Until February 2025, Klaviyo billed you based on the contacts you actively emailed each month. If you had 15,000 people on your list but only emailed 8,000 of them, you paid for 8,000. That was already expensive — but it was at least predictable.
The 2025 pricing update changed this fundamentally. Klaviyo now charges based on active profiles — every contact in your account, whether you email them or not. Unengaged subscribers who haven’t opened an email in two years. People who signed up for a discount code and never bought. All of them count.
The compounding effect is brutal. As you run ads, collect email addresses at checkout, and grow your list through popups and campaigns, your Klaviyo bill climbs automatically — even when your revenue doesn’t.
What most stores actually use Klaviyo for
The honest truth is that 90% of Shopify stores use Klaviyo for four things: a welcome email sequence, an abandoned cart flow, a post-purchase sequence, and occasional broadcast campaigns. These are not advanced features. Systeme.io provides all four on its free plan — without billing you for unengaged subscribers.