Email marketing consistently delivers one of the highest returns of any digital channel. But only if you’re using a platform that matches how your business actually works.
Why Your Email Marketing Platform Is Worth Choosing Carefully
Email remains one of the most effective tools a business can use to stay in front of customers, nurture leads, and drive repeat sales. Unlike social media — where algorithm changes can reduce your reach overnight — your email list is an asset you own. But the platform you use to manage and send those emails affects everything: your costs, your ability to automate, how your campaigns look, and whether your messages actually land in inboxes rather than spam folders.
Brevo and Mailchimp are two of the most widely used email marketing platforms for small businesses, and they’re frequently compared side by side. Both can send professional email campaigns, manage subscriber lists, and automate sequences. But they approach the job differently — with different pricing models, different feature sets, and different strengths depending on how you use email in your business.
This guide breaks down those differences clearly, so you can make the right choice for your situation.
What Is Brevo?
Brevo — formerly known as Sendinblue, before rebranding in 2023 — is a French email and marketing platform founded in 2012. It started as a transactional email service and has grown into a broader marketing tool covering email campaigns, SMS marketing, automation, CRM features, and live chat.
Brevo’s defining characteristic is value. Its free plan is notably generous, and its paid plans are priced competitively — particularly for businesses sending high volumes of email. Rather than charging based on the number of contacts in your list (as many platforms do), Brevo’s pricing is primarily based on the number of emails you send per month. This makes it particularly cost-effective for businesses with large contact lists but moderate sending frequency.
Its feature set covers everything a small business needs for effective email marketing — campaign builders, automation workflows, segmentation, landing pages, and transactional email support — without the premium pricing that more established platforms sometimes command.
What Is Mailchimp?
Mailchimp launched in 2001 and is one of the most recognised names in email marketing. With over 13 million users worldwide, it has the kind of brand recognition that makes it many people’s default starting point when they first explore email marketing tools.
Over the years, Mailchimp has expanded well beyond email into a broader marketing platform — adding social media ad management, website building, e-commerce features, and a CRM layer alongside its core email capabilities. For businesses that want a single platform handling multiple aspects of their marketing, this breadth is appealing.
Mailchimp is also known for its polished user experience. The interface is clean, the guided setup walks new users through the process clearly, and the volume of tutorials, documentation, and community resources available makes it one of the most beginner-friendly platforms on the market. If you’ve never used an email marketing tool before, Mailchimp is designed to feel approachable.
Key Comparisons
Free Plan and Pricing
This is one of the most meaningful practical differences between the two platforms — and where Brevo has a clear structural advantage for many businesses.
Brevo’s free plan allows you to store unlimited contacts and send up to 300 emails per day (around 9,000 per month), with Brevo branding on outgoing emails. For a small business building its list and sending regular newsletters, this is a genuinely usable free tier — not a stripped-down trial.
Mailchimp’s free plan limits you to 500 contacts and 1,000 emails per month, with restrictions on automation features and audience segmentation. As your list grows beyond that threshold, you move onto paid plans — and Mailchimp’s pricing scales with contact count, which can escalate quickly for growing businesses.
To make this concrete: a business sending 10,000 emails per month to a list of 5,000 contacts would need a paid plan on both platforms. On Mailchimp, this would typically fall into their Essentials or Standard tier at a cost that increases as your contact list grows. On Brevo, the same volume can often be handled at a lower monthly cost because the pricing model is based on sending volume rather than contact count. For businesses with large lists that they email infrequently, Brevo’s model is frequently more economical.
Pricing changes over time and varies by region, so it’s worth checking current rates on both platforms for your specific situation — but as a general pattern, Brevo tends to offer more email volume for lower cost, particularly at the free and entry-level tiers.
Features and Capabilities
Mailchimp has invested significantly in broadening its feature set beyond email. Its platform includes advanced audience segmentation, A/B testing, social media ad integration, a website builder, e-commerce tools, and a CRM. For a business that wants to consolidate multiple marketing functions into one tool, Mailchimp’s breadth is a genuine advantage.
Brevo’s feature set is more focused, but not shallow. Its email campaign builder, automation workflows, contact segmentation, landing pages, SMS marketing, and transactional email capabilities cover the full range of what most small businesses need from email marketing. Its automation features — including welcome sequences, behavioural triggers, and drip campaigns — are robust and well-implemented. What Brevo doesn’t offer is the layer of adjacent marketing tools (social ads, website builder) that Mailchimp has built out.
For businesses whose needs are centred on email marketing itself — campaigns, automation, and list management — both platforms cover the fundamentals well. For businesses wanting a broader all-in-one marketing suite, Mailchimp has more to offer.
Ease of Use
Mailchimp’s reputation for ease of use is well-earned. The onboarding process is guided, the interface is intuitive, and new users can typically send their first campaign within an hour of signing up. The email builder is drag-and-drop, with sensible defaults and clear prompts at each step.
Brevo is also user-friendly, but has a slightly steeper initial learning curve — particularly for users who haven’t used a marketing platform before. The interface is clean and logical, but some features require a bit more exploration to locate and configure. That said, Brevo provides tutorials and documentation to support new users, and most people find it manageable within a short period of use.
If you’re completely new to email marketing and want the most frictionless possible starting experience, Mailchimp has a modest but genuine advantage here.
Templates and Design Tools
Mailchimp offers a large library of pre-built email templates across a wide range of styles and use cases — newsletters, promotions, announcements, and more. Its design editor is polished and provides considerable flexibility for customisation without design expertise.
Brevo’s template library is smaller but covers the essential formats most businesses need. Its drag-and-drop email editor is functional and capable of producing professional results, with options to customise layouts, colours, and fonts. For businesses with existing brand guidelines, both platforms allow sufficient customisation to produce on-brand emails.
If template variety and design flexibility are a priority, Mailchimp has the edge. For most standard business email needs, Brevo’s templates are entirely adequate.
Integration and Ecosystem
Mailchimp’s integration ecosystem is extensive. It connects natively with hundreds of third-party tools including WooCommerce, Shopify, Salesforce, Zapier, and many others. Its WordPress plugin is well-maintained and widely used. For businesses already running a complex marketing or e-commerce stack, Mailchimp’s integration breadth often means less custom setup.
Brevo has a growing integration ecosystem that covers the most commonly used platforms — including WooCommerce and WordPress — but has fewer native integrations than Mailchimp in some areas. For businesses with straightforward integration needs, this is unlikely to be a limiting factor. For businesses running complex multi-tool workflows, it’s worth checking whether your specific tools are supported before committing.
Deliverability and Reliability
Both Brevo and Mailchimp maintain strong deliverability reputations — meaning their emails reliably reach recipients’ inboxes rather than being filtered to spam. Both platforms operate on established sending infrastructure and comply with email authentication standards that support deliverability.
It’s worth being clear about something often misunderstood: deliverability is not primarily a function of which platform you use. It depends on the quality of your contact list, how recipients engage with your emails, whether you’ve properly authenticated your sending domain, and the relevance of your content. A business sending to an engaged, permission-based list will see good deliverability on either platform. A business sending to a stale or purchased list will see deliverability problems regardless of the tool.
Automation and Advanced Features
Mailchimp’s automation capabilities are strong, particularly on its Standard and Premium plans. Advanced segmentation, behavioural triggers, multi-step journeys, predictive send-time optimisation, and A/B testing are all available. For businesses that rely heavily on automated email sequences, Mailchimp’s automation tools are mature and flexible.
Brevo has made automation a core strength. Its workflow builder is capable and intuitive, covering welcome sequences, abandoned cart emails, re-engagement campaigns, and multi-condition triggers. Importantly, Brevo also supports transactional emails natively — the automated, one-to-one emails triggered by specific customer actions, like order confirmations, password resets, and shipping notifications. For businesses running an e-commerce store or web application, having transactional and marketing email under one platform is a practical convenience.
Customer Support and Learning Resources
Mailchimp’s support ecosystem is one of its strongest assets for beginners. Its knowledge base is comprehensive, its tutorial library is extensive, and a large community of Mailchimp users and third-party educators means help is rarely far away. Email and chat support are available on paid plans.
Brevo offers email support across its plans and live chat on paid tiers, with a help centre that covers core functionality well. Its community and third-party resource ecosystem is smaller than Mailchimp’s, which means finding answers to niche questions can occasionally require more searching. For most everyday questions, Brevo’s documentation is adequate — but Mailchimp has a meaningful advantage for users who expect to lean on support and learning resources frequently.
Common Misconceptions
“Brevo is a basic tool for small senders.” Brevo is used by businesses sending millions of emails per month, including transactional email at scale. Its feature depth — particularly in automation and transactional email — is often underestimated by people who associate lower pricing with lower capability.
“Mailchimp is always the better value because it’s well-known.” Mailchimp’s contact-based pricing model means costs can escalate quickly as your list grows, even if your sending frequency is moderate. For businesses with larger lists, Brevo’s volume-based pricing is frequently the more economical option.
“Good deliverability comes from choosing the right platform.” Both platforms provide good infrastructure. What determines whether your emails land in inboxes is largely within your control — list quality, sender reputation, authentication setup, and content relevance. Platform choice is a secondary factor.
Use Case Scenarios
When Brevo Is the Right Choice
You have a large list but send infrequently. A business with 10,000 contacts that sends one newsletter per week will almost always find Brevo’s volume-based pricing more economical than Mailchimp’s contact-based model.
You need transactional and marketing email from one platform. If you’re running an online store or web platform and need order confirmations, shipping notifications, and password resets alongside marketing campaigns, Brevo handles both without requiring a separate transactional email service.
Budget is a priority and you need more than the basics. Brevo’s paid plans offer strong automation and segmentation features at lower price points than comparable Mailchimp tiers — particularly for high-volume senders.
When Mailchimp Is the Right Choice
You’re brand new to email marketing. Mailchimp’s onboarding experience, guided setup, and extensive tutorial library make it the most accessible starting point for someone who has never used an email marketing platform before.
You want an all-in-one marketing platform. If you want email, social media ad management, landing pages, and basic CRM functionality under one roof and one subscription, Mailchimp’s feature breadth covers more ground than Brevo.
Your tools already integrate with Mailchimp. If your e-commerce platform, CRM, or other marketing tools have a direct, well-maintained Mailchimp integration, the path of least resistance is often to stay within that ecosystem.
A Decision Framework
Choose Brevo if cost-efficiency is a priority, you have a large or growing contact list, you need transactional email support, or you send high volumes of email relative to your budget.
Choose Mailchimp if you’re starting from scratch and value the most guided onboarding experience, you want a broader marketing platform beyond just email, or your existing tools integrate natively with Mailchimp’s ecosystem.
Test both if you’re genuinely undecided — both platforms have free tiers that give you a meaningful experience before committing to a paid plan. Running a small campaign on each is the most reliable way to see which interface suits you.
Conclusion
Brevo and Mailchimp are both capable, reputable email marketing platforms that serve different business profiles particularly well. Neither is universally superior — the right choice depends on how your business uses email, what your list looks like, and what you expect from the platform beyond sending campaigns.
For businesses that prioritise cost-effectiveness, high-volume sending, and transactional email capability, Brevo consistently delivers strong value. For businesses that want the most beginner-friendly experience, the broadest feature set, and the largest ecosystem of integrations and learning resources, Mailchimp earns its reputation as the market leader.
Start with your most important constraint — budget, ease of use, feature depth, or integration requirements — and let that guide the decision. Both platforms will serve you well if chosen for the right reasons.
