Klaviyo vs Omnisend automations

The same series, a different object

A welcome email, a reminder after a product view, and a note when someone leaves a cart are not unique to either product. Omnisend’s automation library includes welcome, browse abandonment, product abandonment, abandoned cart, and abandoned checkout presets. Klaviyo’s flow library covers the same moments with welcome, browse abandonment, and abandoned cart templates. Once the store is connected and the workflow is turned on, both products can send the reminder.

The difference that changes a review is what the automation is made of. In Klaviyo a flow is a trigger plus filters, and each message has its own status. In Omnisend an automation workflow is one map, with one status, and the thing that stops a buyer is an exit condition on that map. A draft you have not activated sends nothing in both. This page is about those automations. It leaves out prices for either platform, because the price does not tell you whether the cart email still sends after the person has started checkout.

What puts someone into the automation

Klaviyo starts a flow from a metric, a list, or a segment. The store events are metrics. The abandoned-cart article calls the checkout metric Started Checkout. The Shopify data reference calls the same family of events Checkout Started. A product view is Viewed Product. A purchase is Placed Order. A welcome series starts when someone is added to the list you selected. The metric has to be the one the account is receiving. A flow pointed at an idle metric looks finished and sends nothing.

Omnisend starts an automation workflow from a trigger, and the preset names the event. Abandoned cart uses Added products to cart. Abandoned checkout uses Started Checkout. Product abandonment uses Viewed Product, with a default filter that the product is in stock. Welcome uses Subscribed to Marketing. Omnisend’s article on running several abandonment workflows together describes browse abandonment as the workflow for a person who views a page and does not view a specific product, and product abandonment as the workflow that keeps the specific product. Search abandonment is listed for Shopify only. A contact has to be identified before a cart or a product view can start the workflow. For abandoned cart, Omnisend’s tracking article lists an email click, a signup form, and, on WooCommerce, the first order. An email entered at checkout identifies someone for abandoned checkout, not for the cart workflow that starts before checkout.

Omnisend’s welcome article says the preset includes two trigger filters: subscription method is a signup form, and first subscription is true. The same article warns that the signup-form filter leaves out checkout opt-in, imports, forms that are not Omnisend forms, and API subscriptions, and that removing the filter includes every subscription method. First subscription is true limits the series to the first time that contact subscribes on that channel. You can add up to 20 trigger filters on an Omnisend workflow. Klaviyo’s welcome series is list-triggered. With double opt-in, which is the default for every Klaviyo list, the first message waits until the person confirms. List-triggered Klaviyo flows do not re-enter by default.

What stops the next email after they buy

Klaviyo’s abandoned-cart filter is Placed Order zero times since starting this flow. Profile filters are checked when the person enters and again before each email or SMS. A person who fails the filter stays in the flow and moves to the next step, where the filter is checked again. A buyer keeps failing it, so the later emails are skipped. Klaviyo says a large skipped count for failing profile filters is expected on this flow. Trigger filters on a metric flow are checked at entry and are not checked again at send time. Browse uses the same profile-filter idea for Started Checkout, so a person who starts checkout skips the browse email and can still qualify for the checkout flow.

Omnisend uses an exit, and an exit removes the contact from the workflow. The abandoned-cart preset sets the trigger to Added products to cart and the exit conditions to Placed Order or Started Checkout. A person who starts checkout leaves the cart workflow. The abandoned-checkout preset sets the trigger to Started Checkout and the exit to Placed Order. Product abandonment’s default exit is Placed Order. Omnisend’s article on the five abandonment workflows says each one includes Placed order as an exit, and it tells you to add the next stage as well: viewed product on browse, added to cart on product abandonment, and started checkout on the cart workflow. Exit conditions are checked continuously while the contact is in the workflow. Audience filters are checked once, at entry. You can add up to 4 exit conditions, with up to 5 filters on each one. When more than one exit condition is set, any one of them removes the contact.

The two products can both avoid a post-purchase cart email, and they do it with different objects. On the Klaviyo cart flow, the purchase is a profile filter, and the person remains in the flow. On the Omnisend cart workflow, the purchase is an exit, and the person leaves. Omnisend also splits added to cart and started checkout into two workflows, and the cart exit is what hands the person to the checkout workflow. Klaviyo’s standard abandoned cart is the checkout metric, and a separate Added to Cart flow is the neighboring automation. In both products, two series send to the same person unless the workflow you are looking at says they should not. Omnisend’s product-abandonment article also describes Skip Contacts, which keeps out someone who is already in another automation or has recently finished one.

Omnisend’s cart article describes a gap the exit does not close by itself. If the cart event fires more than once in a short period, each event can open its own pass through the workflow. An order can exit one pass and not the other in time. The article says to put at least 30 minutes before the first message so the order event can arrive. Exit conditions apply to contacts who enter after you save them. Someone already in the workflow keeps the exits that existed when they entered. Omnisend’s exit article says you cannot pull one person out of a live workflow. Disabling the workflow, choosing Exit all current contacts, and enabling it again is the control that clears people already inside.

One status for the workflow, or a status on each message

Omnisend shows one status for the automation workflow. A draft does not send. Enabled sends the published version. The settings article separates two actions. Publish Changes saves the edits. Activate Workflow, also called Start Workflow, makes it live. Publishing without activating leaves the workflow disabled. Activating without publishing runs the previous version. You can edit an enabled workflow without disabling it. When you publish, Omnisend asks what happens to people already in the sequence. Complete the sequence lets them finish the structure they entered, and they do not receive steps you added. Discontinue the sequence exits them immediately. New contacts get the version you just published. Edits to the email content apply to the messages. People who already finished do not receive a new email unless they enter again.

Disabling an enabled Omnisend workflow stops new contacts, and you choose whether people already in it finish the current version or exit. You can enable it again later. The report stays. A disabled workflow does not start a new pass for someone who only meets the trigger.

Klaviyo does not use one switch. Each message is draft, manual, or live. Draft schedules nobody. If every message is draft, nobody enters until at least one is live or manual. Manual holds that send for a person to review. A later live message can still go out while the manual one sits in Needs Review. Live sends when the delay is up. Setting one message back to draft skips it, and the person continues. They do not appear in that draft message’s analytics. You can fix one Klaviyo email while the messages you have already approved keep sending. You can also leave a draft in the middle of a series that looks live from the list of flows. An Omnisend workflow that is enabled can still be running the previous published version if the latest edits were not published.

How long the series waits

Omnisend’s delay block starts when the contact reaches it. The settings article says the delay is calculated from the end of the previous block, and that a delay with nothing after it does nothing. Delays can be minutes or months. They use the store’s time zone. Time zone optimization, which sends by the contact’s own time zone, is for email campaigns, not for these workflows. The cart article describes trigger inactivity time separately from that delay. An inactivity period, and the example it gives is 1 hour, waits until the shopper has stopped changing the cart before the workflow treats the visit as finished. Product abandonment is the exception the product-abandonment article calls out: the minimum delay it recommends is 2 hours, so the person has time to add the product before the reminder. The same settings article caps a workflow at 20 conditional splits.

Klaviyo’s pre-built abandoned cart waits 4 hours before the first message. The cart article recommends a first message about 2 to 4 hours after checkout starts, and a second 20 to 48 hours later. If the integration syncs slowly, the same article says to use at least 1 hour and 15 minutes so the order can arrive and the Placed Order filter can skip the buyer. The frequency chart marks one browse email at 2 hours, and two cart emails at 4 hours and at 1 day. The welcome chart marks two sends, immediately and at 4 days, while the welcome article’s pre-built series is three emails. Those chart marks are the library defaults. The delays on the canvas are the ones that will send.

How often the same person may enter is also a setting, not a guess from the delay. Omnisend’s abandoned cart and abandoned checkout articles say the default frequency lets each contact trigger that workflow once every 24 hours. The settings article describes the frequency control more generally. At any time means once ever, and the article says to use that for a one-time offer or a welcome series. A 30-day or custom gap means the contact can enter again only after that gap. Klaviyo’s control inside the message is Smart Sending. Email defaults to 16 hours. SMS and push default to 24 hours. A message skipped for Smart Sending is not rescheduled when the window ends. A Klaviyo list-triggered flow also does not re-enter unless you change that setting. Read the frequency on the Omnisend trigger and the Smart Sending checkbox on the Klaviyo message before you treat a second visit as a second series.

The product in the email

Klaviyo’s pre-built cart email repeats once per item from the triggering event. For Shopify, the link back to that checkout is {{ event.extra.checkout_url }}. The browse email is a different block. It is static, and it is filled from the Viewed Product event. Copying the cart block into the browse flow clears the tags, because changing the block from dynamic to static clears them. Preview against a real event. If the preview lists no events, the metric has no payload yet.

Omnisend’s cart article puts an Abandoned Products block in the email. It fills with the products from the cart or the checkout that triggered the message. The Shop Now button inside that block goes to the product page, not to the full cart. The link back to the cart or the checkout is the personalization variable [[event.raw.abandoned_checkout_url]]. The article says that variable works for abandoned cart and abandoned checkout, in email and in SMS, and that Omnisend shortens it for SMS. A test send from the editor does not fill the block or the link, because a test has no event. The way to check it is to abandon a cart or a checkout in the store. Product abandonment uses the same Abandoned Products block for the product that was viewed. Omnisend does not record a product removed from the cart. The email shows the products from the last add or the last checkout start, including an item the shopper later removed.

The tags do not transfer. A Klaviyo tag pasted into an Omnisend email will not render, and [[event.raw.abandoned_checkout_url]] is not a Klaviyo checkout URL. Rebuild the block in the product that will send it. Phone numbers are a separate limit on the Omnisend side. For Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, Omnisend syncs a phone number after the first order. A first abandoned cart can send email and cannot send SMS. After that order, a later cart can include SMS.

People who already qualified

Omnisend’s cart article and welcome article both say the workflow does not trigger retrospectively. Carts abandoned before you enable it are not emailed. People who subscribed before you enable the welcome workflow are not entered. The welcome article’s options for people already on the list are a campaign to a segment, or a different trigger, Contact enters a segment, which you then have to feed. Exit conditions have the same boundary. They apply to contacts who enter after you set them.

Klaviyo can add past profiles. On a metric flow they are placed by when the event happened, which requires at least one time delay, and only live or manual actions are queued. Draft messages are not. Re-entry rules are not checked for that add. People who already skipped a message are not scheduled for that same message again, but they can be scheduled for a message you added later. The control is how a new series reaches people who qualified before it existed. It is also how an unfinished message becomes a send. Finish the filter and set the status you intend before you use it.

What you can compare from a Klaviyo account

On an Omnisend account, the check is the workflow’s single status, whether the latest edits were published, whether Placed order is an exit, and whether the cart workflow also exits on started checkout so the checkout workflow can take over. KlavyFlow does not connect to Omnisend, and it cannot show that map.

On a Klaviyo account, the same questions are the metric or list, the filter, the delay, and which messages are live. KlavyFlow reads the account after a Klaviyo connection and places the messages on a day-by-day timeline with the creative. It does not edit the flow or send the mail. Flow performance stays a separate view, for 7, 30, or 90 complete account-local days, and a missing observation stays unavailable. The timeline shows whether the delays in that client workspace are the delays you meant to compare with the Omnisend workflow. One brand’s campaign totals are not a stand-in for another brand’s flow.