Brevo

Name: Brevo
Brand: Brevo
Price: 030095000 USD

The European ESP that bills by emails sent, not by contacts stored

Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, is a French marketing and customer relationship platform that combines email campaigns, marketing automation, transactional email and an SMTP relay, SMS and WhatsApp, landing pages, live chat, and a sales CRM in one account, and prices its marketing plans by the volume of emails you send each month rather than by the number of contacts you store.

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Overview

Brevo was founded in Paris in 2012 by Armand Thiberge as Sendinblue, and rebranded in May 2023. It is the most credible European answer to the American ESP oligopoly: around 1,000 employees across eight offices, more than 600,000 users, EU data centers by default, ISO 27001 certification, and B Corp status since May 2025. It reached over 200 million euros in ARR in 2025 and took a 500 million euro round led by General Atlantic and Oakley Capital in December 2025 at unicorn valuation, structured as a leveraged buyout rather than a conventional growth round.

The pricing meter is the reason to care. Almost every competitor charges for the contacts you store, which means a large, mostly idle list is a permanent monthly tax. Brevo charges for the emails you actually send. If you hold 80,000 addresses and mail them once a quarter, that costs Brevo almost nothing and costs Mailchimp several hundred dollars a month forever. This inversion is not a marketing gimmick; it genuinely changes which businesses can afford to keep a big list, and it is the single strongest argument for the platform. The caveat for 2026 is that the pricing page has begun surfacing a contacts selector alongside the email-volume selector, so the historically unlimited-contacts position is worth confirming for your own account rather than assuming.

Scope is the second argument. Brevo bundles things other vendors sell as separate products: a transactional email API and SMTP relay on the same plan as your marketing sends, SMS and WhatsApp, landing pages, web push, a live chat and shared inbox product, and a sales CRM with deal pipelines. Eleven acquisitions built that surface, including Newsletter2Go in 2019, Chatra, Metrilo, and PushOwl in 2021, and WonderPush and Octolis in 2023. For a small business trying to avoid five subscriptions, the consolidation is real rather than nominal.

The 2026 packaging reshuffle is the thing to watch. The old Business plan is now called Standard, and a new Professional tier was inserted at $499 a month, which is a very large step up from the $18 entry price on Standard and a clear signal about where the company wants to grow. Features that used to feel mid-market, including web push, popups, automatic IP warmup, and phone support, now sit on Professional. Read the current plan grid carefully rather than relying on a review written a year ago, because this lineup has moved.

Best for

European small businesses and anyone with GDPR or data-residency pressure, plus any business holding a large list it mails infrequently, and teams that want marketing email, transactional email, SMS, chat, and a light CRM on one invoice instead of five.

Not the right fit for

High-frequency senders with small lists; the send meter works against you exactly where a contact meter would help, so mailing a 2,000-person list daily costs more here than on a flat contact-priced plan.
Ecommerce brands wanting deep revenue attribution and predictive commerce segmentation; Klaviyo and Omnisend are built for that and Brevo is not, despite having the connectors.
Creators monetizing a newsletter; there is no paid-subscription product, no referral network, and no sponsorship marketplace, so Kit, beehiiv, and Ghost are the right category.
Teams that need a polished, best-in-class email design experience; the editor is competent and unremarkable, and MailerLite and Kit both feel better to work in.
Buyers who need SOC 2 or a signed HIPAA BAA on paper; Brevo publishes ISO 27001 and strong GDPR posture, but its own security materials do not advertise SOC 2 or HIPAA, so do not assume either.

How it works

1
You create an account and Brevo puts it through a validation review before unlocking sending. This is unusual and it is deliberate: the free plan's 300 emails a day is not switched on until a human or an automated check has looked at what you intend to send. Purchased, rented, and scraped lists are prohibited outright, and import guidance limits you to contacts who consented within the last two years.
2
Contacts import by CSV with column-to-attribute mapping, by native Mailchimp connector, by form, or by API, and they sit in lists with attributes you define. Because the meter is sends rather than storage, there is no incentive to prune your list for cost reasons, which is a different discipline from every contact-priced platform.
3
Sending covers three separate paths from one account. Marketing campaigns go out from the drag and drop editor to a list or segment. Automations are multi-step visual workflows with triggers, conditions, and splits, unlimited from the Standard plan up. Transactional email rides the same plan through either the REST API or an SMTP relay at smtp-relay.brevo.com, so your password resets and your newsletters come from the same vendor and the same allowance.
4
Around the sending sit the adjacent products: SMS and WhatsApp priced pay as you go by destination, landing pages and forms, web push and popups on Professional, Conversations for live chat and a shared inbox, and a Sales Platform with deal pipelines. Everything shares one contact database, which Brevo describes as the customer data platform included in all plans rather than sold separately.

Feature breakdown

28 features in 5 modules

Email sending and campaigns

Two kinds of email from one plan, which is the underrated part of the offer.

Marketing campaigns: Drag and drop editor with templates, plus raw HTML import, sending to lists or segments with scheduling and preview across clients.
Transactional email on the same plan: Password resets, receipts, and order confirmations ride the same subscription and email allowance as your marketing sends, rather than requiring a second vendor and a second bill.
SMTP relay: A standard relay at smtp-relay.brevo.com so an existing application can point its mail at Brevo without touching an API, with guides for Postfix, WordPress, and Node.
A/B testing: Subject line and content split testing with automatic winner selection, available from the Standard plan up.
AI send time optimization: Per-contact optimal send timing derived from historical engagement, alongside AI content generation and subject line suggestions.
Prepaid email credits: Instead of overage billing, you buy credit packs from 5,000 to 1,000,000 emails. Credits never expire, which suits seasonal senders far better than a monthly subscription does.

Automation and segmentation

Capable multi-step workflows, unlimited from Standard.

Visual workflow builder: Multi-step automations with event and attribute triggers, conditional branches, splits, and delays; unlimited automations from the Standard plan upward.
Advanced segmentation: Segments across contact attributes, campaign engagement, website behavior, and transactional events from the shared contact database.
Contact scoring: Lead scoring plus CLV, RFM, and churn scoring computed against the contact record and usable in segments and workflows.
Website and event tracking: A tracking script and event API let site behavior and custom application events trigger automations.
AI agents and Aura AI: Marketing, Sales, and Conversations AI agents shipped from the February 2026 AI Lab, running on Brevo's own EU infrastructure rather than on a US model host.

Channels beyond email

The consolidation argument, and where Brevo genuinely saves you subscriptions.

SMS: Pay as you go by destination country, roughly one to five cents per message in the US and EU, with no monthly SMS subscription required.
WhatsApp: WhatsApp campaigns and messaging metered the same pay as you go way, on the same contact database.
Web and mobile push: Push notifications built on the WonderPush and PushOwl acquisitions, now positioned on the Professional tier.
Conversations: Live chat, chatbot, universal shared inbox, phone, and meeting scheduling as a separate product with a free tier and paid seats around $15 per user per month.
Sales Platform: Deal pipelines and sales tooling with a free tier, Sales Essentials around $28 a month for one seat, and Sales Advanced around $59 per user per month.
Landing pages and forms: Hosted landing pages and signup forms tied to the same contact database, with popups available on higher tiers.

Deliverability

Actively managed, with a warmup story that differs sharply by tier.

Managed shared IP pools: Default sending is from shared pools that Brevo monitors and segments; adequate for most small senders and free of warmup obligations.
Dedicated IP add-on: Roughly $251 a year, about $21 a month, included with Enterprise and available as an add-on on higher tiers. Deliverability commonly dips below the shared pool during the four to six week ramp.
Automatic IP warmup: On the Professional tier, sending volume ramps automatically by about 20 percent per sending day up to full capacity; lower tiers document a manual warmup procedure instead, and Enterprise gets a warmup plan designed with a CSM.
Account validation on signup: New accounts are reviewed before sending is unlocked, and campaigns to freshly imported contacts are sampled early. Crossing bounce, complaint, or spam-trap thresholds can suspend the whole account.
Consent recency enforcement: Import guidance restricts you to contacts who gave active, explicit opt-in within the last two years, and proof of consent must be producible on request.

Developer surface

One of the better developer stories among general-purpose ESPs.

REST API v3: A documented REST API at api.brevo.com/v3 with API key header auth plus OAuth 2.0 with scopes, published rate limits, and rate-limit response headers.
Comprehensive webhooks: Webhooks across marketing, transactional, payments, conversations, loyalty, sales CRM, push, and meetings, including batched webhooks and retry handling.
Official SDKs: Fully supported Node.js, Python, and PHP libraries, with Ruby, Go, Java, and C# covered on the transactional side.
Inbound email parsing: Incoming mail can be delivered to a webhook and parsed, which most competitors at this price do not offer at all.
MCP connector: A 2026 Model Context Protocol connector exposing Brevo to Claude, ChatGPT, and Le Chat.
Platform plugins: Maintained plugins for WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento rather than relying on third-party bridges.

Use cases

4 documented

Business with an 80,000-person list mailed quarterly

A contact-priced ESP charges several hundred dollars a month to store a list that receives four campaigns a year, and the finance conversation about it recurs annually.

Brevo bills only the roughly 320,000 emails actually sent, and prepaid credits that never expire fit the seasonal shape better than any monthly subscription, cutting the annual cost by an order of magnitude.

EU company under GDPR scrutiny

Legal is uncomfortable with a US-hosted processor, wants EU data residency, ISO certification, and a DPA that does not depend on transfer frameworks holding up in court.

Brevo is a French company with EU data centers by default, ISO 27001:2022 certification, consent records, and DSAR tooling, and its AI agents run on Brevo's own EU servers rather than a US model host.

SaaS founder needing both product and marketing email

Password resets and receipts run through one vendor, the newsletter through another, and neither team can see the full picture of what an address received.

Transactional email through the API or SMTP relay and marketing campaigns run on the same plan and the same contact database, with webhooks feeding both back into the application.

Small team consolidating a marketing stack

Separate subscriptions for email, SMS, live chat, landing pages, and a lightweight CRM, each with its own login, its own contact list, and its own invoice.

Brevo covers all five from one account and one contact database, with chat and CRM seats priced separately but nothing requiring a fifth vendor relationship.

Pricing

from $0 (free, 300 emails per day), then $9/mo on Starter at 5,000 emails

Marketing plans are metered by emails sent per month rather than by contacts stored, selected from volume bands, with prepaid non-expiring credit packs as the alternative to a subscription. SMS and WhatsApp are pay as you go by destination, and Conversations and the Sales Platform are priced separately per seat.

Plan	Price	Includes
Free	$0 per month	300 emails per day Transactional email and SMTP relay included Drag and drop editor and templates Sales Platform and Conversations free tiers Brevo logo on every email Genuinely usable rather than a demo, and unusually generous on transactional sending. Sending is unlocked only after account validation.
Starter	$9 at 5,000 emails, about $29 at 20,000, about $39 at 40,000, about $69 at 100,000 per month	No daily sending limit Basic reporting 1 user seat Email support Logo removal available as an add-on at roughly $11 a month About $8 a month on annual billing at the entry band. The logo removal add-on is an irritating upsell at this price point.
Standard (formerly Business)	$18 at 5,000 emails, about $65 to $69 at 20,000, about $129 at 100,000 per month	Unlimited marketing automations A/B testing and advanced statistics Landing pages Multi-user access Brevo logo removed The tier most small businesses should be on, and the point at which the automation builder stops being restricted.
Professional	$499 per month	Roughly 150,000 emails included 10 user seats Web push and popups Automatic IP warmup Phone support A very large step up from $18, inserted in the 2026 repackaging. Features that used to sit lower, including push and phone support, now live here.
Enterprise	Quoted per year	Positioned at 1,000,000-plus contacts Dedicated IP included CSM-designed warmup plan SSO and SAML One-hour support response commitment

Add-ons

Prepaid email credits (Packs from 5,000 to 1,000,000 emails): Credits never expire, which makes them a better fit than a subscription for seasonal or occasional senders.
Dedicated IP (Roughly $251 per year, about $21 per month): Included with Enterprise; expect a four to six week warmup during which deliverability may sit below the shared pool.
Logo removal (About $11 per month): Needed on Starter; included from Standard upward.
SMS and WhatsApp (Pay as you go by destination, roughly $0.01 to $0.05 per SMS in the US and EU): No monthly SMS subscription, which suits low and irregular volumes.
Conversations and Sales Platform seats (Conversations Pro about $15 per user per month; Sales Essentials about $28 per month, Sales Advanced about $59 per user per month): Both have free tiers, so you can adopt them without immediately adding cost.

Billing notes

The meter is emails sent per month, not contacts stored. This is the whole argument for Brevo and it inverts the economics of a large, infrequently mailed list.
Modelled monthly bill by list size, assuming one campaign per contact per month: a 1,000-contact list sending 1,000 emails fits inside the free plan at zero cost. A 10,000-contact list sending 10,000 emails a month sits in the 10,000 to 20,000 band, roughly $29 on Starter or $65 on Standard. A 50,000-contact list sending 50,000 emails a month lands near the 50,000 to 60,000 band, roughly $55 on Starter or $89 on Standard. The same 50,000 contacts on Mailchimp Standard would cost roughly $450 a month regardless of whether you mailed them.
That comparison flips if you mail often. A 10,000-contact list mailed weekly is 40,000 emails a month and prices like a much larger list, so send frequency and not list size is the variable to model here.
Unsubscribed contacts do not create a recurring cost, because storage is not the meter. This sidesteps the dead-weight problem entirely rather than mitigating it.
There is no automatic overage billing. When the monthly allowance runs out, sending stops until you buy prepaid credits or upsize the plan. That is friendlier than a surprise invoice and less forgiving if you send at the last minute.
Annual billing saves roughly 10 percent, taking the $9 Starter to about $8 and the $18 Standard to about $16 at the entry bands.
The 2026 repackaging renamed Business to Standard and inserted Professional at $499, moving web push, popups, automatic IP warmup, and phone support up. Check the live plan grid rather than trusting older comparisons.
Historically contacts were unlimited and free. The 2026 pricing page shows a contacts selector alongside the email selector, so verify the contact ceiling on your own plan before assuming the classic unlimited position still holds.

Value assessment: Brevo is the best-value general-purpose ESP in this category for a specific and common shape of business: one holding a large list it mails occasionally. At 50,000 contacts mailed monthly you are looking at roughly $89 a month on Standard against roughly $450 on Mailchimp Standard and considerably more on Klaviyo, and that gap only widens as the list grows without the send frequency growing with it. Bundling transactional email, an SMTP relay, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and a light CRM into the same account compounds the saving by removing subscriptions rather than discounting one. The value case weakens for high-frequency senders, where the send meter punishes exactly what a contact meter rewards, and the new $499 Professional tier is a jarring cliff above $18 Standard that will push some growing accounts into a decision they did not expect. For EU buyers, the ISO 27001 certification and EU-default hosting are worth real money on their own.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

Billing by emails sent rather than contacts stored is a structural advantage for anyone with a large list and modest send frequency, and it eliminates the dead-weight contact problem outright.
Transactional email and an SMTP relay ride the same plan as marketing sends, so one vendor covers both password resets and newsletters without a second subscription.
Genuine breadth: SMS, WhatsApp, push, landing pages, live chat with a shared inbox, and a sales CRM with deal pipelines, all sharing one contact database.
The strongest European compliance posture in this category: French company, EU data centers by default, ISO 27001:2022 certified, B Corp since 2025, and AI agents running on Brevo's own EU infrastructure.
Prepaid credits that never expire suit seasonal and occasional senders better than any monthly subscription structure in the category.
A capable developer surface with a documented REST API, OAuth 2.0, extensive webhooks including batching and retry, inbound email parsing, official SDKs, and a 2026 MCP connector.
Very well capitalized after a 500 million euro round in December 2025, with over 200 million euros of ARR and double-digit EBITDA margin, so it is not a survival risk.

Limitations

The send meter penalizes high-frequency senders. A small list mailed daily costs more on Brevo than on a flat contact-priced plan, which is the exact inverse of its strength.
The 2026 lineup puts a $499 Professional tier directly above an $18 Standard tier, which is a severe cliff, and it moved web push, popups, automatic IP warmup, and phone support up into it.
The historically unlimited contacts position now appears qualified by a contacts selector on the pricing page, so the flagship claim needs checking against your own plan.
Charging separately to remove the Brevo logo on the Starter plan is a poor look at a $9 price point.
No SOC 2 or HIPAA commitment is published in Brevo's own security materials, which is a blocker for buyers whose procurement requires either.
The email editor is functional rather than pleasant, and it is a visible step down from MailerLite or Kit.
No ecommerce revenue attribution or predictive commerce segmentation worth the name, despite having the store connectors.
Deliverability during a dedicated IP warmup commonly sits below the shared pool for four to six weeks, and automatic warmup is reserved for Professional and above.

Head-to-head comparisons

5 alternatives

Brevo vs Mailchimp

from $0 (free up to 250 contacts), then about $13/mo on Essentials at 500 contacts

The clearest contrast in this category. Mailchimp bills for contacts including those who unsubscribed; Brevo bills for emails sent and does not care how many addresses you hold. At 50,000 contacts mailed monthly that is roughly $89 against roughly $450. Mailchimp has better creative tooling, deeper predictive segmentation, and vastly more integrations. Take Brevo on cost and EU hosting, Mailchimp on polish and ecosystem.

Full Brevo vs Mailchimp comparison

Brevo vs ActiveCampaign

from About $15/mo on Starter at 1,000 contacts billed annually (about $19 monthly)

ActiveCampaign has the deeper automation builder, real lead scoring, and stronger sales pipelines, and it is the better tool if automation sophistication is the purchase reason. Brevo is dramatically cheaper for large lists, includes transactional sending, and hosts in the EU. Note that ActiveCampaign now bills unsubscribed contacts on new accounts while Brevo does not bill for storage at all.

Full Brevo vs ActiveCampaign comparison

Brevo vs Klaviyo

from $0 (free up to 250 profiles), then roughly $30/mo at 1,000 active profiles

Klaviyo is an ecommerce database with revenue attribution and predictive commerce analytics that Brevo does not attempt to match. Brevo is a broader, cheaper general-purpose platform with EU residency and bundled transactional email. If your revenue comes through a checkout and flows are a forecast line, pay for Klaviyo; for everything else, Brevo does more for less.

Full Brevo vs Klaviyo comparison

Brevo vs Omnisend

from $0 (free up to 250 contacts), then $16/mo on Standard

Omnisend is ecommerce-specialized with prebuilt cart and post-purchase flows and unlimited sends on Pro; Brevo is a general business platform that also handles transactional email, chat, and CRM. A store should probably take Omnisend. A business that happens to sell online alongside doing several other things is better served by Brevo's breadth and send-based meter.

Full Brevo vs Omnisend comparison

Brevo vs MailerLite

from $10.80/mo (Comfort, up to 500 subscribers, billed annually; $12 monthly)

MailerLite has the better editor and a friendlier interface at a low contact-based price, and it is the nicer product to use day to day. Brevo wins decisively on a large list mailed infrequently, on bundled transactional sending, and on EU compliance credentials. Under about 10,000 contacts mailed regularly, MailerLite is the more pleasant choice; above that, run the arithmetic.

Full Brevo vs MailerLite comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: A day, with one caveat unique to Brevo: new accounts go through a validation review before sending is unlocked, so you cannot sign up and send within the hour the way you can elsewhere. Budget for that. Once unlocked, list import, template setup, and a first campaign are straightforward, and pointing an application at the SMTP relay is a fifteen-minute job.
Learning curve: Low to moderate. Campaigns and lists are conventional. The two things that take adjustment are thinking in emails sent rather than contacts stored when planning cost, and navigating a product surface that spans marketing, transactional, chat, and CRM, which makes the interface busier than a single-purpose ESP.
Onboarding: Self-serve on every published tier. Phone support arrives on Professional, and Enterprise adds a CSM, a one-hour response commitment, and a bespoke warmup plan. Brevo Academy provides structured training at no cost.
Migration notes: A native Mailchimp connector handles one-time or scheduled sync, and CSV import supports column-to-attribute mapping. Three specific frictions matter. Mailchimp's combined address fields do not map cleanly. Mailchimp tags do not carry over, because Brevo has no equivalent tag model, so segmentation has to be redesigned around attributes and lists. And imports are restricted to contacts who consented within the last two years, which is stricter than most competitors and can mean leaving part of an old list behind. A large fresh import is also the single highest-risk trigger for early campaign sampling and account review, so import in stages and warm up rather than blasting the whole list on day one.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: Web applicationiOS and Android appsSMTP relayWordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento plugins
API: REST API v3 at api.brevo.com/v3 with API key header auth and OAuth 2.0 with scopes, documented rate limits with response headers, comprehensive webhooks across marketing, transactional, payments, conversations, loyalty, CRM, push, and meetings including batching and retry, inbound email parsing, official Node.js, Python, and PHP SDKs plus Ruby, Go, Java, and C# on the transactional side, and a 2026 MCP connector. Docs at developers.brevo.com.
Compliance: ISO 27001:2022 certifiedGDPR-native with a published DPAB Corp certified since May 2025CCPA and CASL support claimed
Data residency: EU data centers by default, with backups across three geographically separate servers and encryption at rest for backups. This is Brevo's central differentiator for European buyers, and its AI agents run on Brevo's own EU infrastructure rather than a US model host.
SSO: SSO and SAML at the Enterprise tier.
Security notes: Multi-factor authentication, IP whitelisting, consent records, and DSAR tooling. Note that SOC 2 and HIPAA are not mentioned in Brevo's own security materials despite third-party claims, so do not assume either is available. Purchased, rented, and scraped lists are prohibited, new accounts are validated before sending is unlocked, and campaigns to freshly imported contacts are sampled early with account suspension as the enforcement mechanism.

Support & resources

Channels: In-app ticket and email support on all plansLive chatPhone support from the Professional tier upward, in six languagesEnterprise: one-hour response commitment plus a dedicated CSM
Documentation: Help center at help.brevo.com, developer documentation at developers.brevo.com, and free structured training at academy.brevo.com.
Community: Official community forum at community.brevo.com, with a substantial European user base and locale-specific resources.

Company

Founded: 2012
Headquarters: Paris, France
Ownership: Private, majority-backed by General Atlantic and Oakley Capital following a December 2025 buyout; not publicly listed
Founders: Armand Thiberge
Employees: Approximately 1,000 (2025), across roughly eight offices
Funding: Backed over time by Partech, Bpifrance, Bridgepoint, and BlackRock, including a $160M Series B in October 2020, followed by a 500 million euro round (roughly $583M) in December 2025 led by General Atlantic and Oakley Capital, structured as a leveraged buyout at unicorn valuation. Reported ARR of over 200 million euros in 2025 with a double-digit EBITDA margin.

Funding history

Round	Amount	Year	Notes
Series B	$160M	2020	Led by Bridgepoint with Bpifrance and BlackRock participating.
Buyout and growth round	500 million euros (about $583M)	2025	Led by General Atlantic and Oakley Capital in December, structured as an LBO at unicorn valuation, with US expansion and further M&A named as uses of funds.

Timeline

2012Founded in Paris by Armand Thiberge as Sendinblue, building an email platform aimed at small businesses outside the US market.
2019Acquires Newsletter2Go in Germany, the first of eleven acquisitions that build out the multi-product surface.
2020Raises a $160M Series B led by Bridgepoint with Bpifrance and BlackRock.
2021Acquires Chatra, Metrilo, and PushOwl for over $47M combined, adding live chat, analytics, and push notifications.
2023Rebrands from Sendinblue to Brevo on 4 May, passes $100M ARR, and acquires WonderPush and Octolis to deepen push and customer data capability.
2025Certified as a B Corp in May, then raises 500 million euros in December from General Atlantic and Oakley Capital at unicorn valuation on over 200 million euros of ARR.
2026Launches the Brevo AI Lab in February with a 50 million euro five-year commitment, shipping Aura AI, marketing, sales and conversations agents, and an MCP connector, alongside a pricing reshuffle that renames Business to Standard and inserts a $499 Professional tier.

Integrations

WordPress
WooCommerce
Shopify
BigCommerce
Magento and PrestaShop
Zapier and Make
Salesforce
Stripe
Snowflake and BigQuery
Google Analytics
Amplitude
Typeform, plus a native Mailchimp migration connector

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

What is Brevo?

Brevo is a French marketing and customer relationship platform, founded in Paris in 2012 as Sendinblue and rebranded in May 2023. It combines email campaigns, marketing automation, transactional email with an SMTP relay, SMS and WhatsApp, landing pages, live chat, and a sales CRM in one account. Its defining commercial feature is that marketing plans are priced by emails sent each month rather than by contacts stored.

Does Brevo charge by contacts or by emails sent?

By emails sent, which is the main reason to consider it. Storing addresses does not by itself drive the bill, so a large list mailed occasionally is cheap in a way it simply cannot be on a contact-priced platform. One caveat for 2026: the pricing page has begun showing a contacts selector alongside the email-volume selector, so verify the contact ceiling on your own plan rather than assuming the classic unlimited-contacts position still applies in full.

How much does Brevo cost at 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 contacts?

Assuming one campaign per contact per month: a 1,000-contact list fits inside the free plan at zero cost. A 10,000-contact list sending 10,000 emails a month sits around $29 on Starter or $65 on Standard. A 50,000-contact list sending 50,000 emails a month runs roughly $55 on Starter or $89 on Standard. For comparison, 50,000 contacts on Mailchimp Standard costs roughly $450 a month whether you mail them or not.

Do unsubscribed contacts cost me money on Brevo?

No. Because storage is not the meter, an unsubscribed contact sitting in your account does not generate a recurring charge the way it does on Mailchimp or on new ActiveCampaign accounts. Brevo sidesteps the dead-weight contact problem entirely rather than mitigating it with archiving tools.

What happens if I exceed my monthly email allowance?

Sending stops until you buy prepaid credits or move up a plan. There is no automatic overage charge, which means no surprise invoice but also no grace if you discover the limit mid-campaign. Prepaid credit packs run from 5,000 to 1,000,000 emails and never expire, which makes them a good fit for seasonal senders.

Can Brevo handle transactional email as well as marketing?

Yes, and on the same plan and the same email allowance, which is unusual. You can send through the REST API or point an existing application at the SMTP relay at smtp-relay.brevo.com, with documented setup for Postfix, WordPress, and Node. Most competitors either charge separately for transactional email or do not offer it at all, so this is a genuine consolidation saving rather than a listed feature.

Is Brevo good for GDPR and EU data residency?

It is the strongest option in this category on that axis. Brevo is a French company hosting in EU data centers by default, certified to ISO 27001:2022, a certified B Corp since May 2025, with consent recording, DSAR tooling, and a published DPA. Its 2026 AI agents run on Brevo's own EU infrastructure. Be aware that SOC 2 and HIPAA are not advertised in Brevo's own security materials, so if procurement requires either, ask before assuming.

What is the catch with Brevo's pricing?

Two things. First, the send meter punishes high frequency: a small list mailed daily costs more here than on a flat contact-priced plan, so model sends rather than subscribers. Second, the 2026 repackaging put a $499 Professional tier directly above an $18 Standard tier and moved web push, popups, automatic IP warmup, and phone support up into it, so a growing account can hit a very steep cliff.

How hard is it to migrate to Brevo from Mailchimp?

There is a native Mailchimp connector for one-time or scheduled sync, so the mechanics are easy, but three frictions matter. Mailchimp's combined address fields do not map cleanly. Mailchimp tags do not carry over at all, because Brevo has no tag model, so segmentation has to be redesigned around attributes and lists. And Brevo restricts imports to contacts who consented within the last two years, which is stricter than most and may mean leaving part of an old list behind.

Will Brevo let me send immediately after signing up?

No. New accounts go through a validation review before sending is unlocked, including the free plan's 300 emails a day. Purchased, rented, and scraped lists are prohibited outright, and early campaigns to freshly imported contacts are sampled, with account suspension as the enforcement mechanism if bounce, complaint, or spam-trap thresholds are crossed. Plan for the delay and import in stages rather than all at once.

Editorial verdict

Brevo is the value pick in this category, and unusually its value comes from a structural pricing decision rather than from being a cheaper version of the same thing. Charging for emails sent instead of contacts stored genuinely changes what a small business can afford to do with a large list, and bundling transactional email, an SMTP relay, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and a light CRM on top removes subscriptions rather than discounting one. For European buyers the ISO 27001 certification and EU-default hosting are worth money on their own. The weaknesses are real: an unremarkable editor, no meaningful ecommerce attribution, a logo-removal upsell that should not exist at $9, no published SOC 2 or HIPAA, and a 2026 repackaging that opens a punishing gap between $18 Standard and $499 Professional. Buy Brevo if you hold a big list you mail occasionally, if you need transactional and marketing email from one vendor, or if EU data residency is a requirement rather than a preference. Look elsewhere if you mail a small list daily, or if ecommerce revenue attribution is the job.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.