Email marketing
Omnisend - the practical guide.
Omnisend is an ecommerce-first email and SMS marketing platform built specifically for online stores. It positions itself as the cheaper, more accessible alternative to Klaviyo - same automations, segments and revenue reporting, but with a friendlier price tag and a simpler learning curve. For Shopify and WooCommerce merchants under roughly USD 5m in revenue it's often the best value pick in the category.
What Omnisend does
The core covers email campaigns, SMS, web push, signup forms, popups and a library of pre-built ecommerce automations - welcome series, browse abandonment, cart abandonment, order confirmation, post-purchase, win-back and replenishment. Each automation ships with templates, segments and recommended timing so a small store can have a credible lifecycle programme running inside a day.
Segmentation taps directly into store data - lifetime value, order count, products viewed, categories purchased, SKU-level behaviour - and the reporting tracks revenue per campaign, automation and channel. Native integrations cover Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix, Magento and most ecommerce-adjacent tools, with a public API for custom work.
Who it's for
DTC and ecommerce brands on Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce that want serious email and SMS automation without paying Klaviyo prices. Particularly well-suited to stores doing under USD 5m in annual revenue with one or two marketers running the channel.
Pricing, in rough terms
Free for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month with most features included. Paid tiers (Standard, Pro) scale by contact count - Standard starts around USD 16 per month at 500 contacts and rises with the list; Pro adds unlimited email sending and free SMS credits. SMS is billed separately by destination country at carrier rates.
When Omnisend is the right fit
The right call when you run a store, your audience is one CRM (your customer list), and you want lifecycle automation tied to revenue without enterprise pricing. Also a sensible default for stores that want email and SMS in one tool rather than two. A weaker fit for B2B businesses, content sites without a store, or large enterprise brands that need Klaviyo's deeper data warehouse and CDP capabilities.
Watch-outs
Template editor is solid but less flexible than Klaviyo for heavily custom designs. Deliverability is generally good but worth monitoring on first send to a large legacy list. SMS pricing is competitive in the US and UK but can be steep in some markets - model the per-message cost in your top countries before leaning hard on the channel.