Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Which Works Better For International Enterprises?

Growing a business beyond local borders is a massive achievement, but it also comes with new challenges. At this point, you need to check not only the core features of email marketing tools, but also coverage and support across time zones.

Businesses often compare between two main names in the industry: Omnisend and Klaviyo. Both platforms are powerful, but they come at different pricing models and provide different depth levels to justify it. But when international aspects are important, there’s a clear difference between the two.

Let’s see which platform is a better choice for international enterprises and why.

Email and SMS

Reaching a customer via SMS in New York is easy for most platforms. Reaching a customer in Tokyo, Berlin, or Buenos Aires, however, requires a different level of infrastructure. International enterprises need a tool that delivers messages reliably to every country they serve.

Both platforms have strong email capabilities, and you can create both newsletters and automation workflows easily. There are various templates to choose from, segmentation capabilities so recipients receive personalized messages, and other features that help you send campaigns quickly. Klaviyo does allow for deeper segmentation and automation, but that’s usually overkill for most businesses, and also comes at a steep learning curve.

When it comes to SMS, however, Omnisend takes the podium. It provides a global reach, and the billing model for SMS credits is far more flexible than Klaviyo’s. First, you get $1 in free SMS credits so you can test how it works. Then, you can top up the credits in either small or large amounts, depending on your needs. And if you end up with a surplus of SMS credits by the end of the month, they roll over to the next month.

Klaviyo offers a rather rigid SMS billing model, where you have to buy the credits in expensive blocks, and you must use them up before the month ends. If you don’t, you lose them. On top of that, Klaviyo only supports 18 countries for SMS, so that’s most likely an inconvenient limitation for international enterprises.

All in all, if you only need email, you choose either, but if you’re looking to leverage SMS marketing as well, Omnisend is the superior choice that allows you to send messages worldwide.

Customer support

Once you go international, your business is online 24/7. There are no offline hours. You need to be able to contact support immediately if anything goes wrong, regardless of time zone difference or holidays.

Omnisend takes pride in its award-winning customer support via live chat and email. It’s available 24/7 for everyone, and paid users get priority support for faster response times. If something breaks in your workflows during high-intensity promotional periods, you can contact their customer support and get answers in minutes.

If the problem is more technical than the customer support agents can handle, they will escalate the issue further so dedicated people can work on fixing it. Once they do, you’ll get status updates via email.

You don’t need to pay extra for brilliant customer support, and once your monthly plan reaches $400/month, they even give you a dedicated account expert who will be there for you in times of need.

Klaviyo, on the other hand, is not so generous when it comes to customer support. On the free plan, it’s limited to 60 days of email support only, and live chat only becomes available on paid plans. Additionally, the live chat option is 24/5 (not available on weekends unless upgraded for it specifically), and email support takes 1-2 days to get an answer for the lower tiers.

If you want better customer support, you need to upgrade to a more expensive plan, where the email response time becomes 6-12 hours for non-urgent issues on the Enterprise plan.

In short, Omnisend is the winner in terms of customer support since it provides it as a core 24/7 feature rather than a benefit based on the plan tier you’re on.

Pricing

While enterprise budgets are usually large, they’re not limitless, and ROI matters to justify the spend. You need flexible pricing models suitable for the global scale, so it’s important to understand how different platforms charge for their services. For an objective comparison, we won’t compare the Enterprise plans that come with custom prices and custom needs.

Omnisend has a clear pricing model based on your contact list size and either the Standard or Pro plan tier that come with slightly different benefits. The Standard plan starts at $16/month for 500 contacts and comes with $1 in free SMS to try, unlimited web push notifications, 24/7 priority support, AI forms, and more.

The Pro plan starts at $59/month for 2,500 contacts, and comes with global SMS messaging, unlimited emails, unlimited web push notifications, 24/7 priority support, advanced reporting, AI forms, personalized content feature, and more.

Both tiers allow for a dedicated account expert once you reach $400/month, you can top off SMS credits in flexible amounts as you go, and that’s pretty much all there is to it.

What’s more, you can get free migration services if upon signing up for Omnisend when switching from another platform your plan cost exceeds $250/month. They will move your contacts, automations, segments, templates, and more, completely free of charge within 5 business days.

Klaviyo comes with a more complicated pricing strategy. First of all, the pricing scales based on your contact list size, and 5 plan tiers/add-ons you decide to get. The base starting price for the cheapest, Marketing, tier, is $20 for 500 contacts. It comes with generative AI for segments, content, flows, and images, and also includes predictive analytics.

The Professional (second tier) plan starts at $500/month, and includes priority support with 2-24 hour response times based on urgency, extended live chat hours (including weekends), 1 dedicated training session per year, and a deliverability strategist on request.

If you want any additional features like data and analytics, marketing analytics access starts at $100, and the advanced Klaviyo Data Platform starts at $500.

All in all, the bottom line with Klaviyo can add up to thousands of dollars spent per month, whereas Omnisend provides more than sufficient functionality for most enterprises at a fraction of the price, and you don’t need to pay extra for support.

Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Verdict

Choosing between Omnisend and Klaviyo comes down to your priorities. Klaviyo is a sophisticated and technical tool with deep data capabilities for teams that have dedicated data scientists and want to experiment with granular segmentation. However, its limitations in global SMS reach and rigid pricing structures create friction for international brands.

Omnisend wins for the international enterprise that values speed, reach, and efficiency at the same time. It connects with customers around the globe and supports your team 24/7 in any time zone.

It balances power with usability. Omnisend handles the complex needs of a scaling international brand, like multi-channel automation and advanced segmentation, without becoming a burden to use. It offers strong features a large company demands but keeps the interface intuitive.

If your goal is to grow a global brand that doesn’t require extremely niche automation or segmentation capabilities, Omnisend is the superior choice.