Mailchimp and Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) take opposite approaches to pricing: Mailchimp charges by contact count, Brevo charges by send volume. That single difference determines who wins for your situation. If you have a large list but email it infrequently — say 50,000 contacts you email twice a month — Brevo will be dramatically cheaper. If you have a small, frequently-emailed list, the gap narrows. Brevo also bundles SMS marketing, a built-in CRM, and live chat in plans where Mailchimp charges extra or doesn't offer them at all. Mailchimp's e-commerce integrations and brand recognition give it an edge for retail businesses.
Quick comparison
| Feature | Mailchimp | Brevo |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free plan | Free plan |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | No | No |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| G2 rating | Not listed | Not listed |
| Best for | e-commerce businesses, agencies, and teams with small-to-medium contact lists that need deep platform integrations and a familiar brand | businesses with large contact lists and infrequent send cadences, or teams that need SMS, CRM, and email in one platform at a low price |
| Free plan | 500 contacts, 1,000 sends/month | Unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day (~9,000/month) |
| Pricing model | By contact count — price rises as list grows | By send volume — large lists with infrequent sends are much cheaper |
| SMS marketing | Available as paid add-on | Built in — SMS campaigns and transactional SMS included |
| Built-in CRM | No — CRM features require separate tools or integrations | Yes — lightweight CRM included in all plans |
| Transactional email | Available via Mailchimp Transactional (Mandrill) — separate add-on | Built in — transactional email included on paid plans |
| E-commerce integrations | Strong — native Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce | Good — Shopify and WooCommerce, less depth than Mailchimp |
Pricing model and value at scale
The pricing model difference is the most important factor in this comparison. Mailchimp prices by contact count: a list of 50,000 contacts on Mailchimp Standard costs around $270/month regardless of how many emails you send. Brevo prices by send volume: 50,000 contacts with 100,000 sends/month on Brevo Business costs around $65/month. If you send two emails per month to a list of 50,000, Brevo is roughly 4x cheaper. The gap inverts at small list sizes with high send frequency — for 1,000 subscribers who get daily emails, Mailchimp's Essentials at $13/month beats Brevo's volume-based pricing. Brevo's free tier makes this even clearer: unlimited contacts with 300 emails/day is genuinely usable for small senders who want to grow their list without paying for storage. Mailchimp's 500-contact free tier is a constrained starting point. For most businesses with established lists, Brevo's model saves meaningful money.
Multi-channel capabilities (SMS, CRM, live chat)
Brevo's broadest advantage over Mailchimp is what's included without add-ons. SMS marketing campaigns and transactional SMS are part of Brevo's core platform — you buy SMS credits and send from the same interface as email. Brevo also includes a lightweight CRM with contact management, deal pipelines, and task tracking. Live chat and a shared inbox are available on higher plans. Mailchimp added SMS as an add-on in 2023 (U.S. only initially) and has no built-in CRM — you're expected to integrate with HubSpot, Salesforce, or a dedicated CRM tool. For a small business that wants email, SMS, and basic contact management in one subscription without stitching together multiple tools, Brevo's bundle is genuinely compelling. It's not the deepest CRM or the most sophisticated SMS platform, but it removes the need for separate subscriptions and keeps data in one place.
Email campaigns and automation
Mailchimp's campaign builder and automation suite are more polished for email-first marketing. Its drag-and-drop editor is mature, the template library is extensive, and the automation workflows cover common e-commerce use cases — abandoned cart, browse abandonment, post-purchase sequences, win-back campaigns — without requiring significant setup. Brevo's email automation is capable and covers the standard flows (welcome sequences, drip campaigns, transactional triggers), but the automation builder is less intuitive and the template library is smaller. Brevo's automation strength is in multi-channel workflows that combine email and SMS in the same sequence — something Mailchimp can't do natively without an SMS add-on and manual configuration. For pure email automation depth, Mailchimp wins. For cross-channel automation, Brevo's unified platform gives it an advantage.
E-commerce integrations
Mailchimp's integration with Shopify is a first-class, natively maintained connection that pulls product catalog data, purchase history, and customer segments directly into email workflows. WooCommerce and BigCommerce integrations are similarly deep. These integrations enable product recommendation emails, dynamic content that surfaces items a customer viewed but didn't buy, and post-purchase sequences triggered by specific products. Brevo integrates with Shopify and WooCommerce but with less depth — it connects for contact sync and basic purchase event triggering, but product-level personalization requires more custom work. For a DTC brand or Shopify merchant, Mailchimp's commerce-native features are a meaningful edge. For a B2B company or service business that doesn't need product-level email personalization, this Mailchimp advantage is irrelevant.
Transactional email
Transactional email — password resets, order confirmations, shipping notifications — is an afterthought in Mailchimp's pricing structure. Mailchimp Transactional (formerly Mandrill) is a separate add-on that costs $20/month for 25,000 emails on top of your standard subscription. It's a solid transactional email service but the add-on structure is frustrating when you just need to send order confirmations from the same platform as your newsletters. Brevo treats transactional email as a core feature. On the Business plan, transactional email is included and you manage marketing and transactional sends from the same interface with shared contact data. This is a meaningful UX and cost advantage for product teams that need both. If you're building a web app that needs to send onboarding and password reset emails alongside a marketing newsletter, Brevo's unified approach saves a separate subscription.
Deliverability and sending infrastructure
Mailchimp's sending infrastructure and deliverability reputation are generally regarded as industry-leading, supported by decades of volume and investment in IP reputation management. The platform includes built-in spam testing, delivery time optimization, and detailed deliverability reporting. Brevo's deliverability is solid and competitive — it's used by large senders across Europe where it built its original reputation as Sendinblue — but Mailchimp's infrastructure has more years of refinement and a deeper feature set for managing sender reputation. For marketers who live by open rates and inbox placement, Mailchimp's slight edge in deliverability tooling is real. For most business use cases, both platforms deliver reliably and the difference won't affect your bottom line. Where Brevo genuinely closes the gap is transactional email deliverability, where its dedicated IP options and SMTP configuration flexibility match or exceed Mailchimp Transactional.
Pricing deep-dive
Mailchimp
- Free: $0 — 500 contacts, 1,000 sends/month, basic templates
- Essentials: from $13/month — 500 contacts, 5,000 sends/month
- Standard: from $20/month — 500 contacts, 6,000 sends/month, advanced automations
- Premium: from $350/month — 10,000+ contacts, unlimited sends
Brevo
- Free: $0 — unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day, basic features
- Starter: from $25/month — 20,000 emails/month, no daily sending limit, no Brevo logo
- Business: from $65/month — 20,000 emails/month, marketing automation, landing pages, A/B testing
- Enterprise: custom — dedicated IP, SSO, SLA, custom volume
Pricing verdict: Brevo wins decisively for large lists with moderate send frequency — the volume-based pricing model can be 3-5x cheaper than Mailchimp for a 50,000-contact list emailed twice a month. Mailchimp's pricing is more predictable for small, frequently-mailed lists. Factor in Brevo's included SMS and CRM when comparing total stack costs — those features are paid add-ons in the Mailchimp ecosystem.
How to migrate from Mailchimp to Brevo
What real users say
Mailchimp: Mailchimp's reputation is mixed since the Intuit acquisition. Long-time users resent the free tier reduction from 2,000 to 500 contacts and find pricing increasingly complex. Shopify and e-commerce users on higher plans are generally satisfied. New users often start with Mailchimp for name recognition then switch to cheaper alternatives as their list grows.
Brevo: Brevo has a strong reputation in Europe and a growing following among cost-conscious U.S. marketers who discovered it as a Mailchimp alternative after the 2023 free tier cuts. Users praise the pricing model and the all-in-one capabilities. Common complaints: the UI is less polished than Mailchimp, template design options are more limited, and customer support response times vary.
Sources: Synthesized from G2 and Capterra reviews, community discussions on Reddit, and official vendor documentation.
Final verdict
Choose Mailchimp if...
- Choose Mailchimp if you're running email for a Shopify or WooCommerce store — its native commerce integrations for abandoned cart, product recommendations, and purchase triggers are deeper than Brevo's.
- Choose Mailchimp if deliverability tooling and email template depth are priorities — Mailchimp's editor, template library, and deliverability reporting are more mature.
- Choose Mailchimp if your team needs the ecosystem advantage — more third-party tools have native Mailchimp integrations than Brevo integrations.
Choose Brevo if...
- Choose Brevo if you have a large contact list but email it infrequently — the volume-based pricing model will save you significantly compared to Mailchimp's contact-count tiers.
- Choose Brevo if you need email, SMS, and basic CRM in one platform — Brevo includes these; Mailchimp charges add-on fees for SMS and has no native CRM.
- Choose Brevo if you need transactional email alongside marketing email without a separate subscription — Brevo's unified approach is simpler and cheaper than Mailchimp + Mandrill.
Consider neither if: Consider Kit (ConvertKit) if you're a creator or newsletter operator who wants subscriber-first email marketing with better tag-based segmentation. Consider Klaviyo if you're a serious e-commerce brand that needs deep behavioral targeting, predictive analytics, and revenue attribution.