier and contact-count band, and the bill jumps hard at each threshold rather than rising smoothly. As of November 3, 2025, new signups are also billed on total contacts, including unsubscribed and bounced ones.

Which one to pick

If your store leans on Shopify and you want flows built from real purchase and browsing data, Klaviyo is worth the active-profile pricing. It's the tool most built for the ecommerce job specifically, and the tradeoff is clear rather than hidden: you know going in that your bill tracks your full contact count, whether or not you email everyone on it.

If your list is big but you rarely email all of it, run the numbers on Brevo before renewing anywhere else. Its per-email billing rewards exactly the pattern a lot of stores fall into: a large list built up over years, emailed a few times a month. You give up some of Klaviyo's native commerce depth, but for a store that isn't leaning hard on behavioral segmentation, that's a fair trade for the savings.

If you're starting out, or you already run Shopify through Mailchimp and your list is under a few thousand contacts, staying put is fine until you outgrow the free tier or the four-step automation cap on Essentials. Switching tools before you hit a real limit adds migration work for no gain.

If you want a sales pipeline alongside your email automation instead of buying a separate CRM, ActiveCampaign is the one that includes it on paid plans. It costs more to start than the others here, and there's no free plan, but you're paying for automation depth and CRM together instead of stitching two subscriptions.

For the full ranked list and more alternatives in each direction, see our Klaviyo alternatives and Mailchimp alternatives guides.