If you’re running email campaigns, you’re already tracking opens, clicks, and conversions. But are you paying attention to inbox placement? You should.
Without strong inbox placement, your most compelling subject lines and thoughtfully crafted content may never be seen. That’s why the decision between Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign, two of the most popular email service providers (ESPs), should go beyond features and automation capabilities. You need to know which platform gives you a better shot at reaching the inbox.
Both Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign have strong marketing reputations. But when it comes to email deliverability, you need to go deeper than the surface-level feature lists. Let’s explore how each ESP handles deliverability and what to consider when choosing one.
Understanding Deliverability Beyond Open Rates
You might expect open rates to adequately gauge deliverability, but open rates only tell you what happens after your email is sent. You’re missing a big part of the picture if you’re not monitoring inbox placement before your email is sent.
Imagine sending out a campaign to 10,000 contacts. If 2,000 of those messages land in spam, you’ll never know. You’ll just see lower engagement and wonder if it was your subject line that caused it.
Deliverability starts before the reader opens your message. It involves sender reputation, authentication protocols (like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC), bounce management, complaint handling, and inbox testing. Not every ESP gives you transparency into these areas. That’s where your choice between Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign can make or break your email success.
How Klaviyo Approaches Deliverability
Klaviyo is especially popular with e-commerce brands and direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies. Its native integration with Shopify makes it an attractive option for businesses looking to personalize customer journeys and automate product-based campaigns. But deliverability is a mixed bag, depending on your sending practices.
One of Klaviyo’s strengths is that it encourages establishing a dedicated sending domain and implementing authentication. This is a win for inbox placement. However, if you skip that step or stick with their shared sending domain, you might inherit a lower sender reputation from others using the platform. That can hurt your chances of reaching the primary inbox, especially with strict providers.
Klaviyo also offers basic guidance on warming up new domains and avoiding spam traps. To truly optimize deliverability, you’ll need to use additional tools to test inbox placement, monitor blacklist status, and track performance over time.
What ActiveCampaign Provides
ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, leans heavily into automation and segmentation for service-based businesses, coaches, and B2B brands. From a deliverability standpoint, it provides a slightly more hands-on experience, particularly if you’re on one of their higher-tier plans.
One major advantage is that ActiveCampaign offers robust support for authentication and even gives recommendations tailored to your sending habits. If you’re on a shared IP, they tend to group you with similar senders, which can reduce the risk of being impacted by someone else’s poor practices. But as with Klaviyo, the real power comes when you move to a dedicated IP and set up your domain properly.
ActiveCampaign pulls ahead in its focus on list hygiene and sender reputation. It actively flags disengaged contacts or those who haven’t opened emails in a while. This helps you maintain a cleaner list, which influences your deliverability. You also get detailed reports on bounces and unsubscribes, allowing you to take action immediately.
Testing Deliverability Across Both Platforms
You shouldn’t choose an ESP without testing how your emails perform. That’s where pre-send testing comes in. You’re missing valuable insights if you’re not already using email deliverability software for Klaviyo users or ActiveCampaign users.
Say you’re preparing a major campaign and testing the same email across both platforms. With the right deliverability tool, you could see that ActiveCampaign lands 77% of emails in the primary inbox while Klaviyo hits just 62%. That’s not a small difference. In real terms, it could mean thousands more subscribers reading your emails every single day.
An email Inbox placement test lets you know whether your messages are ending up in spam or underperforming. It also allows you to compare performance across multiple ISPs, which is crucial if you’re targeting users on Outlook, Yahoo, or Apple Mail.
The Role of List Health and Segmentation
Regardless of your chosen platform, your email list is the backbone of your deliverability. That’s why you need tools and strategies in place to keep your list clean and engaged.
ActiveCampaign has a slight edge here with its emphasis on contact scoring and engagement tracking. You’ll know which users are hot, warm, or cold and can segment accordingly.
Klaviyo, however, integrates well with customer purchase data, which means you can build highly targeted segments based on behavior like product views or abandoned carts. This can indirectly support deliverability by improving engagement; Mailbox providers are more likely to favor senders whose emails are consistently opened and clicked.
Still, neither platform will protect you from poor list hygiene. Remove inactive subscribers, monitor bounce rates, and regularly validate your email addresses to avoid damaging your sender reputation.
Support and Education Around Deliverability
Klaviyo has a strong library of self-serve resources and documentation. That might be perfect if you like to figure things out independently. But if you run into a deliverability issue, response times from their support team can vary. Some users report waiting days for assistance, especially during peak seasons.
ActiveCampaign has more deliverability-focused support on premium plans. Their onboarding includes help with domain setup and warming strategies, and they’re more likely to offer direct assistance if your emails start bouncing unexpectedly. That can make a huge difference when you’re trying to recover from a dip in performance or troubleshoot a complex issue.
Deliverability education also matters. The more you understand how ISPs evaluate your emails, the better decisions you’ll make. While both platforms offer guides, only ActiveCampaign seems to tie education into real-time usage, giving you a stronger foundation for long-term email success.
Integrating with Deliverability Tools for Better Insights
You’re missing a vital tool if you’re using Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign and not supplementing your campaigns with a deliverability testing platform. Even the best ESP can’t predict every spam filter or blacklist that might impact your message. Add an email deliverability software for ActiveCampaign users or Klaviyo users that offers email campaign testing, authentication monitoring, and blacklist status alerts.
With ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo both allowing API or third-party integrations, you can easily connect your ESP with a dedicated deliverability solution. This gives you real-time data on where your emails land, what factors affect your sender reputation, and how to fix issues before they cost you opens and revenue.
What’s the Final Verdict? Which ESP Delivers Better?
If your top priority is email automation with advanced personalization, and you’re willing to set up your sending domain and monitor deliverability on your own, Klaviyo is a solid choice, especially if you’re in e-commerce.
But if you need more robust support for deliverability, especially around list hygiene and reporting, ActiveCampaign may give you an edge.
Neither platform guarantees inbox placement on its own. You must incorporate the right testing tools, follow best practices, and stay proactive. Whether you choose Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign, your success depends on how you use the ESP. Get educated, implement best practices, stay vigilant, and watch your inbox placement improve.