Quick answer
Choose Sendlane if your list is large compared with how often you email, because its pricing counts average monthly sends and leaves contacts unlimited, and if you want dedicated support under an annual contract (Sendlane pricing). Choose Klaviyo if you want a profile-based CRM with email, a monthly mobile messaging budget, and service products such as Customer Agent and Helpdesk in one account. Its Email plan starts at $20 a month for 500 active profiles and 5,000 emails (Klaviyo pricing). Both advertise text rates that include carrier fees. Price each on your own send volume and marketable profile count, and decide who handles shopper replies before you sign.
There is also a decision about who runs recovery. Zobi writes the first cart message for each shopper, gets your approval and handles the conversation through replies, support questions and reorders. Include that workflow in the comparison alongside your email platform.
Sendlane vs Klaviyo pricing: two different meters
The two platforms measure different things, so their price pages cannot be laid side by side at face value.
Sendlane asks for your average monthly email send volume, excluding seasonal peaks, and treats profiles as unlimited (Sendlane pricing). Sends above your tier are billed as overage at a CPM shown next to each volume. Compare written quotes at both your normal and peak send volume, with the billing term and overage rate stated together.
Klaviyo asks how many active profiles you have, which it defines as any contact in your database that you can market to (Klaviyo pricing). Each profile tier carries a monthly email allowance. The Email plan shows $20 a month for 500 active profiles and 5,000 emails. The Marketing plan, at a regular price of $25 a month at the same size, adds social marketing, reviews without an order limit and Customer Hub. A free plan covers up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, and a custom plan starts above 150,000 active profiles.
Those two readings describe stores of very different sizes, so they are not a price comparison. What they do show is which of your habits each vendor charges for.
| When this happens | Sendlane | Klaviyo |
|---|---|---|
| Your list grows with people you rarely email | Contacts are unlimited; email price follows send volume rather than list size | Active profiles rise if they can be marketed to, which can move you up a tier |
| You email more often | Average send volume rises; sends above your tier are billed as overage | Each tier has a monthly email allowance (5,000 at 500 profiles), so plan the tier around sends as well as profiles |
| You send a long text with an emoji | SMS packages from $0.009 a credit including carrier fees; confirm how many credits a long text uses | Billed per segment per recipient; one segment holds 160 characters, or 70 for Unicode text such as a message containing an emoji |
| Your texting budget goes unused | Confirm in your quote whether package credits carry over | Monthly plan spend renews and unused spend does not roll over |
| You want a named contact | Dedicated support for customers on an annual contract | Dedicated CSM and SLA on Custom plans, offered above 150,000 active profiles or for several brands |
How Sendlane and Klaviyo charge for SMS
Sendlane sells SMS in packages, advertised from $0.009 per credit inclusive of carrier fees, and SMS is available only on paid accounts (Sendlane pricing). The figure is a starting rate, so the package that earns it and the number of credits a long text or MMS uses belong in your quote.
Klaviyo sells mobile messaging as a monthly spend. On per-message pricing, SMS is charged per segment, per recipient, at a rate that varies by country, by channel and by number type, with carrier fees built in (Klaviyo mobile messaging). A segment holds 160 characters, or 70 for Unicode text, such as a message containing an emoji, and longer texts split into several billed segments. Inbound messages from shoppers are not billed, while outbound conversation replies, campaigns and flows are. Plan spend renews monthly and unused spend does not roll over. The free plan includes $5 of mobile messages a month, and the plan cards list the same $5 on Email; larger SMS budgets are an add-on (Klaviyo pricing).
Compare the published carrier-inclusive rates on that basis, then include number, registration and service charges from each quote where applicable. The way to compare them is to take one real cart text you send, count its segments, and ask Sendlane how many credits it uses and Klaviyo what your per segment rate is in your country.
What Sendlane and Klaviyo each offer for Shopify data and automation
Sendlane lists a deep data integration with Shopify on every plan, alongside behavior, trigger and event based automation, pre-built automation funnels, Beacon website tracking, multivariable segmentation, multivariate testing, open API access and Zapier connections (Sendlane pricing). Its pitch is email and SMS automation driven by store events, sold by volume.
Klaviyo lists Shopify among more than 400 integrations, with campaigns, flows and segmentation on every plan and A/B testing from the Email plan up (Klaviyo pricing). Its pricing page groups a wider set of products in one account: reviews, social marketing, Customer Hub, Composer, Customer Agent and Helpdesk. Shopify also matters to Klaviyo's agent: its help center recommends Shopify for full Customer Agent functionality on SMS, such as order tracking and recommendations (Klaviyo Customer Agent on SMS).
For a Shopify store the question is less which platform can trigger a cart flow, since both describe that, and more how much else you want in the same account. If you want email and texting automation with a send-based bill, Sendlane's list covers it. If you want reviews, a customer hub and service tools tied to the same profiles, Klaviyo sells those together. If neither fits, our guides to Sendlane alternatives and Klaviyo alternatives cover the wider field.
The support that comes with each contract
Sendlane says it does not restrict who gets support: live chat and email are available around the clock to every user, trial accounts included. Its Professional tier adds assisted onboarding. Its Enterprise tiers add white glove onboarding, dedicated support, a personal Slack channel, regular program reviews and migration through an implementation partner, and Sendlane reserves those dedicated services for customers on an annual contract (Sendlane pricing).
Klaviyo's plan comparison lists email support on the free plan for the first 60 days, and marks a dedicated CSM and SLA as unavailable on the Free, Email and Marketing plans; they come with Custom plans (Klaviyo pricing).
So for a mid-sized Shopify store the difference is concrete. On Sendlane, an annual commitment can buy a named team and hands-on migration. On Klaviyo, that level of service is tied to the custom tier, and below it you work with the standard support for your plan.
Who answers when a shopper replies to a cart text
A cart reminder by text often gets an answer: a sizing question, a delivery date, a request for a code. Both vendors will send the reminder. The buying decision is who reads and answers what comes back.
Klaviyo sells an AI answer to that. Customer Agent is Klaviyo's AI agent for shopper inquiries on web chat, email, SMS and WhatsApp, and it can track orders, answer product and policy questions, recommend products, process returns and exchanges, and hand off to a person (Getting started with Customer Agent). On SMS it responds to inbound texts, and Klaviyo advises inviting replies in abandoned cart and welcome messages so shoppers use it (Customer Agent on SMS).
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Requirements | An active SMS plan and a sending number that supports two-way messaging; Shopify recommended for order tracking and recommendations; not available to SHAFT brands |
| What it answers | Inbound texts that match your audience settings, such as product questions, recommendations, order status and FAQs |
| What stays with other rules | Compliance keywords such as STOP and HELP, subscription requests and SMS keyword automations |
| When it cannot resolve the question | Escalates to your helpdesk with the conversation transcript, or sends a closeout message you write |
| What it uses | One AI resolution for each conversation it resolves (escalated ones are not counted) plus standard SMS segments for its replies |
| Starting quota | 10 resolutions a month listed on the Free and Email plan cards; more as an add-on |
On Sendlane, ask directly how replies to texts are routed and who answers them under the plan you are quoted. Whichever you choose, write down who owns that reply before the first cart text goes out. Our checkout reply policy template is a place to start, and what happens after the shopper replies walks through the conversation.
Compare both platforms at the same store size
Take a Shopify store with 30,000 contacts it can market to. It emails a 12,500 person engaged segment once a week, so about 50,000 sends in a normal month, and texts a two message cart reminder to around 400 shoppers a month.
On Sendlane, request the 50,000-send tier plus the cost of peak-month emails, with contacts unlimited. On Klaviyo, the email price depends on the 30,000 active profile tier and its email allowance, which you get by moving the slider on Klaviyo's pricing page to your count. If the store adds 10,000 marketable contacts from a holiday giveaway it does not plan to email often, the Sendlane email price does not move solely because of that list growth, provided send volume stays unchanged, while Klaviyo's tier is based on contacts you can market to, so ask Klaviyo how suppressed or unsubscribed profiles are counted.
The texts are a smaller line on both. 800 single segment texts at Sendlane's starting rate, if each used one credit, come to 800 × $0.009 = $7.20. On Klaviyo the same 800 texts cost 800 times your per segment rate, and any reply its Customer Agent sends uses more segments from the same budget. The bigger difference is operational: on Klaviyo the store would set up Customer Agent's content, guidance and handoff to answer replies, and on Sendlane it would confirm how replies reach a person.
Whichever you choose, give the cart conversation its own owner
Sendlane and Klaviyo are both built to send campaigns and flows to a list. Klaviyo's Customer Agent answers the replies those flows invite, once you configure its knowledge, guidance and handoff. Zobi approaches the same moment from the other side: it runs the cart recovery conversation from the first message.
Zobi texts shoppers like someone from your team. Its concierge reads the cart and writes the message for that shopper, and you approve it before it goes out, on iMessage where possible and on RCS, SMS, WhatsApp or email when needed. When the shopper replies, Zobi handles the reply in the same thread, with the cart, the last reply and past orders in view, and keeps that thread going for the delivery question, the reorder nudge and the add-on that finishes the setup. Every conversation stays on record for you to read (how Zobi works).
Keep Sendlane or Klaviyo for newsletters, launches and list automation. Choose Zobi for the abandoned checkout and the conversation that follows if you want those messages written for each cart and approved by you rather than built as flows. If you already run Customer Agent with your policies and it resolves the questions your shoppers ask, compare the two on one recent abandoned cart before adding anything. Coordinate whichever cart reminder you keep so a shopper does not get two, and remember that texting a shopper needs their consent.
Apply to have Zobi run your cart recovery conversations. Free to apply.
Sources
Klaviyo Help, Understand Klaviyo's mobile messaging system
Klaviyo Help, Getting started with Customer Agent
Review how Zobi handles shopper conversations for your store.
Start growing revenueAbout the author
Rene Siller is Head of New Bets at Zobi and oversees the research side of the site.