Comprehensive Attentive vs Klaviyo Comparison Guide

Keeping customers after the first sale is where most e-commerce stores make their profit; yet, picking the right ecommerce customer retention tool can feel like guesswork when comparing SMS and email specialists. Which platform handles segmentation, automation, deliverability, pricing, and real ROI better: Attentive or Klaviyo? This Attentive vs. Klaviyo guide compares key features, including SMS marketing and email marketing, lifecycle campaigns, behavioral triggers, analytics, and integrations with Shopify, to help you determine which aligns with your goals and team. To confidently choose between Attentive and Klaviyo by understanding their differences in features, pricing, and value, so they can invest in the platform that drives the highest ROI for their business.

To help with that choice, Ground's eCommerce personalization platform brings customer profiles, A/B testing, unified reporting, and seamless integrations together, so you can test channels, reduce churn, and increase lifetime value without additional technical work.

Table of Contents

• What are Klaviyo and Attentive, and What do each Do?

• Comprehensive Attentive vs Klaviyo Comparison Guide

• Book a Call for a Free Action Plan | Get an ROI Guarantee or Your Money Back

What are Klaviyo and Attentive, and What do each Do?

Klaviyo: Email and SMS Automation Built for eCommerce

Klaviyo is an all-in-one email and SMS marketing automation platform focused squarely on eCommerce. It centers on audience segmentation, message personalization, and deep integrations with storefronts and back-end systems. You can build detailed segments based on customer behavior, then combine those segments with scheduled campaigns and automated flows to deliver tailored messages via email, SMS, or mobile push at the right moment. Want to target recent purchasers, high-value lapsed buyers, or browsers who abandoned a cart? Klaviyo makes it easy to create and act on those audience lists.

Klaviyo’s Global Reach and SMS Growth in the Omnichannel Market

Founded in Boston in 2012, Klaviyo has grown into a prominent vendor in email marketing automation. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2023. Its platform serves more than 130,000 e-commerce sites and has seen rapid SMS adoption since launching its SMS product in November 2022, now supporting approximately 13,000 SMS clients. Klaviyo connects with over 300 platforms, which helps retailers fold email, SMS, and CRM data into a single workflow. The company employs approximately 1,500 people and operates in over 100 countries. Its SMS channels run across: 

• The United States

• Canada

• The United Kingdom

• Australia

• New Zealand

Klaviyo as the Hub of Lifecycle Marketing and Revenue Automation

Klaviyo’s feature set includes: 

• Advanced segmentation

• Dynamic personalization

• Campaign scheduling

• Multi-step automated flows

It also supports: 

• Mobile push notifications

• Site forms

• Tools for collecting reviews and on-site data

These capabilities position Klaviyo as a central hub for: 

• Lifecycle marketing

• Subscriber growth

• Abandoned cart recovery

• Win-back campaigns

• Revenue-driven automation

Attentive: SMS First, Conversational Messaging, and Real-Time Engagement

Attentive launched in 2016 with a focus on automated SMS marketing and conversational messaging. The product emphasizes two-way text conversations, rich media via MMS, and real-time customer engagement after a shopper opts in. Marketers use Attentive to capture attention with on-site prompts and to continue the conversation using: 

• Targeted SMS campaigns

• Transactional messages

• One-to-one conversational threads

Attentive’s Growth as a Dedicated SMS Marketing Platform

Based in Hoboken, New Jersey, Attentive grew rapidly as one of the early pure-play SMS marketing platforms. The company remains privately funded, backed by 22 investors, and supports approximately 8,000 customers. Attentive maintains over 100 integrations with major e-commerce platforms, CMS systems, and marketing tools, and employs approximately 1,300 people. Its service footprint includes primary markets in: 

• The United States

• Canada

• The United Kingdom

• Australia

Attentive’s Core SMS Capabilities and Expansion into Multichannel Marketing

Attentive’s strengths include conversational SMS, MMS for images and audio, fast subscriber capture and segmentation, and tools for running time-sensitive campaigns and real-time offers. The platform now offers an email component to expand into multichannel marketing, while maintaining SMS as its core. Expect features that: 

• Capture flows

• Manage subscriber consent

• Facilitate two-way messaging

• Automate campaigns

• Support enterprise-grade SMS needs

• Onboarding assistance

Questions about deliverability, compliance, or two-way conversational flows are common when teams evaluate Attentive for focused SMS programs.

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• Churn Rate in eCommerce
• How to Re-engage Lost Customers
• Customer Retention KPIs

Comprehensive Attentive vs Klaviyo Comparison Guide

Automation Approaches: SMS First versus Multi-Channel Orchestration

Attentive centers its automation strategy on SMS. The product positions text messaging as the primary channel and builds automation around timely, behavior-based SMS flows. That makes onboarding, consent capture, and campaign setup fast for teams focused on mobile conversions. Klaviyo takes a broader approach. It unifies email and SMS in a single interface, treating automation as cross-channel orchestration with a customer data platform that feeds real-time triggers into flows. Which approach matters more for your brand’s conversion goals and channel mix?

SMS Marketing Capabilities: Two-Way Texting and Mobile Focus

Attentive’s strengths lie in SMS. Two-way messaging, automated SMS sequences for cart recovery and browse reminders, and detailed behavior-based targeting are core features. Reporting is tuned to SMS KPIs, allowing marketers to view conversion, click-through, and revenue attribution by message. Klaviyo supports SMS as part of its suite. It provides segmentation-driven messages, dynamic content in texts, and cross-channel coordination with email. Klaviyo’s SMS tooling falls short in terms of compliance automation, onboarding assistance, and enterprise-scale sending partners. Do you need advanced two-way SMS and white glove setup, or a single platform that ties SMS to email flows?

Email Marketing Features: Depth, Deliverability, and Builders

Attentive added email more recently and offers: 

• Basic templates

• Drag-and-drop builders

• Simple automation

The email product works as a companion to SMS but lacks advanced features: 

• Deliverability tools

• A/B testing depth

• Predictive personalization

Klaviyo delivers mature email capabilities: 

• Powerful segmentation

• Smart Sending to manage cadence

• AI-assisted content and subject line tools

• Robust A/B testing

For teams that rely on sophisticated email sequences, deliverability insights, and rich product feeds, Klaviyo offers a more comprehensive toolkit.

Segmentation Styles Compared: Action-Based Versus Deep Profiles

Attentive segments around immediate actions such as: 

• Site visits

• Sign-ups

• Cart abandonment

The interface favors simple, timely segments with fewer simultaneous conditions. That simplicity speeds up execution for SMS campaigns, but limits the construction of multi-variable audiences. Klaviyo builds rich customer profiles from: 

• Purchase history

• Lifetime value

• Browsing data

• Demographics

• Predictive analytics

Segments update in real time and support complex conditions and nested logic. Which matters more: speed and immediacy or nuanced audience modeling?

Personalization and Dynamic Content: Immediate Relevance Versus Historical Depth

Attentive personalizes messages to reflect recent behavior and short-term context. It excels at time-sensitive offers and cart recovery, where rapid relevance drives conversion: Klaviyo layers historical purchase patterns, predicted preferences, and dynamic content blocks across email and SMS. The platform utilizes custom attributes and predictive analytics to deliver personalized product recommendations and lifecycle messaging. Do you prioritize instant, behavior-driven personalization on mobile or deeper lifecycle personalization across channels?

Automation Capabilities: Managed Setup versus Custom Flow Complexity

Attentive offers strong SMS automation with pre-built templates, and it often pairs this with a white-glove onboarding service. That reduces technical lift for non-technical teams but can constrain custom engineering of flows. Klaviyo’s flow builder supports multi-step automation with conditional splits, branching logic, and cross-channel switches between email and SMS. Teams can create sophisticated customer journeys and run A/B tests inside automations. Which balance of managed service and configurability best suits your organization?

Event Trigger Workflows: Linear SMS Paths versus Branching Multi-Channel Journeys

Attentive ships pre-built SMS workflows for: 

• Welcome series

• Abandoned carts

• Post-purchase follow-ups

These workflows are quick to deploy and focused on immediate outcomes. Klaviyo enables richer event-triggered sequences that combine time delays, conditional splits, and channel switching based on engagement. Klaviyo workflows handle complex decision trees for lifecycle marketing and lead nurturing. Does your roadmap require straightforward, high-impact SMS flows or branching journeys that integrate email, SMS, and push notifications?

Email Automation Systems: Flow Builders and Integration Depth

Klaviyo’s Flow Builder supports complex, real-time branching for multi-touch campaigns and connects to over 350 integrations for data enrichment. Attentive introduced email automation in 2022 and offers basic automated campaigns, but its integration set and advanced sequencing remain limited. If you need sophisticated branching and deep ecommerce platform data, Klaviyo gives more functional control.

Customer Targeting Options: Real-Time Data Versus Simpler Conditions

Klaviyo processes data in real time and supports an effectively unlimited set of segmentation conditions. It builds detailed profiles and uses predictive analytics to refine targeting. Attentive’s data model focuses on engagement signals and uses up to three simultaneous segmentation conditions in many workflows, reflecting a more straightforward approach to targeting. Which targeting model reduces friction for your marketers and increases relevance for your customers?

Email Performance and Design: Deliverability Tools and Creative Flexibility

Klaviyo invests in deliverability insights, subject line assistance, and AI content features. Its builder supports responsive layouts, product feeds, and advanced personalization. Attentive supplies functional templates and essential personalization options that work well for simple campaigns. For teams concerned about inbox placement, deliverability benchmarks, and sophisticated creative testing, Klaviyo offers a more comprehensive toolset.

SMS Marketing Tools: Compliance, Onboarding, and Sending Infrastructure

Attentive automates SMS setup, provides built-in compliance tools, and gives brands premium onboarding with strategy development and technical support. It also maintains a broader network of sending partners and enterprise-focused delivery features. Klaviyo requires manual configuration for sender numbers and country settings and relies on fewer sending partners. If regulatory compliance, high-volume delivery, and fast subscriber capture are priorities, Attentive’s tooling and support model reduces risk.

SMS Rules and Setup: Ease of Use and Compliance Safeguards

Attentive streamlines opt-in capture with pre-configured sign-up units and consent flows that integrate into Shopify and other platforms. Klaviyo offers more manual control over SMS setup but requires additional configuration steps. Brands that need fast, low-friction consent capture and robust compliance automation will find Attentive faster to implement.

SMS Performance Tracking: Granular Analytics and Case Studies

Attentive provides detailed SMS analytics and real-time campaign reporting. Brands such as Rebecca Minkoff utilized Attentive sign-up units to grow their mobile lists rapidly, and Oak Essentials reported high average conversion rates for campaign and cart messages. Klaviyo captures SMS metrics alongside email performance, but its SMS reporting depth is less extensive. If you value rich SMS KPIs and conversion level attribution for text messages, Attentive’s analytics offer more granularity.

Email and SMS Combined: Cross-Channel Attribution and Cohesive Journeys

Klaviyo tracks email and SMS together, which helps with precise attribution, A/B testing across channels, and multi-channel orchestration using a customer data platform. Attentive emphasizes SMS-driven revenue and offers strong mobile-first workflows, which can yield a high ROI for brands that prioritize text as a primary touchpoint. Which outcome matters more: single-platform attribution across channels or near-term impact via SMS?

Platform Integration and Data: Number of Integrations and Data Depth

Klaviyo offers over 350 pre-built integrations, pushing real-time and historical data into its CDP for seamless segmentation and analytics. Attentive integrates through native connectors and often utilizes Zapier to extend connectivity; documentation for complex integrations is less extensive. If you rely on deep ecommerce platform telemetry and multiple data sources, Klaviyo’s integration set reduces engineering work.

eCommerce Platform Setup: Shopify Friendliness and Onboarding

Both platforms work well with Shopify, but Klaviyo’s extensive ecosystem and native Shopify integration simplify access to order and product data. Attentive offers guided setup for merchant stores and quick sign-up unit deployment for mobile capture. Teams must weigh whether they prefer rapid mobile subscriber growth or deeper data syncs for lifecycle automation.

Results Tracking Tools: Attribution Windows and Benchmarks

Klaviyo provides customizable last touch attribution, deliverability insights, and peer benchmarks across channels. Attentive’s default attribution window can overstate SMS revenue if not adjusted, and its benchmark set focuses on SMS KPIs. Companies that require precise cross-channel ROI modeling will find Klaviyo’s attribution tools more flexible.

Testing and Results: Real World Outcomes and Case Evidence

Klaviyo case studies show substantial multi-channel gains: Frances Valentine reached a 21.8x ROI after switching to Klaviyo SMS, Linksoul increased flow revenue by 82 percent, and Leonisa achieved a 45.6x ROI with combined email and SMS. Attentive case studies highlight exceptional SMS outcomes: APL reported a 78x ROI with an SMS first strategy, and Oak Essentials saw high conversion rates for cart and browse reminders. Which kind of case evidence aligns with your expected channel mix and target metrics?

Attentive Strengths: SMS Mastery and High Touch Support

Attentive specializes in SMS marketing for high volume and enterprise use. The company pairs advanced mobile features with: 

• Premium customer support

• 24/7 availability

• White-glove onboarding

Users benefit from two-way messaging, robust compliance, and templates optimized for mobile customers. Brands that need rapid SMS results and a high-touch partner often prefer this fit.

Attentive Limitations: Email Depth and Channel Coverage

Attentive’s email product remains basic relative to mature email platforms. It also does not natively support channels beyond email and SMS, requiring additional tools for: 

• Push notifications

• WhatsApp

• On-site personalization

For teams seeking a single vendor for omnichannel campaigns, Attentive will likely sit alongside other systems.

Klaviyo Strengths: Email Power, CDP Capabilities, and Public Pricing

Klaviyo delivers: 

• Strong email automation

• A built-in customer data platform

• A broad channel mix including: 

  • Mobile push

  • Reviews

  • Forms

Its real-time segmentation, predictive analytics, and public pricing model make it accessible for teams that want data unification and precise cost estimates. Small businesses and eCommerce brands seeking a single platform for email and broader marketing workflows find Klaviyo attractive.

Klaviyo Limitations: Support Consistency and Enterprise SMS Features

Klaviyo’s customer support quality has varied, and the learning curve for advanced features can be steep. Free plan users face limited support windows, and Klaviyo’s SMS infrastructure and compliance tooling may feel lightweight for enterprise-scale messaging. Organizations that require white-glove onboarding and enterprise SMS delivery assurances may prefer a platform built primarily for mobile-first marketing.

Related Reading

• Customer Retention Automation

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• Attentive Competitors

Book a Call for a Free Action Plan | Get an ROI Guarantee or Your Money Back

You run experiments on paid ads influencers and email, but your monthly growth barely moves. Which channel provides the clean lift you need without wasting your budget on creatives that never engage or audiences that drop off? Ground AI spots the gaps in acquisition and retention by reading signals from every touch point and turning them into revenue actions you can deploy in minutes.

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• Personalizing site content

• Emails

• SMS 

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How Ground AI Drives Revenue Across Acquisition and Retention

Ground AI combines predictive analytics with lifecycle marketing to attract new buyers into the funnel and retain them over time. It layers dynamic segmentation conversion flows, abandoned cart recovery, and two-way SMS fallback, allowing you to capture lost sales and increase LTV. The platform manages campaigns and automated flows with templates, testing, and deliverability controls that optimize: 

• Open rates

• Clicks

• Revenue per subscriber

Why Ground Stands Out Compared to Attentive vs Klaviyo

Both Attentive and Klaviyo offer strong email and SMS primitives, but Ground AI combines cross-channel orchestration with a customer data platform that runs real-time personalization. You get granular segmentation, unified profiles, consent management, and TCPA-compliant two-way messaging, plus MMS support. Instead of toggling between campaign dashboards and separate flows, Ground AI automates dynamic content, A/B testing, deliverability tweaks, and predictive LTV scoring from one control plane.

Recover Bounced Sales and Abandoned Carts Without Manual Follow-Up

Ground AI routes failed email attempts into SMS or app messages, then fire contextual abandoned cart flows with urgency and alternate offers. It utilizes browse abandonment and product affinity signals to trigger recovery sequences via email, SMS, and onsite widgets, thereby increasing the conversion rate on bounced traffic. You can set frequency caps and channel preferences per customer while measuring incremental revenue per channel.

Increase Repeat Purchases With Cross-Sell Replenishment And Subscriptions

Set replenishment windows from actual purchase behavior and deploy subscription offers at the moment of highest intent. Utilize product affinity and follow best offer models to drive cross-sell recommendations in the setting of: 

• Email

• SMS

• On-site 

Winback campaigns and lifecycle winback flows segment by churn risk and predicted LTV, so you spend acquisition dollars where payback is strongest.

Integrations, Data Flow, And Compliance That Keep Operations Moving

Ground AI integrates with Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and major CDPs using webhooks and server-side APIs so your order profiles and events sync in real time. Consent and TCPA compliance are integrated into the platform, featuring opt-in management templates and audit logs for two-way messaging. Track deliverability, reputation, domain authentication, and inbox placement while the system optimizes send windows for each channel.

Measurement Experiments And ROI Guarantee

You get attribution of incremental revenue by test holdout cohorts and event-level reporting for campaigns and flows. Use A/B testing for creatives' subject lines and send timing, while Ground AI attributes conversion lift to the exact channel sequence. Book a call to receive a complimentary action plan, and we will back the plan with an ROI guarantee or a full refund of your investment.

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Book a call, and we will map acquisition gaps, retention opportunities, and a three-month test plan that fits your stack. You will get a step-by-step playbook and a one-line code snippet to launch your first growth flow within five minutes.

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