Brevo vs Mailchimp: 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.

Mailchimp is an active email marketing and automation platform owned by Intuit, which completed its acquisition on November 1, 2021. Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius founded the company in Atlanta in 2001. Intuit reported consideration of approximately $5.7 billion in cash, 10.1 million Intuit shares valued at about $6.3 billion at the then closing price, plus employee RSUs. Mailchimp says 13 million global users and more than 1,500 employees use or support the service, although those are company-published figures. The platform targets small and mid-market businesses with email, SMS, forms, websites, advertising, analytics, ecommerce integrations, and connections to Intuit products. Its broad scope makes it a general-purpose marketing suite rather than a narrowly focused email sender.

A typical Mailchimp workflow begins with importing contacts or building an audience through forms. Users design email campaigns with templates or the editor, segment contacts, schedule sends, or create Marketing Automation Flows with triggers and branching steps. Ecommerce, social, and advertising connections add customer and campaign data, while reporting covers engagement, revenue, and custom metrics on eligible plans. Mailchimp’s pricing table lists more than 300 integrations. SMS is available in selected markets after application approval and requires purchased credit blocks. This workflow supports newsletters, promotions, lead capture, and ecommerce campaigns in one hosted application. The tradeoff is breadth rather than maximum depth: teams receive common email, form, website, advertising, analytics, and automation functions without adopting separate tools for each task.

Mailchimp becomes more expensive as a list grows or retains inactive records, because unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts count toward contact limits. Its AI terms also permit processing inputs and outputs to develop and improve AI models and services, subject to settings and applicable terms. Klaviyo is stronger for ecommerce events, profile segmentation, and revenue-focused journeys, while ActiveCampaign offers deeper automation. Brevo is more budget-oriented for high-volume messaging. Mailchimp remains broader and easier for general SMB campaigns, newsletters, forms, and ecommerce connections, but teams needing advanced behavioral data or highly granular automation may outgrow it. Small and mid-market marketing teams seeking an accessible general-purpose platform should pick Mailchimp.