Why I left Klaviyo, and what I built insteadKlaviyo pricing, and the alternative I built on Amazon SES

I started using Klaviyo in 2015 for Rugby Warfare. Sends were unlimited and you paid for the size of your list. It was brilliant: for the first time I could see exactly which emails made money. When I started Turtle Method, I used it there too.

Klaviyo moved to capping sends. My lists were big, so every send ate into the cap. By August 2022 Turtle Method was paying $1,350 (about £1,000) a month. Then, for its list size and 5 million sends a month, Klaviyo quoted over $3,000 (about £2,250) a month, and even then the sends weren't unlimited. Across my four brands, Klaviyo was heading for over $6,000 (about £4,500) a month. So I went looking for an alternative.

I spent months building my own system on Amazon SES, including conversations with the AWS team. A lot of that time went on the unglamorous parts: making it secure and building a good sending reputation so emails land in the inbox.

• A lean stack where I pay only for what I send: under $50 (about £40) a month for one brand, and it can send millions of emails.
• Flows that are easier to build and work better than before.
• Fully custom designs, not templates.
• Better open and click rates than I had before.
• UTM tracking added to every link automatically.
• Anyone who didn't open gets an automatic resend with a different subject line.

The system is connected to RevenueCat, Stripe and my other payment processors, so every email is personalised from the customer's own profile. This is the part that matters most.

It means I can follow a customer from the ad creative they clicked, to their trial, to their purchase, to which emails they opened and which one converted. That's real full-funnel attribution from my own data, the same thing I set up for paid ads.

I say or type the email in plain English. The system builds the design and emails me a preview. I approve it and it sends. Afterwards it reports back, resends to people who didn't open, suggests improvements and removes bounces and unsubscribes so the list stays clean. I send daily emails for most of my brands this way.

The same system handled Rugby Warfare and now runs Turtle Method, ParrotPal and JitsAI. Across my brands I now pay under $150 (about £110) a month for email, where Klaviyo was heading for over $6,000 (about £4,500) a month.

• You're starting out and need email running this week.
• You rely on its ecommerce integrations, templates and ready-made flows.
• Nobody in your business can own a technical system.

Klaviyo charges by the number of active profiles on your list, so the bill grows with the list. When I checked Klaviyo's UK pricing page on 28 September 2026, the free plan covered up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, the entry Email plan was listed at US$20 (about £15) for 251 to 500 active profiles, and the page said the monthly cost scales directly with the number of active profiles. Check its pricing page for your own list size.

Amazon SES charges per email: $0.10 (about 8p) per 1,000 outbound emails on its pay-as-you-go option, plus extras such as attachments (AWS SES pricing page, checked 28 September 2026). Hosting and upkeep are extra.

I can build the same kind of system for you: I help with the build, direct it, set it up and hand it over. After handover you run it, and you look after the keys yourself.

The one-off fee typically costs less than about three months of what you pay for your current email platform. After that you pay your own sending and hosting, and you get attribution from the ad to the email that converts, which matters most. More on the journeys themselves: email and lifecycle marketing.