Brevo Review The Cheapest All-in-One Solution?

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Inka Wibowo

Inka Wibowo

Researcher

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Best Value For MoneyWe awarded Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) our Best Email Marketing Tool For Value For Money badge for 2023 & 2024!

At EmailTooltester, I am responsible for our email marketing.

About a year ago, it became clear that we needed to move away from GetResponse. Not that GetResponse isn't a great email marketing service - on the contrary. We are on a budget, however, and wanted access to advanced automations, which are costly at GetResponse. Also, we typically don't send multiple emails to the same recipients every month.

It turns out that Brevo (formerly known as Sendinblue) ticks both boxes: budget-friendly automations for relatively low-volume senders.

My Own Experience Using Brevo

In the past, I often found that the more I used an email marketing software, the less I liked it. And I certainly encountered a few hiccups with Brevo.

For example, I recently sent out a newsletter and added recipients from another system. Brevo decided that the campaign's performance wasn't good enough and blocked all these new recipients. Definitely not a great experience, but admittedly, the campaign was not our best. Brevo aims to keep spam complaints to a minimum to prevent their servers from appearing on any blocklists, which I understand.

But returning to my original point: I actually like Brevo more the more I use it. Initially, I didn't think much of their live chat feature or online scheduling tool. However, over time, I've become a heavy user of both.

But enough about anecdotes. Let's dive into the details of what this Paris-based player can really do for your email marketing!

Brevo Review: What to expect

Brevo has a nicely-featured free plan, which includes email templates, automation workflows, unlimited live chat and up to 300 emails per day. The advanced automations included offer web tracking and lead scoring.

They’ve just introduced some cheaper plans, which makes Brevo a great option for beginner email marketers. Paid plans start from as little as $9 a month for 5,000 emails.

best esp comparison template

Now let’s dive into this in-depth Brevo review. See my thoughts from practical experience on whether this email marketing platform lives up to its promise of delivering a user-friendly, all-in-one solution.

  • Brevo Review
Brevo Review video

Try Brevo for free

Brevo Screenshots

Brevo Pricing

$ 0

2,000 Subscribers

9,000 Emails

Free plan. Emails include Brevo branding, with daily limit of 300 emails. Max. of 2k contacts in a marketing automation. Limited features (e.g. basic reports).

$ 9

500 Subscribers

5,000 Emails

Starter plan (removes daily sending limit of Free plan). Can remove Brevo branding for an additional $12/month. Doesn't include landing page builder, A/B testing, or advanced reporting (need to upgrade to Business to access these)

$ 17

1,500 Subscribers

10,000 Emails

Starter plan

$ 29

500,000 Subscribers

20,000 Emails

Starter plan

$ 39

500,000 Subscribers

40,000 Emails

Starter plan

$ 55

500,000 Subscribers

60,000 Emails

Starter plan

$ 69

500,000 Subscribers

100,000 Emails

Starter plan

$ 129

2,000,000 Subscribers

100,000 Emails

Business plan

$ 169

2,000,000 Subscribers

150,000 Emails

Business plan. Includes all advanced features.

$ 239

2,000,000 Subscribers

250,000 Emails

Business plan. Includes all advanced features.

The most significant difference between Brevo and other email marketing services is that Brevo charges primarily per email rather than per subscriber. In fact, the subscriber limits once you start sending over 20k emails are very generous.

It is also worth noting that there is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ option (Email Credits) available for customers who do not send newsletters every month.

Learn more in our comprehensive Brevo pricing guide.

Pros and Cons

  • Pros
  • Cons

Pros

  • Low-cost plans

    The first thing that will probably stand out to you is Brevo’s pricing. It offers some of the most competitive prices on the market, with plans starting at $9 for 5,000 emails and 500 contacts. For this reason, amongst others, we made it one of the top ActiveCampaign alternatives.

  • Solid email automation

    Surprising for a newsletter service at this price point: Brevo boasts excellent workflow-based automation. You can trigger campaign actions using your visitor’s email and website engagement behavior, assign lead scores, send transactional messages, plus loads more. For this reason, it’s one of the best email marketing tools for Shopify.

  • Transactional email and SMS marketing tool

    Not many newsletter tools offer transactional email and SMS marketing, so it’s great that Brevo does. It’s also pretty affordable!

  • Brevo WordPress plugin

    Brevo’s WordPress plugin has over 80,000 active installations on WordPress, with 4.5 stars. The interface mirrors that of the web application, making for a seamless user experience.

  • Free CRM software

    Even Brevo’s free plan comes with a sales CRM. You can see how it compares to the best free CRM software in this guide.

Is Brevo the right newsletter service for you?

  • Recommended if:
  • Not recommended if:
  • You need to send transactional emails, SMS and/or WhatsApp messages

    Brevo does much more than just email marketing campaigns, in fact, it’s one of the best tools for trigger-based and transactional emails. Its automation workflow designer allows you to build campaigns triggered by clicks, opens and even webpage visits. And its dedicated transactional section allows for messages such as password resets, and sign-up and purchase confirmations! There’s even an option to send SMS and branded WhatsApp campaigns to a segmented list.

  • You want a sophisticated tool on a low budget

    Brevo works out to be a lot cheaper than other comparable tools if you send few emails to the same people. If you’re after a value-for-money service with automations, advanced segmentation, live chat and dynamic personalization, it’s a noteworthy option.

  • You’re an ecommerce

    With features like customizable triggers based on purchase data, the ability to import customer orders, and customizable KPIs, Brevo is well-equipped to serve ecommerce. Integrations with popular platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento are available.

Rating Details

Ease of Use

The user experience is pretty good and the menus are easy to navigate. Having undergone some updates, the drag and drop email builder is very user-friendly. There’s also a nice campaign-production flow that is easy to follow.

Editor Info popup

As with most tools, Brevo offers a drag-and-drop email editor that is both fast and smooth. There are a handful of pre-set elements to choose from, which should be enough.

Personalization Info popup

Simply add one of the ‘attribute conditions’ by clicking on the personalization button – the same goes for subject lines and preview text of your campaigns and templates. They also offer conditional content, which allows you to display certain elements of the email to specific contacts (e.g. discount offers to VIP customers), and dynamic lists, which lets you include dynamically-updated content (e.g. items purchased in a customer’s order).

Email types Info popup

Newsletters, autoresponders, A/B testing, transactional email and SMS

Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs Info popup

Brevo offers 48 email templates that are all responsive, and their designs are quite appealing. Additionally, you can set up a brand library that defines colors and fonts. You can also save content blocks, like a footer, for example. What I don’t love about Brevo’s template system is that existing templates, such as those used in automations, do not reflect changes made in the main template.

Email Marketing Automation Info popup

Some really impressive automation options here. Brevo’s workflow editor lets you set up some clever triggered campaigns, based on contact data, email engagement, web behaviour, and ecommerce activity. It scores bonus points for lead scoring, and for the ability to test workflows prior to launching them.

Brevo is also unique in its transactional email offering, letting you send messages such as purchase confirmations and receipts via SMTP. Side note – there’s also a handy ‘Best time’ feature that automatically sends your emails at the optimal time, based on previous campaign performance.

List Management Info popup

You can create ‘filters’ that serve as segments, based on contact field criteria and behavior (email opens, clicks, etc.). You can also set up automated workflows to create a new mailing list based on demographics, behavior and lead scores. Import your contacts via an .xlsx, .csv or .txt file. Unfortunately, there is no tagging feature, but you can emulate it via contact attributes (at least kind of).

Registration Forms/ Opt-in & Opt-out- Process Info popup

The forms are surprisingly advanced: you can let subscribers select which list(s) they want to be opted into (for example, based on interest or industry). Lets you add Captcha verification against spam signups. And if the users are coming to a form via email, you can pre-populate the form fields with their data. There’s also the option to choose between single and double opt-in.

A downside is the lack of design templates and creative options for integrating the form into your website, such as using pop-ups.

Deliverability Info popup

Brevo’s deliverability tends to fluctuate, as demonstrated by our deliverability tests. In the past, they have been known to achieve scores in the nineties, but their rates have dropped in more recent rounds.  We would hope for Brevo to achieve more stable deliverability rates.

Reports and Analysis

Best alternative: ActiveCampaign

Brevo has most of the reports you might need, such as a click-map, geo-tracking and Google Analytics integration. You can also access conversion data if you’ve integrated with an ecommerce platform. Unfortunately, the reports are not the easiest to read, and if you’re on the Starter plan or lower, you’ll be quite restricted in the data you have access to. For example, you won’t be able to see which links were clicked in the message.

Languages Info popup

The website and help center are available in 6 languages (EN, ES, PT, DE, IT, FR)

Spam- and Design-Testing Info popup

There’s a nice in-built previewer for seeing how emails will display in different email clients. No spam testing available, though. Find out how to avoid spam filters here.

Bounce Management Info popup

Hard bounces are automatically deactivated and won’t be sent again. Soft bounces will be resent over the following 36 hours until the email is delivered; if unsuccessful, they’ll be flagged as soft bounces. Brevo keeps a record of both hard and soft bounces.

Blocklist Info popup

It’s possible to export your blocklist from the tool.

Storage available for data and images

Unlimited

There doesn’t appear to be a limit on the total amount of images, or on individual image sizes.

Authentication Info popup

SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

Own Domain Info popup

Available if you purchase a dedicated IP with Brevo (note – this isn’t cheap), or if you have a higher-level plan with this included. Landing pages can be hosted on your domain.

Different levels of account access Info popup

Multi-user access is exclusive to Business and Enterprise plans, giving you highly granular user permissions.

Integrations

A number of integrations are available, however, more are yet to be added. That said, Brevo is also part of Zapier’s library, which lets you integrate a vast number of services.

Landing Page Builder Info popup

A very sleek and modern landing page builder is available for those on the Business and Enterprise plans. Truth be told, we actually like it better than the email editor! There are some nice templates to choose from, or the option to build one from scratch.

Customer Support

Customer service is one of Brevo’s strengths. A universal help button is available, allowing you to access Brevo’s knowledge base, leave a message, or access their agents via live chat. At times, the Help button shows you different support options, which can be confusing (and frustrating!). Live chat was responsive though, and the knowledge base is thorough, so we can’t complain. Also, there is the Brevo Academy targeted at email marketing beginners.

Overall rating

4.3

From a value-for-money perspective, it’s actually a great email marketing software, considering that the features it offers are pretty advanced. A/B testing, advanced marketing automation and CRM features could well meet your email marketing needs. Try it for free.

A More Detailed Look at Brevo’s Features

As you can see, Brevo offers a good range of pro features, and gains points for being so affordable for small businesses. Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of Brevo’s key features:

Brevo Templates

Brevo’s templates aren’t bad at all. There are 47 responsive designs available, and they are organized by purpose (sale, re-engagement, welcome, etc.) rather than industry (fashion, marketing, etc.). Compared to many of Brevo’s competitors it’s an uncommon approach, but in my opinion, this makes more sense, as the design will already be optimized for specific call-to-actions.

sendinblue template categories

All email templates are included on all plans, including the free one. Though, bear in mind that you’ll need to pay in order to remove Brevo’s branding.

You also have the option to code your own newsletter and save it as a template.

Note that once you’ve chosen your template, you won’t be able to change it without starting from scratch.

Brevo SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is offered on the free plan, though you’ll need to purchase credits. The price depends on the country you’re sending them to. For example, sending SMS within the US will cost you €5 for 500 SMS, €10 for 1000, etc. Note that you’ll be charged in Euros regardless of where you operate.

Having the ability to send SMS is an added bonus, as not many email marketing platforms offer this. Not even the popular newsletter tool Mailchimp has this capability.

I compared prices to emailing tool Omnisend and found them to be very similar.

Brevo for transactional emails

Brevo’s SMTP relay service is used to send transactional emails and avoid spam filters. This is great for those who need to send time-sensitive bulk emails.

Brevo promise rapid delivery:

  • 50% of emails delivered within 1 second
  • 99.98% of emails delivered in under 20 seconds

You can use Brevo’s SMTP service for free with a limit of 300 emails per day. If you are going to send a higher volume, you need to pick one of their paid plans. In our tests of the transactional email service, I found some deliverability issues, unfortunately. So if you’re only planning to send emails via SMTP or API, you should check out competitors such as SMTP2Go or Postmark.

Brevo CRM

Aside from unlimited contacts, marketing automation and web tracking, its free plan also comes with a built-in CRM.

Most all-in-one email marketing services charge extra for this pro feature, so having it for free is a great advantage to using Brevo.

I even included it in our guide to the best CRM software for small businesses for that very reason.

It’s true that dedicated CRMs like HubSpot offer greater functionality, though if you only need a simple solution, Brevo’s CRM could be enough for you. After all, we have listed it as one of the best HubSpot alternatives.

sendinblue deals

In our opinion, Brevo’s deal pipeline is well-designed and easy to use. It’s definitely one of the simpler CRM solutions, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, you won’t be overwhelmed by hundreds of options and layers of navigation. Instead, you’ll find editing columns and adding/editing attributes a breeze.

That said, it is missing two key things: lead scoring and analytics. There is no reporting at all on deals, which isn’t great.

Live Chat with Brevo Conversations

Finally, I got around to fully testing the Conversations feature. I honestly didn’t expect much from it. Given our extensive reviews of live chat software on our sister site Tooltester, I thought it would be a tall order for Brevo to measure up to established players like LiveChat and Tidio.

However, to my surprise, Brevo Conversations proved to be an exceptionally adept live chat tool, which we’ve even begun utilizing on EmailTooltester as you can see here:

brevo conversations visitor view

Brevo Conversations live visitors feed

Available even on the free plan, it offers unlimited chats and retains a full conversation history. The Pro plan is priced at a competitive $15/month per user, a rate that’s hard to beat. In comparison, many live chat solutions easily charge double, if not more.

An added perk is that Conversations can be used ‘stand-alone’, meaning you don’t necessarily need to be an email marketing user to take advantage of this feature.

Pros and Cons of Brevo Conversations

  • Automatic triggers and Chatbots: Enjoy unrestricted access to automatic triggers based on various parameters like URL visited, time on site, referrer, etc. Their chatbots allow you to construct scenarios with predefined Q&A flows – for instance, “Are you already a customer? Yes/No.”
  • Wide Range of Integrations: Brevo supports integrations with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. Plus, you can synchronize your chats with their CRM through Brevo.
  • Visitor Live Feed: The live feed offers crucial insights and indicates who has received a triggered message.
  • Live Chat in multiple languages: The chat widget is translated into numerous languages, making the setup of language-specific messages a breeze.

  • Mobile App: The iOS app feels quite clunky. While it suffices for alerting you to new conversations, it’s not a real pleasure to use it. Similarly, the Mac desktop app doesn’t fare much better.

WhatsApp Campaigns

As one of the first Meta partners for WhatsApp Campaigns, with Brevo, you can now send targeted messages to your audience through the messaging app.

Unlike with SMS, you can customize your WhatsApp campaigns with images, videos, attachments, and CTAs. This could be a great way to keep your customers engaged. You’ll be required to add an unsubscribe link to your WhatsApp campaigns, and we’d advise keeping an eye on the unsubscribe rate, as a high one will affect your quality score. It would be great if you could A/B test such campaigns – something that isn’t possible currently.

You can upload your contacts in bulk and create segments that you can use across other channels (SMS and email campaigns). So the fact that you can manage various channels all in one place is really useful.

This feature is available on all plans, though sending charges vary per country.

Migration support

Brevo doesn’t have an in-house migration team. Instead, they offer a directory of approved Brevo experts who can help you out. While these experts do charge a fee, they can likely transfer your entire setup to Brevo, which is a big plus compared to the typical free migration services that often have limits on what they’ll move.

Yes, hiring an expert will add to your email marketing costs, but Brevo is one of the most budget-friendly platforms out there. So, think of the migration fee as an investment in a cost-effective ESP.

And if you’re more of a DIY person, Brevo offers built-in tools to help you import contacts from other ESPs like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Klaviyo. Plus, if you’re on an Enterprise plan, you can take advantage of their deliverability consultations and custom onboarding to get up to speed quickly.

Brevo Deliverability

It’s been interesting to monitor Brevo’s deliverability rates over the years, their scores have fluctuated from the mid-nineties to a disappointing 67.7% in our test in June 2023, coming second to last. However, on a more positive note, they saw quite an improvement in our latest round, moving up 6 places with an increase of 16.6 percentage points.  We look forward to seeing if they can keep this performance up.

Conclusion

After conducting this Brevo review and having used them intensively for more than a year, it’s clear that Brevo is really one of the top providers for small businesses.

They’ve built-in some very clever options to help small businesses optimize their email marketing strategies, including advanced email automation, segmentation, and landing pages and forms that are geared towards increasing conversions.

While its automation features may not be enough to topple the email marketing software giants like ActiveCampaign, it’s not a long way off.

Brevo has also been working on its CRM features, incorporating a deal pipeline and inbox where you’re able to send emails to customers directly by integrating with your email client.

Aside from offering a generous free plan, with its paid plans starting from $9 for up to 5,000 emails, Brevo is one of the cheapest email marketing providers on the market, providing tremendous value.

In terms of features, there’s no denying that Brevo is impressive. Our best advice? If, after reading this Brevo review, you’re really interested in what they could offer you, try it out on the free version to see if you like it. Who knows, you might find yourself enjoying sophisticated marketing automation on a budget?

Try Brevo now for free.

FAQ

Yes, Brevo is a French company that stores your contacts’ data within the European Union (specifically, in France and Belgium).

In addition, Brevo offers all the necessary features for compliance, such as double opt-in, consent fields, and more.

Canceling your account can be done online. Simply log in and go to your accounts My Plan page.

At the bottom, you will see the option to cancel the monthly plan or to close the account.

If you don’t close the account entirely you’ll be able to use your remaining credits until you’ve reached the end of your billing month.

Though the free version is for an unlimited time, there is a daily sending limit of 300 emails.

If you go over this allowance, Brevo will employ its ‘Requeue’ feature, which means that your paused campaign will resume sending automatically in the following days until you have sent the email to all your contacts.

Looking at our detailed Brevo review, you can see that, aside from a slightly unstable email deliverability, it is a very capable ESP. Considering their very reasonable prices, we recommend this email marketing service, especially if you are planning to use features such as the CRM or live chat.

Brevo’s deliverability has fluctuated in our bi-annual deliverability tests. In the most recent round, they managed to move up a few spots, seems as though their email deliverability is on the up.

Brevo Meetings is an online scheduling platform, quite similar to Calendly. Visitors to your website can view your calendar and book appointments, including paid ones.

We began using Brevo Meetings for our Consulting Calls and are extremely satisfied with it. It’s even completely free!

The only limitation I’ve encountered is that it allows charging in only one currency, despite supporting multiple currencies.

Brevo Alternatives

MailerLite is, along with Brevo, one of the most budget-friendly tools we’ve tried. They offer a generous free plan as well. MailerLite is more suitable for beginners as it’s a bit easier to use than Brevo.

GetResponse has some extra (advanced) features like a webinar hosting platform. It also comes with thorough reports and useful analysis features. We are also big fans of their email automations and list management capabilities.

ActiveCampaign is, generally speaking, a more advanced tool than Brevo. For example, their flexible and powerful automation system, can’t be compared to Brevo’s. However, Active Campaign is more expensive and you’ll need some budget to use it – no free plan.

See how Brevo and Mailchimp compare. And check out where we place Brevo as a Constant Contact and Mailchimp alternative.

The authors

Learn more about us

Roberta Phillips

Marketing Manager

Hey, I'm Roberta! Having worked as a digital marketer for a host of online businesses, I've tried, tested, fallen in love with and despaired with so many marketing tools. I'm excited to help you find the email marketing and CRM tools you need to thrive.

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.

Learn more about us

We keep our content up to date

03 Dec 2024 - Price increase reflected
26 Aug 2024 - Added information about migration support
15 May 2024 - Updated prices
05 Jan 2023 - Deliverability update
03 Jan 2023 - Small addition about Brevo's templates
19 Dec 2023 - Smaller updates in the intro
12 Oct 2023 - Detailed review of Brevo Conversations added
28 Sep 2023 - Additional information about multi-user access added
19 Jul 2023 - Added new review video
18 Jul 2023 - Updated email deliverability rate
31 May 2023 - Updated Reports section
18 May 2023 - Sendinblue rebrands to Brevo
20 Mar 2023 - Smaller updates
15 Dec 2022 - Badge added
04 Oct 2022 - Prices updated
28 Sept 2022 - New Conversations feature added
25 Apr 2022 - Deliverability rating increased slightly
17 Feb 2022 - Lite plan prices decreased
16 Nov 2021 - General update
06 Oct 2021 - Updated deliverability rating
06 Sept 2021 - Updated screenshots in light of Brevo design update
19 Jul 2021 - Mention of the Brevo Academy
22 Apr 2021 - General update
04 Nov 2020 - Pricing change - no longer offers Essentials plan, lower allowances on other plans
29 Oct 2019 - A few smaller updates
14 Aug 2019 - Updated video review
7 Jan 2019 - Deliverability rating updated
10 Sep 2018 - General update incl. new marketing automation features and landing page editor
29 Mar 2018 - Pricing change in the free account. Now you can have unlimited contacts but you're only allowed to send 300 emails per day
20 Mar 2018 - Deliverability rating added
23 Feb 2018 - Free version increased number of emails
29 Dec 2017 - Price increase for the Lite plan
18 May 2017 - New integration options
25 Nov 2016 - Update under email automation
03 Mar 2016 - Initial Tests

Our Methodology

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

Our Methodology

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