Shopify Email & Marketing Automation Guide 2026: Email, Facebook Ads, Mailchimp, Klaviyo & Omnisend Explained
Deepak Kharware
Best Email Marketing Apps for Shopify (Beyond Shopify Email)
Shopify Email is a great place to start when you’re getting into email marketing. It’s simple, built into Shopify, and easy to use. However, once your store starts growing, it can quickly feel limiting. Without more advanced tools, you may be missing out on potential sales.
The main drawback of Shopify Email is that it lacks several key features that modern e-commerce businesses rely on, such as customer reviews, restock alerts, and A/B testing. I’ve been using Shopify Email for a while, but recently I started testing other email marketing apps because Shopify Email is beginning to feel a bit too basic for scaling a store.
Below are my top email marketing app choices for Shopify store owners.
Omnisend – Built Specifically for E-commerce
First up is Omnisend, and this is where things start to get really interesting.
What I really like about Omnisend is that its entire focus is on e-commerce. They offer a huge library of form templates designed specifically for online stores. You can create simple email sign-up forms, or go more advanced with features like countdown timers, multi-step discounts, and gamified pop-ups—such as their popular Wheel of Fortune style pop-up.
With so many options available, growing your email subscriber list becomes much easier. Omnisend also provides powerful pre-built automations, including back-in-stock alerts and browse abandonment emails, which are essential for recovering lost revenue.
One of the biggest advantages of Omnisend is that all automation features are available even on the free plan. This includes access to pro-level features such as A/B testing and 24/7 chat and email support—features that many other platforms charge extra for.
Omnisend Pricing Overview
Omnisend offers three pricing tiers: Free, Standard, and Pro.
-
The Free plan allows up to 250 emails per month and includes limited SMS sending.
-
The Standard plan starts at $16 per month and scales based on the number of contacts.
-
The Pro plan starts at $59 per month and includes advanced analytics along with additional SMS credits.
Although the free plan has a relatively low email sending limit, Omnisend allows you to automatically post your email campaigns to your business’s Facebook page. This is a smart way to reach more potential customers for free—even those who are not subscribed to your email list.
Klaviyo – A Powerful Upgrade from Shopify Email
Omnisend is a strong option, but Klaviyo is another top-tier choice for Shopify store owners.
In fact, Shopify has invested in Klaviyo and currently owns 11% of the company. This has led many store owners to wonder whether Shopify Email may eventually be replaced by Klaviyo or more deeply integrated with it.
Regardless, Klaviyo is a major upgrade compared to Shopify Email. Like Omnisend, it includes built-in A/B testing capabilities. You can create multiple versions of an email and test them with different customer segments to see what performs best, helping you optimize your campaigns for higher conversions.
Smart Optimization with Powerful Branding Control
One of the standout features of Klaviyo is how it handles performance optimization. Klaviyo analyzes campaign results and automatically sends the best-performing email to future customers. This makes ongoing optimization much easier, especially if you rely heavily on data-driven decisions.
Klaviyo’s email builder includes a wide range of modern templates, along with customizable basic layouts. These layouts come with content placeholders but no pre-loaded images or color schemes. This gives you full control over branding and makes it easy to design emails that match your store’s identity.
The downside is that you need to manually upload all of your brand assets at the beginning. However, once that setup is complete, Klaviyo can automatically apply your branding to any new emails you create, which saves time in the long run.
Klaviyo Pricing Breakdown
Klaviyo has a very simple pricing structure. All features are available on the free plan, and you can send up to 500 emails per month, which is slightly more than Omnisend’s free limit.
There are only two paid plans:
-
Email-only plan, starting at $25 per month
-
Email + SMS plan, starting at $35 per month
Pricing scales based on the number of contacts and total email volume. While Klaviyo is powerful, the 500-email limit on the free plan is quite low, and costs increase quickly at higher sending volumes—often becoming more expensive than Omnisend.
Yotpo – A Generous Free Plan with Strong E-commerce Tools
If Klaviyo’s pricing feels like a deal-breaker, Yotpo could be a strong alternative.
I’ll admit, I only recently started paying attention to Yotpo, but it turns out I was behind the times. Yotpo has over 7,000 reviews on the Shopify App Store and offers one of the most attractive free plans I’ve seen in email marketing.
With Yotpo, you can send up to 10,000 emails per month for free, with no feature restrictions. An all-access free plan with such a high sending limit is extremely rare and makes Yotpo especially appealing for growing Shopify stores.
Beyond email, Yotpo offers a full suite of e-commerce tools, including subscriptions, customer reviews, and loyalty programs. Their drag-and-drop email editor also integrates directly with Canva, allowing you to pull designs and visuals straight from Canva into your email campaigns.
One of Yotpo’s most impressive features is its AI tool called Tailor. This tool lets you create customer segments using plain English instructions. Since email segmentation can be time-consuming and complex, this feature alone makes Yotpo very exciting to use.
ActiveCampaign – Automation-First Email Marketing
Another email marketing app I’ve been testing recently is ActiveCampaign.
What really stands out about ActiveCampaign is its massive library of automation templates, which they call Recipes. These templates are incredibly useful for getting started quickly with automated workflows.
ActiveCampaign also offers templates designed for very specific e-commerce use cases, including niche scenarios like tracking custom orders. If automation is a core part of your marketing strategy, these pre-built workflows can save you a lot of setup time and effort.
Pricing and Automation Value
One feature I really love about ActiveCampaign is that you can filter automations to see which ones are built specifically for Shopify. This makes it much easier to find workflows that actually make sense for an e-commerce store instead of generic marketing automations.
ActiveCampaign offers multiple pricing tiers, but it’s worth noting that not all features are available on the starter plan. That said, for $19 per month, you still get access to automations, A/B testing, basic segmentation features, and several other core tools. Considering what’s included, ActiveCampaign delivers solid value—especially if automation is a priority in your marketing strategy.
Overall, it’s a strong choice for Shopify store owners who want more control over workflows and customer journeys without jumping straight into very expensive plans.
Shopify Integration Across All Platforms
To wrap things up, Omnisend, Klaviyo, Yotpo, and ActiveCampaign all integrate seamlessly with Shopify.
No matter which email marketing platform you choose, you’ll be able to automatically pull products from your store, sync customer data, and keep everything connected across platforms. This makes setup much easier and ensures your email campaigns always stay up to date with your store data.
I’ve added links to each of these tools so you can try them out for free. I’ve also included a downloadable cheat sheet that covers the most important automated workflows for e-commerce businesses, so you can get started quickly without overthinking your setup.
Final Thoughts
I hope this guide helped you understand the strengths of each email marketing platform and how they compare for Shopify stores. Choosing the right tool really comes down to your goals—whether that’s automation, pricing flexibility, advanced analytics, or ease of use.
If you found this helpful, keep experimenting with these tools and see which one fits your workflow best. And if you have questions or want to share your experience, drop a comment and let others know how it worked for you.
