Unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day free. We tested it for 60 days.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue, rebranded in 2023) is an all-in-one marketing platform covering email campaigns, SMS, live chat, and basic automation. It is primarily used by small businesses and solo creators who need a capable email tool without the cost of premium platforms.
The standout feature is the free plan: unlimited contacts with 300 emails per day. Mailchimp limits you to 500 contacts on its free plan. GetResponse requires a paid plan for automation. Brevo gives you the contacts without the cap, which makes a meaningful difference if you are building a list before you are earning consistently.
Drag-and-drop email builder with 60+ responsive templates. Personalisation, A/B testing, and send-time optimisation on paid plans.
Visual automation builder available on free and paid plans. Supports welcome sequences, birthday emails, and trigger-based campaigns. Less flexible than ActiveCampaign but sufficient for most use cases.
SMTP relay and API for sending receipts, password resets, and order confirmations. Included on all plans. Useful if you sell digital products and need automated delivery emails.
Send SMS campaigns to phone numbers in your contact list. Charged per message. One of the few email tools that includes SMS without a separate subscription.
Simple landing page builder on Starter plan and above. Sufficient for opt-in pages and lead magnets. Not a replacement for dedicated landing page tools like Leadpages.
Embeddable chat widget for your site. Free on all plans. Routes to email inbox when offline. Useful for small e-commerce and digital product sites.
We used Brevo to build a lead magnet funnel: a landing page collecting emails in exchange for a free PDF, followed by a 5-email welcome sequence over 10 days. The whole setup took under 3 hours including the automation workflow.
The drag-and-drop email builder is clean and intuitive. Creating a professional-looking email took about 15 minutes with no design skills. The automation builder is simplified compared to ActiveCampaign, but for a linear sequence — send this email, wait 2 days, send the next — it is perfectly adequate.
Deliverability on the free plan was acceptable but not exceptional. In testing against Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign, Brevo free-plan emails landed in the promotions tab more frequently. Moving to a paid plan and authenticating your domain resolves this in most cases.
What surprised us: the transactional email system is genuinely useful for digital product sellers. Setting up automated PDF delivery emails via Brevo's SMTP took under 30 minutes and has been reliable.
Start here if you are building your first email list. Brevo gives you everything you need to get to 1,000 subscribers and your first automated sequence without spending a cent. Once you are earning consistently and need more sophisticated segmentation, upgrade to ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo. But Brevo will serve you well for the first 6–12 months.
| Plan | Price/mo | Emails/month |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 9,000 (300/day) |
| Starter | $9 | 20,000 |
| Business | $18 | 20,000 (unlimited with add-on) |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited |
| Feature | Brevo Free | Mailchimp Free |
|---|---|---|
| Contact limit | Unlimited | 500 |
| Email sends/month | 9,000 | 1,000 |
| Automation on free plan | Yes (basic) | Limited |
| Transactional email | Yes | No |
| SMS | Yes | No |
| Template quality | Good | Excellent |
Unlimited contacts, no credit card. The best free email plan for creators and affiliate marketers.
Start free with Brevo →