Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an all-in-one marketing platform built around email marketing, with SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, live chat, and CRM features layered on top. Its defining trait is the billing model: you pay by monthly email send volume, not by how many contacts you store. That makes it unusually cheap for businesses with big lists and modest sending needs.
This review is research-based, not hands-on tested. Every pricing and feature claim below comes from Brevo’s official help-center pricing documentation and official product terms read in September 2026 — not from third-party review sites, and not from a live product trial. Where the official pages left gaps, we say so plainly.
Overview
Brevo is a marketing platform covering email and SMS campaigns, transactional emails, marketing automation, landing pages, web push, live chat, and a built-in sales CRM. It sits in the same category as Mailchimp, Kit, and ActiveCampaign, but with two structural differences worth understanding before anything else.
First, the billing model. Most email platforms charge by contact count: the more subscribers on your list, the more you pay, regardless of how often you email them. Brevo charges by monthly email send volume instead. A business with 50,000 contacts that sends one newsletter a month pays for the sends, not the list. This flips the economics for large-but-quiet lists.
Second, the free plan is genuinely usable. The Free tier costs $0 forever with no credit card required, allows 300 email sends per day, stores up to 100,000 contacts, and includes the drag-and-drop editor, automation (limited to 2,000 contacts), transactional email, and even the built-in sales tools. The most obvious limitation is the 300-per-day sending cap.
If you want to try it without committing, the free tier is a realistic testing ground:
— Try Brevo free (no credit card required).
Key Features
Based on Brevo’s official plan documentation, here’s what the platform offers across its tiers.
Email campaigns. A drag-and-drop email editor with custom templates and reusable sections is available on every plan, including Free. Sending is capped at 300 emails per day on the Free plan; paid plans remove the daily limit and sell monthly send volumes instead.
SMS and WhatsApp. SMS campaigns and transactional SMS are available on all plans, billed with SMS credits rather than included in the send quota. WhatsApp campaigns and transactional messaging are gated to the Professional plan and above, and require an active WhatsApp Business account. Official product terms (version Feb 2026) set a fixed SMS/WhatsApp credit unit price of $0.0109 per credit, with consumption per message following country-specific rates and an overage rate of $0.0142 per credit. SMS credit packs start at 100 credits and never expire.
Marketing automation. Multi-channel marketing automation is available on all plans. On Free, automation is limited to 2,000 contacts. Starter keeps some automation gates, Standard unlocks automation with unlimited contacts plus A/B testing and AI send-time optimization, and Professional adds contact scoring, AI segmentation, and marketing pressure management (the ability to cap how often individual contacts are messaged).
Landing pages and forms. Standard includes 1 landing page; Professional includes 10. Enterprise supports a custom number of landing pages. Web push notifications are also tiered: Starter includes 1,000 targeted subscribers per campaign send, Standard allows 10,000, and Professional starts at 20,000 (with add-ons for more).
Built-in sales CRM. Every plan, including Free, includes basic sales tools: 50 open deals, 1 sales pipeline, automated meeting scheduling, live chat, meeting and revenue reporting, forecasting, task management, one connected calendar and mailbox, a mobile Conversations app, and an AI Conversations agent. This is unusual at the free tier and makes Brevo a plausible lightweight CRM for tiny teams.
AI assistant. Aura, Brevo’s AI-powered assistant, is included on all plans.
Paid add-ons worth knowing about. Removing the Brevo logo costs $9/month (Starter only). A dedicated IP is $251/year on Professional (one is included free on Enterprise). SAML SSO is $324/month as a Professional add-on, included on Enterprise. An International package for multi-language support is $215/month on Professional.
Pricing
Brevo’s Marketing Platform has five tiers: Free ($0), Starter (from $9/month), Standard (from $18/month), Professional (from $499/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing). Billing is by monthly email send volume, not contacts — and the send tier you pick also sets a contact-storage cap.
Key details from the official pricing documentation:
- Starter tiers by sends: 5,000 sends (up to 500 contacts), 10,000 (up to 1,500 contacts), 15,000 (up to 2,500 contacts), and 20,000–100,000 sends (up to 500,000 contacts).
- Standard tiers by sends: same first three tiers, with the top end reaching 20,000–500,000 sends (up to 500,000 contacts).
- Auto-upgrade on contact limits: on the first three tiers of Starter and Standard (500/1,500/2,500 contacts), Brevo sends warning notifications as you approach the cap, then automatically upgrades you to the next tier and price if you exceed it. This is worth knowing if your list is growing fast.
- Professional covers 150,000 to 10 million monthly sends with storage for up to 2 million contacts; Enterprise offers unlimited contact storage and fully tailored volumes.
- Yearly billing gets a 10% discount, charged upfront once a year. Monthly plans can be paused for up to 3 months; yearly plans cannot.
- Unused monthly credits expire just before renewal — they don’t roll over.
One important caveat: only the starting prices ($9, $18, $499) were confirmed on Brevo’s official pages during our research. The exact per-tier dollar amounts above those entry points (e.g., what 20,000 sends costs on Starter) were not published on the official help-center page we read — third-party sites report conflicting figures. Pricing may have changed — check the official page before budgeting.
Sales add-ons sit on top of marketing plans: Sales Essentials is $31/month (unlimited deals and pipelines, sales automation, AI enrichment, chatbot scenarios, Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger, unlimited connected calendars/mailboxes) and Sales Advanced is $64/month (Professional/Enterprise only — outreach sequences, AI follow-up emails, AI chatbot, SMS/WhatsApp 1:1 messages, and Phone VoIP with call recording and AI transcriptions).
— Compare plans and see current pricing on Brevo’s official page.
Pros
- Send-based billing saves money for large, quiet lists. If you have tens of thousands of contacts but send infrequently, Brevo’s model is structurally cheaper than contact-based pricing.
- Genuinely generous free plan. 300 sends/day, up to 100,000 stored contacts, automation, transactional email, and sales tools at $0 with no credit card is one of the stronger free tiers in the category.
- Multi-channel in one platform. Email, SMS, WhatsApp (Professional+), web push, and live chat reduce the need for separate tools.
- Free built-in CRM basics. Sales pipelines, live chat, and meeting scheduling on every plan — including free — is rare.
- No credit card to start. You can evaluate the real product on the free plan without payment details.
- Prepaid credits never expire. SMS/WhatsApp and prepaid email credit packs don’t expire, which suits irregular senders.
Cons
- Auto-upgrade can surprise you. Exceeding the contact cap on the lower Starter/Standard tiers automatically bumps you to the next price tier — you get warnings, but the upgrade is automatic.
- Send volume, not contacts, is the constraint. Heavy senders with small lists may find contact-based pricing (Mailchimp, Kit) cheaper; Brevo rewards the opposite profile.
- Unused monthly credits don’t roll over. If your sending is seasonal, you pay for sends you don’t use on monthly plans.
- Key features gated high. WhatsApp messaging, AI product recommendations, contact scoring, and AI segmentation are Professional-tier ($499+/month) features. Removing branding costs extra on Starter.
- Per-tier prices above the “from” amounts weren’t verifiable on the official pages we reviewed — third-party sites conflict, so budget conservatively.
Who Should Use It
- Small businesses with large contact lists and modest sending. Newsletters, announcements, and periodic campaigns for audiences in the tens of thousands are Brevo’s sweet spot.
- Budget-conscious starters. The free plan is a legitimate starting point for a solo founder or micro-business, not a demo.
- Businesses needing SMS alongside email. Transactional SMS and SMS campaigns are available from the free tier up (billed per credit).
- Teams wanting email plus light CRM in one login. The free sales tools — pipelines, live chat, meeting scheduling — may replace a separate basic CRM.
- Ecommerce senders with high volume. The Professional tier’s 150,000–10 million sends, AI product recommendations, and back-in-stock alerts target serious ecommerce operations.
Who Should Avoid It
- High-frequency senders with small lists. If you email a few thousand contacts daily, send-based pricing works against you — a contact-based plan may cost less.
- Users wanting full features cheaply. AI segmentation, WhatsApp, contact scoring, and advanced analytics are gated behind the $499/month Professional tier.
- Teams needing many seats on a budget. Standard supports up to 3 marketing users ($9/month per additional seat); larger teams pay more or go Enterprise.
- Anyone who needs long-term price certainty. Unused credits expire monthly, and auto-upgrades on contact caps can raise your bill without manual action.
Alternatives
- Mailchimp — the best-known alternative, billed by contacts (not sends), with a strong template and integration ecosystem. Better for small lists you email often; worse for large lists you email rarely. (See our Brevo vs Mailchimp comparison.)
- Kit (formerly ConvertKit) — creator-focused, subscriber-based billing, strong on landing pages, forms, and paid newsletters. Better for creators and newsletter monetization.
- ActiveCampaign — automation-first, contact-based billing, built-in CRM included. Better for complex automation workflows; starts at $15/month for 1,000 contacts with no permanent free plan. (See our Brevo vs ActiveCampaign comparison.)
User Experience
A note on method: this is a research-based review. We did not run a hands-on trial of Brevo’s editor or automation builder, so we can’t score its day-to-day usability from experience. What the official documentation tells us: every plan includes a drag-and-drop editor, custom templates, and reusable sections; Standard adds A/B testing and AI send-time optimization; Professional adds an analytics studio with dashboards. Support tiers are documented — email support on Free, priority email support on Standard, and phone plus priority email support with a dedicated success manager on Professional (yearly plan). For usability impressions, we’d recommend the free plan itself: with no credit card required, it’s a low-risk way to judge the editor and workflow yourself.
Integrations
The official help-center pages we reviewed document outbound webhooks on all plans and inbound webhooks on Professional and above, plus an API for custom integrations. We did not verify a published integration count or specific third-party integration list from official pages during this research — the documentation we read focuses on plans and billing rather than the integration directory. If native integrations with your ecommerce platform, CMS, or other tools are a deciding factor, check Brevo’s integrations page directly before committing.
Security/Privacy
From the official plan documentation: Professional and Enterprise support a dedicated IP ($251/year add-on on Professional, included on Enterprise), and SAML SSO is available as a $324/month add-on on Professional and included on Enterprise. We did not review Brevo’s security or privacy policy pages during this research, so we can’t speak to certifications, data residency, or GDPR specifics here. For compliance-sensitive use cases, review Brevo’s security documentation on their site before deciding.
Final Verdict
Brevo is one of the strongest value plays in email marketing — for the right sender. Its send-based billing, generous free tier, and built-in sales tools make it an easy recommendation for businesses with large lists, modest sending frequency, or tight budgets. The trade-offs are real: auto-upgrades on contact caps, expiring monthly credits, and high-tier gating for advanced features.
If your profile matches — big audience, reasonable sending volume, and a preference for one platform covering email, SMS, and light CRM — Brevo deserves a serious look. Start with the free plan and judge it yourself.
— Start free on Brevo (no credit card required).
