Mailchimp vs Brevo
Two accessible platforms for small to mid-sized businesses. Mailchimp offers familiarity with landing pages, social, and ads in one suite; Brevo provides budget-friendly multi-channel marketing with SMS, CRM, and pay-per-send economics.
Quick Verdict
Choose Mailchimp if you want a familiar interface with landing pages, social posting, ads, and e-commerce integrations your team already knows.
Choose Brevo if budget control matters and you need SMS, WhatsApp, and email with a built-in CRM at pay-per-send pricing that rewards large, infrequently-mailed lists.
SaaS teams should add one more option before deciding: neither broadcast suite models trials or billing state. Sequenzy at $19/month covers billing-aware nurture natively — if lifecycle context matters more than channel breadth, start the pilot there instead.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Mailchimp | Brevo |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | Free tier, paid from ~$13/mo | Free tier, sends-based paid plans |
| Pricing model | Audience-based tiers with send caps | Pay-per-send, unlimited contacts |
| Free Tier | Contacts + limited sends | 300 emails/day |
| SMS / WhatsApp | Paid add-on | Included channels |
| Landing Pages | Included builder | Limited |
| Ads & Social | Included | No |
| Automation | Customer Journeys | Visual workflows with conditions |
| CRM | Basic contact tools | Built-in pipelines |
| Transactional API | Via add-on service | Dedicated SMTP API |
| Best For | Small businesses | Budget-conscious multi-channel |
Mailchimp Strengths
- Familiarity: most marketers already know the interface — onboarding cost approaches zero.
- All-in-one breadth: landing pages, social posting, and ads management without extra vendors.
- E-commerce connections: solid Shopify and WooCommerce integrations for store-driven audiences.
- Template library: extensive email and page templates shorten production for lean teams.
Brevo Strengths
- Multi-channel included: SMS and WhatsApp are channels, not add-ons — coordinated campaigns without bolt-on billing.
- Pay-per-send economics: unlimited contacts on most plans keeps large, infrequently-mailed lists cheap.
- Built-in CRM: pipelines and contact timelines without a separate sales tool.
- Transactional infrastructure: dedicated SMTP API with deliverability tooling alongside campaigns.
Audience tiers vs pay-per-send
Mailchimp counts audiences — including unsubscribed and unconfirmed contacts — toward tiers, so list hygiene is a billing control. Archive ruthlessly, clean quarterly, and watch send caps: high-cadence programs force tier jumps mid-quarter that finance never approved. Familiarity has a meter running underneath it.
Brevo's pay-per-send rewards the opposite shape: huge lists mailed rarely stay cheap, while daily cadences accumulate send volume fast. SMS and WhatsApp credits bill separately on top. Model your actual monthly sends plus message credits at realistic cadence — the cheaper headline depends entirely on your sending shape.
When to pick which
Pick Mailchimp when one team runs the whole front office: email, landing pages, social, and light ads with minimal vendors. Familiarity plus breadth beats channel depth for generalist small-business marketing.
Pick Brevo when messages span channels: appointment reminders by SMS, updates by WhatsApp, newsletters by email — with a shared CRM timeline. Local services and notification-heavy businesses get more from channel breadth.
Revisit when sending shapes change: newsletter programs that grow into daily lifecycle outgrow audience-tier math, while multi-channel programs that consolidate onto email waste message-credit breadth. Re-model annually.
Migration notes
Mailchimp to Brevo: audit audiences for billable bloat before export, rebuild landing pages elsewhere (Brevo's builder is limited), transfer SMS consent with timestamps, and separate transactional streams onto the SMTP API from day one.
Brevo to Mailchimp: map workflows to Customer Journeys (expect branching simplification), adopt landing pages and ads to replace lost breadth, and verify send-cap headroom at current cadence before committing tiers.
30-day pilot plan
Pilot generalist cadence — one newsletter plus one automated journey — with a bounded audience on each platform.
| Week | What to do | Evidence to keep |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Clean | Audit lists, archive dead contacts, export with suppression | Billable-count report before and after cleaning |
| 2. Rebuild | Port one newsletter template plus one journey per platform | Rendering screenshots across clients |
| 3. Send | Run with placement, link, unsubscribe, and SMS-consent checks | Engagement, placement, and complaint logs |
| 4. Decide | Compare engagement, operating hours, and fully loaded cost | Signed scorecard with rollback notes |
Deliverability notes
Both platforms deliver reliably on permissioned lists. Mailchimp's shared-IP pools mean neighbor behavior occasionally affects placement — monitor domain reputation at volume. Brevo teams should isolate SMTP API traffic from campaign blasts on separate subdomains from day one.
Sunset chronic non-engagers before migration and monitor placement per mailbox provider through cutover. Inherited list debt damages new-sender reputation fastest.
Frequently asked questions
Which is actually cheaper?
It depends on sending shape: large lists mailed rarely favor Brevo's pay-per-send; small lists with all-in-one needs favor Mailchimp's bundles. Model monthly sends, SMS credits, and billable contacts at 12-month growth.
Does Brevo replace landing pages?
Only basically — teams leaving Mailchimp's builder should plan a page replacement before migration. Unbundled tools can surprise budgets when priced after cutover instead of during evaluation.
Can transactional mail stay separate?
Yes, and it should: Brevo's SMTP API isolates receipts from campaigns cleanly. Mailchimp teams need the add-on transactional service with separate stream discipline.
When do both stop fitting?
At lifecycle depth: billing triggers, product-event branching, and revenue attribution outgrow both broadcast suites. SaaS teams graduate to billing-aware tools; commerce teams graduate to catalog-native platforms.
Our Recommendation
Both are solid choices for general small-business marketing. Mailchimp for familiarity and all-in-one breadth; Brevo for budget-friendly multi-channel with CRM context. Decide by sending shape and channel mix, modeled at realistic 12-month scale.
Keep exploring: all comparisons · nurture for small business · deliverability guide