Sticky
Built for ecom. Not for cannabis.

Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Attentive, they don't know why your customers come in on Green Wednesday.

Generic ESPs were built for Shopify shops, not licensed dispensaries. They don't read your POS, can't run wallet loyalty, and can't do age-gated SMS. Most also name cannabis as a restricted industry in their own acceptable-use policy, which is worth reading before your next renewal.

your-esp.com
Account suspended

Most general-purpose email and SMS platforms name cannabis as a prohibited or restricted industry somewhere in their acceptable-use policy. You usually find out on the day it matters.

Last campaign
🔥 Friday Flower Drop, 30% off
Status: FROZEN, under review
Recipients: 0 of 12,840
Illustration, not a screenshot. Go and read your own provider's acceptable-use policy and search it for “cannabis”. That answer is the one that matters.
Why generic ESPs fail dispensaries

Six things they can't do, and you need.

No cannabis-friendly TOS

Mention “flower,” “edibles,” or “THC” and you're a compliance risk on a platform that wasn't built for you. Accounts can get frozen with little warning.

No age-gated SMS

Cannabis SMS requires special carrier registrations (10DLC + cannabis vertical). Generic ESPs typically don't have them, so your texts may not deliver.

No POS integration

Your customer data lives in Dutchie or Treez. Klaviyo expects Shopify. Manual CSV uploads, daily, forever.

No wallet loyalty

Generic ESPs do email and maybe SMS. They can't issue Apple Wallet or Google Wallet passes. The #1 retention play in cannabis is unavailable.

No compliance posture

SMS registration, age verification, consent capture, banned-term screening. Sticky ships the tools and you set the rules. Generic ESPs make you build them from scratch.

No cannabis CSM

Klaviyo's success team will gladly help you set up a Shopify abandoned cart. They've never seen a dispensary. Sticky's CSMs only work in cannabis.

Three ESPs, three failure modes

What to ask each one before you renew.

Klaviyo
Built for Shopify
  • Built around ecommerce carts, not a dispensary POS
  • Klaviyo ships its own native SMS product, but its terms do not permit cannabis messaging on it
  • Ask: is cannabis restricted in your acceptable-use policy?
Mailchimp
Built for SMBs
  • Restricts cannabis in its terms of service
  • Built for general small business, with no cannabis compliance tooling
  • Ask: if the account is closed, what happens to my list?
Attentive
Built for ecom SMS
  • SMS-first, with no wallet loyalty and no POS-linked balance
  • Ask: will you register my cannabis 10DLC campaign with the carriers?
  • Pricing scales with sends, so growth can get expensive
Case study · 18 stores · first 100 days

What a POS-wired list actually does.

A generic email tool can send to your list. It cannot tell you what the register rang up. Farmer Jane runs 18 dispensaries across Saskatchewan and Manitoba on a spend-linked wallet program wired to their POS. Over the first 100 days, their loyalty members spent 18.5% more per order and came back 3.3 days sooner than everyone else.

Figures from the joint Farmer Jane and Sticky 100-day performance review, measured against the non-loyalty cohort in the same stores. Both order values are net of discounts. It is a cohort comparison, not a randomised test, so some self-selection is expected.

Read the 100-day review
18.5%
Bigger orders from members
3.3d
Sooner back through the door
11.8% of revenue
On 10.1% of orders. Members weren't just showing up more, they were building bigger baskets when they did.
No anonymous operator quotes on this page. Every number above belongs to a named customer who agreed to publish it.

Two things to check before you renew.

Open your provider's acceptable-use policy and search it for “cannabis”. Then open their data-export documentation and find out what you keep if the account is closed. You now know your real risk, and you didn't need us to tell you.

If both answers are fine, stay where you are. If the first answer says your industry is restricted and the second says the list goes with the account, that is the whole reason this page exists.

Stop renting an account. Own a platform.

Free migration off any generic ESP. List import, deliverability warmup, and a CSM who's only ever worked in cannabis.