Reviews
Canadian ecommerce SMS retention tools: Twilio vs Klaviyo vs Postscript
Canadian ecommerce SMS retention tools compared on CASL consent, French support, short codes and CAD pricing. Each suits a different kind of store.
What to take away
- Twilio supplies messaging infrastructure. Your team supplies consent records, scheduling and reporting.
- Klaviyo is the shortest path for a store already running email there, because SMS shares the same customer profiles.
- Postscript fits Shopify-first merchants who want opt-in tooling built in and can live with tighter flow limits.
- None of the three removes your CASL obligations, your French review, or the carrier filtering that decides delivery.
Consent rules that apply in Canada
Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation treats a marketing text as a commercial electronic message, so the consent standard matches the one used for email. Express consent is the safe footing. Implied consent can rest on an existing business relationship, with a two year window after a purchase.
Every message needs sender identification and a working unsubscribe. The maximum penalty for a business reaches $10 million CAD (CASL consent requirements). Consent evidence matters as much as the sending tool.
A defensible opt-in flow looks like this:
CASL-compliant SMS opt-in flow
- Collect number with unchecked box
- State message type, frequency, rates
- Record timestamp, source page, wording
- Send confirmation text, ask reply
- Keep records three years after unsubscribe
A double opt-in text is the cleanest evidence you will hold if a complaint reaches the CRTC.
The criteria that decide it
Five things separate these platforms in Canada: consent capture, short code access, French handling, billing currency, and reporting depth. Price is one row in the matrix, not the whole decision. What you keep matters more than what you send, and the ecommerce retention marketing guide names the numbers worth watching before you sign.
Canadian SMS platform criteria
Twilio
- Consent capture
- Build it yourself
- Canadian short code
- Available, weeks lead
- French support
- You supply copy
- Billing currency
- CAD
- Pricing model
- Per segment + fees
- Reporting
- Raw logs
Klaviyo
- Consent capture
- Profile fields
- Canadian short code
- Usually long code
- French support
- Manual variants
- Billing currency
- CAD
- Pricing model
- SMS credits
- Reporting
- Revenue and flow
Postscript
- Consent capture
- Built-in tools
- Canadian short code
- Long code via request
- French support
- Manual variants
- Billing currency
- Often USD
- Pricing model
- Subscriber tiers
- Reporting
- Campaign and revenue
Twilio
- Consent capture
- You build it; APIs are open
- Canadian short code
- Available, carrier approval, weeks of lead time
- French support
- Any language, you supply copy
- Billing currency
- CAD
- Pricing model
- Per segment plus carrier fees
- Reporting
- Raw logs, dashboards you build
Klaviyo
- Consent capture
- Consent fields on existing profiles
- Canadian short code
- Usually a long code
- French support
- Manual translated variants
- Billing currency
- CAD
- Pricing model
- SMS credits beside an email plan
- Reporting
- Revenue and flow reporting
Postscript
- Consent capture
- Built-in keywords and opt-in tools
- Canadian short code
- Usually a long code, via carrier request
- French support
- Manual translated variants
- Billing currency
- Often in USD, confirm at signup
- Pricing model
- Tiers based on subscriber count
- Reporting
- Campaign and revenue reporting
Twilio on a Canadian build
Twilio sells messaging, not retention. Expect to write the opt-in logic, keyword handling and reporting yourself, or to pay a developer. In return you get control over language, timing and number type.
Illustrative list pricing for a Canadian sender runs about $0.01 to $0.03 CAD per message segment, with carrier fees on top. A 12,000 segment month lands near $150 to $450 CAD, before tax. GST or HST applies to that spend, and rates differ by province (CRA guidance on which rate to charge).
Klaviyo when email already runs there
Klaviyo's case is data. If your email program already lives there, SMS inherits the profiles, segments and purchase history. A purchase triggered flow can add a text step without a second vendor, which keeps measurement in one place (ecommerce email marketing).
Costs are less predictable. SMS credits sit on top of the email plan, and Canadian carrier fees exceed US rates. Illustrative monthly spend for a mid-sized store falls between $150 and $600 CAD. French copy is manual, flow by flow.
Postscript for Shopify-led stores
Postscript suits merchants on Shopify who want opt-in tooling without engineering time. Keyword opt-ins, abandoned cart texts and revenue attribution come packaged.
Plans are tiered by subscriber count and often quoted in US dollars, so confirm the currency on the invoice. Illustrative monthly cost sits between $100 and $500 CAD below about 50,000 subscribers. Custom flows are narrower than Klaviyo's.
Where each one wins
- Twilio is right when the team has developers and the requirement is unusual, such as three languages or custom triggers.
- Klaviyo is right when email leads the retention program and SMS is a second channel.
- Postscript is right when the store runs on Shopify, the marketing team is small, and speed beats control.
A store with heavy Quebec sales should test French rendering in each before signing. Quebec's Charter of the French Language requires French to be markedly predominant in commercial advertising, so an English only review misses the risk.
What none of them solve
Delivery is decided by carriers and by list quality. No platform repairs a list of scraped numbers, or an opt-in that never mentioned frequency. Filtering rules change without notice.
Consent records also sit under PIPEDA once a phone number is personal information (PIPEDA overview). Reviews that rank ecommerce marketing tools rarely price the labour those two duties create, and that labour does not shrink with volume.
