Thank-you and post-purchase emails have the highest open rates of any email type in ecommerce. Customers check their order confirmation. They look for the shipping notification. They read the delivery update. That attention is valuable, and most Shopify stores use very little of it. Shopify’s default order notification emails cover the essentials but do not include product recommendations, discount codes for repeat purchases, or review requests. They are functional, not strategic.

The apps on this list fall into two distinct categories, and understanding the difference determines which one is right for your store.

Key Takeaways
1
Post-purchase emails have the highest open rates in ecommerce, and most stores barely use them.
2
There are two routes: full email platforms like Klaviyo and Omnisend that send separate flows, or apps like Spently that upgrade the order emails Shopify already sends.
3
Match the tool to your stage. A big store wants automation and segmentation; a small one wants a simple app that just works.

Two Different Approaches to Thank-You Email

The first category is full email marketing platforms: Klaviyo, Omnisend, GetResponse, CleverReach, SmartrMail, and Seguno. These send separate marketing emails triggered by order events. Your customer gets Shopify’s standard order confirmation from Shopify, and separately receives your post-purchase email from whichever platform you have connected. These platforms have full automation builders, segmentation, A/B testing, and campaign tools. They do far more than thank-you emails, but post-purchase flows are one of their core use cases.

The second category is notification enhancers: Spently and, to some extent, Vitals. Instead of sending a separate email, these apps redesign Shopify’s native order notification emails. The customer still gets one email from Shopify confirming their order, but it now looks branded, includes product recommendations, and has a discount code or review prompt built in. The open rate advantage here is real: transactional emails from Shopify are opened because customers are looking for order details, not because a marketing email appeared in their inbox.

Both approaches are legitimate. If you want full email marketing automation including campaigns, segmentation, and list management, use one of the platforms. If you want to make the most of the emails Shopify is already sending to 100% of your customers, use Spently.

What Shopify’s Default Order Emails Cover (and What They Don’t)

Shopify sends six transactional emails by default: order confirmation, order edited, shipping confirmation, shipping update, out for delivery, and delivered. These go to every customer, automatically, on every order. The open rate on order confirmations runs consistently above 60% across ecommerce.

What Shopify’s default notifications do not include: product recommendations, discount codes for the next purchase, review requests, cross-sell blocks, or any branding beyond your store logo. They are plain, functional, and identical for every customer regardless of what they bought or how many times they have ordered from you.

The platforms in the first category add a separate layer on top of this. Spently replaces what Shopify sends with a customized version that includes those missing elements.

Choosing Based on Where You Are in Growth

Early-stage stores often benefit from starting with Spently or the free tiers of Seguno and Omnisend. The effort to set up a full email marketing platform and build automation workflows is high, and the return is lower when your list is small. Improving the order notification emails that go to 100% of buyers from day one requires less setup and produces a return on every order.

As the store grows and a subscriber list builds, moving to a full platform like Klaviyo or Omnisend makes sense. Post-purchase sequences, segmented campaigns, and multi-channel automation produce compounding returns as the list grows. The tools below are ranked by detection share from our dataset, which reflects actual adoption across the stores we scan.

What to Look for When Choosing

  • Notification enhancement vs. separate send: decide whether you want to improve the emails Shopify already sends, or add a separate marketing layer on top of them.
  • Free plan limits: Omnisend and Seguno both offer automation on free plans. Check whether post-purchase flows are available before the paid tier, since some platforms restrict automation to paid subscribers.
  • SMS included: Klaviyo and Omnisend include SMS in the same platform. If you want coordinated email and SMS without connecting two tools, these two are the main options.
  • List size pricing: most platforms price by subscriber count. CleverReach’s pay-per-email model is the exception, which benefits stores with large lists that send infrequently.
  • Shopify-native vs. third-party: Seguno stays inside Shopify admin and uses Shopify’s email infrastructure. All other platforms connect via integration and store data on their own servers.
Key Takeaways
1
Spently customizes Shopify’s native order notification emails, not a separate marketing send. Customers open order confirmations at high rates because they are looking for order details. That built-in attention is why notification enhancers like Spently produce results even without a marketing list.
2
Klaviyo is the most widely detected email platform in our dataset. Its post-purchase flows branch by order value, product category, and customer history without code, and email plus SMS run from the same platform.
3
Omnisend’s free plan includes email and SMS automation, including post-purchase flows. For stores just starting email marketing, it provides more functionality on a free plan than most competitors.
4
CleverReach uses a pay-per-email pricing model instead of a monthly subscription. Stores with large subscriber lists that send infrequently pay less with this model than with a per-contact monthly plan.
5
Seguno lives inside Shopify admin and uses Shopify’s email infrastructure. All data stays within the Shopify environment, which simplifies compliance for stores that prefer not to share customer data with third-party platforms.

8 Shopify Thank You Email Apps: Stats + Reviews 2026