How to reduce Klaviyo active profiles after cleaning up Shopify duplicates

Klaviyo bills by active profiles, and a lower count lowers your bill only when it falls below a limit of your plan. We read Klaviyo’s pages on November 1, 2026, and its rules change, so check your own account.

What do active profiles mean on Klaviyo?

An active profile on Klaviyo is one that Klaviyo can email, as Klaviyo’s billing page says.

“Any profile, regardless of consent status, that can be emailed through Klaviyo is considered an active profile.”

Consent does not enter into it: a shopper who never subscribed is an active profile (in plain words: a contact Klaviyo can email, and the kind it counts toward your plan) if Klaviyo can email the address. Two kinds of profile fall outside the count:

• A phone number only. It does not count toward the Profiles and Email plan.
• A profile suppressed from email. It drops out once Klaviyo processes the suppression.

Suppress, delete or merge: what each one does

Suppressing and deleting take a profile out of your active count. Klaviyo’s pages do not state what a merge does to it.

Klaviyo advises: “Generally, you should aim to suppress rather than delete profiles.” Suppressed profiles stay in your account for reporting, so delete only when you are certain you no longer need the profile.

How do you delete or export Klaviyo profiles?

To delete a Klaviyo profile, open its Profile actions menu and choose Delete Profile. Klaviyo says deleting “permanently removes its data and cannot be undone”. To export one, choose Export profile in the same menu. Klaviyo’s page on bulk suppressions and deletions covers many profiles at once.

Does Klaviyo charge for suppressed profiles?

On a Profiles and Email plan, Klaviyo does not count suppressed profiles once suppression is processed. The exception is Advanced KDP, which Klaviyo says is based on total profiles, including suppressed ones, so check your billing model first.

How do I suppress inactive profiles in Klaviyo?

To suppress inactive profiles in Klaviyo, pick the profiles that have gone quiet for a long time and suppress them instead of deleting them. Klaviyo describes an inactive profile as one with a long, sustained period of no website visits, purchases or marketing engagement.

• Think about buying cycles first, as Klaviyo advises.
• Try one last sunset flow. Then suppress or delete the profiles that do not respond.
• Keep the ones that matter for deliverability. Klaviyo advises an unengaged segment. Leave those contacts out of regular campaigns, and consider their buying cycle and a chance to re-engage them before you suppress anyone who has stayed inactive.
• Use Klaviyo’s tools. Its Suppressed profiles page highlights long-term inactive profiles, and the bulk suppression dialog can keep recently engaged ones active. Thresholds change, so read the dialog in your account.

What is the difference between Klaviyo profiles and subscribers?

A subscriber is a profile that has consented to email marketing, and an active profile is one Klaviyo can email. Klaviyo’s page on active email profiles adds that active does not mean subscribed or recently engaged, so your billing count can be higher than your subscriber count. Why Shopify and Klaviyo subscriber counts don’t match compares the two systems.

How do I merge profiles in Klaviyo?

To merge profiles in Klaviyo, open the profile you want to remove, choose Merge profile in Profile actions, select the profile you want to keep and click Merge profiles. These are the steps on Klaviyo’s help page for deleting, merging and exporting a profile. The merge takes a few moments.

Klaviyo copies the removed profile’s event data to the kept profile and adds the removed profile’s properties where the kept one has none. A valid timezone on the removed profile replaces the kept one, and the location comes from whichever profile has more detail.

Is a merge in Klaviyo permanent?

Yes. Klaviyo’s help page on profiles says a merge is permanent and warns: “Only merge profiles that belong to the same person.”

Review the kept profile’s consent and suppression status before you send. Klaviyo also merges profiles by itself when one action links their identifiers, such as a checkout with both an email address and a phone number. Duplicate Klaviyo profiles from Shopify covers when that happens, and what happens to consent when you merge covers the consent cases.

When does a lower count change your bill?

A lower count changes your bill when it moves you to a lower plan. Klaviyo says every account has a base plan that depends on “the number of active profiles you have in your account and the number of emails you send”. Its billing page adds:

“Your Profiles and Email plan does not automatically downgrade just because you reduce profiles.”

Its active profile management page says you may need to choose a lower plan unless auto-downgrade is enabled. After a large cleanup, “the profile count displayed in billing may take up to 72 hours to refresh”. Going over a plan’s limit does not stop you from sending.

We publish no tier limits or prices, because Klaviyo changes them. Your billing page shows your plan’s limit and your count. For other platforms, see how email platforms bill for contacts.

Work out your own count

Your new count is:

Count after cleanup = count now − profiles that were active and stop counting

• Count each profile once, even when it is suppressed and also merged.
• Count a merged pair as one profile, and only when both could be emailed before the merge.
• Leave out profiles already out of the count.

This formula is our own arithmetic from Klaviyo’s definition, not Klaviyo’s figure. For example: a made-up account shows 1,000 active profiles. A cleanup suppresses 60 active profiles, deletes 20 and merges 10 pairs of emailable profiles, with no profile in two groups. That is 60 + 20 + 10 = 90 profiles that stop counting, so 1,000 − 90 = 910. Worked example (made up) These numbers are not a typical duplicate rate or a saving: your bill changes only if the new count falls below a plan limit.

What happens in Klaviyo when two customers merge in Shopify

Klaviyo’s help pages do not say whether a Shopify merge reaches Klaviyo, so this guide does not say either way. The pages do cover these points.

• Shopify’s side. Shopify’s webhook reference lists a customers/merge topic but not when it fires.
• Klaviyo’s side. The Shopify data reference says Klaviyo creates a unique profile for every customer it syncs, and “Please note that profiles deleted in Shopify are not correspondingly deleted in Klaviyo.” It does not say whether a merge counts as a deletion, and neither that page nor Klaviyo’s Getting started with Shopify page mentions merging Shopify customers.
• A merchant’s report. In October 2023 a member of Klaviyo’s community wrote that merges made in Shopify are not passed on to Klaviyo. A reply said Klaviyo’s profile merge API had only just been added and hoped the Shopify integration would follow. Two later posts, in March and August 2025, ask whether it had been released, with no answer from Klaviyo on the page. This is one member’s 2023 account, not Klaviyo documentation, and Klaviyo may have changed since.

To settle it for your own store, search Klaviyo for both email addresses of a merge you made in Shopify and see whether one profile or two remain. Two profiles that can both be emailed both count.

What MergeGuard does

MergeGuard merges the duplicate customers in Shopify. The Klaviyo step is a separate setting, Merge repeat profiles in Klaviyo, in Settings, Integrations. It is off until you turn it on and needs a plan that includes Klaviyo merging.

With the setting on, MergeGuard asks Klaviyo to merge each merged-away customer’s profile into the kept customer’s profile after it finishes a group in Shopify, one pair at a time.

• Outside merges. Merges you make in the Shopify admin outside MergeGuard are not mirrored.
• Skipped pairs. Some pairs are skipped, such as when the merged customer has no separate Klaviyo profile, and History shows why.
• Consent. Klaviyo’s merge rules decide the merged profile’s consent and suppression. MergeGuard does not copy, change or reapply them.
• Permanent. MergeGuard’s turn-on dialog says a Klaviyo merge is permanent.

MergeGuard makes no claim about what this does to your count, so check your billing page. The steps are in merge repeat profiles in Klaviyo, and the integration is on the Klaviyo page.

How to clean up Klaviyo profiles, in order

To clean up Klaviyo profiles, work in this order.