The first email a new subscriber gets from you is one of the most-read emails you will ever send. They just signed up, they are paying attention, and a good welcome email tells them what to expect next. The problem: sending it manually does not scale. That is what marketing automation is for — and Brevo includes it even on its free plan.
This guide walks through what Brevo’s automation can do, how to set up a simple welcome series, and where the free plan’s limits are.
What Brevo’s automation includes
Brevo’s automation builder is a visual workflow editor: you design a customer journey out of triggers (what starts it), conditions (who goes down which path), and actions (send an email, send an SMS, wait, etc.).
Out of the box, Brevo ships around 14 pre-built email workflows, including a welcome message flow, abandoned cart, anniversary date, product purchase, and page-visit triggers. You can start from one of these templates or build a flow from scratch. Flows can mix email and SMS actions, which is handy if you run an online store.
How to set up a welcome series (step by step)
- In the Brevo dashboard, open Automations and choose Create a new automation.
- Pick the Welcome new contacts template (or start from scratch if you prefer).
- Set the entry condition: the workflow starts when a contact is added to a specific list — for example, your “Newsletter subscribers” list. Set it to run once per contact so nobody gets the series twice.
- Add your first email right after signup (a short welcome: who you are, what you will send, how often).
- Add a delay step (e.g. wait 2–3 days), then a second email with something useful — your best article, a getting-started guide, or a small discount if you sell products.
- Repeat once or twice more with a few days between emails. Three to five emails is plenty for a welcome series.
- Review the whole flow, then activate it. Every new subscriber to that list now gets the series automatically.
(UI labels and steps as of September 2026 — Brevo updates its dashboard from time to time, so names may shift slightly.)
What the free plan lets you do — and where it stops
Brevo’s free plan is genuinely usable for automation testing:
- 300 emails per day, up to 100,000 stored contacts, no credit card required.
- Automation workflows are available, but active automations are limited to 2,000 contacts.
- Every email carries Brevo branding, and there is no A/B testing or landing page builder on the free tier.
The practical catch is the daily cap: it does not pool across days. If your list has 500 people and you send one newsletter, you exceed the 300/day cap that day even if you send nothing the rest of the month. For a small welcome series trickling out to new subscribers one by one, though, the free plan works fine.
When it makes sense to upgrade
If your list grows past a few hundred active subscribers or you want unbranded emails with A/B testing and landing pages, Brevo’s Standard plan (listed from $18/month on brevo.com) is the natural step — it unlocks full marketing automation depth. Starter (from $9/month) removes the daily sending cap but keeps branding and skips automation. Pricing changes, so verify current figures on brevo.com before committing.
For a deeper look at the platform itself, see our full Brevo review.
Practical tips for your first automation
- One clear call-to-action per email. Welcome emails that ask for five things get none of them done.
- Space emails a few days apart. Day 0, day 3, day 7 is a sane default.
- Write the series before you build it. Draft all emails in a document first, then paste them into the workflow — it is much faster.
- Watch the first week’s numbers and fix the weakest email first, not the whole series.
Bottom line
You do not need a paid plan to start automating. Brevo’s free tier covers a simple welcome series for a new list, and the visual builder makes the setup approachable even if you have never built a workflow before. Start small, measure, and upgrade when your list outgrows the free limits.
Disclosure: MarketPulse is reader-supported. This article contains no affiliate links for Brevo yet — when we join a program, we will say so clearly.
