Klaviyo RCS Is Now Live: What It Means for Ecommerce Email Operators

Klaviyo RCS is live with branded sender profiles, product carousels, and action buttons. Device coverage is 75-80% of US subscribers. Here is the cost and conversion math.

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Klaviyo launched RCS (Rich Communication Services) as a general availability channel in early 2026. RCS runs natively in Android's Messages app and, since iOS 18, in Apple Messages. Where SMS is 160-character plain text, RCS supports full-color images, carousels, quick-reply buttons, branded sender profiles, and read receipts. The delivery mechanism is mobile carrier infrastructure, the same as SMS, but the rendering is closer to an app than a text message.

If you are running Klaviyo for email and SMS on a Shopify or BigCommerce store, RCS is now a third channel available in your flows and campaigns. Whether it is worth enabling depends on your subscriber device mix, your current SMS cost basis, and whether you are running SMS campaigns that would benefit from visual product presentation.

What RCS Actually Is (Technical Brief)

RCS is not a new messaging standard. The protocol was developed in 2008 and has been supported by Android since 2016. What changed in 2024 and 2025 was adoption: Apple announced RCS support in iOS 18 (released September 2024), and carrier support for RCS in the United States reached full coverage by mid-2025. Before those two events, RCS penetration was too fragmented to build a marketing channel around. Today it is viable.

RCS messages are delivered over the same carrier networks as SMS. The difference is in what the receiving device can render. An Android device running Messages with RCS enabled receives a full rich message: images up to 1 MB, video thumbnails, action buttons (Shop Now, Track Order, Reply), typing indicators, and delivery and read receipts. An iPhone on iOS 18 or later receives the same. A device without RCS support (older iPhones on iOS 17 or earlier, or a carrier that has not enabled RCS for that number) receives a standard SMS fallback.

The fallback behavior is the critical design constraint. Klaviyo's RCS implementation automatically falls back to SMS when the recipient's device cannot receive RCS. The content changes: the image does not display, the action buttons become a link, and the message renders as standard SMS. This means you cannot design purely for RCS and ignore the SMS fallback. You design for both and let the platform handle delivery.

How Klaviyo Implemented RCS

Klaviyo's RCS builder is integrated into the existing campaign and flow editors. You build an RCS message the way you build an email: add an image block, write body text, add a product carousel, and configure action buttons. The editor previews both the RCS and SMS fallback versions side by side so you can see what recipients on non-RCS devices will receive before sending.

RCS messages in Klaviyo draw from the same Klaviyo data layer as email and SMS: purchase history, browsing behavior, segment membership, and predictive analytics. A flow that triggers a cart abandonment RCS message has access to the same product data that populates cart abandonment emails. This is the integration advantage Klaviyo has over standalone RCS platforms: the product, customer, and behavioral data are unified.

Branded sender profiles are a new element specific to RCS. Unlike SMS, which displays a phone number or a generic alphanumeric sender ID, RCS displays your brand logo, brand name, and a verified checkmark. This removes the "unknown sender" friction that reduces SMS open rates for brands that have not established their phone numbers as recognizable to recipients.

Cost Comparison: RCS vs SMS

Klaviyo's RCS pricing is per message sent, billed at a rate above standard SMS. The published rates as of April 2026: SMS messages bill at approximately $0.01 to $0.02 per message depending on volume tier. RCS messages bill at $0.03 to $0.05 per message, reflecting the higher carrier infrastructure cost for rich media delivery.

The relevant question is whether the higher per-message cost is justified by conversion performance. Early data from Klaviyo's launch cohort and from third-party RCS deployments on Android suggests click-through rates on RCS messages with image carousels run 35 to 60% higher than SMS equivalents with a link. If your current SMS click-through rate is 8%, an RCS equivalent at 12% represents a 50% improvement. On a 10,000-person RCS subscriber list where 1% of click-throughs convert at a $60 average order value, that is 8 vs 12 orders per send, or $240 in additional revenue per campaign.

Against that $240 revenue lift, the additional cost of sending RCS vs SMS to 10,000 recipients: at $0.03 per RCS vs $0.015 per SMS, the cost differential is $0.015 per message, or $150 per send. The revenue lift covers the cost differential by $90 per campaign, assuming the 50% CTR improvement holds. These numbers change with your list size, conversion rate, and average order value. Run the math with your own numbers before treating the published early-adopter data as universal.

The Device Coverage Problem

The largest operational constraint for RCS in 2026 is device coverage. The United States' smartphone split as of early 2026 is approximately 55% Android, 45% iPhone. Android RCS coverage is near-complete for active Google Messages users, which is the majority of Android devices sold since 2020. iPhone coverage requires iOS 18 or later, which had reached approximately 72% of active iPhones as of early 2026.

Combined, the practical RCS delivery rate for a typical US ecommerce subscriber list in 2026 is approximately 75 to 80%. The remaining 20 to 25% receive SMS fallback. This means you are paying RCS rates for 75 to 80% of sends and SMS rates for the remainder, with the higher-engagement RCS experience only reaching the majority of your list, not all of it.

For a list where your existing SMS subscribers skew younger and Android-heavy (common in streetwear, gaming accessories, and consumer electronics), RCS device coverage may be above 85%. For a list that skews older or toward iPhone-heavy demographics (common in luxury goods, B2B services, professional services), coverage may be closer to 65%. Check your Klaviyo subscriber device data before assuming the coverage number applies to your list.

Whether to Enable RCS Now or Wait

The case for enabling now: branded sender profiles and visual product carousels offer a differentiated experience relative to standard SMS, and early-mover brands are building RCS subscriber lists before the channel becomes commodity. Klaviyo's unified data layer makes the setup straightforward if you are already running SMS flows.

The case for waiting: RCS message costs are higher, device coverage is not universal, and the conversion lift data is still early-cohort. Brands that have not fully optimized their SMS flows are better served by improving existing SMS performance before adding a new channel. An SMS flow with 6% CTR is not a good foundation for RCS at higher per-message cost.

The practical threshold: if your SMS flows are performing at or above your industry benchmark CTR, your subscriber list has over 10,000 active SMS recipients, and more than 70% of your subscribers are estimated to be on RCS-compatible devices, testing RCS on one or two high-volume flows (cart abandonment, post-purchase upsell) is a reasonable Q2 2026 project.

What Omnisend Is Doing

Omnisend announced RCS support in Q1 2026, with general availability expected in Q3 2026. The implementation covers Android RCS with iOS support following the Omnisend rollout timeline. For operators not on Klaviyo, Omnisend's RCS will offer similar branded sender profiles and image support with a similar SMS fallback mechanism.

The key difference in Omnisend's approach is pricing structure: Omnisend bundles SMS and RCS messaging into its Standard and Pro plans with a message credit system rather than per-message billing. For operators on Omnisend Pro ($360 per month for 50,000 contacts), RCS credits are included in the monthly credit allocation rather than billed at a separate per-message rate. This changes the cost math compared to Klaviyo's per-message RCS pricing.

See the Klaviyo vs Omnisend comparison for a full channel-by-channel feature breakdown. For an assessment of your current SMS performance and whether adding RCS fits your 2026 ecommerce stack, use the AI Stack Advisor to get a recommendation based on your list size and platform.