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.
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.
Six things they can't do, and you need.
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.
Cannabis SMS requires special carrier registrations (10DLC + cannabis vertical). Generic ESPs typically don't have them, so your texts may not deliver.
Your customer data lives in Dutchie or Treez. Klaviyo expects Shopify. Manual CSV uploads, daily, forever.
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.
Per-state SMS tooling, age-verification, compliance opt-ins. Sticky gives you the tools to handle them. Generic ESPs make you build them from scratch.
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.
What to ask each one before you renew.
- Built around ecommerce carts, not a dispensary POS
- SMS runs through a third-party passthrough, not a cannabis-native route
- Ask: is cannabis restricted in your acceptable-use policy?
- 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?
- 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
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.