Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) takes a different approach to email pricing than every other major platform. Instead of charging by the size of your contact list, it charges by the number of emails you send per month. For founders sitting on a 50,000-person list they email twice a month, the difference can be hundreds of dollars.

Who it’s for

Founders with large or growing contact lists who don’t email at high frequency. E-commerce sites with seasonal campaigns. SaaS companies running monthly newsletters to a large user base. Anyone who’s been quoted ridiculous prices by Mailchimp because “you have too many contacts” despite barely emailing them.

If you’re sending daily promotional emails to a smaller list, list-based pricing (Kit, MailerLite) is usually cheaper.

What it actually does well

The pricing model is the differentiator. The free plan supports unlimited contacts with a 300 emails/day cap, which is enough for many small businesses to run real email marketing without paying anything. Paid plans start at $9/mo for 5,000 sends.

Multi-channel is the second strength. Email, SMS, WhatsApp, web push notifications, and live chat all live in the same platform with shared contact records. For founders who want to reach customers across channels without managing five separate tools, this matters.

Transactional email is included on every plan, including free. If you need to send password resets, order confirmations, or notifications, you don’t need a separate Postmark or SendGrid account.

Where it gets awkward

Brevo branding shows on emails sent from lower-tier plans. Removing it on Starter requires a $9-12/mo add-on. On higher tiers it’s automatically removed. Worth knowing if you’re price-shopping at the entry level.

The interface feels notably less polished than Kit or Mailchimp. Functional but visually dated, with menus that occasionally surprise you. The October 2025 restructure pulled landing pages out of Starter, making the entry tier feel more limited than it used to.

Daily caps on Starter (a hard limit on how many emails per day) catch people sending bulk campaigns. If you regularly send a weekly newsletter to a large list, you’ll need Standard or higher.

How it compares

Versus Mailchimp: dramatically cheaper at higher contact counts, less polished interface, similar core feature set. Brevo wins on price for most founders.

Versus Kit: different positioning. Kit is creator-focused with monetisation tools. Brevo is multi-channel marketing with transactional email. Pick Kit if you’re a creator, Brevo if you’re a business with broad email needs.

Versus Mailgun or Postmark for transactional: Brevo includes transactional sending in every plan, but the dedicated transactional providers offer better deliverability and developer tooling at scale.