Brevo Review: Affordable Email Marketing and CRM for Small Business

Quick Verdict

Brevo is one of the few email platforms that doesn't punish you for growing a list. Pricing is based on sends, not contacts, so a 50,000-person newsletter costs the same as a 5,000-person one if you email at the same cadence. For small businesses graduating from Mailchimp's per-contact pricing, that alone is often reason enough to switch.

What Is Brevo?

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an all-in-one marketing platform that combines email marketing, SMS, WhatsApp campaigns, transactional email, marketing automation, landing pages, and a light CRM. It's based in Paris and has grown particularly popular with European SMBs, though it's widely used globally.

Unlike Mailchimp and ConvertKit, Brevo charges by email volume rather than contact count, which tends to favor businesses with larger lists and moderate send frequency.

Key Features

• Email campaigns: drag-and-drop editor, A/B testing, send-time optimization, segmentation.
• Marketing automation: visual workflow builder for welcome series, abandoned cart, and behavior-based triggers.
• SMS and WhatsApp: send transactional and marketing messages through the same platform.
• Transactional email: SMTP relay and API for order confirmations, password resets, and similar system emails.
• Sales CRM: a free CRM with deal pipelines and contact management, sufficient for small sales teams.
• Landing pages and forms: included on paid plans.
• AI writing and send-time optimization: generates subject lines and body copy, picks optimal send times per recipient.

Pricing Overview

• Free: unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day, core features.
• Starter: from ~$9/month (5,000 emails/month), no daily sending limit, basic reporting.
• Business: from ~$18/month (5,000 emails/month), marketing automation, A/B testing, advanced analytics.
• Enterprise: custom pricing with SSO, premium support, and dedicated IP options.

Pricing scales with email volume, not list size. If you email a 30k-person list twice a month, you'll pay far less than you would on Mailchimp.

Strengths

• Generous free tier: 300 emails/day and unlimited contacts is hard to beat.
• Volume-based pricing: scales well with large, infrequently-emailed lists.
• Transactional + marketing in one: most competitors separate these into different products.
• Multi-channel: email, SMS, and WhatsApp from the same dashboard.
• Free CRM included: basic but functional for small sales teams.

Weaknesses

• UI is less polished than Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign; the editor occasionally feels dated.
• Templates are fewer and plainer than competitors; you'll do more design work.
• Automation builder is competent but not as deep as ActiveCampaign for complex journeys.
• Support response times on the free and Starter plans can be slow.

Implementation Friction

Getting started takes about 30 minutes: verify your domain, import contacts (CSV or API), and set up DKIM. Transactional email setup is well-documented. The automation builder has a learning curve, but basic workflows (welcome series, birthday emails) can be set up in under an hour.

Who Should Choose Brevo

Choose Brevo if you want predictable pricing as your list grows, you need both marketing and transactional email, or you already outgrew Mailchimp's per-contact pricing. It's especially strong for e-commerce and SaaS businesses that send system emails alongside marketing.

Skip Brevo if you need the deepest automation logic available (ActiveCampaign wins there), you want the most polished email designer (Mailchimp still leads on templates), or your list is under 2,000 contacts and you only send monthly (Mailchimp's free tier may be cheaper in that case).