Hi ​@cumesy,

Thanks for posting your question here, and apologies for any negative interaction you had so far. I’ll do my best to explain Klaviyo’s billing practices, and if you have any questions about it afterwards, don’t hesitate to respond and ask. I can answer any follow-up questions you have afterwards.

From what you’re explaining, it appears that you’re paying for both profiles + emails (one plan) and mobile messaging (another plan).

Your profiles and emails plan is based on two things. 1). The amount of active profiles (profiles with an email that aren’t unsubscribed/suppressed) in your account and 2). the amount of emails you send. In general, the profile and email plan will allow for 10 times the amount of email sends as active profiles you have. For example, if your plan allows for 1000 active profiles, it will also allow for 10,000 email sends. You can turn off auto-upgrade for email sends, so instead of going over your email send limit and being upgraded, you’d stop sending emails once you reach that limit. That being said, auto-upgrade for active profiles cannot be turned off, and if you’re above your active profile limit at the end of the month, your plan will be upgraded to the next plan capable of housing your active profiles. If you’d like to save money on your profiles + email plan, the best way to do so is to suppress profiles you’re not emailing, or who aren’t opening your emails, and then downgrade your plan.

The mobile messaging plan works a little differently - it’s only based on message send credits. We use “credits” instead of “sends”, because each message you send may cost a different number of credits, depending on the country you send it to, the presence of an image/emoji in the message, or the length of the message. This table below shows how much SMS and MMS messages cost in every country where it’s available:

If you’re on Mobile Messaging auto-upgrade, which you can find in the billing preferences tab, we’ll automatically upgrade your plan once you send enough messages to go over your plan limit, so you can continue to send, rather than have all messaging be stopped immediately until the next billing cycle begins. You can turn this preference off, if you so choose. If you’re seeing additional charges every time you text, it’s likely because you’ve reached your plan limit, so you’re being upgraded so you can continue sending.

Once again, let me know if the above answers your questions, and if not, how else I can help out.

Hi Byrne,

Thank you for your response. We do not send e-mails through Kaviyo, only text. Is it possible we are paying for a service we are not using. 

Our text go to U.S numbers. I understand SMS=1 credit and MMS=3 credits, but how much does a credit cost?

Also can length of text and emoji increase cost, if so what are the specific details so we can plan text accordingly.

Previously Klaviyo had a detailed breakdown of cost which was very helpful. The is no longer posted anywhere. 

Over the past 6 month we have averaged around 650K credits per month, 1 month we used 915K credits. 

what is best plan for us?

Hi ​@cumesy,

If you’re not sending emails through Klaviyo, I’d recommending suppressing every active profile you have, and then cancelling your email plan. Since email billing is based on active profiles as well as email sends, you’ll need to suppress these profiles in order for your email plan to be eligible for cancellation. That being said, suppressing profiles doesn’t delete them entirely, and you can still send SMS messages to suppressed profiles (you just can’t send them emails). So to simplify this:

• If you’re not emailing anyone, you likely are paying for a plan you’re not using.
• You should suppress all active profiles.
• You should then cancel your email plan.

The cost of one message credit is (slightly) variable. As a general rule, the price of an individual credit goes down as your plan goes up. For example, on the lowest SMS plan ($15/month), you get 1,250 mobile messaging credits. This comes out to 1.2 cents per credit. On the $135/month SMS plan, you get 15,000 credits. That’s .9 cents per credit. On larger plans like the $3,825/month plan, you get 450,000 credits, which comes out to .85 cents a credit.

Regarding message length and emojis, an SMS can be up to 160 characters long before the amount of credits it costs double. That means that in the USA, a 161-character message will cost 2 credits, and in Canada, it will cost 6 credits. An emoji restricts this limit down to 70 characters. A 70-character message with an emoji will cost 1 credit in the USA, but a 71 character message with an emoji will cost 2 credits.

I know this all seems pretty complicated, and I wanted to attach an article here that explains our credit system in depth. Note that our mobile message billing is structured this way because carriers in different countries charge different amounts for various message types.

For the plan that’s right for you, the $5,525/month SMS plan allows for 650,000 credits, so you might want to make that plan your default. Then, in the billing preferences tab, choose “Flexible Overages” for SMS, so if you go over that limit, you’ll be billed a one-time charge, but your account won’t be permanently upgraded.

Thank you Byrne,

Very helpful. I agree the $5,525 -650,000 credits is best for us and switching to Flexible overages, we are were on auto upgrade which created problems.

What happens if I change plan today, how does that affect billing for this month?

Do I need to to wait till the end of the month?

Michael Cumes

Also how do we purge 1200 undeliverable profiles?

No problem! What happens when you change your plan today depends on whether your current plan is above or below the new plan you want. If you downgrade to a lower plan, the downgrade will take effect at the start of your next billing cycle, to make sure you still get to use the credits you already paid for at the start of this cycle. If you upgrade, then the upgrade will take effect immediately.

When you refer to 1200 undeliverable profiles, are you speaking about profiles that you attempted to send an SMS to, but received a “Failed to deliver SMS” metric from? If so, we already suppress profiles who fail for certain reasons from SMS marketing. If you attempt to send a number an SMS message, and a “Message blocked” or “Device incapable of receiving SMS” failure is returned, Klaviyo will automatically suppress these profiles, because we have reason to believe that these numbers will never be able to successfully receive text messages.

Other failures, like “Device disconnected” or “Device unreachable” aren’t automatically suppressed by us. If you’re seeing a lot of these errors, I’d recommend creating an SMS error segment and excluding that segment from your SMS campaign sends.

yes all the “failed” deliveries say failed reason “Device disconnected” I have looked at the list of failed deliveries for separate dates and it seems list is almost identical, so assuming we can no longer reach these numbers.

Screenshot shows sent messages breakdown. Sent = 12,165, but when I add delivered, failed, unsubscribed and Skipped it totals 10,483.