Email Marketing Tools

Brevo vs SendGrid (2025): Which One Is Better For Your Business?

Inka WibowoJul Domingo

By Inka & Jul

Brevo vs SendGrid

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A growing business means you need to send well-timed, targeted campaigns and transactional emails. So it makes sense your current one no longer fits the bill.

If you’ve been planning to make a switch, Brevo and SendGrid are two names that have probably popped up in your search a few times.

For a good reason.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) lets you go beyond email marketing, while SendGrid leads the mass email communications game.

That said, their audiences often overlap, which might leave you wondering: which one aligns better with your goals now—and where you’re headed?

Let’s find out.

Brevo vs SendGrid: Summary

Here’s a quick TL;DR to help you decide between the two:

  • Brevo and SendGrid have shared offerings. Both let you handle marketing emails and transactional messages, although Brevo focuses on breadth of features, while SendGrid places a greater emphasis on reporting and deliverability.
  • Brevo has intuitive editors for emails and landing pages, robust automation tools, and thoughtful extras like a CRM and live chat tool, making it a great fit for businesses needing a flexible, all-in-one solution.
  • SendGrid dominates in terms of transactional emails and deliverability. It’s great for businesses managing high email volumes or those requiring detailed analytics and API integrations.
  • If you prioritize versatility and budget-friendly plans, definitely go for Brevo. If you need a scalable solution for your large recipient list, SendGrid might be a better choice.

Round 1: Ease of Use

Brevo’s dashboard is, hands down, user-friendly. The rounded, modern typefaces and branded visuals give it a polished yet approachable feel.

brevo dashboard

Right after signing up, a handy checklist walks you through the basics. But you don’t have to follow it, you can move on to other tasks if you’re eager to dive in. For instance, I could set up a welcome email campaign without uploading my contact list first. But for convenience, I was first invited to upload my brand assets (logos, themes, etc.) or link to my website.

Many users will find the process flexible. And the thoughtful tips and reminders are there to ensure you don’t overlook important details and shortcut opportunities.

Plus, the sidebar menu has clear labels and is well-organized. Locating specific campaign tools, analytics, or any other feature you might need is a breeze.

Now, SendGrid is a different story. There are plenty of cryptic technical terms and no background details to explain what they are. Take a look at the “Stat” section, for example:

SendGrid dashboard

If you’re a seasoned marketer or a developer, however, you probably won’t bat an eyelash. Still, you’ll need some patience to figure out where things are. For example, to create and manage your contact lists, you’ll have to click “Marketing”, then look for “Contacts” under that tab. Certainly not very intuitive.

Winner: Brevo's intuitive interface and beginner-friendly design make it accessible for non-technical users. If you don’t want to wrestle with a complex interface, it’s the clear winner.

Score:

Brevo – 1

SendGrid – 0

Round 2: Email Editor

Both platforms offer drag-and-drop functionality and HTML editors. But we’ll zoom in on the drag-and-drop experience for now.

Brevo’s editor lets you tweak any of its six suggested layouts or 54 templates to get started. A quick look at the sidebar and you’ll see the editing controls like content blocks and pre-designed sections. You can save your favorite designs for quick access in the future.

One drawback, however, is that you'll have to reset the whole thing if you decide to switch templates midway. This can set you behind if you’re in a time crunch.

SendGrid’s Marketing Campaign has a Design Editor, which you’ll find when you click ‘Single Sends’. This tool helps you customize any of the 60 templates that it offers. But very much like the dashboard, the toolbar is clunky and lacks clear groupings. It will take some getting used to.

To test their usability and flexibility, I tried adding social media buttons to the designs I picked.

Brevo made it super simple to adapt the icons to my brand. I could change up the design, layout, and spacing. Plus, the visibility of the content adapts according to the recipient's device.

Brevo editor

SendGrid, on the other hand, is less flexible. You can only adjust the background, color, size, and alignment of the icons—that’s about it.

SendGrid editor

Winner: Brevo’s drag-and-drop editor is a clear winner. As you can see in my mini experiment, it's easier to use and offers more customization.

Score:

Brevo – 2

SendGrid – 0

Round 3: Design And Flexibility

You already know the number of customizable templates for each platform. So in this section, we’ll talk about the quality of their designs, as well as their HTML editors.

Both Brevo and Sendgrid provide mobile-optimized and professional-grade templates:

Brevo templates

Brevo’s templates

SendGrid templates

SendGrid’s templates

However, Brevo’s are sleeker, more modern, and include more editable elements. It also has an HTML block for quick template tweaks and an HTML editor for creating them from scratch. While functional, these tools are relatively basic.

SendGrid, on the other hand, has a more versatile HTML tool. You can use it to make significant structural changes to templates, or even code your own. It includes advanced features like split-screen preview, syntax highlighting, scroll-syncing, and error flagging—to simplify the process and ensure compliance.

Winner: It’s a tie. SendGrid’s editor allows for extensive customization with HTML. However, if you don’t plan to play around with the templates much, Brevo might be more suitable.

Score:

Brevo – 3

SendGrid – 1

Round 4: List management

List management is key to maintaining a clean and efficient subscriber database—and both platforms offer solid tools for the job.

Brevo’s Contact Management solution lets you tag contacts with attributes like location, birthday, and profession, to help personalize campaigns.

You can sort contacts into lists, and then group these lists into folders. When it comes to segmentation, you can start from scratch or use one of their templates. (Brevo users, here’s a heads up: as of January 1, 2025, segments have replaced dynamic lists.)

Brevo List Management segment templates

List maintenance is also easy with Brevo. When you import your contacts, it automatically removes duplicates. There’s also a manual yet efficient route. Simply pick a list, navigate to settings, and select from:

Brevo List Settings

Last, definitely not least: Brevo also has a built-in sales CRM known as the “Deals” tab. This add-on is great for monitoring every customer interaction, which further helps enrich your campaigns.

SendGrid also supports manual list creation and dynamic segments (limited to 200 per user, though). If you have more data to work with, you can import them from external sources quickly.

To clean up your list, SendGrid’s meticulous reports will let you know who the disengaged subscribers are. But you’ll have to take them off the list yourself.

Winner: Brevo. Both can do the job well, but Brevo’s ease of use and built-in sales CRM earn it some serious extra points.

Score:

Brevo – 4

SendGrid – 1

Round 5: Automations

Many email marketing platforms double as marketing automation tools, including our two contenders.

Brevo offers impressive versatility here. You get access to the classic editor, the new editor (drag-and-drop), and a handful of pre-made automation templates.

Have a look at its welcome email flow template and handy automation workflow designer:

Brevo List Automation Builder

Brevo enables you to dig deep by giving you access to various data sources–like email engagement, website behavior, and ecommerce transactions—for triggering campaigns. And it goes beyond email automation because you can create workflows involving SMS, WhatsApp, and Web push.

On the other hand, Sendgrid’s setup leaves minimal room for customization. You’re limited to customizing the basics like entry criteria, exit criteria, and emails included in the automation. You also can’t create complex journeys because you can only choose one trigger and condition.

But the simplicity has a pay-off: I find the builder is easy to use, especially since there are large, descriptive pop-ups explaining the process.

Winner: Brevo. It lets you create simple and complex campaigns with ease.

Score:

Brevo – 5

SendGrid – 1

Round 6: Analytics and Reporting

Brevo’s real-time analytics include basic email metrics for lower-tiered users. I think this is fine for beginners because there’s enough data (unsubscribes, clicks, opens, etc.) to refine campaigns.

brevo reports

But as your business grows, you’ll probably find these insights too limited. Compared to the entry-level Starter plan, the higher-tiered Business plan has a lot more to offer. You’ll be able to track more like geolocation data, heatmaps, and more detailed email engagement performance.

As for SendGrid, I think it deserves a round of applause. It gives you high-level email performance summaries, but you can also see the nitty-gritty for each email category you have.

Plus, you’ll also get the performance overview of the different tools you use like email clients, devices, and mailbox providers. If you send emails a lot, you can spot performance trends and address potential issues early on. I can see the comparison tabs being especially useful here.

The real icing on the cake, though? Its deliverability reports. SendGrid lets you dig into valuable information, like bounced and blocked emails, to discover how to improve the chances of your emails reaching their destination.

SendGrid Deliverability Reports

If that’s still not enough, adding “Expert Insights” to your plan might do the trick. SendGrid will analyze your stats every month, and suggest some actionable ways to give them a boost.

Winner: SendGrid. Its more comprehensive reporting options will make data-driven marketers and developers really excited!

Score:

Brevo – 5

SendGrid – 2

Round 7: Integrations and APIs

Brevo’s App Marketplace is home to approximately 70 apps, making it easy to connect Brevo to other tools and platforms (such as your website builder or CMS). You’ll find integrations across categories like Analytics, Ecommerce, Marketing Automation, and more. If you’re managing email marketing on your own, having access to these plug-ins can help to get your campaigns up and running quickly.

Brevo’s integrations

Brevo’s integrations connect it to some of the most popular online tools in the market

Developers can also use Brevo’s API to set up custom integrations for sending transactional emails, SMS and WhatsApp messages.

As a more developer-focused tool, SendGrid doesn’t have a traditional app marketplace. It does, however, benefit from seamless compatibility with Twilio’s other services like multi-channel marketing and voice messaging. Beyond that, SendGrid also offers pre-built integrations with a select range of enterprise-level solutions through its partner network.

Another place where SendGrid is really powerful is in its RESTful APIs and SMTP, which allows developers to integrate into technical ecosystems and carry out complex tasks (such as creating dynamic email templates, accessing live analytics, and validating emails in real-time).

Note: If this isn’t enough, you can use middleware solutions like Zapier. Both Brevo and SendGrid can integrate with this app.

brevo zapier integration with interact

Zapier helps to extend the possibilities of integrating both Brevo and SendGrid with third-party tools. In this case, we’ve used Zapier to connect Brevo with interactive quiz tool Interact.

Winner: Another tie, as the winner depends entirely on your needs. While Brevo’s plug-and-play integrations make life easier for non-technical users, SendGrid’s API and partner network can extend SendGrid’s capabilities into more powerful tasks.

Score:

Brevo – 6

SendGrid – 3

Round 8: Extras

We’ve covered the important bits. Now, let’s talk about the add-ons and frills that could potentially tip the scales.

Brevo is an all-around marketing platform. Alongside its own CRM, which is already a big bonus, you’ll also get:

  • Transactional emails: Every plan comes with a decent allowance of 300 free emails. Besides designing transactional emails, Brevo also lets you send WhatsApp messages and manage text messages.
  • Landing page builder: Works as smooth as butter, much like the new email builder.
  • AI assistant: A great partner for generating email content ideas.
  • Brevo Conversations: A live chat tool for immediate customer support.
  • Multichannel marketing: Options to automate SMS marketing and share your email campaigns on social media quickly and easily.

SendGrid, while robust, is primarily an email marketing tool. So its frills don’t go over this scope:

  • Transactional emails: Using SendGrid’s powerful Email API, you can send up to 100 transactional emails for free every day. You’ll also get real-time analytics and deliverability insights. If you need to increase your limit or access advanced features, though, you’ll need to pay extra (on top of your Email Marketing plan).
  • Suppression lists: Stops emails from being sent to uninterested recipients. This feature also gives them the option to adjust preferences like frequency and content.
  • Inbox rendering and spam testing: Previews emails and improves deliverability. (The number of Email Testing credits depends on your Marketing Campaigns or Email API plan.)
  • Native email validation: Verifies domain validity and identifies disposable or high-risk addresses.

Winner: Brevo. Its extended features cater to more marketing operations, providing greater value overall. A better fit for anyone needing a comprehensive marketing tool.

Score:

Brevo – 7

SendGrid – 3

Round 9: Pricing

For many marketers and business owners, pricing is often the biggest decisive factor. Let’s see which of the two gives higher value for money.

Here are Brevo’s pricing plans:

brevo pricing

Brevo offers a free plan with many of the same features as the Starter plan, but caps email sends at 300 per day. For important tools like a landing page builder, advanced reporting, and phone/chat support, you’ll need the Business plan. This tier starts at $18/month.

As you’ve probably noticed: Unlike other email marketing platforms, Brevo charges per email sent. Businesses with infrequent email sending can benefit from this pricing method.

Brevo also has a pay-as-you-go plan. We find it to be between 25% to 60% more affordable than prepaid packs from competitors.

We break down Brevo’s complete pricing plan in this blog post.

Here’s SendGrid’s Marketing Campaigns plan:

SendGrid Marketing Campaigns Plans

SendGrid’s Basic Plan begins at $15, which is reasonably priced—especially since it lets you send up to 300,000 emails per month and already comes with phone support. You also get email testing credits.

But here’s the downside: key features are missing. To access automation, for example, you’ll need to move up to the Advanced Plan. Doing so means paying a hefty $60/month. Such a huge leap!

It’s also worth talking about the fact that both platforms have separate pricing for their email marketing platform and transactional API.

You can get 300 free transactional emails per day on any of Brevo’s Marketing Platform plans. Should you need more, there’s an option to purchase 20,000 emails for $15 a month.

As mentioned before, you’ll have to switch to SendGrid’s Email API to send transactional emails. It has a separate pricing plan, which is a bit heavier on the wallet, starting at $19.95 a month if you need to send more than 100 emails per day:

SendGrid Email API PlansWinner: Brevo’s plans are generally more affordable. It’s also perfect for businesses with smaller contact lists or infrequent email sends.

Score:

Brevo – 8

SendGrid – 3

Who is the winner? Conclusion

Brevo is the clear winner, scoring more than twice as many points as SendGrid. For good reason. It’s a comprehensive marketing solution packed with useful features you can enjoy at a very friendly price.

Read our complete Brevo review or sign up for a free trial today.

SendGrid is a strong contender with its advanced tools and API capabilities. But it falls short of fulfilling other important email marketing needs, such as landing pages or a CRM.

If developer-friendly editors, stronger integrations, or enhanced scalability are critical for your business, other options are available that tick more boxes. Check out our SendGrid alternatives blog post to discover what they are.

The authors

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Inka Wibowo

Senior Content Manager

Hi, I'm Inka! I spent the earlier part of my career in agency land, helping businesses of all sizes get their email marketing campaigns up and running. Now, at EmailTooltester, I'm using my experience to help businesses like yours find the best email marketing services for your needs. Although I've used dozens of different tools, I'm most familiar with Mailchimp and Kit (I use the latter for my personal newsletter!).

Jul Domingo

Hi! I’m Jul Domingo. I’m a content writer focused on companies (SaaS, PaaS, B2B) serving small and medium-sized businesses. Having been born into an entrepreneurial family, I am passionate about helping SMEs like you make smart business decisions. Working with EmailTooltester allows me to accomplish that, particularly in terms of helping your organization establish a strong digital presence.

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This article has been written and researched following our EmailTooltester methodology.

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