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Klaviyo versus Sendgrid, Mailgun (or others) for sending transactional email

  • November 14, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 1040 views

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Hi All,

  1. I’m keen to hear/learn from the experience of others with regard to using Klaviyo for sending/managing transactional emails, as opposed to just marketing emails.

    Good information about it here: 

    https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003165732-How-to-use-flows-to-send-transactional-emails

    Arguably, Sendgrid and Mailgun are perceived as being particularly strong with transactional emails, whereas Klaviyo (and MailChimp etc.) are perceived as being particularly strong with marketing emails.

    But ultimately an email is an email, whether it’s sent for marketing (consent required) or transactional  (consent not required) purposes.

    So there’s no obvious reason why Klaviyo wouldn’t be totally fine as a transactional email platform too.

    Indeed it’s ideal to have an all-in-one solution for both marketing and transactional email, than to split between two different platforms. Less is more!

    UNLESS either

    1. Sendgrid, Mailgun, or others offer strong benefits for transactional emails that Klaviyo doesn’t, and/or
    2. Sendgrid, Mailgun or others are particularly cost effective relative to Klaviyo for transactional emails.

    I’d like to hear from anyone else on the above topic, i.e. experiences, any important factors to consider, etc.

    THANKS!
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2 replies

KeviSunshine
Expert Problem Solver III
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  • Expert Problem Solver III
  • 160 replies
  • November 15, 2022

Hi @spaceman,

For me, a transactional email service requires the ability to trigger sending emails via an API.

As it stands right now, Klaviyo is not a transactional email service.

I use Klaviyo for some transactional emails in order for my marketing team to have better visibility (to keep communications to our users in one place). I do that by triggering Klaviyo events via their events API.

However, we still use Mandrill (Mailchimp’s transactional service) as a transactional email service. We do that so we can trigger the emails directly from the code.

I am familiar with both SendGrid and Mailgun, and recently setup a client on Send in Blue and I enjoyed that experience a lot too.

All in all, you can force Klaviyo into a transactional service, but that’s not the purpose.

Cheers,

Kevin.


Taylor Tarpley
Community Manager
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  • Community Manager
  • 2148 replies
  • November 16, 2022

Hi @spaceman

 

Thanks for starting this conversation! Happy to hop in here! 

 

I wouldn’t necessarily say we are an either or kind of service as we happily provide both kinds of emails! While you are more than welcome to use another service for transactional emails, there are added benefits to using Klaviyo for transactional sending such as building your brand’s deliverability as transactional messages typically have high engagement rates. To investigate more about this, I’d reccomend checking out this article written by one of our ‘22 champions @In the Inbox as well as this additional article, linked below. 

 

Thanks for making the Community a collaborative place! 

-Taylor