The Attentive stack: what brands run alongside Attentive

Among commerce brands in these interviews, those using Attentive run much the same core stack as similar-sized commerce brands without it: Shopify, Klaviyo, Gorgias and Bazaarvoice appear at similar rates. What stands out is tools for onsite capture and triggered messaging, which appear about two and a half times as often — buyers describe Wunderkind competing with Attentive for onsite sign-ups, while Bluecore appears in some stacks as a triggered-email platform alongside Attentive's SMS — along with returns tools such as Loop Returns and Narvar at nearly twice the rate. About three in five Attentive brands also name Klaviyo; in buyer accounts describing how the two platforms work together, a common arrangement is Klaviyo for email and Attentive for SMS. Experiences coordinating the two vary: some buyers describe straightforward segment sharing, while others report difficulties managing suppressions, unsubscribes and overlapping messages. Some are consolidating email and SMS onto one platform, in both directions.

What tools do brands commonly run alongside Attentive?

Klaviyo is one of the most commonly named platforms alongside Attentive, appearing in about three in five Attentive brands' stacks. Shopify, reviews tools such as Yotpo or Bazaarvoice, and other email platforms such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Emarsys or Cordial are also common. Compared with similar commerce brands, they more often add onsite capture and triggered-email tools such as Wunderkind and Bluecore, returns tools such as Loop Returns and Narvar, loyalty tools such as LoyaltyLion, and measurement tools such as Rockerbox. Buyers describe some of these connecting to Attentive easily and others not connecting at all.

Do Attentive brands also run Klaviyo?

Many do, at about the same rate as other commerce brands. Among buyers who describe how the platforms work together, a common arrangement is Klaviyo for email and Attentive for SMS. “We have Klaviyo for email, we have Attentive for SMS. That's more of a service, and Klaviyo is more of a platform, as you probably know,” one buyer says. Experiences of the connection differ. “Very easy to pass segments between the two. They're interconnected,” one brand says, while another says “they have now become competitors with each other. So the integration between the two isn't the best.” See Klaviyo vs. Attentive.

How do brands keep email and SMS in step across two platforms?

With difficulty, for some. The recurring problem is the same customer receiving the same message twice — “I could, in theory, be hitting you with an abandoned cart twice, in email and SMS. And there's really no way for me to manage that cross-platform,” one retailer says. Buyers describe workarounds: a shared unsubscribe across platforms — “we have a universal unsubscribe so we can sync with all three platforms” — or a CDP that builds segments for both. At larger brands, an enterprise email platform often runs the journey and Attentive only sends the text: “the campaigns are built in Emarsys and the triggers are built there, but the actual sending is done by Attentive.”

Are brands consolidating email and SMS onto one platform?

Some are, and in both directions. Some brands have moved SMS into Klaviyo — one did so because “all of the audience segments could be all tied back together very quickly” — and a few have moved it to Postscript or Listrak, citing price or one platform. Others have moved email onto Attentive: “we switched from Klaviyo email to Attentive email to consolidate that into one platform because we're already using Attentive for SMS.” And several priced consolidation and kept the two apart. One buyer kept Attentive after Klaviyo competed for the SMS business: “Klaviyo fought hard and we ended up staying with Attentive because I was like, Klaviyo is email first.” Buyers who keep SMS separate most often cite SMS expertise, service and compliance — Attentive “help out a lot on the legal privacy side of things,” one says.

How do Wunderkind and other onsite capture tools work alongside Attentive?

Wunderkind is about twice as common at Attentive brands as at similar commerce brands, and buyers describe the two competing for the same sign-up moment. One brand found that when both ran pop-ups, “since launching Wunderkind our SMS acquisition tanked”; another saw its SMS capture rate fall when the two overlapped. Others credit Attentive's own sign-up units: “when we use the two in one that Attentive, has our acquisition rates skyrocketed versus we used to collect phone number and email separately,” one says. In buyer accounts describing Bluecore alongside Attentive, some use Bluecore for triggered email while Attentive handles SMS.

The Attentive stack, layer by layer

How often Attentive brands name a tool in each layer, against similar commerce brands, which tools they name, and how buyers describe the connection to Attentive. How often tools appear together is separate from how well they connect, which is what the last column reports.

How do brands measure SMS?

Some buyers question how much revenue Attentive's reporting attributes to SMS, particularly when email and SMS platforms may both claim credit for the same purchase. Others use the platform's reported returns as a directional measure, while recognizing that attributed revenue does not necessarily represent incremental revenue. “Attentive also over-attributes within their platform, and there's not really a good way to understand exactly what revenue is attributed to SMS without using a third-party app,” one says, while another accepts the figures for what they are: “It's not fully incremental, but even so, we see pretty healthy return an investment with this channel.” A few feed Attentive's data into a third-party measurement tool such as Triple Whale.

The stories behind the stack

What this means for your stack

A common configuration among these brands runs Shopify, an email platform such as Klaviyo and Attentive for SMS, often with onsite capture, reviews and returns tools alongside. Some buyers describe coordinating email and SMS as a recurring challenge, particularly around suppressions, unsubscribes and overlapping journeys, and consolidation remains a live question in both directions. Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe: if you run email and SMS on separate platforms, decide which system owns unsubscribes and suppressions, test how quickly a change in one reaches the other on a live journey, and decide which tool owns the sign-up pop-up before adding a second capture tool.

What this page does not show

It shows which tools Attentive brands run, not which ones they should. How often tools appear together says nothing about satisfaction, and a tool appearing beside Attentive does not mean the two are connected. Attentive brands are compared with commerce brands of similar size, but they may still differ in category, price point and how much of their revenue comes from direct sales, so part of the difference reflects the kind of brand rather than the choice of Attentive. And the brands describing consolidation are a minority whose experience may not reflect the rest.

Common questions