Last Updated: February 2026

Attentive SMS Review: An Honest Take From an Agency That's Used It

Attentive is the biggest name in SMS marketing for ecommerce. They've raised hundreds of millions in funding, they sponsor every conference, and their sales team is aggressive. But after managing Attentive accounts for multiple ecommerce brands, we don't recommend it for most businesses.

Our recommendation: If you're using Klaviyo for email — and you should be — use Klaviyo SMS instead. Having email and SMS on the same platform eliminates the data sync headaches, gives you accurate attribution, and lets you build coordinated flows without managing two separate systems.

This article covers what Attentive does well, the real problems we've encountered using it, why we switched our clients to Klaviyo SMS, and how to think about SMS strategy regardless of which platform you choose.

What Attentive Does Well

To be fair, Attentive isn't a bad product. It's a dedicated SMS platform and it does SMS things. Here's what it genuinely does well:

List Building

Attentive's sign-up forms are probably its strongest feature. The two-tap mobile opt-in is slick — the subscriber taps a button, it opens their native messaging app with a pre-filled text, they hit send, and they're subscribed. It's noticeably smoother than most email-style pop-up forms asking for a phone number. If your primary goal is growing an SMS list fast, Attentive's sign-up units are effective.

Compliance

TCPA compliance is non-negotiable in SMS marketing, and Attentive takes it seriously. Their templates and sign-up flows are built with compliance in mind, they respect quiet hours, and they have in-house TCPA experts. For brands nervous about SMS regulations, this is reassuring. That said, Klaviyo also handles TCPA compliance well — this isn't unique to Attentive.

Two-Way Messaging

Attentive's conversational SMS features and AI auto-replies are solid. If you're a brand that gets a lot of inbound text replies and wants to handle them at scale, this is a real feature advantage. For most ecommerce brands, though, this isn't a deciding factor — most SMS is outbound campaigns and automated flows, not customer service conversations.

The Real Problems With Attentive

Here's where it gets frustrating. These aren't minor quibbles — these are problems that directly impact your revenue tracking, your flow performance, and your ability to understand what's actually working.

1. Data Doesn't Pass Through to Klaviyo Properly

This is the big one. When someone subscribes through Attentive's sign-up forms, that subscriber data doesn't always sync correctly to Klaviyo. We've seen cases where profiles get created in Klaviyo without the proper event data, or where the cookie gets reset during the handoff between platforms.

Why does this matter? Because your Klaviyo flows depend on that data. If someone signs up through Attentive and the data doesn't pass through cleanly, your Klaviyo welcome flow might not trigger. Your browse abandonment flow might not fire. Your abandoned cart flow might miss them entirely. Meanwhile, Attentive's own flows trigger just fine — because the data lives in their system.

The result: Attentive gets the credit for the sale (because their flow fired), and Klaviyo looks like it's underperforming (because its flow never triggered). This creates a skewed picture where Attentive appears to be driving more revenue than it actually is, while your Klaviyo flows — which would have converted those same people — never got the chance.

We had to reach out to Attentive support multiple times to diagnose and attempt to fix these sync issues. They may have improved this since we last dealt with it, but the fundamental problem remains: you're adding a data handoff point between two platforms that doesn't need to exist.

2. Inflated Attribution Makes It Hard to Trust the Numbers

Attentive uses a 30-day click attribution window by default. That means if someone clicks a link in an Attentive SMS and then purchases anything from your store within 30 days, Attentive claims credit for that sale.

Think about how absurd that is. Someone clicks a flash sale text on January 1st, then comes back on January 28th through a Google search and buys something completely different — Attentive counts that as SMS-attributed revenue. This inflates their numbers dramatically and makes it nearly impossible to understand the actual ROI of your SMS program.

To be clear, Klaviyo's attribution is also generous — most email and SMS platforms are. But Attentive's 30-day click window is among the most aggressive in the industry. When your SMS platform is telling you it's generating 30x ROI, take that with a mountain of salt.

3. Two Platforms Means Double the Work

Running Attentive for SMS and Klaviyo for email means maintaining two sets of segments, two sets of flows, two dashboards, and two billing relationships. Every time you want to build an abandoned cart sequence, you're doing it in two places. Every time you want to check performance, you're logging into two platforms and trying to reconcile numbers that don't agree with each other.

This isn't just an inconvenience — it leads to real mistakes. We've seen brands accidentally send an SMS campaign and an email campaign with conflicting offers because the teams managing each platform weren't coordinated. Or brands that have an abandoned cart email and an abandoned cart SMS firing at the same time because the flows aren't aware of each other.

4. Pricing Is a Black Box

Attentive doesn't publish pricing. You have to talk to their sales team, and pricing varies significantly based on your volume, contract length, and negotiation. This makes it difficult to budget accurately or compare costs. Klaviyo's SMS pricing is transparent and usage-based — you can see exactly what you'll pay before you commit.

Why We Recommend Klaviyo SMS Instead

The core argument is simple: if you're already using Klaviyo for email, adding a separate SMS platform creates problems that don't need to exist. Here's what you get by keeping everything in Klaviyo:

No Data Sync Issues

When someone opts into SMS through a Klaviyo form, their profile data, browsing history, and purchase history are already there. Your flows trigger correctly because there's no data handoff between platforms. The subscriber who signed up via SMS gets the same flow experience as someone who signed up via email — because it's the same system.

Coordinated Email + SMS Flows

This is where having one platform makes the biggest difference. In Klaviyo, you can build a single abandoned cart flow that sends an email first, waits to see if they open it, and then sends an SMS only if they didn't. Or a welcome series that alternates between email and SMS based on engagement. Use our Flow Builder to map out these integrated sequences.

With Attentive, you're building parallel flows in two platforms and hoping they don't step on each other. It's clunky at best and creates conflicting customer experiences at worst.

One Source of Truth for Attribution

When you run Attentive and Klaviyo side by side, both platforms claim credit for the same purchases. Add up the revenue from both dashboards and you'll get a number higher than your actual revenue. With everything in Klaviyo, you still have one attribution model to account for, but at least you're not reconciling two conflicting reports.

Better Segmentation

The best SMS segments are based on email and purchase behavior: people who opened your last 3 emails, customers who bought in the last 30 days, subscribers who haven't purchased yet. With Klaviyo SMS, that data is native. You don't have to sync it across platforms or build workarounds. Check out our Audience Builder to plan your segmentation strategy.

How to Actually Use SMS Well (Regardless of Platform)

The platform debate matters less than the strategy. Most brands mess up SMS not because they picked the wrong tool, but because they treat it like email. SMS is a notification channel, not a content channel.

Use SMS For

• Abandoned carts and checkouts: The highest-ROI SMS use case. Short, direct, one link.
• Flash sales and time-sensitive offers: SMS open rates are 90%+ within minutes. Perfect for urgency.
• Back-in-stock and price drop alerts: High-intent notifications that convert well.
• Shipping and delivery updates: Customers actually want these. Good for brand experience.
• Post-purchase follow-ups: Review requests, reorder reminders — short and actionable.

Don't Use SMS For

• Brand storytelling or long-form content — that's what email is for
• Weekly newsletters — people will unsubscribe fast
• Anything requiring more than 2-3 sentences
• Messages without a clear, immediate call to action

The biggest mistake we see is brands collecting SMS subscribers and then being afraid to text them. You have a channel with 90%+ open rates — use it. Just use it for the right things. For a deeper dive into retention strategy, read our guide on customer retention strategies.

What If You're Already on Attentive?

If you're currently using Attentive and considering a switch to Klaviyo SMS, here's the reality:

• Your SMS list migrates. You can export your subscribers from Attentive and import them into Klaviyo with their consent status intact.
• You'll need to rebuild flows. Your Attentive flows don't transfer, but this is actually a good thing — you can rebuild them as integrated email + SMS flows in Klaviyo instead of siloed SMS-only flows.
• Watch your contract. Attentive typically locks brands into annual contracts. Check your terms before making the switch.
• Expect a short adjustment period. There will be a week or two where you're getting things set up. Plan the migration for a non-peak period.

We've helped brands through this migration. It's not painless, but every client we've moved to Klaviyo SMS has said their reporting is cleaner and their workflow is simpler on the other side. See our case study on a 500% increase in email and SMS revenue for what an integrated approach looks like in practice.

What About Other SMS Platforms?

Attentive isn't the only standalone SMS platform. Here's how the others stack up:

• Postscript: Shopify-focused SMS platform. Cheaper than Attentive, easier to use, but has the same fundamental problem — it's a separate platform from your email. Read our full Postscript review.
• Yotpo SMSBump: Budget-friendly option that's popular with smaller Shopify stores. Decent for getting started with SMS but limited automation compared to Klaviyo. See our Yotpo SMSBump review.
• Klaviyo SMS: Our recommendation. Not because it's the best standalone SMS tool — it's not — but because the integration with Klaviyo email eliminates an entire category of problems. Learn more in our guide on what Klaviyo does.

The pattern is the same across all standalone SMS platforms: they create data silos, attribution conflicts, and workflow duplication. The specific platform matters less than the decision to keep SMS and email together or separate.

Bottom Line

Attentive is a competent SMS platform with good list-building tools and solid compliance features. But for the vast majority of ecommerce brands — especially those already using Klaviyo for email — it creates more problems than it solves. The data sync issues, inflated attribution, and operational overhead of managing two platforms aren't worth the marginal feature advantages.

Use Klaviyo SMS. Keep your email and SMS on one platform. Spend your time on strategy — building the right flows, sending the right messages, segmenting properly — instead of troubleshooting why your data isn't syncing between two systems.

For more on building an effective retention program, check out our guides on email marketing with Shopify and Klaviyo and tracking add-to-cart events in Klaviyo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Attentive worth it for ecommerce?

For most ecommerce brands, no. If you're using Klaviyo for email — which most serious ecommerce brands are — running a separate SMS platform creates data sync problems, inflated attribution, and unnecessary complexity. The exception might be very large brands with dedicated SMS teams who need Attentive's advanced conversational features.

Does Attentive integrate with Klaviyo?

There's an integration, but it's unreliable. We've experienced issues with subscriber data not passing through properly, cookies getting reset, and Klaviyo flows failing to trigger for subscribers who signed up through Attentive. This was a significant enough problem that it affected flow performance and revenue attribution for our clients.

How does Attentive's pricing compare to Klaviyo SMS?

Attentive doesn't publish pricing — you have to go through their sales team. Klaviyo SMS pricing is transparent and usage-based. In our experience, Attentive tends to be more expensive, especially when you factor in the annual contract commitment and the operational cost of managing a second platform.

Can I migrate my SMS list from Attentive to Klaviyo?

Yes. You can export your subscriber list from Attentive with consent records and import it into Klaviyo. You'll need to rebuild your flows, but this is an opportunity to create integrated email + SMS flows instead of SMS-only sequences. Plan the migration during a non-peak period and give yourself 1-2 weeks for setup and testing.

What's Attentive's attribution window?

Attentive uses a 30-day click attribution window by default, which is one of the most aggressive in the industry. This means any purchase within 30 days of clicking an SMS link gets attributed to Attentive, significantly inflating reported ROI. Always cross-reference Attentive's reported revenue with your actual Shopify revenue to get an accurate picture.