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Email/ Contact Cost and Klaviyo Billing Question

  • 25 October 2021
  • 8 replies
  • 618 views

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Hello community!!

I would like to ask happens if I have 100.000 contacts and want to send 1.100.000 emails. What is the pricing plan for this case?

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Best answer by alex.hong 25 October 2021, 20:55

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8 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +58

Hi there @KonstantinaSatori,

Thanks for posting to the Community! I’d love to give you more details about our billing plan!

To preface and provide some clarity here:
Klaviyo's billing structure is based on the following two criteria:
1. The number of contacts/Active Profiles in your account (both inside and outside of your lists)
2. The number of emails you send during the month
And an 'Active Profile' is a profile that meets the following two conditions:
1. Has interacted with your website in some way - whether they subscribed to a list, placed an order, or abandoned checkout.
2. Is not suppressed. 

Similar to streaming services like Netflix, Klaviyo's billing structure is subscription-based, and opt-in only. Thus as a monthly subscription service, we enable you to select your billing plan based on your own usage. And while you have the freedom to amend that billing plan any time you wish to do so, if you downgrade mid-cycle; your account will still be subject to the plan that it was on when you entered your billing cycle.

Please also note that when you select to downgrade your billing plan, that adjustment takes effect within your account immediately. So if you wish to remain on a billing plan until the end of the current cycle, we recommend that you wait to downgrade the account. Additionally, per Klaviyo's Terms of Service - we do not provide refunds or credits for downgrades. This information is laid out at the following resource here.

 

With that being said, I believe in your account settings you can choose a plan that is perfect for you!

 

All the best,

Alex

Badge +1

Hi, 

I got billed 400dk kr/ $61, but when I look under my billing history it says $0?

I changed my email address a while back. Could the bill come from a different account? 

I dont have access to my old email address. 

Can you please help me stop this monthly billing? 

Thanks.

Regards

Regitze 

Userlevel 7
Badge +58

Hi there @Regitze Simonsen,

For all account and billing related questions, please contact support directly as they are better suited to assist with those problems.

 

Thank you,

Alex

Badge +1

Hi Alex,

thanks for your reply. 

I cant find any email address or contact form to send an email to anywhere. 

Could you please provide me with one, or simply send my case to someone who can help.

Thanks.

Regards

Regitze 

Userlevel 7
Badge +58

Hi @Regitze Simonsen,

Here is the resource for contacting support. I have opened up a case for you as well so make sure to check your emails.

 

Thank you!
Alex

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

@alex.hong, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that your response to @KonstantinaSatori above is misleading.

The truth is, Klaviyo’s 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).

In the screenshot below, you can see how the language on the right is misleading -- it 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.

I’m curious why Klaviyo keeps claiming, in all of your documentation and in this forum, that Klaviyo's billing structure has something to do with the number of contacts/Active Profiles in one’s account, when in fact it does not. Can you explain please?
 

 

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +58

Hello @MattR,

Apologies to see you feel that way about the verbiage and language used to describe Klaviyo’s pricing model. I believe to call it misleading or deliberately unclear might not be the most accurate stance. 

I would like to share a general statement I have received from our other department to others on the community:

Regarding the billing model, the verbiage on the email plans page is correct in the intent of Klaviyo’s subscription limits. Profile count is meant as the limit set for upgrading which is why our finance team mentioned the COGS related to data storage of profiles etc. The issue at hand is around monitoring and enforcement of the profile limits. At this moment our system is set up to monitor based on campaign size and total outreach which is legacy code from early in Klaviyo’s development where very often campaign size and profile count were very close in number.
 
Shifts in the email marketing space have created the situation where campaign volume is a less effective indicator of total profile count. While I can see how you would feel this is deceptive, I would argue that it is a technicality or loophole which goes against how the system is meant to function.
 
As mentioned previously, Klaviyo does incur increased costs for data storage as well as message throughput which is why profile count and total sending volume are meant to be the driving forces behind subscription upgrades.

 

Klaviyo charges users based on the amount of contacts in an account and the number of emails sends that will be going out to these accounts. 

 

I see that you have a ticket opened with our other teams @MattR and I advise you connect with them directly and discuss with those teams as correspondence on the Community will only go so far. We appreciate your thoughts and willingness to voice your opinion on this matter and for bringing it to light in our forums.

 

Best,

Alex

Userlevel 1
Badge +3

I appreciate the explanation @alex.hong. While I accept that the inaccurate verbiage around billing is meant to protect Klaviyo’s bottom line until you can get the system functioning the way you intend for it to, it is still inaccurate. So it’s not really about how I “feel” about the verbiage. The verbiage of all of your documentation around billing is simply, by definition, misleading. And it is intentionally misleading insofar as your goal is to get your users to pay for the number of profiles in our accounts, despite the fact that we don’t have to. 

Even in your last response, after the quoted explanation, you repeat the false claim that I was questioning in the first place: “Klaviyo charges users based on the amount of contacts in an account and the number of emails sends that will be going out to these accounts.“ Can we agree that this isn’t technically true? Again, for anyone reading, Klaviyo does not charge users based on the amount of contacts in our accounts. That is how Klaviyo wishes it could bill, but due to legacy code, they currently can’t.

It was a serious bummer to learn that we have been drastically overpaying compared with what we could have been paying all along, and I imagine that a great many Klaviyo customers would be equally shocked and disappointed if they understood how billing actually works (not how Klaviyo wishes it worked). It would be quite a customer service ordeal for Klaviyo if this “loophole” became general knowledge, but fortunately for Klaviyo there’s enough smoke and mirrors around your billing structures to where most customers will never even realize it.

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