Mailchimp vs Klaviyo: pick Klaviyo for online stores that earn from automated flows, and Mailchimp for general businesses that want an easy newsletter. Add the other three and the agency rule is simple: Klaviyo for shops, Kit for creators, Brevo or MailerLite for small local businesses on a budget, Mailchimp when the client already has it.
You rarely get to pick one tool for every client. So the real question for an agency is which tool fits each client, and how you run five of them without five separate workflows.
TLDR: At 500 contacts, the cheapest paid plans in November 2026 are Brevo ($9), MailerLite ($12), Mailchimp ($13), Klaviyo ($20) and Kit ($33). Choose by client type, keep each client in their own account, and plan every newsletter on one calendar.
Prices side by side (November 2026)
Read on each tool's own pricing page on 2026-11-14, in USD, at the smallest paid tier. Prices rise with your contact count.
| Tool | Free plan | Cheapest paid plan | Next plan up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts, 500 emails/month (250/day) | Essentials, from $13/month | Standard, from $20/month (500 contacts, 6,000 emails) |
| Klaviyo | 250 profiles, 500 emails/month | Email, from $20/month (500 profiles, 5,000 emails) | Marketing, from $25/month |
| Brevo | 300 emails/day | Starter, $9/month (5,000 emails, 500 contacts) | Standard, $18/month |
| Kit | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Creator, $33/month for 1,000 subscribers ($390/year) | Pro, $66/month |
| MailerLite | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month | Comfort, from $12/month | Power, from $25/month (unlimited emails, fair use) |
Two things the table hides:
- Brevo prices by emails sent, not by contacts, up to its contact cap. Good for a client with a big list who sends rarely.
- Kit's free plan is the most generous on list size, but it has no automated sequences and keeps Kit branding.
Klaviyo: the pick for online shops
Klaviyo is built around flows: welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back. It pulls order data from the store and uses it to trigger and personalize emails.
- Best for: Shopify and WooCommerce brands where email drives revenue.
- Watch out for: price. It bills by active profiles, and the free plan's 500 emails run out with one weekly newsletter to 250 people.
- Weak spot: the weekly content newsletter. Flows run themselves, the campaign gets forgotten. We wrote a whole guide on sending a Klaviyo newsletter from your social calendar.
Kit: the pick for creators
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is made for people who sell their own expertise: coaches, writers, course creators, podcasters.
- Best for: a creator who grows a list fast and sells digital products or paid newsletters.
- Why: the free plan holds up to 10,000 subscribers, and paid plans add sequences, RSS campaigns and a recommendations network.
- Watch out for: the jump to paid is the steepest here, $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers.
Brevo and MailerLite: the picks for local businesses
For a dentist, a restaurant or a local shop that sends one newsletter a month, both are cheaper than Mailchimp for the same job.
Brevo fits a client with a large list that sends rarely, because you pay for emails, not contacts. It also sends SMS, with credits sold separately, if the client wants texts for promos.
MailerLite fits a client who wants a clean editor, a landing page and signup forms at a low price. The free plan's 2,500 emails a month covers a monthly newsletter to a small list.
Mailchimp: the pick when the client already has it
Mailchimp is the name every client knows, and many already have a list there. Moving a working list costs time and risks deliverability, so in our experience the right call is usually to keep it.
- Best for: general businesses, nonprofits, anyone with years of history in it.
- Watch out for: the free plan's 250-per-day cap, and spam folders when the sender domain is not authenticated. Here is the fix for Mailchimp emails going to spam.
Personalization tags differ in every tool
If you write newsletters for several clients, this trips people up. The same first-name greeting is written five ways:
- Mailchimp:
*|FNAME|* - Klaviyo:
{{ first_name }} - Brevo:
{{ contact.FIRSTNAME }} - Kit:
{{ subscriber.first_name }} - MailerLite:
{$name}
Use the client's own tag, and test-send before every first campaign.
Run all five from one calendar
Here is the agency problem: five clients, five email tools, five logins, and newsletters planned nowhere near the social posts they should echo.
Mydrop is the social media OS for agencies and multi-brand teams, managing 67,000+ posts, and its newsletter channel sends a campaign through each client's own account: Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Brevo, Kit or MailerLite.
- One publish flow for all five. Write the email like a post: subject, preview text, headings, links and images.
- Each client keeps their tool and their list. The email goes out from their account, to their subscribers.
- Their tags stay. Write the client's own merge tag and their tool fills it in.
- A spam warning when the client's sender domain is not authenticated, before you send.
- On the same content calendar as the client's Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok posts, with client approval before it goes out.
Kit, Klaviyo and Brevo connect by signing in. MailerLite connects with an API key, and it only accepts emails written outside its editor on its Power plan (the plan MailerLite's sign-up still calls Advanced).
What Mydrop does not do: build Klaviyo flows or Kit sequences, send SMS, use segments, or show open and click rates. Those stay in each email tool.
Your next step
List your clients in three columns: shop, creator, local business. Anyone already happy on a tool stays on it. For new clients, start with the free plan of the matching tool from the table above, then put their first newsletter on the same calendar as their posts this week.
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