GUIDE
Ecommerce cart and post-purchase email: which platform runs the flows
Cart and post-purchase email lives or dies on store events: a cart abandoned, a product browsed, an order placed. Omnisend is built store-first around exactly those triggers with email and SMS in one flow. Brevo and GetResponse can run the same journeys as part of a broader toolkit. A plain newsletter platform fakes these flows badly, so pick by whether your revenue depends on them.
Flows that fire on store events
Ecommerce email is not a bigger newsletter. It is a set of automations wired to what a shopper does: leaving a full cart, viewing a product without buying, placing an order, then coming back or not. Each of those is a store event the platform has to receive and act on within minutes. If a tool cannot read your catalogue and order data, its cart flow is a guess, and the guess is where revenue leaks. So the first question is not price, it is whether store events drive the automations natively.
Omnisend, store-first by design
Omnisend (free plan, paid from $16/mo) is organised around a store: pre-built abandoned-cart, browse-abandonment and post-purchase flows, with email and SMS in the same journey, priced by billable contacts. If your revenue runs through a store, that focus pays for itself because the automations expect product and order data rather than pretending to have it. The trade is that a plain newsletter uses little of it. Read how the plans and sending rules work on the Omnisend dossier before you shortlist it.
Brevo and GetResponse as broader picks
If you want ecommerce flows inside a wider toolkit, Brevo (free plan, paid from $9/mo) pairs cart and post-purchase automation with transactional email in the same account and bills by emails sent, which suits a large store list mailed selectively. GetResponse folds store flows into an all-in-one that also does webinars, courses and multi-list management, useful when the shop is one arm of a bigger operation. Neither is as store-native as Omnisend, but both avoid a second tool if you already lean on their other features.
Decide by how much revenue runs on flows
If cart, browse and post-purchase flows are your main revenue engine, Omnisend's store-first depth is worth the focus. If they matter but sit beside a newsletter or a broader marketing stack, Brevo or GetResponse cover them without a dedicated ecommerce tool. Price your real contact count and cadence across all three in the cost calculator, and check the Omnisend versus Mailchimp comparison if the incumbent is your current default.
Questions people also ask
Can a plain newsletter platform run cart flows?
Loosely, through integrations, but the automations expect store events they do not natively hold, so the flows are fragile. For revenue that depends on cart and post-purchase timing, a store-first tool like Omnisend is the safer base.
Do I need SMS as well as email?
Not always, but cart and post-purchase moments are where SMS earns its keep. Omnisend puts both in one journey, so you can add SMS to the same flow later without rebuilding it in a second tool.
What if the store is only part of my business?
Then a broader platform like Brevo or GetResponse may serve better, since it runs the store flows plus your newsletter, webinars or transactional mail from one account rather than splitting spend across two.