Quick verdict
Brevo is the standout per-send pricing platform in the email marketing market — and the single most under-recommended tool relative to its quality. The reason it’s under-recommended is commercial: per-send billing produces smaller affiliate commissions than per-contact platforms like Mailchimp or Klaviyo when list sizes are small. We have an affiliate relationship with Brevo. We’re recommending it first in our rankings anyway.
For a nonprofit, a freelancer, a local business, or any team that sends monthly or less to a list under 50K contacts, Brevo’s math is decisive. Unlimited contacts, 300 sends per day on the free tier. A 5K-contact nonprofit sending one monthly newsletter (5K sends) stays free forever. The same scenario on Mailchimp is $75/mo.
How we tested
Brevo Starter and Business plan, 3,200 contacts, bi-weekly newsletter and automation
- Tested on Starter plan (£25/mo, 20K sends/mo) for 6 weeks
- Built welcome series (4 emails), re-engagement workflow, and monthly campaign
- Deliverability testing: compared primary inbox placement vs Mailchimp on same content
- Tested transactional SMTP relay for order confirmations alongside marketing
Test period: March–May 2026
Compared against: Mailchimp, MailerLite
Read full testing methodology →Why per-send pricing changes the math
Per-contact pricing (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ConvertKit) charges based on how many contacts are in your list. Per-send pricing (Brevo) charges based on how many emails you actually send.
For infrequent senders, the gap is enormous:
| Scenario | Mailchimp Standard | Brevo Starter |
|---|---|---|
| 5K contacts, monthly newsletter | $75/mo ($900/year) | £9/mo (£108/year) |
| 10K contacts, quarterly sends | $100/mo ($1,200/year) | £25/mo (£300/year) |
| 2K contacts, weekly sends | $45/mo ($540/year) | £9/mo (£108/year) |
| 50K contacts, monthly sends | $270/mo ($3,240/year) | £49/mo (£588/year) |
Source: Brevo pricing page + Mailchimp pricing page, verified May 2026.
The break-even point: if you send more than 6 emails/month per contact, per-contact billing can become competitive. Most small businesses and nonprofits don’t. They send 1–4 campaigns/month. Per-send wins.
Pricing reality
Brevo’s plans in 2026:
| Plan | Monthly cost | Send limit | Key features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | £0 | 300/day (9K/month) | Unlimited contacts, basic automation, Brevo branding |
| Starter | £9–£49/mo | 20K–500K sends/mo | No daily cap, remove branding, basic reporting |
| Business | £49–£259/mo | 500K–3M sends/mo | Marketing automation, A/B testing, advanced segmentation |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Dedicated IP, custom volume |
Brevo branding (footer link) on the free tier is the main limitation. The £9/mo Starter removes it and lifts the daily cap to monthly-based. For a business sending 20K emails/month, £9/mo is an exceptional price.
Automation — honest assessment
Brevo’s automation builder is good, not great. On the Business plan, you get multi-step workflows with conditional splits, wait steps, and goal conditions. On Starter, automation is basic — single triggers, limited branching.
Where Brevo’s automation genuinely stands out: the transactional and marketing integration. You can send a marketing drip campaign through the same account as your order confirmation and password-reset emails, sharing the same sender reputation. Most per-contact platforms separate these into paid add-ons.
If you need deep B2B automation with predictive sending and multi-branch flows, ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo outperform Brevo significantly. For a welcome series, post-purchase follow-up, and re-engagement workflow, Brevo’s Business plan is sufficient.
Deliverability — our 6-week test results
In our 6-week test (bi-weekly newsletter, 3,200 contacts):
- Primary inbox placement: 78% (Brevo) vs 71% (Mailchimp) on identical content
- Spam rate: 0.04% — well below Gmail’s 0.30% threshold (Gmail bulk sender requirements)
- Bounce handling: Automatic soft-bounce suppression after 3 bounces; hard bounces suppressed immediately
- DKIM/SPF/DMARC: One-click setup from the dashboard — no DNS expertise required
Brevo’s deliverability is class-leading for its price tier. The shared IP is well-managed. If you need a dedicated IP (typically required only above 50K sends/day), it’s available on Enterprise.
What Brevo doesn’t do well
- Ecommerce-native flows: No equivalent to Klaviyo’s abandoned-cart or revenue-per-recipient attribution. The Shopify integration exists but is basic — it’s not built for revenue optimisation.
- Advanced automation at Starter: The good automation requires the Business plan (£49/mo). Starter’s automation is limited to simple triggers.
- Landing page builder: Present but underwhelming compared to GetResponse or MailerLite.
- CRM depth: Brevo has a CRM module, but it’s lightweight. ActiveCampaign is the standard if you need CRM-grade contact records alongside email.
- Creator features: No tag-based segmentation comparable to ConvertKit/Kit. Not the right choice if you’re running a paid newsletter or course funnel.
What most comparison sites won't tell you
The insight most Mailchimp refugees don’t hear: If you’re leaving Mailchimp with under 10K contacts and you send monthly or bi-monthly, Brevo will cost you 70–80% less than Mailchimp for the first year. The common recommendation — “switch to Mailchimp’s cheaper plan” or “try Constant Contact” — ignores the pricing-model difference entirely. Mailchimp still bills on contacts; Constant Contact bills on contacts. The only way to escape per-contact billing is to switch to per-send. Brevo is the market leader in that category.
Compliance — GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CASL
Brevo is GDPR-compliant and holds ISO 27001 certification. Data processing agreement available in the dashboard. Key compliance features:
- Double opt-in supported and recommended by default
- Suppression list auto-maintained: unsubscribes, hard bounces, spam complaints
- One-click unsubscribe compliant with RFC 8058 (required by Gmail/Yahoo from February 2024)
- Data stored in EU data centres (Frankfurt primary)
For nonprofits with European donors: Brevo’s EU data residency is a cleaner GDPR story than Mailchimp’s US-primary infrastructure.
Final verdict
Brevo earns a 9.2/10 in 2026 — the highest score in our reviews. The per-send pricing model is the right answer for the majority of small businesses, nonprofits, and infrequent senders. The automation is sufficient for most use cases. The deliverability is class-leading.
It’s not the right call for Shopify ecommerce stores (use Klaviyo or Omnisend), for B2B teams needing advanced automation (use ActiveCampaign), or for creator newsletters needing tag-based segmentation (use ConvertKit/Kit).
For everything else: Brevo first.
Related: Per-contact vs per-send pricing · Brevo vs Mailchimp · Email marketing for nonprofits