Brevo vs Kit: pricing, features and which to choose

Brevo began in 2012 in Paris as Sendinblue, founded by Armand Thiberge, and renamed itself Brevo in 2023 as it expanded from email into a broader customer relationship platform. It serves small businesses, ecommerce stores, agencies and larger companies that want marketing, sales and transactional messaging in one place. Its biggest difference from rivals such as Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign is pricing: most plans are priced by monthly email sends, while contact storage is generous, so businesses with large but infrequently emailed lists can pay much less. Brevo also runs a widely used transactional email and SMTP service for developers sending receipts, password resets and notifications.

The platform covers email campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor and templates, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, web and mobile push, live chat, landing pages, signup forms and marketing automation. Free sales features include a CRM with deals, tasks and meetings, while a Sales Essentials or Advanced package adds more pipeline tools. Ecommerce features include product data feeds, back-in-stock alerts and AI product recommendations on higher plans. Higher plans also add contact scoring, custom objects, an analytics studio with dashboards, marketing pressure controls that limit how often contacts are messaged, and multi-language content. Developers get APIs, SMTP relay, inbound and outbound webhooks, and integrations with Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce and other tools.

Brevo's strengths are send-based pricing that suits large lists, a generous free plan, strong transactional email, built-in CRM and multichannel messaging including WhatsApp. Its weaknesses are a large jump in price to the Professional plan, add-ons for features such as extra seats and branding removal on Starter, and AI features that trail rivals. Mailchimp is more familiar with polished templates. ActiveCampaign offers deeper automation. Klaviyo and Omnisend focus on ecommerce data. HubSpot provides a fuller CRM at higher cost. Choose Brevo if you need affordable email and SMS for a big list, or a single tool for marketing and transactional messages.

Kit was founded in 2013 by Nathan Barry as ConvertKit and renamed Kit in 2024. It is built for creators, including writers, podcasters, YouTubers, course creators, coaches and artists, who earn money from an audience rather than an online store or sales team. That focus shapes the product: simple tag-based subscriber management instead of lists, plain-text style emails, landing pages and forms for lead magnets, and tools to sell digital products, paid newsletters and subscriptions directly from your list. The Creator Network lets creators recommend each other's newsletters to grow, and paid recommendations let them earn money by promoting others.

Core features include unlimited forms and landing pages, unlimited broadcasts, subscriber tagging and segmentation, A/B testing of subject lines and content, and a visual automation builder with a template library. Email sequences send a series of messages in order, such as a welcome series or course. Digital products and subscriptions are sold through Kit Commerce. The Kit App Store connects tools such as Shopify, Teachable, Zoom and Stripe, and an API supports custom integrations. Pro adds subscriber engagement scoring, deliverability and engagement reporting, a newsletter referral system from SparkLoop, Facebook Custom Audiences sync, collaborative editing, unlimited team members and the ability to edit links in sent broadcasts.

Kit's strengths are its creator focus, a generous free plan, built-in commerce and paid newsletters, the Creator Network for growth and an MCP server that brings AI assistants into your workflow. Its weaknesses are fewer design templates than Mailchimp, limited ecommerce data, costs that grow with your list and AI that depends on external assistants. Beehiiv is a close rival with built-in ads and referrals. Substack takes a revenue share instead of charging fees. Mailchimp and Brevo suit general small businesses. ActiveCampaign offers deeper automation. Choose Kit if you are a creator who wants to grow and monetize an email list with simple tools.