The conversation usually starts outside the ecommerce team. Sales already lives in HubSpot. Service tickets run through it too. Then finance looks at the software bill, notices two platforms holding the same customers, and someone asks the question that kicks off the whole evaluation: “Can HubSpot handle the store’s emails as well?”

It can. And that’s exactly why it’s the wrong question to stop at.

Look at how the two platforms describe themselves today. In its Q2 2026 results, HubSpot introduced itself as the agentic customer platform for scaling businesses. Klaviyo, reporting the same day, described itself as the autonomous B2C CRM. And back in 2022, Shopify invested in Klaviyo and named it the recommended email solution partner for Shopify Plus.

None of that makes one platform better. It tells you where each one’s center of gravity sits. Our view is that the real test of HubSpot for ecommerce has less to do with ecommerce features and more to do with which record your revenue depends on. HubSpot organizes commerce around a relationship: the contact, the company, the deal, the order. Klaviyo organizes it as a stream of shopper events on a profile. Pick the platform whose data model matches how you make money, and connect the other one only where you need it.

This guide covers how to test that fit, where Klaviyo is the stronger choice, whether HubSpot can run abandoned cart flows, how loyalty data fits in, and the three ways to connect Shopify. First, it helps to understand why retail stacks split the way they did. 

Why retail split its stack, and why the lines are blurring

For most of the last decade, the split made sense. A DTC brand ran a commerce-focused email platform for its consumer flows. If it also had a wholesale or sales team, that team ran a separate CRM. Consumer revenue came from high-frequency triggers: a cart left behind, a first order, a gap in buying. B2B revenue came from people managing accounts, quotes, and reorders. Two motions, two systems.

That line has been fading from both sides.

On the HubSpot side, the Shopify Data Sync now brings carts and orders into the CRM as their own objects, and a Shopify overview card on the contact record (added manually for connections made after November 1, 2025) shows total orders, average order value, and product views, along with a sales graph and an AI-generated summary. On June 16, 2026, HubSpot also renamed Commerce Hub to Revenue Hub and expanded it into full quote-to-cash, covering quoting, contracts, subscription billing, and payments. At INBOUND 2025, HubSpot announced Data Hub as the replacement for Operations Hub, which matters here because Data Hub is what you need for custom field mappings on the Shopify sync.

On the Klaviyo side, the platform has moved well past email. In Q3 2025, Klaviyo launched K:Service into general availability, an AI-powered customer service platform that launched with Customer Hub, Customer Agent, and Helpdesk.

Put those moves side by side, and a feature comparison starts to look like a draw on paper. Both are serving brands that sell through more than one motion. But the data model each one was built around hasn’t changed, and that’s where the real differences show up once the platform meets a working store.

Where the data model shows up: Catalog, orders, channels, and team

There are four places where this gets practical. Each one is a requirement you plan for.

Catalog size and structure 

HubSpot’s native sync matches products by product name, stripping capitalization, special characters, and punctuation before it compares. HubSpot’s Data Sync documentation states that Shopify product variants can’t sync to HubSpot, and Shopify metafields aren’t supported through the Data Sync app either.

Klaviyo handles the same information differently. Each Ordered Product event carries the variant name and the variant SKU, and you can filter and target those events by variant options.

Notice the difference. In Klaviyo, a variant is a detail on every Ordered Product event. In HubSpot’s native sync, variants don’t come across at all. If your personalization depends on size, color, fit, or attributes stored in metafields, decide early where that data lives and which system reads it.

Order volume and flow logic 

Orders and abandoned checkouts sync one way from Shopify, and once the first sync is done, records update within 10 minutes of a change. Neither order sync nor cart sync identifies or merges duplicates automatically. Emails built with HubSpot’s cart module need Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise, only work inside a cart-based workflow, and can’t be A/B tested.

Whether any of that matters depends on how you run recovery. If your team tests cart offers and timing constantly, the A/B testing rule will shape the program far more than the sync window will.

Channel mix 

On the standard 10DLC route, HubSpot marketing SMS requires Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise plus the Marketing SMS Add-On; the short code route requires Enterprise. And messages can only go out from US-based numbers, with the standard 10DLC route reaching only US and Canadian numbers (the US Virgin Islands are excluded). Klaviyo SMS works from a documented country list spanning North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, and the same branded sender ID can be used in countries such as the UK, Germany, and Australia, though it has to be set up and registered separately for each country.

If you sell into the UK, Australia, or other countries on Klaviyo’s list and SMS carries real revenue, this one factor can carry a lot of weight in the decision. Both country lists change, so check them on the day you decide.

Team skills and ownership 

This is the factor teams underestimate. HubSpot rewards people who think in properties, objects, workflows, and lists. Klaviyo is built around metrics, flows, and segments. In a two-platform setup, a hidden cost to watch for is a second platform nobody really owns.

When the decision is made on license cost alone, the risks are easy to predict. The DTC team gets asked to rebuild its flows inside a CRM it didn’t choose, variant-level personalization quietly drops out during the move, and reporting turns into a debate about whose revenue number is right. The reverse happens too: wholesale accounts end up in spreadsheets because the email platform has no real company record to hold them.

Some of these can be worked around and some can’t. Data Hub mappings, marketplace connectors, and custom builds all change the picture, and we’ll get to them. The real question is whether the cost of working around each factor is justified for your brand.

Reframing fit: Which record does your revenue depend on?

So stop asking which platform is better at ecommerce. Ask a narrower question. Is your revenue driven by relationships that need managing, or by shopper events that need reacting to?

Relationships look like accounts, quotes, service cases, stockist reorders, and high-consideration purchases where a person often gets involved before the sale. Events look like a product view, an added item, a started checkout, a placed order, a shipment, a delivery, and then the window before the next order. Most brands have both. The useful work is figuring out which one your revenue actually leans on.

Where HubSpot fits well

Brands choose HubSpot for one shared CRM across marketing, sales, and service, and that’s a real advantage. Company records sync between Shopify and HubSpot, though company sync is only available on Shopify Plus, and Revenue Hub adds quoting, contracts, billing, and payments on top. In our view, HubSpot is a strong fit for high-consideration retail (furniture, equipment, made-to-order goods) and for brands with a wholesale arm where an account manager owns the relationship.

Where Klaviyo is the stronger fit

Klaviyo is particularly well suited to brands prioritizing high-volume DTC flows built on event data, variant-level personalization, SMS across several countries, and deep Shopify history. On connection, it syncs the last 90 days of order and customer data first, then works back through older data covering up to 10 years by default, and the events it records include Fulfilled Order and Added to Cart (with behavioral tracking turned on), plus Confirmed Shipment and Delivered Shipment where Shopify and the carrier provide them.

Where Klaviyo has limits

Klaviyo has limits of its own, and each one below comes from Klaviyo’s help center documentation.

• Refunds: its Shopify refund event is recorded only when an order is refunded in full, so partial refunds do not trigger it.
• Shipment events: Confirmed Shipment and Delivered Shipment events sync only if they are available in Shopify, and Shopify provides these notifications only for certain shipping carriers.
• Abandoned checkout setup: you need to turn off Shopify’s own abandoned checkout messages manually before enabling Klaviyo’s recovery flow, or customers get duplicate reminders.
• Custom data: custom objects can’t be sent through Klaviyo forms or CSV uploads, so a developer has to send those records through the API.
• Synced Shopify properties:: custom profile properties synced from Shopify, such as Shopify tags, are overwritten the next time the integration syncs, so editing them in Klaviyo is not recommended.

The two-platform answer

Plenty of brands sit in the middle, and the honest answer for them is both: HubSpot as the system of record for accounts and service, Klaviyo for consumer flows. A Klaviyo app on the HubSpot App Marketplace handles the connection. It’s built and maintained by Klaviyo partner KAV Labs and needs a KAV Labs subscription on top of your Klaviyo plan, and it brings HubSpot contacts and events into Klaviyo for flows and segments while showing Klaviyo email activity on the HubSpot contact timeline. 

Here’s a simple way to see where your brand leans:

Factor	Leans HubSpot	Leans Klaviyo	Consider both
Catalog depth and variants	Focused catalog with little metafield logic	Deep catalog where size, color, or attributes drive personalization	Large catalog plus account-level selling
Order frequency	Lower frequency, high consideration orders	Frequent repeat and replenishment orders	Frequent DTC orders alongside periodic wholesale orders
International SMS	SMS limited to the US and Canada, or not a key channel	SMS matters in the UK, Australia, or other countries on Klaviyo’s list	Consumer SMS abroad, account management at home
Share of B2B or wholesale revenue	Meaningful wholesale or B2B revenue	DTC is most of the revenue	Both carry real weight
Sales or service already on HubSpot	Yes, and they own the customer relationship	No, or only lightly	Yes, but the DTC team runs its own program
Team skills	Team thinks in objects, properties, and workflows	Team thinks in metrics, flows, and segments	Separate teams with separate skill sets

What HubSpot for ecommerce looks like in practice

A useful reference point is Kristen’s Kick Ass Ice Cream, a food and beverage brand we worked with. Its earlier store ran on a separate platform, which left the online store, marketing, and sales operating in silos. We moved operations into HubSpot: rebuilt the site on HubSpot CMS, integrated the Product Library, added third-party payment gateways, and built a purchase workflow connecting products, payments, and the CRM. The case study reports that online revenue rose 30%, which it credits to improved user experience and streamlined operations.

The brand’s problem was fragmentation across its store, marketing, and sales. That’s one case, not a rule, and it didn’t involve Shopify or Klaviyo.

Can HubSpot run abandoned cart flows? 

Yes. Abandoned cart runs through cart-based workflows using the cart module, which shows details of the items left in the cart, such as product name, price, and quantity. Cart emails need Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise. If you’re on the Klaviyo side, our guide on how to create and use a Klaviyo abandoned cart flow walks through that setup.

What about loyalty programs? 

Loyalty usually lives in a dedicated app, and the major ones connect to HubSpot. Smile.io syncs points balance, VIP tier, and referral URL onto HubSpot contacts. Yotpo Loyalty sends program data into HubSpot so you can build sharper segments and personalize outreach, and LoyaltyLion syncs loyalty program data so you can segment on loyalty behavior and send personalized loyalty emails. The thing to plan for is which system owns the trigger: the loyalty app, or the HubSpot workflow reading its properties.

Connecting Shopify: Three routes and what each commits you to

Whichever way you lean, the Shopify connection decides how much of this works day to day.

Route 1: Native Data Sync

Shopify	Direction	HubSpot
Customers	Both ways	Contacts
Companies (Shopify Plus only)	Both ways	Companies
Products	Both ways	Products
Orders	Shopify to HubSpot	Orders
Abandoned checkouts	Shopify to HubSpot	Carts

That’s the current object map from HubSpot’s Data Sync documentation. A few details are worth knowing before you switch it on. Installing the integration adds the HubSpot tracking code to your Shopify store automatically, and any custom field mapping needs at least Data Hub Starter. Contacts match on email address, and selecting the “Only sync contacts with an email address” option reduces duplicates.

For a lot of brands, native sync is enough as it is. It isn’t something to fix. It’s something to understand.

Route 2: Data Hub or a marketplace connector

When you need metafields, line item properties, or custom objects, you either extend the sync with Data Hub mappings or bring in a connector. As one example, Unific’s marketplace listing covers sync for variants, metafields, and line item properties. The tradeoff is another vendor in the chain, another bill, and another place where a sync can break.

Route 3: Custom API

Keep this for an unusual commerce model: subscriptions with their own logic, several stores with different data rules, or point-of-sale data from physical locations. It gives you the most control and the highest ownership cost, because someone has to maintain it long after launch.

The ownership decisions to make first

Before picking a route, settle four things: which system is the source of truth for the customer record, which one owns consent, who watches sync errors, and what happens to historical orders.

Billing is a good reason to settle the first one early. HubSpot bills on marketing contacts, the contacts you engage through its marketing tools each month. Klaviyo bills on active profiles, meaning contacts you can reach, and unsubscribed and suppressed contacts don’t count. Run both without deciding which contacts are marketed from which tool, and you can end up paying twice for the same audience.

None of this needs a new hire. For a lean ecommerce team, it usually means one named owner for integration health and a monthly sync check against Shopify. That habit is cheap, and it surfaces problems while they’re still small. 

Wrapping up 

That brings us to the business end of this article, where it’s fair to say that we should decide the system of record before the tool. 

Mavlers holds HubSpot Elite status, and we’re also a certified Klaviyo partner. We spend our time matching the platform to the data model and operating model a brand actually runs on.

HubSpot can handle a store’s emails. That was never really in doubt. The question was always which record your revenue depends on, and whether your stack is built around it.

So before you ask which tool sends the emails, decide which system gets to be right about the customer.

If you’d like a second pair of eyes on how your Shopify, HubSpot, and Klaviyo setup fits together, our HubSpot and Klaviyo teams are happy to take a look.