Brevo Review 2026: The Best Value Email Marketing Platform?
Brevo is the best-value email marketing platform available in 2026. The free plan is genuinely useful — no contact limit, 300 emails/day — and paid plans are cheaper than Mailchimp at every list size. Deliverability is strong, automation is included on all plans, and the transactional email tools are a bonus for developers. The interface isn't as polished as Mailchimp, but it gets the job done at a fraction of the cost.
Brevo (previously Sendinblue) doesn’t have Mailchimp’s brand recognition, but it arguably has the better product in 2026 — particularly for price-sensitive small businesses. The free tier is genuinely useful, the paid plans are cheaper at every list size, and the platform handles both marketing and transactional email.
Here’s an honest look at whether it delivers on that promise.
What Brevo Does Well
Most Generous Free Plan Available
Brevo’s free plan offers:
- Unlimited contacts — no cap on list size
- 300 emails per day (around 9,000/month)
- Automation workflows — even on the free plan
- Transactional email — up to 300/day
- SMS marketing — pay-as-you-go
- Live chat widget — basic version included
Compare this to Mailchimp’s free plan: 500 contacts, 1,000 sends/month, no automation. Brevo’s free tier is meaningfully more useful, especially for businesses still growing their list who don’t want to pay until they’re generating a return.
Price at Scale
Where Brevo really wins is on larger lists. Unlike Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor (which price by contact count), Brevo primarily prices by monthly send volume. This means a business with 20,000 contacts who sends once a month pays far less than on Mailchimp:
| Contacts | Sends/mo | Mailchimp Standard | Brevo Business |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,500 | 10,000 | ~£25/mo | ~£7/mo |
| 10,000 | 40,000 | ~£100/mo | ~£14/mo |
| 25,000 | 25,000 | ~£200/mo | ~£7/mo |
For businesses with larger lists and moderate send frequency, the savings are substantial.
Automation on All Plans
Brevo includes marketing automation on all plans including free. You can build welcome sequences, behavioural triggers, re-engagement campaigns, and transactional flows without upgrading. The automation builder is visual and covers standard use cases without requiring technical knowledge.
Transactional Email Included
Most email marketing platforms handle campaigns only — you’d need a separate service (SendGrid, Postmark, AWS SES) for transactional emails. Brevo handles both. For a small business or developer who wants one email platform for everything, this is a genuine simplification.
SMS Marketing
Brevo includes SMS marketing from the same platform and dashboard as email. Useful for businesses that want to add SMS to their marketing mix without a separate tool. Pay-as-you-go SMS credits mean you’re not paying for a subscription you don’t use regularly.
Where Brevo Falls Short
Template Quality Behind Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor
Brevo’s template library and builder work fine but produce plainer results than Campaign Monitor’s. If your emails need to look polished and professional without a designer’s touch, Campaign Monitor is the better choice. Brevo’s output is functional; Campaign Monitor’s is beautiful.
Interface is Less Intuitive
The Brevo dashboard has improved significantly since the Sendinblue rebrand but still feels more complex than Mailchimp for new users. Finding specific settings can require more clicks than it should. For non-technical users, there’s a learning curve.
Fewer Integrations Than Mailchimp
Brevo integrates with the major platforms — Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Zapier — but Mailchimp’s integration count is higher. For niche tools and CRMs, Mailchimp is more likely to have a native connector.
Branding in Email on Free Plan
Free plan emails include a Brevo logo in the footer. This is standard for free-tier email tools and easily removed by upgrading to the Starter plan.
Pricing
| Plan | Monthly (approx) | Sends | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | £0 | 9,000/mo | Unlimited |
| Starter | From ~£7/mo | 20,000/mo | Unlimited |
| Business | From ~£14/mo | 20,000/mo | Unlimited |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited |
Starter removes Brevo branding and adds A/B testing. Business adds advanced reporting and multi-user access.
Verdict
✅ Pros
- Best free plan available — unlimited contacts, 9,000 emails/month
- Significantly cheaper than Mailchimp at all list sizes
- Automation included on free plan
- Handles both marketing and transactional email
- SMS marketing from the same platform
❌ Cons
- Template quality and builder less polished than Campaign Monitor
- Interface has a steeper learning curve than Mailchimp
- Fewer third-party integrations than Mailchimp
- Brevo branding in footer on free plan
Brevo is the first email marketing platform to recommend to a UK small business starting out in 2026. The free plan is genuinely useful, the pricing is fair as you grow, and the transactional email inclusion is a real bonus. For businesses where email design quality is paramount, Campaign Monitor is worth the premium. For everyone else, Brevo is hard to beat on value.
→ Read our full Mailchimp review → See our best email marketing tools roundup