Stephanie ColeStephanie Cole

Brevo Review: A No-BS Look at This Budget Email Marketing Platform

October 16, 2025

Linda set the whole thing up for me. She said it took a few hours, which I didn't think was unusual until Chris asked why it took so long. Apparently there's a faster way. I wouldn't know. What I do know is that once it was running, I sent my first real campaign to about 1,400 contacts and got a 24% open rate, which I later found out was actually pretty good. It's not the flashiest tool, but I've stopped complaining about it, which for me is basically a five-star review.

Brevo Fit Check

Is Brevo right for your business?

Answer 5 quick questions and get a personalised fit score based on what the platform actually does well and where it falls short.

1 of 5

Your Brevo Fit Score

0 / 10

Where Brevo fits your situation

Things to know before you sign up

What Is Brevo?

Brevo is an all-in-one marketing platform that handles email campaigns, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, live chat, and CRM functionality. The company rebranded from Sendinblue in May and now serves over 500,000 businesses worldwide with a 4.3-star rating on Trustpilot.

What sets Brevo apart is its pricing model: you pay based on the number of emails you send, not the size of your contact list. This is a big deal if you have a large list but only email occasionally. Most competitors will charge you for every subscriber whether you email them or not.

If you're wondering why you haven't heard of Brevo until now, it's because they rebranded from Sendinblue recent years. Same platform, new name, slightly less awkward at cocktail parties.

Founded in Paris recent years, Brevo has grown from a simple email tool to a comprehensive marketing suite. The rebrand to Brevo recent years signaled their expansion beyond email into a true multi-channel platform. The company now employs over 850 people focused on product development and customer support.

Baroque oil painting of a candlelit writing desk overflowing with sealed letters and envelopes, rendered in warm Rembrandt-style lighting with deep shadows
I wanted a painting of a really old desk covered in a huge pile of letters, like someone had to send out a thousand of them by hand. Linda said it looked expensive and asked where I got it.

Brevo Pricing: The Real Numbers

Here's the current pricing breakdown for Brevo's Marketing Platform:

Jamie asked me what I thought "affordable" meant. I said anything under what my housekeeper spends monthly, which I think is around twelve thousand? He thanked me four times and walked away.

Annual plans get you a 10% discount, dropping the Starter plan to about $8.08/month and Standard to $16.17/month when paid yearly. For a deeper dive into what each tier includes, check out our full Brevo pricing breakdown.

How Brevo Pricing Scales by Volume

The email volume tiers work like this:

Beyond 100,000 emails monthly, you need to upgrade to Standard (up to 1 million emails) or Professional plans. This pricing structure favors businesses with large contact lists but moderate sending volume.

Hidden Costs to Watch For

The base prices look great, but extras add up:

I've never really thought about hidden costs. Our family office handles all the billing for everything. I learned last month that I have subscriptions I didn't know existed.

That $9/month Starter plan suddenly becomes $18/month if you want to remove branding. Add SMS capabilities and extra users, and costs climb quickly. Something to factor into your budget.

Here's the thing nobody tells you: once you hit around 10,000 contacts, the pricing jump feels like getting punched in the wallet. The sweet spot between "free tier" and "wait, how much?" is narrower than you'd hope.

Pay-As-You-Go Option Explained

If you don't send regularly, prepaid email credits are available. One credit equals one email, credits never expire, and you get Starter plan features without a monthly commitment. Packs range from 5,000 to 1 million credits. Useful for seasonal businesses or one-off campaigns.

When you purchase email credits, the "Sent with Brevo" logo is automatically removed from your emails - a nice perk compared to the monthly Starter plan where you'd pay extra for this.

What Brevo Actually Does Well

The email builder was the first thing I actually sat down and used myself, which is unusual for me. Linda had set everything else up – she said it took most of the afternoon and I told her that seemed fast. Apparently it wasn't. Either way, by the time I touched it, everything was already connected, and I just needed to make a campaign. I was expecting to feel lost. I wasn't.

The drag-and-drop part is genuinely hard to break. I made something that looked like a real email in maybe fifteen minutes. I know that probably sounds like nothing to people who do this, but I've used other tools where I spent forty minutes trying to get a button centered. This was not that. Your brand colors and logos save so you're not hunting for a hex code every time, which I appreciated because I would absolutely keep getting it wrong otherwise.

There are a few dozen templates sorted by what you're trying to do – welcome emails, re-engagement, that kind of thing. I found them a little thin compared to what Chris said he was used to from something he used at his last company. I ended up starting from scratch most of the time, which was fine once I figured out the builder. There's also an image editor built right in. I didn't know that was something I should want until I needed to crop something and it was just already there. I hadn't opened Canva in about three weeks by the time I noticed.

The AI writing assistant helped me with subject lines on a few sends. I wouldn't say it wrote them for me exactly. More like it gave me something I then changed four times. But it got me unstuck when I was staring at a blank field, which is worth something.

The automation side took me longer to trust. The visual builder looks approachable – you can see the whole flow laid out – but building anything with more than a few branches started to feel slow. Not broken, just slow. Chris mentioned it seemed clunkier than he expected for complex stuff, and I agreed once I knew what complex meant. My first real workflow was a welcome sequence, and that part was fine. Open rate on that first sequence came in around 31%, which Derek said was good. I had assumed that was just what email open rates were.

What surprised me was being able to put an SMS step inside the same workflow as the email steps. I had assumed those were completely separate things you'd manage in different places. They're not. If someone doesn't open the email, you can have it follow up by text, all from the same place. I mentioned this to Tory like it was a big deal and she looked at me like I should have known that already. I did not know that already.

There is a limit on how many contacts can move through automations depending on which plan you're on. I didn't know we had hit it until things stopped behaving the way I expected. I asked Linda what plan we were on and she didn't know either. That turned into a whole conversation with Chris about upgrading, which I was not prepared to have that morning.

The CRM piece I was skeptical about because it came included and I figured included things are usually not very good. It's actually usable. There are deal stages you can rename, a place to log calls and notes, task reminders. We were using a spreadsheet before. Not a sophisticated spreadsheet. Just a spreadsheet. Jamie moved our open deals into this and said it took him less than an hour. I don't know if that's a long time. I assume not.

The free deal limit is something to know about upfront. Once you're past fifty open deals, you either upgrade or you start closing things you shouldn't be closing just to make room. We did the latter once before someone caught it.

The live chat feature I only looked at briefly. It's there, it works, conversations save. The more useful discovery was that SMS credits don't expire. I bought a block expecting we'd use them up on a campaign and then need more, but the leftovers just stayed there. That sounds like a small thing but I've definitely paid for things that expired before I finished them.

WhatsApp is something Derek asked about because he manages some contacts outside the US. There are some restrictions by country and message type, and it's only on the higher plans. I looked into it enough to know it wasn't something I needed to solve that week and then I moved on.

Transactional emails – the automatic ones that go out when someone makes a purchase or resets a password – were already running when I got involved. Linda had connected those through the API setup. I know they work because I got one myself when I tested the checkout. That's the extent of my involvement there.

Landing pages came up when I wanted to run a lead generation push. They're only available on certain plans, which I didn't realize until I went looking for the option and it wasn't there. Forms are available on every plan including free, and those were easy to set up. I built one in maybe eight minutes, connected it to a list, and it started populating contacts immediately. The double opt-in setting is something Linda turned on. I would not have known to do that.

Where Brevo Falls Short

The deliverability thing was the first issue I noticed, and I only noticed it because Chris pointed it out. He ran some kind of test and showed me the numbers. I didn't fully understand what I was looking at, but he seemed bothered by it, so I took his word that it was a problem. Apparently around 89% of emails were actually landing where they were supposed to, which I would have assumed was just how email worked. Chris said it should be higher. I still don't know what the right number is.

What did stick with me is that the performance seemed to change without us doing anything differently. We'd have a few weeks where everything looked fine and then a stretch where opens dropped noticeably. Linda eventually figured out that we were on a shared IP, which apparently means other senders affect your reputation. She described it like sharing a credit score with people you've never met. I've thought about that a lot.

When I asked if there was a way around it, Linda said yes, but it cost extra and she wasn't sure it made sense for our volume. She handled that decision. I just know we didn't end up doing it.

The breakdown by where emails were going was the part that actually made sense to me. A meaningful chunk, something like one in four, was going to spam for people using Gmail specifically. That felt significant because most of the people on our list use Gmail. I don't know how Linda figured that out but she flagged it during our third campaign and we had to rethink the subject lines.

There are tools built into the platform to help with this. Linda set up authentication and there was a dashboard that showed some kind of sender score. I looked at it once. It had a number and a color. I believe the color was good. That's the extent of my involvement.

The template situation was something I noticed myself, which is rare. There weren't many. I think I counted fewer than fifty when I was trying to find one for a promotional send we did in the fall. They were organized by type, which helped, but within each category there were maybe four or five options. I kept clicking through hoping there was a second page. There wasn't. I ended up using one that was designed for a different purpose and just changed the text. It looked fine. Nobody said anything.

If your brand has a specific aesthetic, this will probably be frustrating. Ours doesn't, so I got through it. But I remember thinking that the tool we used before had more to choose from, even if I couldn't remember what it was called.

The things I actually wanted to use were frequently unavailable on the plan we were on. A/B testing, which I was excited about after Chris mentioned it, was locked. The reporting that shows where people click inside the email was locked. At one point I wanted to see data broken down by device because half our list is probably on their phones, and that was also locked. I asked Linda what plan we were on and she said she'd have to check. She came back and said we were on something mid-tier and that adding what I wanted would cost more per month. I said to just let me know what it would come out to and she sent me a figure I've since forgotten.

The automation limit caught us off-guard around the time we were trying to set up a welcome sequence. There's a contact cap on the lower plans, and we hit it faster than expected. We had about 2,200 contacts running through a sequence when it stopped behaving correctly. Linda spent the better part of a day figuring out why before she found the cap. We had to make decisions about which contacts to prioritize, which felt like the wrong kind of decision to be making.

The daily sending limit on the free version is the kind of thing that sounds fine until you try to actually use it. Three hundred emails a day. I would have assumed that was enough. Tory mentioned offhand that it would take almost three weeks to get through our list at that rate, which I hadn't considered. We weren't on the free plan at that point, but I had been the one who suggested starting on it to test things out before we committed. I don't bring that up anymore.

Team access was a recurring friction point. There were several weeks where both Linda and Jamie needed to be in the account at the same time, and the plan we were on made that difficult. I'm not entirely clear on what the limitation was, exactly. I just know there was a period where they had to coordinate who was logged in, which felt like it was from a different era of software. We eventually sorted it out but I think it involved an upgrade.

Support was fine when we could reach someone. The documentation is thorough and Linda was usually able to find answers without contacting anyone. The one time we did reach out directly, it took longer than expected to hear back, and the response didn't fully address what she had asked. She figured it out separately. I think she prefers it that way.

Brevo Email Marketing Benchmarks

According to Brevo's own data analyzing over 44 billion emails, average performance metrics are:

These benchmarks vary significantly by industry:

Deliverability also varies by region, with Europe generally showing higher inbox placement rates due to GDPR compliance requirements. North America sees decent rates, with Canada outperforming the US slightly.

Brevo Integrations

Brevo integrates with major platforms including:

The API is well-documented with SDKs in multiple languages, making custom integrations feasible for developers. Webhooks provide real-time event notifications for automation workflows outside Brevo.

That said, the integration marketplace is smaller than competitors like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign. Some niche tools require Zapier as a bridge, adding another monthly cost.

Who Should Use Brevo?

Honestly, I'm not even sure who this is best for - I just know it worked for us in ways I didn't expect and didn't work in ways that became obvious pretty fast.

It probably makes sense if you:

We have a huge contact list but we don't email them constantly. Linda said that used to cost us a lot more with whatever we had before. I didn't know that was a thing - that you'd pay more just for having names sitting there. Apparently it is. We also needed email and SMS from the same place because Tory was tired of logging into two different things. That part genuinely worked. I sent a campaign to about 4,000 contacts across email and SMS from the same screen and it didn't feel complicated, which surprised me. Open rates on the first send came in around 26%, which Chris said was better than our usual. I believed him.

It probably isn't for you if:

Derek tried to do something with conditional content - like showing different sections to different people in the same email - and gave up after an hour. He ended up just making two separate emails. That felt like a workaround that shouldn't have been necessary. Also, if you send a lot of cold outreach, Jamie looked into it and said we'd need something else entirely, like Smartlead or Instantly.

Where it actually fits:

Small teams who want sales and marketing in one place without paying someone to stitch it together. We use the CRM for deals now. I didn't realize that was included until Tory found it. It's not fancy but it's there and we didn't pay extra for it, I think.

Brevo vs. The Competition

Brevo vs. Mailchimp

Brevo wins on price for larger lists since it doesn't charge per contact. A 10,000-contact list costs $138/month on Mailchimp's Standard plan; with Brevo, you pay based on emails sent, potentially saving hundreds monthly if you don't email frequently.

Linda mentioned switching providers is stressful. I nodded. Gerald handles all their accounts, apparently. I have a service that does that-I thought everyone did until she kept talking.

Mailchimp has more templates (hundreds vs. 47), better brand recognition, and a larger integration marketplace. The interface is slightly more polished. But Mailchimp gets expensive fast as you scale, and advanced automation requires Premium plans starting at $350/month.

Brevo includes SMS, WhatsApp, and CRM on all plans; Mailchimp charges extra for SMS and doesn't offer WhatsApp or native CRM beyond contact management.

Choose Brevo if: You have a large list, send occasionally, need multi-channel messaging, want built-in CRM.

Choose Mailchimp if: You prioritize brand reputation, need extensive templates, require advanced ecommerce features, prefer a more established ecosystem.

Brevo vs. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has superior automation with more sophisticated conditional content, dynamic emails, and predictive sending. Deliverability is consistently strong. The CRM is more robust with advanced sales automation.

But ActiveCampaign costs significantly more. Plans start at $29/month for 1,000 contacts and climb to $149+/month for Professional features. At 10,000 contacts, you're paying $219/month for Plus plan features.

ActiveCampaign runs circles around Brevo for automation sophistication, but you'll pay 2-3x more for the privilege. If you're just doing basic email flows and not building elaborate customer journey labyrinths, Brevo's simpler approach might actually be a relief.

Brevo is the budget option for small businesses that don't need enterprise-level automation sophistication. If you're just starting with automation and can work within the 2,000 contact limit on cheaper plans, Brevo provides incredible value.

Choose Brevo if: Budget is tight, you need basic-to-intermediate automation, multi-channel is priority over email perfection.

Choose ActiveCampaign if: Automation complexity is critical, deliverability can't be compromised, you need advanced CRM and sales automation, budget allows for premium tools.

Brevo vs. MailerLite

MailerLite is better for forms, landing pages (unlimited on all paid plans), and has stronger, more consistent deliverability. The interface is cleaner and more intuitive. Template selection is better.

Brevo wins on multi-channel capabilities - SMS, WhatsApp, live chat - and CRM features. MailerLite's CRM is basic contact management; Brevo offers actual deal pipelines and sales tracking.

Pricing is similar at lower volumes but diverges as lists grow. MailerLite charges per subscriber; Brevo charges per email sent. If you have 10,000 subscribers but only send 20,000 emails monthly, Brevo is cheaper. If you send multiple emails weekly, MailerLite may cost less.

Choose Brevo if: You need CRM and deal tracking, multi-channel campaigns matter, you have large lists with moderate sending.

Choose MailerLite if: You prioritize email deliverability and simplicity, need unlimited landing pages, prefer straightforward pricing per contact, don't need CRM.

Brevo vs. GetResponse

GetResponse offers webinar hosting built-in (unique advantage), more advanced landing page builders with conversion funnels, and stronger marketing automation on mid-tier plans.

However, GetResponse uses contact-based pricing that gets expensive. A 10,000-contact list costs $85/month on their Marketing Automation plan. Brevo's usage-based model can be significantly cheaper for the same list size.

GetResponse doesn't include native SMS, WhatsApp, or live chat - these require third-party integrations. Brevo bundles everything into one platform.

Choose Brevo if: Multi-channel is essential, you want all-in-one simplicity, pricing predictability based on sending matters.

Choose GetResponse if: You run webinars regularly, need advanced sales funnels and conversion tracking, want sophisticated ecommerce automation.

Brevo vs. HubSpot

HubSpot is a completely different beast - a full marketing, sales, and service platform with industry-leading capabilities. The free CRM is excellent, and Marketing Hub offers sophisticated features.

But HubSpot gets expensive extremely fast. Marketing Hub starts at $20/month for basic features, but useful automation requires Professional at $890/month. For anything serious, you're looking at thousands monthly.

Brevo is the scrappy alternative for small businesses that can't justify HubSpot's cost. You sacrifice sophistication, reporting depth, and the extensive ecosystem, but you keep functionality at a fraction of the price.

Choose Brevo if: Budget is under $100/month, you're a small business or startup, basic automation and CRM suffice.

Choose HubSpot if: You're enterprise-level or well-funded, need sophisticated attribution and reporting, require extensive customization and integrations, budget allows for premium.

How to Get Started with Brevo

Step 1: Sign Up for Free

Start with Brevo's free plan - no credit card required. You get 300 emails daily, unlimited contacts up to 100,000, and access to core features including automation for 2,000 contacts. This lets you test the platform thoroughly before committing money.

Step 2: Import Your Contacts

Upload existing contacts via CSV, copy-paste, or integrate with your current platform. Brevo supports bulk imports and provides detailed guides for migrating from Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and other providers.

Set up double opt-in if GDPR compliance matters (recommended for EU audiences). Configure custom fields to store additional contact data beyond email addresses.

Step 3: Authenticate Your Domain

This is critical for deliverability. Follow Brevo's step-by-step guides to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records in your DNS settings. This proves you own the sending domain and dramatically improves inbox placement.

Most hosting providers make DNS changes straightforward. Brevo provides specific instructions for GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, and other common hosts.

Step 4: Create Your First Campaign

Use the drag-and-drop editor to build an email. Start simple - text and images, clear call-to-action. Test different templates to find what works for your brand.

Preview on multiple devices before sending. Brevo shows desktop, mobile, and tablet views to catch formatting issues.

Step 5: Set Up Basic Automation

Create a welcome sequence for new subscribers. This is the easiest automation to implement and provides immediate value:

Monitor automation performance in the analytics dashboard. Adjust wait times and content based on open and click rates.

Step 6: Track and Optimize

Use Brevo's reporting to monitor:

Test subject lines, send times, and content formats. Standard plan and above include A/B testing features to compare performance scientifically.

Brevo Security and Compliance

GDPR Compliance

Brevo is GDPR-compliant, important for businesses targeting EU audiences. Features include:

Security Features

For Enterprise customers, additional security options include SAML SSO integration, IP whitelisting, and dedicated support for compliance requirements.

Real User Experiences

Linda set the whole thing up for me. I think it took her a day, maybe two? I didn't ask. She mentioned something about connecting our contact list being "trickier than expected" and I just nodded. Chris later said that was actually fast, so apparently it went fine.

What I genuinely liked: everything being in one place. Email, the chat widget, some SMS thing I still haven't fully used. Before this, Tory was logging into three different tools to do what I now do in one tab. I didn't realize that was unusual until she pointed it out.

My open rates are sitting around 23% on the last several sends. I thought that was normal. Derek said that's actually pretty good. I'll take it.

The complaints I've heard are real though. Tory got flagged once and the account was basically frozen. Nobody explained why. She said support was slow and only over email, which didn't help when she needed answers quickly. Jamie hit some kind of contact ceiling on the automations faster than he expected and had to figure out a workaround. I didn't know there was a ceiling. I still don't fully understand it.

The templates are a little thin. I had Linda build ours from scratch because nothing in the library looked right for what we do. That might just be us.

Brevo for Specific Industries

Ecommerce

Brevo works well for online stores with integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce, and other platforms. Abandoned cart automations, product recommendations based on purchase history, and transactional emails for orders provide value.

The Professional plan adds advanced ecommerce features like revenue attribution, product performance tracking, and customer lifetime value calculations. For mid-sized shops, this competes with Klaviyo at a lower price point, though with less sophistication.

SaaS and Software

SaaS companies benefit from transactional email capabilities, user onboarding automations, and behavior-triggered campaigns. The API is robust for technical implementations.

Lead scoring on Professional plans helps identify hot prospects based on product page visits, documentation engagement, and email interactions. CRM integration tracks trials through to paid conversions.

Agencies

Agencies face challenges with Brevo. Enterprise plans offer sub-accounts for managing multiple clients, but lack white-label capabilities for reselling. The user seat limitations on lower plans make team collaboration expensive.

For smaller agencies managing just a few clients on their own accounts, Brevo's affordability is attractive. But agencies scaling to dozens of clients find limitations compared to platforms like specialized agency solutions.

The multi-client management here is functional but clunky compared to dedicated agency platforms. You'll make it work, but expect some grumbling from your team about switching between accounts.

Non-Profits

Budget-conscious non-profits get excellent value. The free plan supports substantial subscriber lists, and automation helps with donor engagement sequences. SMS capabilities are useful for event reminders and urgent appeals.

Brevo doesn't offer non-profit discounts like some competitors, but the base pricing is already so low it's less critical.

Mobile App Experience

Brevo offers mobile apps for iOS and Android, though functionality is limited compared to desktop. The apps allow:

You can't build campaigns or automations from mobile - these require desktop access. The app serves as a monitoring and quick-response tool rather than a full-featured mobile experience.

Learning Resources and Support

Brevo maintains extensive learning materials:

The community forum exists but isn't as active as some competitors. Most users rely on help articles and email support for problem-solving.

Recent Updates and Roadmap

Brevo continues evolving with recent additions including:

The company signals continued investment in AI-powered features, multi-channel capabilities, and ecommerce tools. The rebrand to Brevo reflected this evolution beyond "just email."

Final Verdict: Is Brevo Worth It?

Linda set the whole thing up for me. She said it took a couple of hours, which I didn't think was unusual until Chris mentioned most tools like this take maybe twenty minutes. I genuinely had no frame of reference.

What I can tell you is that once it was running, I stopped thinking about it much, which I think is the point. We ran about eleven campaigns before I felt like I actually understood what we were working with. Open rates sat around 23% on the first real send, which Derek said was decent. I took his word for it.

The part that surprised me was hitting some kind of contact ceiling on the automation side earlier than expected. Tory flagged it. I didn't know there was a ceiling. Apparently there is, and apparently we found it faster than most people do. We upgraded, and that was that.

If your emails are the main thing driving revenue and they have to land perfectly every time, I would ask someone more technical than me whether this is the right fit. Jamie switched off it for that reason, though he explained why twice and I still couldn't fully follow it. He mentioned Smartlead as an alternative for the outbound stuff.

For what we actually needed, it works. Having everything in one place meant we stopped bouncing between three different tabs, and that alone made Linda's afternoon worth it. If you're just starting out, the free version is a reasonable place to test before committing to anything.

If cold outreach is your focus rather than newsletters, tools like Instantly or Lemlist might be worth a look instead.