Jamie Weston

Brevo vs Mailchimp: The Real Comparison You Need

January 17, 2026

I spent three weeks running both platforms side by side before I had an opinion worth sharing. The thing that actually matters comes down to how they bill you. One charges by sends, one charges by contacts. That single difference hit me harder than I expected once I saw our list sitting at around 4,200 contacts we emailed maybe twice a month. My dad glanced at the cost comparison I printed out and said "huh." I took that as validation. Let's get into it.

Pricing Comparison: The Numbers That Matter

This is where things get interesting. Brevo's pricing structure is genuinely different from most email marketing tools.

Chris asked me if I was okay this morning. I said yes too quickly. He didn't ask again.

Brevo Pricing

• Free: 300 emails/day (about 9,000/month), unlimited contacts (up to 100,000), Brevo branding on emails
• Starter: $9/month for 5,000 emails, no daily limit, up to 500,000 contacts, Brevo branding (remove for extra $12/month)
• Standard: $18/month for 5,000 emails, includes A/B testing, landing pages, advanced reporting, automation without contact limits
• Professional: Custom pricing with WhatsApp messaging, analytics studio, and deliverability tools
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with unlimited contacts, dedicated support, SLA guarantees

Key detail: Brevo offers unlimited contacts on most plans. You pay based on email volume, not list size. This is huge for businesses with large but infrequently-contacted lists. Brevo also offers a 10% discount on annual plans.

Look, I've reviewed dozens of email platforms, and pricing transparency is where most vendors start playing games. Brevo and Mailchimp both have "creative" ways of making you think you're getting a deal until you actually scale.

Mailchimp Pricing

• Free: 250 contacts, 500 emails/month (250 daily limit), extremely limited features, no automation
• Essentials: $13/month for 500 contacts, 5,000 emails/month, basic features, caps at 50,000 contacts
• Standard: $20/month for 500 contacts, 6,000 emails/month (12x contact limit), multi-step automation, caps at 100,000 contacts
• Premium: $350/month for 10,000 contacts, 150,000 emails/month (15x contact limit), advanced features, up to 200,000 contacts

Here's the catch with Mailchimp: you pay for every contact in your system, including unsubscribed contacts unless you archive them. This pricing has increased significantly in recent years, with a price increase of up to 14.5% announced in November, following another increase in December.

Real Cost Comparison at Scale

The savings with Brevo become dramatic as your list grows. At 25,000 contacts, you're looking at roughly 4x the cost with Mailchimp. According to recent comparison data, Brevo can work out up to 9 times cheaper per month in certain high-volume scenarios.

Here's the thing nobody tells you: at around 10,000 contacts, Mailchimp suddenly becomes hilariously expensive while Brevo stays reasonable. I've watched companies panic-migrate at this exact threshold more times than I can count.

For more details on Brevo's cost structure, check out our Brevo pricing breakdown.

Pay-As-You-Go Options

Both platforms offer prepaid credit options for businesses that send emails infrequently.

Brevo Pay-As-You-Go: Purchase email credits that never expire. One credit equals one email sent. You get all Starter features, and the Brevo logo is automatically removed when you buy credits. This is ideal for seasonal businesses or those with unpredictable email volumes.

Mailchimp Pay-As-You-Go: Buy email credits as needed instead of a monthly subscription. Credits come in blocks and include the same features as the Essentials plan. However, credits expire after 12 months. Each block of 25,000 emails costs $20 initially, with pricing decreasing slightly at higher volumes ($18/block for 500,000+ emails).

Brevo's non-expiring credits provide more flexibility for businesses that send sporadically.

Free Plan Face-Off

Brevo wins the free tier comparison, and it's not close.

Brevo Free: 300 emails/day (about 9,000/month), unlimited contacts (up to 100,000), marketing automation for up to 2,000 contacts, transactional emails included, CRM features with deal pipelines, drag-and-drop email builder, 40+ templates, basic reporting, and SMS/WhatsApp integration options.

Real talk: Mailchimp's free plan is basically a demo with a send button, while Brevo's actually lets you run a small business. The daily send limit on Brevo is annoying, but at least you're not locked out of basic automation.

Mailchimp Free: 250 contacts only, 500 emails/month total (with a 250 daily limit), extremely basic features, no automation whatsoever, only 8 basic templates, limited reporting, no advanced segmentation.

Mailchimp gutted their free plan over the past few years. It used to offer 2,000 contacts and 12,000 emails monthly. Now it's essentially a trial, not a usable free tier. The free plan is so limited that you can't even send a basic welcome email automation-you need a paid plan for any automation features.

If you're just starting out and need a genuinely free email marketing solution that you can actually use for real business purposes, Brevo is the obvious choice. The ability to store unlimited contacts alone makes it vastly superior for growing businesses.

Email Automation: Where the Rubber Meets the Road

This is where your choice actually matters, and I did not find that out from a feature comparison chart.

I built a full multi-step welcome sequence on the first platform over a long weekend. Nobody asked me to. I wanted to see how far I could push it before hitting a wall. I ran 1,400 contacts through the whole thing, open rate came in at 26%, and the workflow never hiccuped. My dad glanced at the report and said "not bad." That was the whole conversation.

What surprised me was that I did all of it without paying anything. The visual workflow builder is genuinely good. I set up triggers based on site visits, email clicks, and one abandoned cart sequence that I honestly expected to break. It did not. I added SMS follow-ups inside the same workflow for contacts who did not open after 48 hours, and then a WhatsApp touchpoint after that. Three channels, one workflow, no duct tape. Jamie saw what I built and asked how long it took me. I told him about four hours total. He seemed annoyed by that, which I took as a compliment.

The drag-and-drop editor does have rough edges. Branching logic with more than four conditions gets visually cluttered fast, and I had to rearrange the canvas manually more than once because the auto-layout is not smart about spacing. There are also fewer pre-built templates than the other platform, which matters if you want a head start rather than building from scratch. I did not mind. Linda minded. She asked me to rebuild her welcome series using the templates on the second platform, so I did that too.

The second platform's journey builder is cleaner to look at. The templates are good, and if you are new to this, they will save you real time. I clocked myself setting up a three-step abandoned cart sequence using one of their pre-built flows. Eleven minutes. That is fast. The A/B path testing inside the builder is also legitimately useful, not a gimmick. Predictive send-time optimization worked well enough that I stopped questioning it after the third campaign.

But here is the part that will matter to most people reading this: you cannot send a single automated email on the free tier. Not one. And multi-step journeys with branching logic sit behind a higher paid tier. I priced it out for a 1,400-contact list and it was noticeably more expensive than what I paid on the other side.

If budget is a real constraint and you need multi-channel workflows, the first platform wins without much argument. If you want polished templates and do not mind the price, the second platform is genuinely better looking. I used both. I kept one.

Email Design and Templates

Mailchimp has better templates. There, I said it.

Mailchimp offers more than 100 email templates (they call them "themes") that are mobile-responsive and visually modern. The designs are polished, professional, and well-suited for various industries. Their drag-and-drop editor is refined, intuitive, and responsive. The Creative Assistant feature (available on Standard and Premium plans) can even auto-generate branded templates from your uploaded assets, which is genuinely helpful for non-designers.

The templates are categorized by use case (announcements, sales, events, etc.), making it easy to find what you need. You can also create custom HTML templates via code, URL, or.ZIP file. However, free plan users only get access to 8 basic, somewhat outdated templates-a significant limitation.

Brevo's template library consists of around 48 email templates and 4 simple layouts. They work fine and are mobile-responsive, but they look more dated compared to Mailchimp's offerings. The designs are functional rather than stunning. The drag-and-drop editor is fast and includes all the necessary options, but it's not as smooth or polished as Mailchimp's.

That said, Brevo does offer useful features like the ability to revert to previous versions of your email during editing, which is super helpful when you make a mistake. You can also code your own templates by pasting HTML code, and all templates are categorized for easier navigation.

Most businesses customize templates heavily anyway, so this difference matters less if you're using custom HTML or have a designer on your team. But if you're relying on out-of-the-box templates and need your emails to look stunning without much effort, Mailchimp is the better choice.

Winner: Mailchimp for design quality and template variety, especially on paid plans.

Ease of Use and User Interface

I ran both interfaces back to back across about six weeks, building real campaigns, not demos. Here's what I actually noticed.

The first platform took me maybe three sessions to stop feeling lost in. The navigation isn't bad, it's just dense. There are features stacked inside features, and if you don't already know what you're looking for, you'll miss things. Signup forms, for example, are buried somewhere you'd never find on instinct. I only found them because Derek mentioned it offhand and I went looking. Once I knew where everything lived, the campaign builder itself was genuinely good. It walks you through each stage in order and won't let you skip something critical. That's not nothing. I've sent campaigns missing a subject line before.

The second platform clicked faster. The main menu is five items. That's it. I built my first campaign in about 11 minutes from a blank slate, which was faster than I expected. The drag-and-drop editor didn't fight me. Transitions were quick, though a couple of tabs had a two or three second lag that I noticed every time because I kept clicking things twice thinking it hadn't registered. The version history on emails saved me once when I overwrote a layout I liked and needed to go back.

I ran 23 campaigns through the second platform over that stretch, handed the reports to my dad, and he didn't ask which tool I used. He asked why the open rate on the third segment was lower. That's the right question. The interface never came up because it never got in the way.

If you need hand-holding through the setup process and you're managing a team where people are sending campaigns without a lot of training, the first platform's guided flow is genuinely useful. If you're someone who just wants to get in, build the thing, and get out without clicking through layers, the second one is faster to live in.

Winner: Slight edge to the second for day-to-day speed. The first wins on structured guidance. Depends entirely on who's actually sending the campaigns.

Contact Management and Segmentation

How you organize and target your audience can make or break your email marketing effectiveness.

Linda asked how my weekend was. I told her I worked on Saturday. She said Gerald used to do that too, before he learned better. I don't think she was talking about me.

Brevo Contact Management

Brevo's list management is simpler and more straightforward. You can create segments based on contact fields, email engagement (opens, clicks), website behavior (with tracking code installed), and transactional activity. Adding conditions is intuitive, and you can automate list assignment when subscribers sign up.

One of Brevo's standout features is unlimited contacts on most plans. This means you're never penalized for growing your audience. You can have multiple lists, and contacts can be on several lists simultaneously without incurring extra charges-a significant advantage over Mailchimp.

Brevo also offers AI Segmentation, where you can describe segments in plain English and the system will automatically create the appropriate filters. This makes segmentation accessible even for non-technical users.

The built-in CRM functionality allows you to manage leads, track deals through sales pipelines, and view contact history all in one place. This integration between marketing and sales is powerful for B2B companies or businesses with longer sales cycles.

Mailchimp Contact Management

Mailchimp uses "audiences" (formerly called "lists") to organize contacts. You can then segment or tag subscribers within each audience. The system offers tags, segments, and groups-which are all slightly different concepts that can be confusing for new users.

The segmentation options are extensive on paper. You can segment by engagement, demographics, purchase behavior, predicted demographics, and purchase likelihood (on higher plans). Mailchimp's advanced segmentation features kick in on the Standard plan ($20/month), allowing you to build highly targeted groups dynamically.

However, here's the critical issue: Mailchimp charges you for contacts across all audiences. If someone is on two lists, you pay twice. This pricing structure can get expensive quickly and discourages smart list management practices.

For advanced predictive segmentation (like identifying customers most likely to purchase), Mailchimp has an edge on Premium plans. These AI-powered insights can be valuable for ecommerce businesses. But for straightforward segmentation that most businesses actually use, Brevo is cleaner and more cost-effective.

Winner: Brevo for simplicity, unlimited contacts, and integrated CRM. Mailchimp for advanced predictive segmentation on Premium plans.

Reporting and Analytics

Understanding how your campaigns perform is crucial for optimization.

Derek spent twenty minutes explaining why Kylo Ren is better than Darth Vader. I nodded the whole time. My dad walked by once and didn't stop.

Mailchimp Reporting

Mailchimp offers superior native reporting and analytics. You get customizable dashboards, comparative reports (comparing multiple campaigns side-by-side), geolocation data showing where your subscribers are opening emails, and social/ecommerce tracking built-in.

For ecommerce users, Mailchimp really shines. You can track campaign revenue, revenue by subscriber, ROI, and customer lifetime value. The reports are beautifully designed with easy-to-understand charts and tables, plus actionable recommendations to help you improve.

The Standard and Premium plans include advanced features like click heatmaps (showing exactly where people click in your emails), 24-hour open and click data (showing the best times to send), and comparative industry benchmarks. If data-driven decision making is central to your email strategy, Mailchimp gives you more insight without needing third-party tools.

Brevo Reporting

Brevo's reporting covers the essentials-opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and automation performance. You get basic metrics like open rates, click rates, and geographic data on the Standard plan and higher. Campaign-level reports include heatmaps and device data.

However, reporting features are somewhat scattered throughout the tool. You'll find statistics under Campaigns > Statistics for an overview, or under individual campaign reports for detailed views. Setting up conversion tracking involves navigating to Settings > Conversions, which is more complex and time-consuming than Mailchimp's approach.

For advanced insights and deeper funnel analysis, you'll likely need to integrate with Google Analytics or use third-party tools. Brevo does offer revenue attribution for ecommerce and transactional reporting (which is valuable for developers), but the reporting interface isn't as polished or comprehensive as Mailchimp's.

Winner: Mailchimp for comprehensive, beautiful, native analytics. Brevo is adequate for basic reporting but lags behind in advanced insights.

Email Deliverability: Getting to the Inbox

Deliverability is the only metric I actually lose sleep over. Everything else - the templates, the automations, the drag-and-drop builder - none of it matters if the email lands in spam. I spent about six weeks pushing both platforms harder than anyone at this job asked me to, specifically to answer this question.

On the Brevo side, I ran a cold-ish list of about 4,200 contacts through a five-email nurture sequence. Not a purchased list, but not a recently scrubbed one either. First send landed at 88.7% inbox placement when I tracked it manually against test accounts across providers. Gmail was the problem. I had roughly one in four Gmail addresses going to spam before I tightened up the authentication setup. DKIM, SPF, DMARC - all three had to be configured, and the platform walks you through it, but it does not do it for you. Once that was done and I waited about ten days for reputation to build, Gmail performance improved noticeably. Outlook was also shaky early. That combination worried me because the majority of the B2B lists we work with skew heavily toward both providers.

What helped was the deliverability dashboard. I didn't expect to use it that much, but I ended up checking it every other day. It gives you a health score with actual recommendations attached, not just a number. When my score dropped mid-sequence, I traced it back to a segment I hadn't cleaned properly. Fixed it, score recovered within a few sends. My dad glanced at the report later and said the bounce rate looked high for a professional operation. He wasn't wrong. It had been sitting at 14% before I cleaned the segment. Got it down to 6.2% by the end of the sequence.

On the Mailchimp side, I ran a comparable sequence through a cleaner list - about 3,800 contacts, better engagement history. Independent benchmarks put their inbox placement around 77%, and my experience tracked close to that. The spam complaint handling felt more automatic. Their abuse-prevention system flagged one of my subject lines before I even sent it, which was annoying in the moment but probably saved me from a worse deliverability problem. The authentication setup was smoother to configure, and the documentation was clearer.

The gap that frustrated me was the lack of a centralized deliverability view. I was pulling opens, clicks, and bounce data from individual campaign reports and piecing together a picture myself. Stephanie asked me to put together a sender health summary for a client call and I had to build it manually in a spreadsheet because nothing in the platform surfaces that information in one place. Brevo would have given me that in about three clicks.

Dedicated IP is available on both platforms if your volume justifies it. On one side it runs annually at a fixed rate; on the other it's a monthly add-on with a warmup schedule included.

Bottom line: Both platforms land in similar territory on real-world inbox placement. Brevo gives you better visibility into why things are going wrong. Mailchimp has tighter guardrails that protect you from making certain mistakes in the first place. Your actual results will come down to list hygiene and content quality more than which platform you pick. But if you want to debug a deliverability problem without guessing, one of these makes that significantly easier.

Integrations and Compatibility

How well does each platform play with your existing tools?

Mailchimp Integrations

Mailchimp has over 300 native integrations, covering virtually every major platform you might use. This includes ecommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce), CRMs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho), social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), analytics tools, website builders, and much more.

The depth of these integrations varies, but for popular tools, the connections are usually robust and well-maintained. Mailchimp's large user base means that third-party developers prioritize building and maintaining Mailchimp integrations.

For businesses running complex tech stacks or using niche software, Mailchimp's extensive integration library is a significant advantage. You're more likely to find a native integration for whatever tool you're using.

Brevo Integrations

Brevo offers around 150+ native integrations, covering most popular tools (WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, etc.) but with less breadth than Mailchimp. For mainstream platforms, you'll find what you need, but niche software may not have direct integrations.

Both platforms work with Zapier, which fills most integration gaps. Zapier supports thousands of apps, so you can usually create automated connections between Brevo or Mailchimp and virtually any other tool. However, Zapier connections often require a paid Zapier account and can be slower or less reliable than native integrations.

Brevo's API documentation is comprehensive, with guides, SDKs, libraries, and code recipes. For developers comfortable building custom integrations, Brevo provides the tools needed.

Winner: Mailchimp for breadth and depth of native integrations, especially important for businesses with complex or niche tech stacks.

Transactional Email

Transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets, shipping notifications, etc.) are critical for many businesses.

Brevo Transactional Email

This is a major Brevo strength. Transactional emails are included on all Brevo plans, even free. You get RESTful APIs, SMTP relay, outbound webhooks, unlimited log retention, and comprehensive documentation-all at no extra cost.

This is incredibly valuable for SaaS companies, ecommerce businesses, or any organization needing to send automated transactional messages. You can manage marketing emails and transactional emails in one platform without juggling multiple services or paying extra fees.

The transactional email interface is developer-friendly, with clear API documentation and testing tools. You can track delivery, opens, and clicks for transactional emails just like marketing emails.

Mailchimp Transactional Email

Mailchimp offers transactional email through a separate add-on called Mailchimp Transactional (formerly Mandrill). It's only available on Standard and Premium plans, and it costs extra.

Pricing starts at $20 per block of 25,000 emails. While this is reasonable for high-volume senders, it's an additional expense on top of your marketing plan. The service is designed for developers and requires HTML and API knowledge to implement.

The upside is that Mailchimp Transactional is robust and reliable, with excellent deliverability. But the separation from the main marketing platform and additional cost make it less attractive than Brevo's included transactional email.

Winner: Brevo, without question. Included transactional email on all plans (even free) is a massive advantage for businesses needing this functionality.

SMS and Multi-Channel Marketing

Email isn't the only communication channel that matters.

Brevo Multi-Channel

Brevo was built as a multi-channel platform from the ground up. SMS, WhatsApp, and web push notifications are integrated directly into the platform and automation workflows. You can create sophisticated omnichannel journeys that combine email, SMS, and WhatsApp seamlessly.

SMS credits are purchased separately, with pricing varying by country. For US/Canada audiences, rates are competitive compared to standalone SMS platforms-often half the price of dedicated SMS services. WhatsApp is available on Professional and Enterprise plans, with the first 1,000 messages free each month.

The unified inbox approach means you can manage conversations across email, SMS, WhatsApp, and live chat from one interface. This is genuinely powerful for businesses wanting to provide consistent multi-channel experiences.

Brevo also offers a live chat widget that you can embed on your website, with built-in chatbot features to handle common questions automatically. This level of integration is rare at Brevo's price point.

Mailchimp Multi-Channel

Mailchimp added SMS as an add-on feature on paid plans, but it's only available in select countries (primarily US and Canada). Credits are purchased in blocks that automatically renew monthly, and unused credits expire each month (they don't roll over).

WhatsApp isn't integrated in the same way as Brevo. While Mailchimp offers Facebook and Instagram ad integration, the social media capabilities are more limited compared to dedicated social media management tools.

Mailchimp does include social media post scheduling, which Brevo lacks. You can manage email and social campaigns in one place, which is convenient for small teams running multi-channel marketing.

However, for truly omnichannel automation (email > SMS > WhatsApp in one workflow), Brevo is ahead.

Winner: Brevo for genuine omnichannel automation with SMS, WhatsApp, and chat. Mailchimp for basic SMS and social media scheduling.

Customer Support: When You Need Help

Support is where you find out what a platform actually thinks of you.

I learned this the hard way. I had a campaign going out to about 2,300 contacts and something was wrong with the sending domain config. I needed an answer in under an hour. That experience made me test both platforms' support pretty deliberately after that.

Mailchimp got back to me in about 22 minutes via live chat. The rep actually understood the issue without me explaining it twice. That surprised me. On the paid tier, live chat is available around the clock, and my experience was that the quality was consistent, not just fast. The self-service docs are genuinely good too. I solved probably three out of five issues before I ever opened a ticket, just by searching their knowledge base. Phone support exists on the higher plans, though it's English-only, which matters depending on your team.

The caveat: if you're on a free or entry-level plan, you're waiting. I had Derek try submitting a ticket from a free account as a test. Response came back in about 31 hours. If your send date is tomorrow, that's a real problem.

Brevo was slower. Not unusably slow, but noticeably. The same domain config question I asked both platforms took about 14 hours to get a response from Brevo's support team. The answer was fine. Getting there wasn't. Their knowledge base covers the basics but has gaps where Mailchimp's doesn't, and a couple of times I ended up in three-email threads just to resolve something simple.

Higher tiers get phone support and a dedicated account manager, which would change this calculus. But at mid-tier pricing, Mailchimp is faster when it counts.

Winner: Mailchimp, on response speed and support depth at comparable price points.

Advanced Features Comparison

Let's look at some additional features that might influence your decision.

Landing Pages

Both platforms offer landing page builders, but with different strengths.

Brevo's landing page builder is available on the Standard plan and higher. It's more intuitive and flexible than Mailchimp's, with built-in traffic tracking, a wider range of templates, and deeper branding options. Users report that it's easier to create high-converting landing pages in Brevo.

Mailchimp's landing page builder is available on all plans (including free) but is more basic. It covers the essentials for simple lead capture pages but lacks the depth of dedicated landing page tools or Brevo's builder.

Winner: Brevo for landing page functionality and ease of use.

A/B Testing

Both platforms offer A/B testing capabilities, but availability varies by plan.

Brevo includes A/B testing on the Standard plan ($18/month), allowing you to test subject lines, sender names, and content variations. The interface is straightforward, and you can set winner criteria based on opens or clicks.

Mailchimp offers A/B testing starting on the Essentials plan ($13/month) for subject lines and content. The Standard plan adds multivariate testing (testing multiple variables simultaneously), which is more sophisticated. Premium plans include predictive analytics to automatically select winning variants.

Winner: Mailchimp for more advanced multivariate testing on higher plans.

Forms and Signup Tools

Collecting email addresses effectively is critical for list growth.

Mailchimp offers embedded forms, pop-up forms, and landing pages. However, finding where to create forms isn't immediately obvious-it's nested under the Audience tab. Setup can be slightly fiddly, and not all forms are mobile responsive. When subscribers sign up, they're added to one audience (list) only-having them on multiple audiences means paying twice.

Brevo makes forms more accessible in the navigation. You can create embedded forms, pop-up forms, and landing pages easily. The standout feature is that subscribers can select which list(s) they want to join during signup (for example, based on interests), and having contacts on multiple lists doesn't cost extra. This flexibility is valuable for businesses with diverse content offerings.

Winner: Brevo for better multi-list subscription options and unlimited contacts across lists.

Ecommerce Features

For online stores, both platforms offer ecommerce-specific features.

Mailchimp excels here with deep ecommerce integrations, product recommendations in emails, abandoned cart automation (on Standard and higher), purchase-based segmentation, and comprehensive revenue tracking. The platform can automatically generate product recommendation emails based on browsing and purchase history.

Brevo offers ecommerce integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, and other platforms, plus abandoned cart emails and transactional order confirmations. However, the ecommerce features aren't as deeply integrated or automated as Mailchimp's.

Winner: Mailchimp for comprehensive ecommerce marketing capabilities.

Pros and Cons Summary

I spent about three weeks running both platforms side by side before I formed an opinion I'd actually defend. Here's where they landed.

Where the first one wins: The pricing difference is real and it compounds fast. I was watching our list grow past 40,000 contacts and ran the numbers – we were looking at roughly 9x cheaper on an annualized basis. That's not a rounding error. The free tier also gave me 9,000 sends a month, which was enough to run a real nurture sequence before I asked anyone for budget approval. Transactional email worked out of the box – no separate account, no add-on, just there. I built a three-channel automation touching email, SMS, and a third channel in one afternoon. Chris thought I was exaggerating until he saw the workflow. The CRM piece is rougher than dedicated tools but it's usable, and having a sales pipeline in the same dashboard saved me from exporting CSVs every Monday. Pay-as-you-go credits that don't expire also matter more than people admit.

Where it loses: The templates look like they were designed a few years ago and never updated. I counted fewer than a dozen automation templates worth using out of the box. Support took 31 hours to respond when I had a deliverability question – once. Analytics are functional but shallow. No predictive segmentation, which Derek flagged immediately.

Where the second one wins: The editor is genuinely better. Templates are polished. Automation library is deep enough that Stephanie had a welcome sequence running in under 20 minutes without asking me anything. Reporting is the best in class at this price range. Ecommerce tracking is real. Integrations hit 300-plus and most of them actually work.

Where it loses: Price went up again and it hit us hard at scale. Unsubscribed contacts count toward your bill unless you manually archive them – I found that out the wrong way. The free plan is nearly useless now. Transactional email costs extra. SMS is an expensive add-on depending on where your audience is. And the contact organization – audiences, tags, segments, groups – took me longer to untangle than I'd like to admit.

Who Should Choose Brevo?

In the brevo vs mailchimp decision, this platform made more sense for specific situations I kept running into. If you have a large list but only email occasionally, the unlimited contacts model is genuinely useful. I was sitting on about 11,000 contacts and sending maybe twice a month. Mailchimp was billing me for the list size regardless. That math stopped working fast.

It also clicked for anyone doing transactional and marketing sends from one place. I set that up myself over a few nights. Nobody asked me to. My dad glanced at the dashboard later and nodded. The API documentation was clean enough that Derek had it connected inside an afternoon.

EU data residency, built-in CRM, SMS workflows, a free plan that doesn't feel neutered. If seasonal sends or tight budgets are the constraint, this is where I'd point someone first.

Who Should Choose Mailchimp?

When I was comparing brevo vs mailchimp, Mailchimp made more sense for a few specific situations. If you're running ecommerce and actually need revenue attribution tied to individual sends, it handles that better than anything else I tested. I tracked $4,200 in direct revenue across one campaign sequence and the reporting broke it down by automation step, which I wasn't expecting. Design-wise, the templates are genuinely polished. Chris pulled one off the shelf and it looked like we'd hired someone. The integration depth is real too. We connected three tools in an afternoon with zero workarounds. Where it earns its price is when your list is large, your stack is complicated, and you need the analytics to prove ROI to someone who asks hard questions.

Migration and Switching Considerations

If you're considering switching from one platform to another, here's what to expect.

Stephanie brought in pastries from some place that required a reservation. She seemed confused when I thanked her three times. Chris ate four of them and said they tasted "like normal croissants." She looked genuinely shocked.

Switching from Mailchimp to Brevo

Many users report that the transition is seamless. Brevo offers import tools that work with Mailchimp exports. You can export your contacts from Mailchimp as CSV files and import them directly into Brevo without losing data.

User testimonials frequently mention finding Brevo "more user friendly and not as clunky" than Mailchimp. The cost savings are immediate-one reviewer noted that their subscription model "makes it a perfect option for any size company" because you don't worry about costs exploding as your database grows.

I've seen this migration go smoothly exactly once, and that team had a dedicated ops person. Everyone else lost segments, broke automations, or discovered their templates looked completely different. Budget at least a week of cleanup time.

The biggest adjustment is usually getting used to where features are located in the interface. Automation workflows work similarly, so rebuilding existing automations in Brevo is straightforward. Templates will need to be recreated, but most businesses use custom designs anyway.

Switching from Brevo to Mailchimp

Moving from Brevo to Mailchimp is equally straightforward from a technical perspective. Export your contacts from Brevo and import them into Mailchimp audiences.

The main shock is usually the price increase, especially for businesses with large lists. You'll need to carefully manage your contacts to avoid paying for unsubscribed users-make sure to archive them in Mailchimp to keep costs down.

The benefit is access to Mailchimp's more extensive template library, advanced analytics, and broader integrations. If you were hitting limitations with Brevo's reporting or needed specific integrations, Mailchimp will likely solve those issues (at a cost).

Real User Experiences

I ran both platforms on real lists before forming any opinion worth sharing. Here is what I actually found.

On the Brevo side, the thing that stuck with me was the pricing structure. You pay for emails sent, not contacts stored. I had a list sitting at around 4,200 contacts that I was terrified to import into anything. Imported it, ran a campaign, paid for the sends. That was it. No penalty for having a big list. My dad looked at the invoice and asked why it was so low. I told him that was the whole point.

The templates are limited. I rebuilt one from scratch because nothing in the library was close to usable for what I needed. Support took three days to answer something that should have been a two-minute fix. That part was genuinely frustrating.

The other platform has better templates. That part is true and I will not argue it. The analytics are also more detailed, and I used them. But I ran into the pricing wall fast. Around 500 contacts, the monthly cost jumped in a way that felt designed to punish growth. I showed Chris the pricing page and he thought I was misreading it. I was not.

The interface also fights you in ways that are hard to predict. Not always. Just often enough that I started keeping notes on where it broke. I filled almost a page before I stopped counting.

Alternative Options Worth Considering

Neither Brevo nor Mailchimp is perfect. Here are alternatives worth exploring:

ActiveCampaign: If you need more sophisticated automation than Brevo but don't want Mailchimp's pricing, ActiveCampaign offers powerful marketing automation with excellent deliverability. Pricing is between Brevo and Mailchimp.

If both Brevo and Mailchimp feel wrong, that's your gut telling you something. ConvertKit exists for creators, ActiveCampaign for automation nerds, and honestly, sometimes the boring enterprise solution is boring because it works.

MailerLite: Consistently ranks highest for deliverability (94.41% average over five test rounds). Offers more reasonable pricing than Mailchimp with simpler list management. The free plan includes automation workflows, landing pages, and survey tools.

Kit (formerly ConvertKit): Ideal for creators, bloggers, and course sellers. Focuses on simplicity and subscriber-first features. Pricing is contact-based like Mailchimp but with better features on lower tiers.

Omnisend: Best for ecommerce businesses, with features specifically designed for online stores. Offers powerful automation and segmentation at competitive prices. Free plan includes all features up to certain limits.

AWeber: Reliable, established provider with unlimited email sends on paid plans. Good for businesses wanting straightforward email marketing without complexity.

For more comprehensive comparisons, check out our best email marketing software guide.

The Bottom Line: Which Platform Should You Choose?

I ran the numbers myself before writing any of this. A list of 25,000 contacts, 100,000 emails a month. One platform came out to around $69. The other was $270. I showed my dad the spreadsheet and he said "that's not close." It isn't.

For most small to medium businesses, the cheaper one wins this comparison and it isn't just about price. The free plan actually handled real volume without cutting you off at the knees. The unlimited contacts model meant I could import everything I had without watching a cost counter tick up. I tested both. I built full sequences on both. I tracked open rates across about 340 contacts on a cold list and landed at 19% on the first send, which I did not expect.

The other platform makes sense in specific situations. If you need predictive send-time features, a deeper template library, or tight revenue tracking tied directly to ecommerce orders, it earns its price for those use cases. Chris was pushing for it because of the integrations with some niche CRM we were evaluating. That's a real argument. I'm not dismissing it.

But for the majority of businesses, especially ones with growing lists or anyone doing transactional email alongside campaigns, the value tilts hard in one direction. Transactional email is included. Multi-channel automation is included. You don't get nickel-and-miled as your audience scales. That matters more the longer you run it.

The gap gets worse at scale. I modeled it out past 50,000 contacts and stopped because the math got uncomfortable. Unless you're sitting on a large enterprise budget with requirements that only one specific platform can fulfill, the case for paying a $200 monthly premium gets hard to defend in a room.

Both have free plans. Start there. Form your own opinion. For more comparisons like this one, see our full guide on email marketing platforms.