Brevo vs Mailchimp
 Brevo |  Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| Score | 66/100 | 11/100 |
| Rank in category | #1 | #5 |
| Rated comments | 34 | 31 |
| Best for | Small businesses and nonprofits with large lists that send infrequently; Beginners and small newsletters that want a free or cheap starting tier; Teams that want marketing and transactional email from one provider | Small lists sending straightforward newsletters; Stores that want product images, titles and links pulled into emails from their catalog |
| Skip it if | Ecommerce stores that need complex, Klaviyo-style flows; Small teams that need many native integrations without IT help | Large lists that only mail segments, since price follows total contacts; Shopify stores that rely on purchase-behavior segments and flows; Senders without the volume for a dedicated IP who need consistent Gmail inbox placement |
| Starting price | $9/mo | $13/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | Free plan sends up to 300 emails/day. Paid plans are priced by monthly email volume (campaigns and transactional): Starter from $9/mo for 5,000 emails ($8.08/mo billed yearly), Standard from $18/mo ($16.17/mo yearly) adding automation, A/B testing and no Brevo logo, Professional from $499/mo ($449.08/mo yearly) from 150,000 emails, and custom-priced Enterprise. Removing Brevo branding on Starter is a $10.80/mo add-on; pay-as-you-go email credits that do not expire are also sold. Prices shown in USD. | Free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 sends/mo. Paid plans shown at the page's default contact tier: Essentials $13/mo, Standard $20/mo, Premium $350/mo, each listed per month for the first 12 months; prices scale with contact count and overages apply. 14-day free trial of Essentials or Standard; Premium trial via sales. |
Independent users in r/Emailmarketing and r/ecommerce mostly treat Brevo as the budget pick: cheap for large lists because plans are priced on emails sent rather than contacts, simple enough for beginners, and backed by support that several long-time users praise. The trade-off is depth: users call its automations limiting for complex or ecommerce flows, one reports ecommerce automations misfiring, native integrations are thin, and deliverability reports conflict. 42 of 97 comments were promotional and excluded, including a near-identical PushOwl pitch posted by four accounts, matching Omnisend switch stories, and repeated plugs for Sender, Mailtrap, Moosend and EngageBay.
Users like
- Cheap for big lists: pricing follows emails sent rather than contacts stored, so infrequent senders with large lists pay less, and pay-as-you-go credits suit occasional sends[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Customer support gets repeated praise from long-term users, including a four-year customer and one who moved from Klaviyo[1][2][3][4]
- Simple, easy interface that beginners and small teams can run without technical help[1][2][3][4][5]
- Free tier of 300 emails a day with no contact cap covers small club or startup newsletters[1][2][3]
Users complain about
- Automation is fine for standard sequences but limiting for complex multi-branch or ecommerce flows; one WooCommerce user says ecommerce automations failed to trigger when buyers used coupons[1][2][3][4]
- Few native integrations, so small teams without IT skills may need help connecting their stack[1]
- Deliverability is contested: one user's open rate rose after leaving Brevo for MailerLite, another saw open rates under 5% on two IPs, and a new sender found Gmail filed every email under Promotions[1][2][3]
- Smaller gaps users name: limited design customization and clunky consent management[1][2]
Independent users mostly see Mailchimp as fine for small lists and plain newsletters, and a poor fit once the list or the strategy grows: the most common complaints are steep price increases as contacts accumulate, campaigns landing in Gmail spam on shared sending IPs, and segmentation and automations that struggle with Shopify purchase behavior. A handful defend the price relative to email ROI and like its one-click product import from a store catalog. About 43 of the 100 comments were promotional, much of it repeated pushes for alternatives such as Omnisend, ActiveCampaign, Sender and Campaign Monitor in Mailchimp-alternative threads.
Users like
- Cheap at small list sizes, and some users argue the cost is small relative to the revenue email brings in[1][2][3]
- Pulls product images, titles and links from a store catalog into an email in one step, which users say smaller tools lack[1][2]
- Works well enough for newsletters and basic campaigns[1][2][3]
Users complain about
- Cost rises steeply as the list grows; one 14-year customer saw their bill double to $308/mo for 7K contacts, and others pay for stored contacts they rarely mail[1][2][3][4][5]
- Deliverability depends on shared IP pools: users report test sends reaching the inbox while bulk campaigns land in Gmail spam[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- Segmentation and automation hit limits for ecommerce: combining purchase-behavior conditions kept breaking for one Shopify seller, and others found it clunky beyond a newsletter[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- The interface feels bloated and hard to use, with many steps, awkward editors and formatting fights[1][2][3][4][5]