Clivipollia pulchra is characterized by the bright orange colour ameliorated with darker, red-brown spiral lines inside the spiral interspaces. The species is therefore called "The Beautiful Ricinula" (Reeve, 1846: pl. 3).
Uniform yellow shells are well known from New Guinea and became described as var. papuaensis, but this colour form is also recorded from Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Shells with an uniform orange colour, thus without the brown spiral bands, occur occasionally within populations of normally coloured ones. The colour of the aperture is usually of a bright pink, occasionally white. Juveniles occasionally show a broad, pale band along the base below the sutural line.
Clivipollia incarnata looks much similar to C. pulchra at first glance but differs in the sharper spiral cords separated by broader interspaces with more secondary spiral cords, the brown spiral lines that are situated on top of the spiral cords (rather than in the spiral interspaces), the shorter siphonal canal and the slightly paler upper spire whorls.
Peristernia schepmani Dekkers, 2014 looks similar in pattern but differs by the protoconch consisting of 1,5 whorls, the broader secondary spiral cords, the broader axial interspaces, the ornamentaion inside the aperture that bears a parietal knob but has a much smoother outer lip, the absence of fine spiral cords on the tip of the siphonal canal, the slightly longer siphonal canal and the presence of fine internal lirae within the aperture. Both species lives at different depths (however some empty shells are recorded from deep water, see Dekkers, 2014: 37).
Engina pulchra (Reeve, 1846) from the eastern Pacific, described as Buccinum pulchrum in the same work (1846: pl. 11, fig. 80) is occasionally confused with Clivipollia pulchra, especially in checklists available on the web. The identical combination of specific name with authorship when both species are placed in Engina without mentioning the original combination has cause an unnecessary and confusing synonymy.