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Starting life as a digital agency, Sendinblue’s email marketing platform was developed in response to one of the biggest challenges faced by small-to-medium businesses: automating email marketing on a budget.
Everything, from its comprehensive feature set (which includes a CRM, marketing automation, transactional emails, SMS, landing pages and Facebook ads), to its extremely competitive pricing, shows that Sendinblue is serious about becoming a major player in this historically underserved market. It even has a very popular email plugin for WordPress.
Its efforts seem to be paying off, with over 80,000 users and 100 million emails sent per day! For a company that’s a relative newcomer (it was launched in 2012), it’s not bad at all.
Sendinblue Review: What to expect
Sendinblue has a nicely-featured free plan, which includes marketing automation, phone support (for the first 60 days) and up to 300 emails per day. The advanced automations included offer web tracking and lead scoring. Unlike other providers, they charge based on the number of emails you send rather than how many contacts you have. Paid plans start at $25 a month for 10,000 emails.
Now let’s dive in and see whether this platform lives up to its promise of delivering a user-friendly, all-in-one solution.
Sendinblue screenshots
Sendinblue Pricing
Pros and Cons
Low-cost plans:
The first thing that will probably stand out to you is its pricing. Sendinblue offers some of the most competitive prices on the market, with plans starting at $25 for 10,000 emails and unlimited contacts.
Solid email automation:
Surprising for a newsletter service at this price point: Sendinblue boasts a fully-kitted out, workflow-based automation feature. You can trigger campaign actions using your visitor’s email and website engagement behavior, assign lead scores, send transactional messages, plus loads more.
SMS marketing tool:
This is relatively unique to Sendinblue, as not many newsletter tools offer this feature. At $1.34 for 100 messages, it’s also pretty affordable.
Deliverability:
Our latest tests show that Sendinblue have definitely been working on their deliverability.
Sendinblue WordPress plugin:
Sendinblue’s 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 plan sending limit:
Their free plan has a daily sending limit of 300 emails, which is not much at all.
Poor email template designs:
Their newsletter templates look a bit dated, and there aren’t a lot of them to choose from. However, you can upload your own HTML code, so I’d consider checking out what template builder, Stripo, has to offer.
Slow and buggy system:
Sometimes the web application is a bit slow when loading certain pages.
Is Sendinblue the right newsletter service for you?
Recommended if:
You need to send transactional emails and SMS:
Sendinblue is 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.
You want a sophisticated tool on a low budget:
Sendinblue 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, Sendinblue is well-equipped to serve ecommerce. Integrations with popular platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento are available.
Not recommended if:
You need multiple logins and different user access levels:
Unfortunately, Sendinblue only allows you to set up logins for multiple users on their Premium and Enterprise plans.
Rating details
| criterion | rating | comments |
|---|---|---|
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Ease of Use |
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The user experience is pretty good and the menus are easy to navigate. There’s also a nice campaign-production flow that is easy to follow. |
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Newsletter Creation |
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Editor |
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As with most tools, Sendinblue 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. |
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Personalization |
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Simply add one of the ‘attribute conditions’ by clicking on the personalization button. 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). |
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Email types |
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Newsletters, autoresponders, transactional emails, A/B tests, SMS |
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Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs |
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There are 65 templates to choose from, and they’ll all responsive. Note that some templates have the same design with just a different layout. The designs aren’t the most modern or creative, and could do with an update. |
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Email Automation |
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Some really impressive automation options here. Sendinblue’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. Sendinblue 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. |
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List Management |
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You can create ‘filters’ which serve as segments, based on contact field criteria and behavior (email opens, clicks etc). You can also set up automated workflows to create new lists based on demographics, behavior and lead scores. |
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Registration Forms/ Opt-in & Opt-out- Process |
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The forms are surprisingly advanced, with some really cool personalization features. You can let subscribers select which list(s) they want to be opted into (for example, based on interest or industry). You can also enable Captcha verification. And if the users are coming to a form via email, you can pre-populate the form fields with their data – impressive! There’s also the option to choose between single and double opt-in. |
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Deliverability |
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Based on our deliverability tests, Sendinblue has seen a big improvement in this area. |
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Reports and Analysis |
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Sendinblue 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. |
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Languages |
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The website and help center are available in 6 languages (EN, ES, PT, DE, IT, FR) |
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Further Features |
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Spam- and Design-Testing |
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There’s a nice in-built previewer for seeing how emails will display in different email clients. No spam testing available, though. |
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Bounce Management |
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Hard bounces are automatically blacklisted. Sendinblue provides a list of both hard and soft bounces. |
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Blacklist |
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It’s possible to export your blacklist from the tool. |
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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. |
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Pro Features |
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Authentication |
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SPF, DKIM and DMARC. |
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Own Domain |
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Available if you purchase a dedicated IP with Sendinblue (note – this isn’t cheap), or if you have a higher-level plan with this included. Landing pages can be hosted on your domain without the dedicated IP. |
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Different levels of account access |
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Only available on Premium and Enterprise plans. |
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Integrations |
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A number of integrations are available, however, more are yet to be added. That said, Sendinblue is also part of Zapier’s library. |
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Landing Page Editor |
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A very sleek and modern landing page editor is available for those on the Premium 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. |
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Support |
4/5 |
A universal help button is available, allowing you to access Sendinblue’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. |
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Overall rating |
4.2/5 |
From a value-for-money perspective, it’s actually a great tool, considering that the features it offers are pretty advanced. It could very well serve your email marketing needs. Try it for free. |
Conclusion
Taking a look at Sendinblue’s feature set, it’s clear that they ‘get’ email marketing. They’ve built in some very clever options to help marketers optimize their email campaigns, including advanced email automation, segmentation, personalization, and landing pages and forms that are geared towards increasing conversions.
While its automation features may not be enough to topple the giants like ActiveCampaign, it’s not a long way off. See how it compares to Mailchimp in this comparison.
Aside from offering a generous free plan, with its paid plans starting from $25 for up to 10,000 emails, Sendinblue are one of the cheapest providers on the market.
In terms of features, there’s no denying that Sendinblue is impressive. Our best advice? If after reading this Sendinblue review you’re really interested in what they could offer you, try it out on the free plan to see if you like it. Who knows, you might find yourself enjoying sophisticated marketing automation on a budget?
Sendinblue Alternatives
MailerLite is, along with Sendinblue, 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 Sendinblue.
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 Sendinblue. For example, their flexible and powerful automation system, can’t be compared to Sendinblue’s. However, Active Campaign is more expensive and you’ll need some budget to use it – no free plan.
FAQ
How do I cancel Sendinblue
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.
Is Sendinblue free and what are the limits?
Though the free plan is for an unlimited time, there is a daily sending limit of 300 emails.
If you go over this allowance, Sendinblue 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.
How good is Sendinblue?
Aside from a slightly slow system, the features and allowances you get with Sendinblue are very good. Considering their very reasonable prices, we recommend this newsletter service.
About Roberta Phillips
Latest Updates
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 plan. 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 plan 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
