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Billing: Active Profiles vs Recipients a month.

  • 23 April 2021
  • 7 replies
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A bit confused on the Active Profiles/Recipients/Emails/Campaigns related to billing. 

Say we have 137,000 active profiles but are at the $20/month plan that allows (I guess??) 251 - 500 people.

Are we charged $1,600/month even if we only send 1 campaign a month to a segment of 400 people?

Same situation but say we send out 300 campaigns a month with each campaign including 400 different profiles from our 137,000 active profiles. How much will we be billed? The same $20/month right?

Another question, let’s say in a month we send out 1 campaign to a 400 person segment from our 137,000 “active profiles”. Two days after that campaign goes out we re-send the campaign to 399 contacts that did not open the campaign. Will we have exceeded our 251 - 500 people (recipients?)?

Another question, if we have over 137,000 active profiles but never send out a campaign, will we still be charged $1,600/month just because we have that many “active profiles.”

Hope my examples make sense, because I am royally confused on profiles vs active profiles, people vs recipients,  emails vs campaigns ext.

Thanks! 

Luke :)

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Best answer by Admire Marketing 24 April 2021, 00:10

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Hi Luke,

if you’d like to send a campaign to only 400 people, select a plan that allows sending to that size (i.e. 250-500 etc.)

Klaviyo only charges you for active profiles. This means you can have 100,000 profiles and suppress i.e. 20,000 inactive/unengaged ones. You will keep all 100k profiles in Klaviyo, but will only need to pay for 80k

if you want to resend a campaign to the same profile, it won’t count as a new profile.

If you want to pay less and segment your audience so it fits your lower plan, you can do so, but honestly it’s a lot of extra work. (i.e. you have 100k profiles, but choose a 10k plan - you will have to send each campaign 10x so it reaches everybody) & I’d highly advise against it.

Also worth noting, it’s up to you to choose the plan and it’s size first and decide to pay, Klaviyo won’t all of a sudden charge you, it will instead limit your ability to send, if you've reached max available profiles.

Hope this helps! If you need any marketing help, feel free to reach out to me or our agency

George

 

Userlevel 2
Badge +6

Hi @Luukee 

 

Thanks for reaching out in the community!

 

There’s a great article in our help center here that provides an overview of how Klaviyo bills for Emails. I’d also like to mention this guide around SMS billing.  As @Admire Marketing the best way to manage your pricing is to regularly clean your list and suppressing them so they are not active profiles. 

 

I’d also suggest reaching out to Klaviyo’s sales team regarding specific account pricing by requesting a demo from the top right of the klaviyo.com home page or by going to https://www.klaviyo.com/pricing

 

I hope this helps!

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Hi there,

Wondering if someone can clarify further:

I understand the % of active emailable profiles effects campaigns, but am unclear of how it effects flows.

E.g. We have “26,529 of 20,000 active emailable profiles (133% used)” - are 6,529 profiles unable to receive flow emails?

Apologies if this is covered somewhere else, I’m new to Klaviyo and wasn’t able to find it.

Thanks,
Warran

Userlevel 1
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@Warran and @Luukee, your confusion here is not at all surprising. Klaviyo’s billing structure is highly deceptive.

@Admire Marketing also seems confused about how Klaviyo’s billing works, because in their response above they say “Klaviyo only charges you for active profiles.” In fact, the number of active profiles in your account has nothing to do with how you are charged. @marissanunez ‘s suggestion that “the best way to manage your pricing is to regularly clean your list and suppressing them so they are not active profiles“ is also incorrect.

The truth is, their email plans are determined not by the number of contacts in your account, but rather by the number of contacts that you send to in a single blast (plus the number of emails that you send out each month). I go into more detail in this post, but the gist is as follows:

In the screenshot below, you can see how their language is misleading -- the language on the right gives the impression that the highlighted column corresponds with the number of contacts in your account. However, that column is actually the number of people you can send to in a single blast.

 

 

In other words, you could have a million contacts (active or not) in your account, but as long as you only send 10,000 emails per month total (between your campaigns and flows), and you only blast to 1000 people at a time, then you only need to pay for the $30 per month tier.

The article that @marissanunez cites above is also deceiving. It states that “The billing structure is based on the number of contacts in your account.” This, again, is simply not true.

The reasons why Klaviyo leads you believe that their billing has something to do with the number of contacts in your account are twofold:

  1. They want you to self-opt into a higher tier than you actually need.
  2. Klaviyo incurs COGS for the storage of their customers’ profiles, so the more they get you to suppress contacts, the less they have to pay for storage.
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This is so helpful, thank you 🙌

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hi @MattR

 

Thank you for sharing your honest opinion with us! We are always looking to intake customer feedback and improve our documentation! I’m sorry that you feel that our pricing verbiage isn’t clear. Our system is supposed to function in tandem relation to how many active profiles are in your account and how often you’re sending to these active profile.  I can see that a ticket has been opened up for you and someone is following up with you directly to learn how to improve this experience!

 

@Warran to your question: It isn’t that 6,529 profiles aren’t able to receive flow emails, but that you are 6,529 profiles over the limit of your active profile count for your email tier. If you had reached the max amount of email sends in your monthly cycle, then no further profile would be able to receive emails in that cycle. 

 

Thank you for your question and thoughts shared in our Community space!

-

-Taylor 

 

Userlevel 1
Badge +6

Hi @MattR

 

Thank you for sharing your honest opinion with us! We are always looking to intake customer feedback and improve our documentation! I’m sorry that you feel that our pricing verbiage isn’t clear. Our system is supposed to function in tandem relation to how many active profiles are in your account and how often you’re sending to these active profile.  I can see that a ticket has been opened up for you and someone is following up with you directly to learn how to improve this experience!

 

@Warran to your question: It isn’t that 6,529 profiles aren’t able to receive flow emails, but that you are 6,529 profiles over the limit of your active profile count for your email tier. If you had reached the max amount of email sends in your monthly cycle, then no further profile would be able to receive emails in that cycle. 

 

Thank you for your question and thoughts shared in our Community space!

-

-Taylor 

 

Hi @Taylor Tarpley I need to weight in, because I’m still confuse about the consequences of being over my limit of active profiles. I’ve just cheked the answes provided in here: 

But they seem contradictory to me :( 

So my question is, is there a problem if I go over my profile limit? Or can I keep sending my campaigns and flows without trouble as long as the total between them doesn’t surpass my active profile limit? 

The thing is that I want to upload new profiles that opted-in from an external source, but I’m worried that might not work and that I could not send emails to them. 

I’d love if you could explain the consequences of having more active profiles than allowed in our plans. 

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