What big brands told us about Klaviyo, and where it’s losing ground.
Klaviyo’s biggest customers grew fastest last quarter. Here’s what big brands told us about it.
Klaviyo reported Q3 last Thursday. Revenue was $387M, up 25%. But the number that jumped out was customer size: accounts paying more than $250K a year grew 49%, and accounts over $500K grew 57% (MarTech Edge). It also raised full-year guidance and announced a $300M buyback (Yahoo Finance).
A week earlier, its email AI agent went generally available (MarTech). Klaviyo isn’t just the Shopify email tool anymore. It wants the enterprise.
So we went back through our interviews. Klaviyo came up in 283 of them in the last 12 months, and 43 of those were at companies doing $500M or more in revenue.
Here’s what they told us.
Enterprise users like Klaviyo
175 of 283 buyers rated Klaviyo an 8 or higher
28 of 43 buyers at $500M+ companies did the same
Last 12 months. Ratings are the 1-10 satisfaction scores buyers gave when we asked them to rate their stack.
You’d expect a tool built for Shopify brands to get worse reviews as the customers get bigger. Not here. And one ecommerce manager at a $10B-$100B food company gave us a pretty good example of why. Back in May, their team was told to move off Klaviyo to the company’s standard platform. By September, they’d decided against it:
“We were going to have to migrate to Salesforce because that’s what the rest of the company uses. However, it wasn’t really going to be able to segment and do some of the same things that we could do in Klaviyo, and then there would be a significant cost to migrate the data and have a team work on that.”
Manager Ecommerce, $10B-$100B food company
They still rate Klaviyo an 8/10.
It’s showing up on enterprise shortlists
Some big companies that aren’t on Klaviyo yet are now putting it next to the enterprise suites. An ecommerce director at a $10B-$100B retailer is replacing their email platform before peak season:
“So we’re looking at Salesforce obviously, because that’s their wheelhouse as well. It should have been looked at about three or four years ago when we moved to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, but we’re looking at Klaviyo as well.”
Director Ecommerce, $10B-$100B retailer
And a CMO at a $500M-$1B electronics company has Klaviyo on a list with Adobe and Salesforce:
“There are some new kids on the block like Klaviyo, which bring as well a very interesting mix between email, CRM, and also CDP.”
CMO, $500M-$1B electronics company
Though the same CMO flagged the catch for anyone already deep in another suite:
“With Klaviyo, I think they are taking some very interesting steps into creating a very powerful suite, but it’s a completely new setup for us…”
CMO, $500M-$1B electronics company
However, pushback comes from corporate
Only 5 of the 43 buyers at $500M+ companies rated part of Klaviyo a 6 or lower. A couple had familiar complaints (price, and one saw email revenue drop after switching over from Salesforce). But the sharpest criticism wasn’t about the email product. It was that Klaviyo doesn’t fit how a big company runs (lots of brands, lots of sites, lots of countries).
A VP of ecommerce at a $1B-$10B consumer services company rated it a 2/10:
“It is a terrible enterprise platform. It has weak cross-site profile unification… It is hard to tie into multiple Shopify instances and has no centralized management. It’s very much a small business solution.”
VP Ecommerce, $1B-$10B consumer services company
A marketing director at a $1B-$10B beauty company was more generous. They rated it a 7/10 and said it’s improved a lot in the last six months. But they hit the same wall, especially outside the US:
“When you have an enterprise company, their team didn’t really understand typical objectives and goals of like a multinational, highly matrixed organization.… they didn’t have many… support teams or coverage outside of Australia and the UK and the US… It made it really difficult to sell Klaviyo as our CRM tool in APAC.”
Director Marketing, $1B-$10B beauty company
They also didn’t love paying for add-ons. Klaviyo sells its CDP and analytics as separate products, and their company already owns both.
At a $100B+ food company, Klaviyo came in through an acquisition. The marketing director rated it a 5/10 and said it doesn’t have the breadth of Salesforce:
“I don’t think it’s indicating that Klaviyo could be our primary Customer Relationship Management platform in the future.”
Director Marketing, $100B+ food company
So the people running email day to day mostly love it. The pushback comes from whoever has to manage it across brands and regions. That’s the same corporate pull that told the $10B-$100B food company above to move to Salesforce, and it’s where Salesforce and Adobe will push hardest.
Ironically, SMB complains the most
Smaller brands are where Klaviyo grew up, and they’re its toughest critics. 37 of the 238 buyers at companies under $500M rated it a 6 or lower (16%), vs. 5 of 43 at $500M+ (12%). And their complaints are about the product, usually SMS. An ecommerce director at a $100M-$500M footwear brand rated Klaviyo a 6/10 and just moved SMS to Postscript (email might be next):
“…the limitations we’ve seen are that it has not kept up with competitor services. There are lots of limitations within the pop-up and lead generation as well as the SMS capabilities…”
Director Ecommerce, $100M-$500M footwear brand
A marketing director at a $10M-$100M fitness company rated Klaviyo’s SMS a 6/10:
“Other SMS-specific companies are doing a more thorough job at cornering the market on SMS.”
Director Marketing, $10M-$100M fitness company
“It’s expensive and I don’t know that we are being educated on the most efficient ways to use it and to scale the company.”
Director Marketing, $10M-$100M fitness company
SMS is the soft spot at the top end too. A VP of ecommerce at a $10B-$100B brand group rates Klaviyo an 8/10 for email but runs SMS on Attentive, and that contract may be up for grabs at renewal. Here’s what will decide it:
“Ability for the full customer profile to be in sync and in platform, cost, and ease of being able to build campaigns.”
VP Ecommerce, $10B-$100B brand group
Notice what’s first on that list: keeping the customer profile in one place. That’s exactly what Klaviyo sells. Attentive’s answer is that it’s simply better at SMS. Either way, price is part of the call.
What to do about it
- If you sell enterprise email or automation, expect Klaviyo on the shortlist. It’s winning because the team can actually run it. Where it’s weak is managing lots of brands, sites and regions from one place. Lead there, and make sure your demo shows a marketer building a segment, not an admin building a data model.
- If you sell SMS or another channel next to Klaviyo, the fight is at renewal. Klaviyo will pitch one profile and one bill. Show the lift you drive on your own channel, and make the integration so clean that “one platform” stops being a reason to switch.
- If you partner with Klaviyo, follow it upmarket. Its bigger customers come with bigger stacks: Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks. Being the piece that connects those to Klaviyo just got more valuable.
Klaviyo got big by being the easy choice for Shopify brands. Now it wants to be the easy choice for the biggest brands too. Whether that works probably depends on what the rest of their stack looks like.
Jon ✌️
P.s. We’ve got all 283 Klaviyo conversations from the last year on the platform, including how each buyer rated it and who’s weighing a switch (in either direction). If you want the breakdown, LMK. Best case, you spot your next opp. Worst case, you know what you’re up against.