Top 4 Email Service Providers (2024): Comparison, Pricing, Suggestions & More
Delve into the Top 4 ESPs of 2024, their pricing, features, and recommendations that reflect Team Retentics’s insights and experience.
Sep 09, 2024
Contents
1. How to Compare Pricing Plans of ESPs2. Estimating “Customized” PricesTable 2: Estimated Price Comparison of 500,000 Profiles3. ESP Comparison AnalysisTable 3: Comparison of Free Trial Plans4. So, What Will Be the ESP Optimized for My Brand’s Email Marketing?5. Further Comparison of ESP FeaturesChoosing the right Email Service Provider (ESP) is crucial for effective email marketing, and navigating pricing structures can be a significant challenge. This article provides guidance into comparing ESP pricing, focusing on how their costs could fluctuate based on the number of a brand’s profiles of customers. For newcomers, Yotpo could be a user-friendly choice, while Klaviyo offers advanced features ideal for established brands.
1. How to Compare Pricing Plans of ESPs
Regardless of DTC brands in the phase of beginning a journey into email marketing or brands already delving into strategies that could increment revenue derived from email marketing, choosing the best Email Service Provider (ESP) is always a daunting task- especially when it comes to pricing.
As a team providing solutions to elevate email marketing strategies for U.S. DTC brands via our own AI segmentation and item recommendation technology, we would like to share our insights regarding ESP pricing and give guidance for readers to choose their perfect platform.
Table 1: Price Comparison of Each ESP
ㅤ | Klaviyo | Mailchimp | Omnisend | Yotpo |
Profiles/Contacts | ㅤ | ㅤ | ㅤ | ㅤ |
5,000 | $110 | $100 | $81 | $60 |
150,000 | $1,955 | $1,325 (Premium) | $1,456 (Standard) | $1,310 |
500,000 | $3,220 (Estimated price) | $3,250 (Estimated price) | $3,276 (Estimated price) | $3,235 |
*Be aware that every price on this table is the lowest.
Just to remind you before we begin, prices of most ESPs are based on the number of profiles of contacts of the brand’s customer list. We suggest to set your brand’s customer profiles as your standard when comparing prices similarly to the table above.
Our team’s experience and engagement with our clients lead us to introduce these four points to compare:
-Profile Criteria
The criteria of 5,000 profiles is set for brands at the beginning stages of email marketing to refer to, while 150,000 profiles are for expanding brands and 500,000 are for brands of substantial size. Additionally, the criteria of 150,000 is the maximum that every platform above provides on each respective website, therefore allowing accurate comparison.
-Customized Pricing for Larger Profiles
Profiles which exceed 250,000 for Klaviyo and Mailchimp, and those that exceed 150,000 for Omnisend do not have clarified payments, as platforms provide customized prices.
Accordingly, team Retentics provides an estimation of possible payments for the criteria of 500,000 profiles, which will be further elaborated on below.
2. Estimating “Customized” Prices
Formerly mentioned, when your brand’s customer profiles exceed the 150,000 for Omnisend and 250,000 for Klavio and Mailchimp, these platforms no longer display standard prices. Instead, they offer 'customized pricing' which requires contacting their sales team.
It is rather a leap to suppose that these prices are being omitted because most brands do not have the number of profiles over the limit, however. Instead, from our experience, whereas this article introduces four representative platforms, there are numerous ESP players that compete with each other; this indicates that information about pricing and available features could most likely be opaque.
Therefore, our team suggests your estimation of prices, according to your brand’s profiles, to follow the guide below, with the example of 500,000 profiles. Why specifically 500,000? On average, the number of profiles of our team’s clients whose email marketing generates over 35% of their total revenue -through utilization of Klaviyo with Retentics AI features- is approximately 500,000.
Table 2: Estimated Price Comparison of 500,000 Profiles
ㅤ | Klaviyo | Mailchimp | Omnisend | Yotpo |
Estimated price ($) | 3,220 | 3,250 | 3,276 | 3,235 |
- Omnisend: $52 for every 5,000 profile
- Yotpo: price provided on website
- Klaviyo: estimated $230 for every 50,000 profile
The bottom two intervals have a margin of $230 for the gap of 50,000
- Mailchimp: estimated $275 for every 50,000 profile
The bottom two intervals have a margin of $275 for the gap of 50,000
3. ESP Comparison Analysis
The number of email sends is mostly predicted to be ten times or above the number of profiles of customers a brand has- therefore, such as in the case of Klaviyo, you can send about ten times the number of profiles you’ve set a plan for, and additional payments are charged when profiles are added or the number of emails surpasses.
Exclusively, Yotpo’s pricing solely depends on the number of emails sent, apart from other ESPs which consider both the number of sent emails and profiles. This is the very notable fact that we wish to point out to be the biggest factor of ESP pricing comparison between platforms.
That is, as the number of profiles increases, the possibility of Yotpo’s prices exceeding other platforms sharply rises.
According to our team’s estimation-although for profiles of 500,000 and above, every platform except Yotpo provides customized pricing, therefore giving room for variations-there is a very high chance that Klaviyo’s pricing would be much friendlier while Yotpo’s pricing could steeply increase, by the point when a brand’s profiles exceed 500,000.
This leads to our team’s suggestion that for businesses of substantial size which most likely start from a number of profiles of at least 500,000 in accordance with our team’s experience, Klaviyo’s pricing is worthy of attention.
How about in the case of lower profiles? For 5000 and 150,000 profiles, the lowest price found on the pricing page was Yotpo. This platform could also be defined as a friendly platform for newcomers as apparently, Yotpo provides 10,000 free emails initially, for any tier you choose.
Nevertheless, what is important is that you’ll eventually have to be satisfied with the functions themselves: it is inevitable to use at least the Pro tier to have access to parallel levels of functionality to other platforms including Klaviyo.
For those who are pondering about which platform to choose and which functions to try out, please refer to the compilation below of each ESPs Free Trial plan.
Table 3: Comparison of Free Trial Plans
ㅤ | Klaviyo | Mailchimp | Omnisend | Yotpo |
Email Sends | 500/month | 1000/month | 500/month | First 10,000 emails free |
Profiles | 250/month | 500/month | 250/month | X |
4. So, What Will Be the ESP Optimized for My Brand’s Email Marketing?
Of course, all of these four ESPs have strong merits: Mailchimp, in comparison to Klaviyo, aims to simplify every process, making it suitable for brands that prefer not to spend time deliberating over numerous options. In the case of Omnisend, you can experience every feature the platform offers during its free trial.
Nevertheless, it is crucial to take into account the status quo of your business when selecting the most apt platform for your brand- and we’d like to make two suggestions.
For beginners: Yotpo
For brands at the beginning stage, our team strongly suggests Yotpo, for its user-friendly traits.
To begin with, it suggests the most essential flows for your brand with detailed explanations. smooth setup process for beginners. Also, not only to mention once more about its low price especially in cases of a small number of customer profiles, Yotpo’ billing standards are comparatively clear as being based on the number of email sends and prices can be easily checked out even without signing up or having to inquire.
For Advanced Users: Klaviyo
On the other hand, for brands looking for in-depth strategies and whose resources are enough to invest in email marketing, we do recommend Klaviyo for its sustainability, in a long term view.
Our team’s interview with over a hundred of DTC brands in the U.S. along with our clients also confirm that Klaviyo is the most widely used platform among eCommerce brands, and their merits are as follows.
The biggest advantage of Klaviyo is its extensive functionality as the innovative platform, which allows brands to utilize advanced email marketing strategies. In other words, they have data and experience that allows them to outperform in customer segmentation based on AI tools, automization of emails and real-time data analysis.
In particular, Klaviyo provides automated flows that are evaluated as being most detailed and multiplex. While it does not offer a one-to-one customized design for email templates, in addition, it provides a significantly wide range of templates that various industries can freely use.
Moreover, Klaviyo excels in A/B testing features, allowing experimentation with a wide variety of factors including email subject lines, content and optimized email-send times. Klaviyo also supports various integrations, such as add-ons and plugins. These all allow brands to experiment with a wider range of email growth marketing.
Our team, Retentics, believes that these advantages of Klaviyo allows it to be the most suitable ESP to solve the problems which many DTC brands face in email marketing: limitations of resources. This is the very reason why we prioritize supporting integrations with Klaviyo!
5. Further Comparison of ESP Features
Before wrapping up this article, we would like to provide a comparison of features that these four platforms offer, for more details.
Table 4: Function Comparison
ㅤ | Klaviyo | Mailchimp | Omnisend | Yotpo |
A/B testing | ✔️(email, SMS, forms) | ✔️(email) | ✔️(email) | ✔️(email, SMS) |
Forecasting | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ |
Real-time data | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ | ❌ |
Segmentation | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Email templates | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Product recommendation | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Campaign settings | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Automated flows | ✔️ (60+) | ✔️(60+) | ✔️(6) | ✔️(13) |
Landing page builder | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Pop-ups | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
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