Agent-led customer engagement that's built to scale.
Modern teams choose Knock to manage all their messaging in one platform. Ship dynamic, cross-channel campaigns that drive engagement, growth, and retention.
The top reasons teams choose Knock over Klaviyo
One system for all messaging
Manage your product, marketing, and transactional messaging from one place. Send messages across email, in-app, SMS, push, and chat, triggered from API calls, events, or audience changes.
Agent-led customer engagement
Knock is built for agents to do the work. Build complex customer journeys with a prompt, generate on-brand templates, and manage all your messaging from Claude, Slack, or the terminal.
Infrastructure-grade reliability
Knock's messaging infrastructure powers billions of notifications in production for world-class organizations like Vercel, Webflow, and Zapier, with 99.99% uptime, git-style versioning, and full observability.
Ship messaging without limits.
Flexible, AI-native tooling to build any messaging experience you want, without compromising on design, performance, or user experience.
Ship messaging without limits.
Flexible, AI-native tooling to build any messaging experience you want, without compromising on design, performance, or user experience.
Send messages across email, SMS, push, chat, and in-app.
Build complex messaging journeys with a single prompt.
Deliver messages when and where your users expect them.
Send messages across email, SMS, push, chat, and in-app.
Build complex messaging journeys with a single prompt.
Deliver messages when and where your users expect them.
Never build an email again. Generate beautiful, client-safe emails in your layout and branding.
User-first controls. Respect user time with preference centers and send windows.
Never build an email again. Generate beautiful, client-safe emails in your layout and branding.
User-first controls. Respect user time with preference centers and send windows.
Unify and activate your data.
Ingest real-time data from your product, tools, and warehouse so you can trigger relevant, timely messaging based on any user attribute, event, or action.
Unify and activate your data.
Ingest real-time data from your product, tools, and warehouse so you can trigger relevant, timely messaging based on any user attribute, event, or action.
Ingest data from your warehouse, CDP, reverse ETL, and webhooks.
Build dynamic segments using attributes, events, and relations.
Trigger workflows from API calls, usage events, or segment changes.
![[object Object]](/_next/image?url=%2Fassets%2Fhome%2Ffeatures%2Ftrigger-workflows-tablet.png&w=3840&q=75)
![[object Object]](/_next/image?url=%2Fassets%2Fhome%2Ffeatures%2Ftrigger-workflows-mobile.png&w=3840&q=75)
Ingest data from your warehouse, CDP, reverse ETL, and webhooks.
Build dynamic segments using attributes, events, and relations.
Trigger workflows from API calls, usage events, or segment changes.
![[object Object]](/_next/image?url=%2Fassets%2Fhome%2Ffeatures%2Ftrigger-workflows-desktop.png&w=3840&q=75)
Model your data. Sync custom objects for audiences and personalized templates.
Personalize every message. Tailor messaging with AI-powered content, logic, and targeting.
Model your data. Sync custom objects for audiences and personalized templates.
Personalize every message. Tailor messaging with AI-powered content, logic, and targeting.
Knock vs. Klaviyo feature comparison
| Feature | Knock | Klaviyo |
|---|---|---|
| Visual template editor | ||
| Cross-channel messaging support | ||
| Campaign engagement analytics | ||
| Full observability (API logs, message debugging) | ||
| CLI and management API | ||
| Advanced workflow functions like batching, throttling | ||
| Git-like version control | ||
| Multi-environment support | ||
| Schema-enforced trigger validation | ||
| Native in-app messaging components | ||
| Multi-tenancy support |
Frequently asked questions
What's the main difference between Knock and Klaviyo?
Knock is developer-first messaging infrastructure that provides APIs and SDKs for engineering teams to build custom notification systems. Klaviyo is primarily a marketing automation platform designed for e-commerce and marketing teams to create campaigns and flows.
Knock focuses on transactional product notifications and in-app messaging across multiple channels, while Klaviyo specializes in marketing automation and customer segmentation for e-commerce.
Can developers use Klaviyo for transactional notifications?
While Klaviyo can send transactional messages, it's primarily built for marketing campaigns and flows. Developers often find Klaviyo's workflow builder limiting for complex notification logic, whereas Knock provides programmatic control through APIs and code-based workflows designed specifically for transactional product and customer messaging use cases.
Does Knock support marketing campaigns like Klaviyo?
Knock excels at product and customer messaging use cases like user onboarding flows, activity notifications, system alerts, and other product-driven communications.
However, features like Broadcasts and Guides allow engineering, product, and growth teams to work collaboratively to send relevant lifecycle messaging and one-off promotional emails, just like Klaviyo.
Can non-technical team members use Knock?
Unlike Klaviyo, which prioritizes marketing workflows, Knock is purpose-built for developers, so initial setup requires some technical involvement.
From there, non-technical users can easily create messaging workflows, manage notification templates, edit and send one-time messages, ship in-app messaging, and view analytics without any developer involvement.
How do the analytics compare between Knock and Klaviyo?
Klaviyo offers email marketing analytics for campaign performance and customer segmentation. Knock also provides extensive engagement analytics across channels, plus end-to-end observability for delivery tracking, message debugging, and API logs.
Which platform scales better for high-volume notifications?
Knock is built as infrastructure to handle billions of notifications with guaranteed delivery and idempotency. While Klaviyo can handle large volumes, it's optimized for marketing campaigns rather than real-time, event-driven notifications at scale.
Does Knock offer the same channels as Klaviyo?
Klaviyo supports email, SMS, mobile push, WhatsApp, and other marketing channels. Knock supports email, push, SMS, in-app notifications, and chat apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Knock allows integration flexibility with 25+ messaging providers, so AWS-native companies can save costs by using Amazon SES for transactional emails or use Twilio's infrastructure to reach 180+ countries via SMS.
Unlike Klaviyo, Knock also provides native in-app messaging components and integrations with chat apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams, plus webhooks for custom channels.
Can I use Knock and Klaviyo together?
Yes, many companies use both platforms. It's common to see engineering teams using Knock to handle transactional messaging (alerts, updates, collaboration messages) while marketing teams use Klaviyo to manage marketing campaigns and flows.
However, this separation can lead to inconsistent messaging over time, and using two systems ends up costing more than just using Knock to handle all product and customer messaging.
Is Knock cheaper than Klaviyo?
Knock typically offers more cost-effective pricing for engineering teams building notification systems. While Klaviyo uses tiered pricing based on contacts and features, Knock provides transparent usage-based pricing starting at $0 for the first 10,000 notifications, making it accessible for startups and growing companies, with volume discounts for larger enterprise organizations.
All plans include unlimited data ingestion and unlimited channels with no onboarding or service fees, and overages are only incurred by volume of sent messages.
What about compliance and data residency?
Both platforms offer enterprise compliance features. Knock provides SOC 2 Type 2 certification and supports GDPR/CCPA requirements. Klaviyo offers similar compliance but typically requires enterprise contracts.
Knock's infrastructure approach gives engineering teams more control over data handling.
Which platform is easier to implement?
Knock is designed for rapid implementation by developers, with most teams shipping notifications within hours using pre-built components. Klaviyo typically requires weeks of migration, configuration, and training for marketing teams.
If your engineering team needs to ship quickly, Knock's developer experience provides faster time-to-value.
How long does migration from Klaviyo to Knock take?
Most engineering teams migrate from Klaviyo to Knock within 2-4 weeks, depending on notification complexity. Knock's responsive support team help accelerate the process.
The investment pays off quickly through improved developer productivity and reduced maintenance.
Migrate from Klaviyo to Knock
Bring your workflows, templates, and notification logic to Knock with a more flexible, open infrastructure. Reduce vendor lock-in and gain full control with developer-first workflows.