Brevo (Sendinblue) Review 2026: Email + SMS + CRM in One Platform

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Brevo flips the email marketing pricing model on its head: you pay for emails sent, not subscribers stored. If you have a large list but don’t email them every day, this saves serious money. We tested Brevo for 3 months across email campaigns, SMS, and its built-in CRM, and found a platform that does many things competently — but none of them best-in-class.

Brevo is the Swiss Army knife of marketing platforms. Email, SMS, WhatsApp, CRM, transactional email, landing pages, chat. It’s impressive breadth. The tradeoff is that each individual tool is solid but not exceptional. If you want one platform for everything, Brevo is hard to beat. If you want the best email marketing tool specifically, look elsewhere.

The Pricing Model That Changes Everything

Every other email platform charges by subscriber count. 10,000 subscribers? Pay the 10K tier — whether you email them once a month or every day. This punishes large lists.

Brevo charges by emails sent. Unlimited subscribers on every plan, including free. The free plan gives you 300 emails per day. The $25/month Starter plan gives you 20,000 emails per month. The $65/month Business plan gives you 40,000-100,000+ depending on volume.

Here’s what this means in practice:

Scenario	Brevo Cost	Mailchimp Cost	MailerLite Cost
5K subs, weekly sends (20K/mo)	$25/mo Starter	$60/mo	$39/mo
25K subs, weekly sends (100K/mo)	$65/mo Business	$270/mo	$139/mo
50K subs, biweekly sends (100K/mo)	$65/mo Business	$350/mo	$139/mo

That 50K subscriber scenario is where Brevo’s model shines. Mailchimp charges $350/month because you have 50,000 contacts. Brevo charges $65/month because you’re only sending 100,000 emails. Same list, same sends, $285/month savings.

ELI5: Transactional vs Marketing Email — Marketing emails are the ones you choose to send: newsletters, promotions, product announcements. Transactional emails are triggered by something you did: bought a product (order confirmation), forgot your password (reset link), shipped your package (tracking info). They’re sent by robots, not marketers, and they have separate rules because people actually want them.

The Multi-Channel Play

Brevo’s real pitch isn’t “email marketing.” It’s “customer communication platform.” Email, SMS, WhatsApp Business, live chat, CRM — all in one dashboard. In 2026, most businesses use at least 3 of these channels. Running them from separate platforms is expensive and fragmented.

Email Marketing

The core email tools are solid. Drag-and-drop editor, template library, A/B testing, segmentation, and automation. Nothing here is best-in-class, but everything works. The editor is functional but lacks the polish of Mailchimp’s or MailerLite’s designers. Templates are adequate but not inspiring.

In our testing, campaign creation was straightforward. The workflow follows what you’d expect: choose a template, design your email, select your audience, schedule or send. No surprises, no confusion. But also no delight.

SMS Marketing

This is where Brevo adds genuine value. Sending SMS campaigns from the same platform as your email campaigns means you can build multi-channel automations: “Send welcome email. If not opened in 3 days, send SMS reminder.” We tested this flow and it worked as advertised.

SMS pricing is pay-per-message on top of your plan. Rates vary by country — roughly $0.01-0.06 per SMS in the US. Not the cheapest SMS provider, but the convenience of having it alongside email is worth the small premium.

CRM

Brevo includes a basic CRM — deal tracking, pipeline management, contact notes, task assignments. It’s not Salesforce. It’s not even HubSpot. But for a small business that currently manages deals in a spreadsheet, it’s a meaningful upgrade. And it’s free with every plan.

ELI5: CRM (Customer Relationship Management) — Software that keeps track of everyone your business talks to. When did you last email them? Did they buy anything? What did they ask about? It’s like a super-organized address book that also remembers every conversation you’ve ever had with each person.

In Our Testing

We ran Brevo for 3 months on two use cases: a 4,000-subscriber marketing newsletter and transactional emails for a small e-commerce site.

Marketing email: Campaign creation was smooth. Deliverability was acceptable but not stellar — we measured roughly 94% inbox placement on Gmail, compared to 99% on Kit and 97% on Mailchimp. The shared IP on the Starter plan is likely the culprit. Business plan users get a dedicated IP, which should improve this.

Transactional email: This is where Brevo impressed us. Setting up SMTP relay took about 10 minutes. Order confirmations and password reset emails went through reliably with strong deliverability (98%+ inbox placement). Having marketing and transactional email on the same platform simplified our workflow significantly.

Automation: Brevo’s automation builder handles multi-channel workflows. We built a sequence that sent a welcome email, waited 3 days, checked if the email was opened, and if not, triggered an SMS. It worked without issues. The builder is visual but not as intuitive as Kit’s — there’s a learning curve.

The daily send limit on free: 300 emails per day is workable for very small lists but hits the wall fast. If you have 1,000 subscribers and want to send a campaign, it would take 3-4 days to reach everyone. For testing purposes, it’s fine. For real marketing, you’ll need to upgrade quickly.

What We Didn’t Like

Deliverability Inconsistency

On shared IPs (Starter plan and below), deliverability is a gamble. Your emails share infrastructure with other Brevo users, and if one of them behaves badly, everyone’s deliverability suffers. We experienced two weeks during our test where Gmail inbox placement dropped to about 88%. It recovered, but the inconsistency is concerning.

The fix is upgrading to the Business plan ($65/month) for a dedicated IP. But that’s a significant jump from $25/month, and platforms like Kit and MailerLite deliver consistently on their cheapest plans.

Interface Complexity

Brevo does a lot. Email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, CRM, automations, landing pages, transactional email. That’s a lot of features packed into one dashboard, and it shows. Navigation can feel overwhelming, especially for new users. Finding a specific setting sometimes requires clicking through 3-4 levels of menus.

Compare this to MailerLite’s clean, focused interface and the difference is stark. Breadth has a complexity cost.

Email Editor

The drag-and-drop editor works but feels a generation behind Mailchimp’s and MailerLite’s. Moving blocks can be imprecise. The template library is smaller and less modern. For basic newsletters, it’s fine. For design-heavy promotional emails, you’ll feel the limitations.

ELI5: Shared IP vs Dedicated IP — When you send email, it comes from a number called an IP address. A shared IP means you’re sharing that address with hundreds of other businesses. If one of them sends spam, your emails get blamed too — like living in an apartment building where one noisy neighbor gets the police called on everyone. A dedicated IP is your own house — your reputation is yours alone.

Who Should Pick Brevo

Yes, Brevo is for you if:

• You have a large subscriber list but send infrequently (Brevo’s per-send pricing saves you money)
• You need email AND SMS from one platform
• You need transactional email alongside marketing email
• You want a built-in CRM without paying for a separate tool
• You’re a small business that wants one platform instead of four separate tools

No, skip Brevo if:

• You want the best email deliverability (Kit and AWeber are more consistent)
• You want a beautiful, intuitive email editor (MailerLite and Mailchimp are better)
• You need advanced marketing automation (ActiveCampaign is a league ahead)
• Your primary need is a newsletter platform (Kit or Beehiiv are purpose-built for this)
• You want a generous free plan for testing (300 emails/day is restrictive)

Migrating to Brevo

CSV import is the standard migration path. Brevo accepts subscriber exports from all major platforms. Field mapping is straightforward, and tags/segments can be recreated during import.

The unique advantage of migrating to Brevo: you can import a massive list without seeing your bill spike. A 50,000-subscriber list on Mailchimp costs $350/month just to exist. On Brevo, that same list costs nothing to store — you only pay when you send.

Automation migration is manual. Brevo’s builder is capable but has a learning curve, so budget extra time compared to simpler platforms like MailerLite.

The Bottom Line

Brevo is the best choice for businesses that need multi-channel marketing (email + SMS + chat) without stitching together separate tools, and for anyone with a large list who doesn’t send frequently. The per-send pricing model is genuinely innovative and saves significant money for the right use case.

It’s not the best email marketing tool. It’s not the best SMS tool. It’s not the best CRM. But it’s the best single platform that does all three at a reasonable price. If “good enough at everything” beats “excellent at one thing” for your business, Brevo is your platform.

Just make sure to budget for the Business plan if deliverability matters to you. The shared IP on cheaper plans is a real weakness.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Brevo cheaper than Mailchimp? ▼

Brevo charges based on the number of emails you send, not how many subscribers you have. If you have 50,000 subscribers but only email them twice a month, Brevo is dramatically cheaper because you're paying for 100,000 sends, not 50,000 contacts. Mailchimp charges for every subscriber whether you email them once or twenty times.

Is Brevo the same as Sendinblue? ▼

Yes. Sendinblue rebranded to Brevo in May 2023. Same company, same platform, same team. The rebrand reflected the company's expansion beyond email into SMS, WhatsApp, CRM, and sales tools. If you see old articles about Sendinblue, they're referring to the same product.

Can Brevo handle transactional emails? ▼

Yes, and this is one of Brevo's key differentiators. Most email marketing platforms (Mailchimp, Kit, MailerLite) only handle marketing emails. Brevo supports both marketing and transactional email (order confirmations, password resets, shipping notifications) through its SMTP relay and API. This means one platform for everything.

Is Brevo's free plan enough to start with? ▼

It depends on your volume. The free plan allows 300 emails per day (about 9,000 per month) with unlimited contacts. If you have 1,000 subscribers and email them weekly, 4,000 sends per month fits easily. If you have 5,000 subscribers and email twice weekly, you'll blow past the limit. The Starter plan at $25/month removes the daily cap and adds analytics.