Klaviyo vs Drip: two profile-priced platforms, and which one a SaaS should pick

What each one costs by list size

Klaviyo's figures are its Email plan calculator, and Drip's are its list-size slider, both read on 7 October 2026. Klaviyo's Email plus SMS tiers did not appear in the calculator, so they are left out. The monthly gap column is Klaviyo minus Drip.

At 2,500 profiles the $21 gap is $252 a year, and at 25,000 the $31 gap is $372 a year. Klaviyo's price steps up quickly between 5,000 ($100) and 25,000 ($400), a fourfold rise for a fivefold list, while Drip goes from $89 to $369, about 4.1 times. Prices are on klaviyo.com/pricing and drip.com/pricing.

Send limits are where the tiers really differ

Klaviyo ties a monthly email allowance to each profile tier: 5,000 emails at 500 profiles, 10,000 at 1,000, 25,000 at 2,500, 50,000 at 5,000, 100,000 at 10,000 and 250,000 at 25,000. That is ten emails per profile at every step. Drip's slider lists unlimited email sends from the 2,500 tier through 30,000 people, then shows 480,000 sends at 40,000 people and 600,000 at 50,000, which is twelve per person.

A concrete case: a 5,000-person list that gets a weekly digest plus two lifecycle emails a month receives about 6 emails each, or 30,000 sends, and fits either tool. Raise that to 12 emails each and the total is 60,000, which is over Klaviyo's 50,000 allowance at that tier and still inside Drip's unlimited range at $89. Klaviyo's page does not state the overage rule in the readout taken, so a heavy sender should ask Klaviyo for it in writing before committing.

Free plan against free trial

Klaviyo's free plan covers up to 250 profiles and 500 emails a month, with $5 of mobile messages and $5 of Composer usage, plus web forms, a drag-and-drop editor, basic segmentation and revenue attribution for campaigns. Drip has no ongoing free tier: its pricing page offers a 14-day trial without a credit card. For a SaaS in pre-launch with a few hundred waitlist signups, Klaviyo's free plan will carry a welcome flow indefinitely, while a Drip trial forces a decision within two weeks.

What the extra money buys as you grow

Drip's slider changes the support level with list size: email support at 5,000 people, chat and email support at 10,000, then free migration and personalized onboarding at 25,000. Its tiers at 2,500 to 10,000 mention up to 50 workflows, dynamic segments and onsite campaigns. Klaviyo's pricing page groups its products differently, with marketing, analytics and data, a helpdesk with ticket management, and two AI agents named Composer and Customer Agent. If you want support tickets and campaigns reported against the same profile, Klaviyo's page is the one that lists both.

Stripe and subscription events for a SaaS

Klaviyo's Stripe help article says you enable the integration, then add a Stripe webhook that sends every charge and invoice event. Four things come through: an invoice being issued with its line items, a failed payment, a refund and a successful payment. That is enough to trigger a failed-payment flow from invoice.payment_failed or a receipt on a successful charge. It does not describe trial start, trial end or cancellation states, so those emails need events your own backend sends through Klaviyo's API.

Drip lists Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Typeform and Zapier as integrations. Its API reference includes calls to record an event, record events in a batch, create or update subscribers, apply tags and subscribe someone to an email series campaign. I could not open Drip's own Stripe integration page on 7 October 2026 because it returned an access error, so how far that sync goes is not covered here. For a SaaS the safe route with either tool is the same: have your server send a named event when a trial starts, ends or is cancelled, and trigger the flow on that event.

Which one to pick

• Start on Klaviyo if you have fewer than 250 contacts, or you want SMS credit and a helpdesk from the same vendor.
• Start on Drip if you already have 2,500 or more people, send many emails per person, or run a store alongside a product and want Shopify or WooCommerce data in the same account.
• Look elsewhere if the first emails you plan are trial-ending and failed-payment sequences for a subscription product. Loops vs Klaviyo and Loops vs Drip show what a SaaS-first tool costs against each.

Moving between the two

1. Export people with their unsubscribed and suppressed status before touching anything, and import those as suppressed so nobody who opted out is mailed again.
2. Rebuild the welcome and abandoned-cart or trial flows first, because those carry the revenue. Drip's page lists free migration at the 25,000 tier, so ask what they will move for a smaller list.
3. Add the new sending domain's SPF and DKIM records and send to your most engaged segment for a week before moving the rest.
4. Keep the old account on its cheapest tier for one billing cycle while you compare the first month of results.

Other pairings that share a buyer with this one:all comparisons, Klaviyo vs Brevo, Klaviyo vs HubSpot and Encharge vs Drip.