Klaviyo vs. HubSpot: Which One Is Best for Email Marketing?

Are you an e-commerce wizard, a B2B marketer, or a startup looking to choose between Klaviyo and Hubspot? 

It’s an established fact that Hubspot and Klaviyo are two of the biggest players in the email marketing world.

These two heavy hitters have been duking it out for the top spot in email marketing and CRM tools. 

But here’s the million-dollar question: which one is right for your business?

That’s exactly what we’re diving into today.

By the time you’re done reading, you’ll have a clear picture of which tool aligns with your marketing goals. 

No fluff, no jargon – just straight talk. 

Let’s dive in..

To summarize, HubSpot’s email marketing capabilities are solid, but it’s true strength lies in its broader marketing automation features. HubSpot is a strong contender if you need a platform to manage your entire marketing funnel.

However, if you’re primarily focused on e-commerce and personalized email campaigns, Klaviyo might be the better fit.

HubSpot’s impressive feature set might tempt you, but it’s essential to consider if it truly aligns with your business needs. As a powerful marketing hub, it enhances productivity and customer engagement by driving efficiency, aiding in measuring marketing investments and increasing overall traffic and conversion rates for businesses utilizing the platform.

Let’s explore where HubSpot might fall short compared to Klaviyo:

E-commerce Focus: While HubSpot can handle e-commerce, Klaviyo is tailor-made for online stores, offering more specialized features and integrations.

Email Customization: Some users prefer Klaviyo’s email builder for its ease of use and flexibility in creating visually appealing campaigns.

Pricing: HubSpot’s pricing structure can be more complex, especially for small businesses primarily focused on email marketing.

What is Klaviyo?

Klaviyo, pronounced Clay-vee-oh, is a cloud-based email marketing platform founded in 2012 by Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen.

The duo created Klaviyo to help businesses convert customer data into actionable marketing insights.

Trusted by over 150,000 brands, Klaviyo is much more than just email marketing. 

With deep integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento, and built-in SMS marketing, Klaviyo has evolved itself as the go-to email marketing platform for e-commerce. 

Why Choose Klaviyo as an Email Marketing Platform?

Right from the start, Klaviyo was built with e-commerce in mind. 

It excels at using customer data to create hyper-personalized email campaigns.

Klaviyo packs some incredible punch by turning customer data into actionable campaigns. 

It recommends products and promotional opportunities based on customer’s previous purchases. Not only that its predictive analytics can actually tell you the lifetime value of a customer and future shopping trends. Pretty neat, isn’t it?

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

Klaviyo’s real strength lies in its ability to optimize every step of the customer’s lifecycle with automated flows. Using Klaviyo flows (a.k.a automations), you can quickly deploy automated email campaigns for abandoned cart recovery, lost customer reactivation, and automated up-sells. 

Best for: E-commerce businesses focused on personalized customer experiences.

In a nutshell, Klaviyo is the undisputed leader in e-commerce email marketing. 

Now let’s dive into Hubspot and discover its unique capabilities. 

What is Hubspot?

Founded in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot is a leading B2B CRM platform that offers a comprehensive suite of sales and marketing tools. 

It’s like the Swiss army knife for sales and marketing teams, bringing everything together under one umbrella. 

Why Choose Hubspot for Email Marketing?

HubSpot offers a broad range of marketing tools, including CRM, content management, social media, and sales automation. The HubSpot Marketing Hub is a powerful marketing software that facilitates customer engagement and enhances productivity through user-friendly tools. 

HubSpot is a great platform to manage all aspects of your sales and marketing in an integrated fashion. While it’s capable of email marketing, its strength lies in its broader suite of features.

Best for: Businesses looking for a comprehensive marketing solution beyond email.

We’ve incorporated the table with quick overviews of Klaviyo vs. Hubspot features. However, if you’d like to save even more time reading this comparison, check out our ESP Evaluation and Migration Service.

That being said, let us look into the key difference between these two heavy hitters. 

Klaviyo vs. Hubspot: Key Differences

Here’s how these marketing automation platforms, Klaviyo and HubSpot, differ:

Klaviyo vs. HubSpot: A Feature Comparison

When it comes to email marketing, both Klaviyo and HubSpot offer powerful tools to elevate your inbound marketing strategy. 

These platforms not only handle email campaigns but also integrate seamlessly with lead tracking and content creation tools, all designed to boost customer engagement and drive higher conversion rates.

1. Integration Capabilities, Customer Data, and Pricing

Klaviyo boasts over 350+ pre-built integrations plus flexible APIs. The platform’s notable integrations include TrustPilot, Aftership, Rebuy, and ShipStation. While over 300 is undoubtedly a decent range, Klaviyo’s integration focus seems to lie within the e-commerce ecosystem. Additionally, it lacks CRM integrations altogether.

Some of Klaviyo’s best integrations include:

• ShipStation
• Trustpilot
• AfterShip
• Okendo
• Supermetrics
• Rebuy
• Tapcart

On the other hand, Hubspot comes with 1600+ integrations; the platform outshines Klaviyo by far in this area. These integrations run a wide gamut, from marketing, sales, customer service, productivity, and finance to even e-commerce platforms. Some notable ones include:

• Gmail
• Canva
• Salesforce
• LinkedIn
• MailChimp
• Calendly
• PandaDoc
• Stripe Payment Processing
• Asana
• QuickBooks

Some integrations like Shopify might require third-party plugins, but Hubspot’s overall integration breadth is impressive. Additionally, both platforms allow businesses to sync customer data seamlessly, enabling the tracking of purchase behaviors and crafting personalized campaigns.

Let’s compare the pricing: 

Regarding the free plans, Hubspot offers more value and is an excellent option for startups and freelancers looking to dip their toes into email marketing without a budget.

As for the paid plans, Hubspot is pricier. However, the cost reflects its comprehensiveness as the plans also incorporate the other modules in its marketing suite.

Thus, Klaviyo’s integrations and pricing plans make it a good choice for small-scale e-commerce-focused enterprises.

While Hubspot is better suited for larger non-e-commerce businesses with substantial budgets seeking a unified marketing platform.

2. Marketing Automation and Segmentation Tools

Automation is the key reason marketers turn to tools like Hubspot and Klaviyo. So, it’s no surprise that this is where both platforms put their best foot forward.

Hubspot automation vs Klaviyo automation stacks both include:

• Workflow automation
• Pre-built email templates
• Drag-and-drop email builder
• Behavior automation, such as automated welcome emails and cart abandonment emails
• SMS marketing campaigns

Notably, while each shines in email automation, their focus differs.

Klaviyo targets e-commerce specifically, whereas Hubspot caters to a broader range of businesses. This distinction results in a slight difference in their segmentation capabilities. Klaviyo allows users to segment audiences based on e-commerce-related metrics like:

• Client browsing tendencies, for example, viewed products and cart activity
• Purchase data like order value
• Customer lifecycle data like first-time and repeat buyers

On the other hand, Hubspot offers segmentation options like engagement data, such as how website visitors interact with emails, buying roles, and lead scoring.

In summary, both platforms excel in automation and segmentation. However, Klaviyo’s laser focus on e-commerce gives it a competitive edge.

3. CRM Functionalities Compared

While both platforms offer CRM-like capabilities, HubSpot takes a clear lead.

HubSpot’s entire platform is designed around customer relationship management. This deep integration allows you robust features like lead scoring, nurturing, and comprehensive contact management.

What about Clay-vee-oh?

Klaviyo is primarily an email marketing champ, but it doesn’t leave you hanging when it comes to customer data. They can connect with popular CRMs like Salesforce or Zoho, so you can get a pretty good picture of your customers, too. It’s not as deep as HubSpot’s CRM, but it can definitely help you out.

However, where Hubspot CRM vs Klaviyo integrations are concerned, Hubspot clearly outperforms the latter. Klaviyo’s focus is email marketing optimization, while Hubspot’s email marketing function and CRM function as one unit, providing enterprises with a comprehensive view of each client’s journey. This Dotdigital vs. Hubspot comparison article covers more of Hubspot’s CRM features.

4. Analytics & Reporting

Both platforms are well-equipped when comparing Klaviyo vs. Hubspot for email marketing analytics and reporting. You can find standard metrics on both platforms like open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates.

Additionally, both platforms support email performance analysis, A/B Testing, and revenue attribution. You can also generate custom email marketing reports in Klaviyo and Hubspot both. Tracking and analyzing your email marketing efforts is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns and optimizing your broader marketing strategy.

However, there’s a slight difference in their focus.

Hubspot’s analytics and reports are broader in scope and suited for various business types, giving you a more comprehensive view of your marketing performance.

While Klaviyo analytics tend to lean towards e-commerce-specific metrics, helping you understand customer purchase behavior in detail.

So, which platform takes the medal in this Hubspot vs Klaviyo analytics race?

Tight as it may have been, we’d have to give it to Hubspot, as the platform analytics are more accommodating and comprehensive.

5. Ease of Use and Customer Support

An email marketing platform may have the most advanced features, but the user experience usually boils down to ease of use.

That said, Hubspot’s dashboard, while data-rich, incorporates graphs, pie charts, and other visuals, making analytics and reports quite digestible.  You can also toggle between weekly and monthly views, facilitating easier campaign tracking.

The catch is that although presented in user-friendly formats, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming, especially for new marketers.

Klaviyo seems to have taken cues from Hubspot and designed a similarly visuals-equipped user dashboard but with less data. This approach undoubtedly makes it less overwhelming.

But you may have to throw in some extra minutes when seeking hyper-specific email marketing campaign metrics or data. Check out our previous review of Kilavyo vs Mailchimp to see how their dashboards compare.

So, who wins the Klaviyo vs Hubspot user interface comparison?

Hubspot undoubtedly deserves the cake. Its dashboard is intuitive, with all necessary information adequately displayed. This integration of multiple functions allows businesses to streamline and optimize their marketing efforts across different channels.

It also takes the lead in Hubspot vs Klaviyo customer support, as you can get 24/7 phone, email, and live chat support.

For Klaviyo, you can only get email and live chat support. Plus, their live chat availability varies by location and plan type.

Benefits of Klaviyo vs. Hubspot

Here’s a quick overview of Hubspot vs. Klaviyo benefits: Popular email marketing platforms like HubSpot and Klaviyo offer unique advantages for businesses looking to engage with their audience and drive conversions.

Klaviyo Vs. HubSpot FAQs

Can Klaviyo be used for non-eCommerce businesses?

Yes, although Klaviyo is geared towards eCommerce businesses, it can still be used by businesses in other niches. For instance, some of its segmentation features are highly useful to service-based businesses.

How scalable are Klaviyo and HubSpot?

Both platforms are scalable in terms of handling your growing email list. However, the costs of each will increase as your number of contacts rises.

What are some alternatives to Klaviyo and HubSpot?

There are plenty of alternatives to HubSpot and Klaviyo on the market, such as:

• Omnisend
• Mailchimp
• ActiveCampaign
• Drip
• GetResponse

Klaviyo Vs. Hubspot: Final Thoughts

In the end, the choice between Klaviyo and HubSpot boils down to two key questions:

1. Do you need an email marketing platform specifically designed for an eCommerce business?
2. How big is your marketing budget?

If you run an eCommerce business and have a fairly small budget, you should go for Klaviyo. It has all the features you’ll need to create an effective, automated campaign, and it won’t break the bank.

If your business is in a different niche with a pretty big budget, HubSpot is definitely the better option. Although it’s expensive, you’ll gain access to a comprehensive tool that satisfies all of your email marketing needs.