klaviyo bills you for ghosts

You grew your list. Why did your bill grow faster?

Every contact stored in your Klaviyo account counts toward your bill - including the ghosts: profile that never open, click, or buy. Brevo's bill moves with what you send - with room for up to 500,000 contacts from $32/month.

count your ghosts
G2 Leader — Email Marketing Mid-Market, Europe 2026
600,000+ customers
Start free — upgrade when you're ready
Prices from each platform's public pricing pages, verified August 18, 2026. See methodology.

How ghosts get on your bill

You pay for the asleep

A customer who bought once in 2024 and never opened again costs the same as your best VIP. Omnisend goes further — by its own help docs, it bills for non-subscribers too: abandoned carts and customers who never opted in.

Your bill upgrades itself

Since Feb 2025 Klaviyo bills on every active profile stored, and auto-upgrades your tier when signups cross a threshold. A good popup month raises your bill on its own. And if you hit Klaviyo's send limit, overages bill automatically — and your flows stop until next cycle.

The "fix" is deleting your data

The official cost-control advice is pruning your list: destroying first-party data to drop a tier. A pricing model that punishes you for owning your audience is working against you.

Brevo's model is one sentence: pay for what you send.

Receipts

Merchants who stopped paying for ghosts — in their own words.
~$40K/year saved after leaving Klaviyo
Riders Share · Motorcycle rentals & tours

After Klaviyo's price hike, Riders Share moved to Brevo — and reports saving close to $40K a year.

Via a verified Shopify App Store review (July 2025), featured by PushOwl
Klaviyo emails were landing in spam

One merchant switched after their Klaviyo campaigns kept hitting spam folders — deliverability was the dealbreaker.

Via a verified Shopify App Store review (July 2025), featured by PushOwl
INVOICE — MARCH 2026
REDACTED
Illustration — based on Klaviyo's published pricing
Plan — 42,500 active profiles
$610.00
Monthly total
$672.40
Same store on Brevo
$59/mo

Switching sounds painful.

It's a weekend, not a project.

1

Import your list

Contacts and suppression lists via CSV or API — your opt-out history comes with you.

2

Rebuild your core flows

Welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase — from ecommerce templates.

3

Warm up and switch

Follow the warm-up guide so your sender reputation carries over.

Spending $1,000+/month on Klaviyo? Get 50% off Brevo for 3 months.

Share a Klaviyo invoice showing $1,000+/month and our team applies the discount to your first 3 months.

claim 50% off

The honest comparison

Klaviyo
Omnisend
Mailchimp
Brevo
Pricing model
Per active profile stored
Per contact, 12× send cap
Per contact — unsubscribed included
Per email sent (up to 500K contacts included)
10K contacts / 40K emails
$150/mo
$132/mo
~$135/mo
$46/mo
At 25K contacts
$400/mo
$282/mo
$270/mo
$46/mo at 40K emails
Annual discount
None on self-serve
3-month intro promo only
None on self-serve
Yes — 10%
Channels
Email, SMS, mobile push
Email, SMS, web push
Email, SMS (US-centric)
Email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, web push
Built-in CRM
Basic audience tools
Included — deals, pipeline, tasks
AI creative
Subject lines
Subject lines
Content assistant
MagicFit — full creative generation
Automation depth
60+ templates — Klaviyo wins here today
~30 ecommerce presets
Pre-built journeys
~20, growing
Beyond Shopify
Shopify-first
Shopify, Woo, BigCommerce
Shopify, Woo + others
Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, open API

Straight up: if you run 40-step automation logic today, Klaviyo's library is deeper than ours right now. We're closing that gap in public. What we won't do, ever, is raise your bill because your list grew.

FAQ

Questions merchants ask us

Methodology

Prices are the published tiers from each platform's public pricing pages — klaviyo.com/pricing, omnisend.com/pricing, brevo.com/pricing (all captured August 18, 2026) and mailchimp.com/pricing (US-market prices from its official pricing page, verified March 2026 via archived capture; Mailchimp prices vary by region). No interpolation: the calculator selects the smallest published tier that fits your inputs. Klaviyo bills on active profiles stored (suppressed profiles excluded) and includes roughly 10× your profile count in monthly sends; above 150,000 profiles Klaviyo is sales-only. Omnisend bills on contacts — including non-subscribers such as abandoned carts — with a send cap of 12× contacts on Standard; the calculator switches to Pro when your volume exceeds it. Brevo bills on emails sent; each tier includes a contact allowance (up to 500,000 on Starter/Standard, 2 million on Professional) and the calculator picks the tier that fits both your sending and your list. Mailchimp Standard supports up to 100,000 contacts; larger lists require Premium. At volumes up to 9,000 emails/month the calculator shows Brevo's permanent Free plan ($0, 300 emails/day, up to 100,000 contacts stored); campaigns to more than 300 recipients send in daily batches on the Free plan. Klaviyo, Omnisend and Mailchimp also offer free tiers (roughly 250–500 contacts); they fall below this calculator's 500-contact minimum. Annual view applies Brevo's published 10% yearly discount to Brevo only. The List Tax is an estimate: it assumes an engaged contact receives about 4 emails per month, so contacts reached ≈ monthly emails ÷ 4; ghost contacts are those stored beyond that, and the List Tax is the difference between Klaviyo's published price for your full list and its price for only the contacts you reach. 'You'd save' is not an estimate — it is the difference between Klaviyo's and Brevo's published prices at your inputs. All trademarks belong to their owners; figures are estimates, not quotes.
Klaviyo
$400
/mo
·
Brevo
$46
/mo
·
You'd save
$4,248
/yr
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