Klaviyo vs Mailchimp for Australian Ecommerce: Which Should You Use?
It is one of the questions I get asked most by Australian store owners: should we stay on Mailchimp or move to Klaviyo? Here is my honest take, as someone who works mainly in Klaviyo but does not think it is right for everyone.
The short answer
Choose Klaviyo if you run an ecommerce store (especially on Shopify), you want revenue from automated flows, and you are willing to use segmentation properly.
Stay on Mailchimp (or a simpler tool) if you mainly send a newsletter, you sell services rather than products, and your list is small and budget matters more than advanced automation.
Where Klaviyo is stronger
Ecommerce data
Klaviyo was built around ecommerce. It pulls in product views, carts, checkouts and orders, and lets you use all of it in segments and flow triggers. You can build a segment like "bought twice, spent over $200, has not ordered in 90 days" in a couple of minutes.
Flows
Abandoned checkout, browse abandonment, post-purchase and win-back flows are where Klaviyo pays for itself. The flow builder handles conditional splits and filters cleanly. (Here are the seven flows I set up for most stores.)
Reporting
Klaviyo attributes revenue to each campaign and flow, so you can see which emails actually drive sales instead of guessing from open rates.
SMS in the same platform
If you want SMS alongside email, Klaviyo keeps both in one place with shared segments.
Where Mailchimp is stronger
Simplicity. For a monthly newsletter, Mailchimp is quicker to learn.
Service businesses. If you do not have product and order data, much of Klaviyo's advantage disappears.
Familiarity. Many teams already know it, and that has real value.
What about cost?
Both platforms price by list size, and both get expensive as you grow. Klaviyo has a free plan for small lists (around 250 active profiles at the time of writing) and paid email plans starting from roughly US$20 a month, billed on active profiles. Always check Klaviyo's current pricing page, because tiers change.
The better question is not "which is cheaper" but "which earns more". If Klaviyo's flows and segmentation lift your email revenue, the extra monthly cost is usually covered many times over. If you are only going to send one newsletter a month, it will not be.
Switching from Mailchimp to Klaviyo: what to watch
Consent records. Only import people who gave permission, and keep track of how they subscribed. Australia's Spam Act 2003 requires consent for commercial email.
Unsubscribes and bounces. Import these as suppressed so you never email them again.
Sending domain. Set up a branded sending domain with correct authentication before your first send.
Warm up. Start by sending to your most engaged subscribers and widen gradually, rather than blasting the whole list on day one.
Rebuild, don't copy. A migration is the perfect time to rebuild flows properly instead of recreating old ones.
My recommendation
For established Australian ecommerce brands, Klaviyo is almost always the better long-term choice. For service businesses and small newsletters, it depends, and I will tell you honestly if staying put makes more sense.
If you are weighing up a move, I can review your current setup in a 60-minute strategy session, or handle the full migration as part of Klaviyo management.
