Bloomreach vs Klaviyo: What each platform can do & an alternative

Bloomreach and Klaviyo compete in some of the most important areas for many eCommerce marketers — email, SMS, and mobile push marketing. 

Their capabilities in these areas are similar, although Klaviyo has an edge when it becomes to email and SMS, while Bloomreach is a complete and versatile omnichannel solution.

However, beyond the similarities, Bloomreach and Klaviyo are drastically different platforms. In this article, we’ll explore their main differences to uncover which use cases and teams are better served by each platform.

We’ll also discuss why Insider — our AI-native omnichannel and customer engagement platform — can be an ideal alternative to either Bloomreach or Klaviyo.

Bloomreach vs Klaviyo: Quick overview of their main differences and use cases

In short, Bloomreach is a true omnichannel personalization platform, while Klaviyo is a more specialized solution for email and SMS. This means that:

• Bloomreach offers many tools, features, and channels that Klaviyo doesn’t, like web personalization, advanced analytics, WhatsApp marketing, site search, content management, and more. This makes it a better choice for larger teams looking to integrate their martech stack.
• Klaviyo offers better tools for email and SMS marketing. It also has a lot of eCommerce expertise, tons of templates, and a massive ecosystem of experts who help businesses use the platform. As a result, it’s often the better option for eCommerce brands (especially ones using Shopify) looking to maximize their email and SMS efforts.
• Klaviyo has a free version and affordable plans that Bloomreach doesn’t. However, scaling with Klaviyo can quickly get expensive, so Bloomreach can be the more cost-effective platform for enterprise teams that have large contact lists.
• Bloomreach also has an edge in customer support. Many Klaviyo customers have been dealing with inconsistent support quality over the last few years.

With that in mind, let’s move on to a more detailed explanation of both platforms.

Bloomreach: Omnichannel eCommerce personalization platform for enterprises

Bloomreach is an AI-powered eCommerce personalization platform with tools for marketers and merchandisers. The company was founded in 2009, with its first products being focused on search engine optimization (SEO) and eCommerce site search. 

Over the years, the company has made acquisitions to diversify its toolkit, including:

• Hippo CMS, which helped Bloomreach’s transition into a digital experience platform with capabilities for content management and merchandising.
• Exponea, which was a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP). This gave Bloomreach the ability to collect and activate customer data across different channels and is the foundation of the Bloomreach Engagement product.

At the time of this writing, Bloomreach is not a public company, unlike Klaviyo which had an IPO in 2023 and now trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Bloomreach differentiators

Bloomreach is a much more comprehensive and versatile platform than Klaviyo. 

First, it supports many capabilities and marketing channels that Klaviyo doesn’t — including web and mobile app personalization, site search, WhatsApp, RCS, and more. 

It’s also a useful platform for both marketing and merchandising teams with tools for delivering personalized product recommendations, targeting profitable organic keywords, having two-way conversations with customers, and more.

This makes Bloomreach a better choice for companies that:

• Require content creation and management capabilities.
• Want to unify multiple marketing channels under one platform.
• Need access to other specific tools and capabilities that Klaviyo doesn’t offer, like site search, anonymous user tracking, or advanced web analytics.

In short, Bloomreach is usually the right option for larger organizations with complex needs spanning various channels, departments, and workflows. 

Bloomreach limitations

Bloomreach offers most of what Klaviyo does but some of its tools aren’t intuitive or easy to manage as their equivalents in other solutions.For example, many customers report that Bloomreach’s email tool is difficult to use, with limited template options compared to other platforms. Bloomreach’s SMS capabilities are also rated slightly lower than Klaviyo’s.

As a more robust platform, Bloomreach has a more difficult setup process for most teams. It also comes with a steeper learning curve due to its many tools and functionalities, which is why customers typically give the edge to Klaviyo in categories like ease of use, ease of setup, and ease of admin.

Again, this is mostly a function of Bloomreach being a more versatile platform and not a reflection of its customer support which is rated higher than Klaviyo’s.

Learn more: 11 Top Bloomreach competitors & alternatives (by category).

Klaviyo: Email, SMS, and mobile push platform for all eCommerce businesses

Klaviyo is the leading email and SMS marketing platform for eCommerce businesses in many regions. It was founded in 2012 and has kept a strong focus on the eCommerce industry since then, especially on businesses using Shopify.

The company has expanded its offering with tools like Mobile Push, Web Reviews, and Forms. However, these are still in their infancy compared to Klaviyo’s email and SMS marketing tools which remain the company’s core offering.

As we said, Klaviyo went public in 2023, after becoming the recommended email solution partner for Shopify Plus and acquiring Napkin — a tool for building and deploying APIs. 

Klaviyo differentiators

Compared to Bloomreach, Klaviyo offers more intuitive email and SMS marketing tools. The same goes for its templates and template builder — Klaviyo has more templates and more versatile options for customizing them based on your needs.

Klaviyo also offers pricing plans for businesses of all sizes. For example, small eCommerce brands can take advantage of a free plan and paid plans starting as low as $45/month. Bloomreach doesn’t provide upfront pricing and is typically more expensive as it’s geared toward enterprises.

Lastly, Klaviyo has a large ecosystem of agencies, developers, and other experts, especially for Shopify merchants. This, combined with its pricing, makes it the better choice for eCommerce teams looking for a specialized email and SMS solution, rather than an all-in-one enterprise marketing platform.

Klaviyo limitations

As we said, Klaviyo doesn’t offer nearly the same breadth of features and capabilities that Bloomreach does. Plus, some of its tools — including Analytics, Reviews, and Web Forms — are still quite new with customers reporting various setup and usability issues.

Klaviyo’s pricing is another common concern. While the platform is more affordable than Bloomreach to start, its price increases as the number of contacts in your base grows. 

This means that scaling your SMS and email campaigns can quickly become expensive. Large businesses can easily find themselves in a situation where Bloomreach is more cost-effective than Klaviyo, especially if they consolidate other channels.

Learn more: 11 Best Klaviyo competitors & alternatives for all business types.

Insider: End-to-end personalization platform with the fastest ROI

Insider is our AI-native platform for unifying customer data, predicting future behaviors with AI, and building personalized omnichannel campaigns across 12+ channels.

We’ve helped 1200+ clients across a plethora of industries, like Adidas, Phillips, Toyota, and Allianz, create personalized customer experiences that drive conversions, revenue, and retention. 

Thanks to this versatility, Insider has been ranked as a top solution by G2, Gartner, Forrester, and IDC across categories like:

• Omnichannel marketing platforms.
• Mobile marketing software.
• Customer data platforms.

Here’s how you can use our platform to achieve your marketing and business goals (and why it can be a perfect alternative to Bloomreach and Klaviyo).

Access 12+ channels from one platform

With Insider, you can access a broad range of channels, including the ones offered by Bloomreach and Klaviyo. For example, you can use our platform to reach customers and build campaigns across:

• SMS.
• Email.
• Chatbots.
• WhatsApp.
• Push notifications.
• Facebook Messenger.
• Your website and mobile app.
• Social media and search ads.
• And more.

You can start with just one or a combination of these channels and expand later. For example, many of our customers start with our best-in-class website personalization capabilities and then expand to email, SMS, WhatsApp, and other touchpoints once they see the value from our platform.

Over time, the more channels you consolidate, the easier it comes to manage your workflows and analyze your results. Plus, consolidating your stack under one platform means you can save time and effort, as well as reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO) as you won’t be paying for a bunch of different marketing tools.In short, the ability to access a plethora of channels from one place is a massive benefit for many of our customers across industries like eCommerce, travel and hospitality, financial services, automotive, media, and telecommunications.

Fuel your campaigns with reliable unified data

If you’ve ever used a combination of point solutions like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or Attentive, you likely know how difficult it can be to scale your personalization efforts across all touchpoints. 

Key data often remains siloed off in each platform, resulting in an incomplete picture of the customer experience. This makes it difficult or even impossible for marketers to truly understand their audiences and create tailored campaigns.

That’s why Insider offers a true customer data platform (CDP) which is built to unify real-time data from all online and offline sources, like CRMs, CMSs, APIs, analytics tools, customer service software, marketing automation platforms, and more.

This allows Insider to create detailed, 360-degree customer profiles that contain key insights like: 

• The customer’s name, demographics, and contact info.
• Predictive characteristics, like likelihood to purchase or engage.
• Behavioral data, like interactions with your website or messaging channels.
• Last purchased, visited, and abandoned products.
• And other key characteristics and metrics.

Our Integration Hub also offers pre-built connectors for all sorts of solutions to ensure crucial data is always shared between Insider and other platforms you’re using. For example, you can easily integrate Insider with:

• eCommerce platforms, like Shopify, VTEX, and Akinon.
• Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, SendGrid, and Campaign Monitor.
• Marketing analytics software, like Google Analytics, Amplitude, and Mixpanel.
• Data warehouses and storage systems, like BigQuery and Amazon S3. 
• Ad networks, like Google, Facebook, and TikTok ads.
• CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive.
• And more.

Plus, you can connect to all sorts of other systems, like data management platforms (DMP) or legacy solutions, using our flexible API. 

Our platform also offers advanced segmentation and customer journey analytics capabilities once your data is unified.

For example, you can easily target customers based on standard and predictive characteristics, like locations, browsing histories, previous purchases, likelihood to purchase, likelihood to engage on a channel, discount affinity, and more.

Plus, our platform creates useful audiences automatically — like cart abandoners, mobile app users, and email leads — so you don’t have to build them from scratch. 

For an even easier segmentation process, you can use Sirius AI™. This is our patent-pending Generative AI solution that can build segments for you. All you have to do is provide a simple text prompt with the end goal, like generating more purchases or improving customer lifetime value (CLTV). 

Finally, our customer journey analytics software makes it possible to analyze your results across all campaigns, channels, and customer lifecycle stages.

For example, you have access to customizable analytics dashboards and tools like Funnels, Retention Cohorts, and Message Frequency Analytics that enable you to uncover valuable customer insights and make data-driven campaign decisions.

Work with the best customer support team and extensive templates

Setting up and managing platforms like Bloomreach and Klaviyo can take months for large businesses. 

It requires getting the right data to the right places, involving technical and commercial stakeholders, and overcoming the initial learning curve that comes with any solution. As a result, showing a meaningful ROI requires time, effort, and technical resources that many teams simply don’t have.

Insider solves this issue by:

• Delivering a best-in-class customer support experience.
• Offering easy-to-use tools for building campaigns that don’t require technical expertise.
• Having a massive library of pre-made templates for all channels, various use cases, and different industries.

All Insider customers work with in-house support teams. This means you’re not dealing with 3rd-party agencies or system integrators. Instead, your questions and issues about the platform’s setup and management are always handled by in-house teams.

Plus, our Growth Experts analyze your website and campaign data to come up with strategies that can deliver quick wins when you start the engagement. They also continue to assist you at every point in the engagement to ensure you’re taking maximum advantage of our platform’s capabilities for your business goals.

That’s why customers rank Insider as the best solution in terms of ease of use, ease of setup, quality of support, and time-to-value compared to all omnichannel platforms like Bloomreach, Braze, or CleverTap (and even point solutions like Klaviyo).

Next, all of Insider’s personalization and automation tools are user-friendly and don’t require technical expertise. 

For example, say you want to add personalized product recommendations on your website or in your email marketing campaigns. 

You can do that by choosing from a plethora of algorithms — e.g., location bestsellers, frequently purchased together, or user-based — and using a simple drag-and-drop editor to adjust images, titles, sizes, and add attributes like product reviews.

The process is just as simple when it comes to emails. You only have to drag and drop elements with our no-code builder to deliver tailored product recommendations right inside each email.

Lastly, you have plenty of templates to choose from, depending on your goals and use cases like:

• Delivering price drop notifications to interested users on messaging channels.
• Gamifying the user experience to generate more leads on your website.
• Celebrating customer milestones with timely emails.
• And much more.

These templates enable you to launch campaigns across all channels quickly, without any IT assistance. They’re also easily customizable, so you can adjust your brand tone, logo, colors, or any other elements in minutes.

Personalize each touchpoint and build tailored omnichannel campaigns

Insider offers user-friendly tools for building personalized messages and campaigns across all your channels, including:

• Website: Besides relevant product recommendations, Insider also lets you personalize all other elements of your site or app — including categories, banners, pop-ups, and more. This is essential for optimizing your conversion rates and getting the most out of your budget. Sapphire used these capabilities to increase their average order value (AOV) by 98%.

• Emails: You can easily add customers’ names, cart items, milestones, recommended products, and more using a simple drag-and-drop editor. You can also leverage AMP emails to create web-like experiences that let recipients answer surveys, browse products, and complete bookings, which can drastically boost engagement, completion rates, and email revenue.

• Messaging channels: Insider lets you reach users across channels like SMS, WhatsApp, LINE, and Facebook Messenger with timely product promotions, price drop and back-in-stock alerts, cart reminders, and transactional messages. For WhatsApp, you can even create end-to-end shopping experiences that let customers browse items, add them to their carts, and complete purchases without leaving the app (i.e., WhatsApp Commerce).

• Other conversational touchpoints: Our Conversational CX offering lets you have AI-native, two-way conversations to market, sell, and support users on their favorite channels. For example, Renault used our AI-powered digital assistant to handle WhatsApp inquiries about the car purchase processes, which led to a 93% decrease in customer service wait times,

• Online ads: You can easily target the segments you create with Insider using personalized Google, Facebook, and TikTok ads. For example, Pierre Cardin used Insider to target customers based on their likelihood to purchase, discount affinity, and other predictive characteristics. This led to a 445% uplift in conversions and a 67.95% reduction in cost per acquisition (CPA).

Our platform also makes it easy to bring all your channels together into a cohesive customer journey with Architect — our AI-powered journey orchestration solution.

Architect lets you build consistent, timely, and relevant one-to-one experiences across every touchpoint with a simple canvas-based tool. Again, this doesn’t require any technical assistance — it’s easy to choose channels, conditions, wait times, and much more just by dragging and dropping elements.

You can also A/B test everything in your journeys to determine the most effective approaches for each campaign. For example, you can experiment with different channels (e.g., email vs SMS), titles, wait times, and much more.

Our AI-powered solution can also help you speed up the campaign process by creating journeys based on your text prompts. 

For instance, you can instruct Sirius AI™ to build a journey that’s tailored to a specific customer segment with the goal of driving engagement, revenue, or any other key metric.

For a real-life example of Architect’s power, check out our case study with eCommerce brand NA-KD.

They used Insider to consolidate their customer data and set a solid foundation for their new marketing approach. From here, they used Architect to launch highly personalized campaigns across five channels — email, WhatsApp, SMS, web push, and mobile app push.

This helped the brand increase its CLTV by 25% and achieve a 72x ROI in 12 months.

Insider: An ideal alternative to Bloomreach and Klaviyo

Insider gives you access to 12+ channels from one place — including web, mobile app, email, push notifications, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more. It also lets you personalize your communications across these touchpoints using no-code tools and proven templates for launching campaigns as quickly as possible.

This makes Insider a perfect alternative to Bloomreach and Klaviyo for teams that need broad channel access, personalization tools, and automation capabilities combined with an easy setup, best-in-class customer support, and fast ROI.

In a nutshell, Insider can help you:

• Work with experienced customer support teams that ensure fast deployment and quick problem resolution.
• Use no-code tools for building and automating campaigns across all channels, including on-site, email, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, and more. Plus, our platform comes with proven templates for all channels and various industries and use cases.
• Maximize engagement, conversions, and revenue by personalizing each touchpoint to customers’ needs, interests, and preferences. This is crucial if you’re looking to make the most out of your marketing budget and build long-term profitable customer relationships.
• Unlock the full power of marketing AI to predict customer behaviors, deliver personalized product recommendations, have unstructured two-way conversations with customers, work more efficiently, and much more.

Click here to book a demo with our team and learn how Insider can help you reach your business goals.