What it is
Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, is a marketing platform covering email, SMS, transactional email, chat and a light CRM.
Its distinguishing feature is pricing: you pay for emails sent rather than contacts stored, which inverts the usual model and saves real money on large lists you mail occasionally.
It is the platform I point people to when they have twenty thousand contacts and send four campaigns a year.
What it does
Email campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor, segmentation and A/B testing, at a standard comparable to its rivals.
Transactional email through their SMTP or API, which for anybody sending order confirmations or password resets removes the need for a separate service.
Automation covers welcome flows, behavioural triggers and abandoned cart, though the builder is fiddlier than MailerLite's.
SMS, WhatsApp and chat sit alongside, which is genuinely useful for businesses that need more than email and do not want three vendors.
Who it's for
Features
Pros and cons
Pricing
| PLAN | WHAT YOU GET | WORTH IT FOR |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Limited daily sends, unlimited contacts. | Testing and very low volume. |
| Starter | Monthly send allowance, no daily limit. | Small businesses. Choose by send volume. |
| Business | Automation, A/B testing, landing pages. | Regular senders needing automation. |
| Enterprise | High volume and dedicated support. | Large operations. |
Priced by monthly emails sent, so estimate list size multiplied by campaigns per month before comparing with contact-based platforms.
The free tier while testing, then the lowest send volume that covers your actual campaigns. If you hold a large list and mail rarely, this will be considerably cheaper than any rival.
Alternatives
My verdict
Brevo wins on one specific thing: if you hold a large list and send infrequently, send-based pricing is dramatically cheaper than paying monthly for contacts you rarely email. That case is common and badly served by every other platform.
The trade is polish. The interface and the automation builder are both a step behind MailerLite, and you will spend longer setting things up.
Having marketing and transactional email in one account is also genuinely convenient for a small e-commerce business, and it is the reason I would consider it even where the pricing model does not favour you.
Try Brevo →Who should use it
Who should avoid it
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Affiliate disclosure
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes the price you pay. It also does not decide what appears on this page: I recommend tools with no affiliate programme just as readily, and leave off tools with generous ones when they do not deserve the space.