Brevo

Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, has evolved from a straightforward email marketing tool into one of Europe's most comprehensive all-in-one marketing platforms. Founded in 2012 by Armand Thiberge in Paris, France, the company rebranded to Brevo in May 2023 to reflect its expansion beyond email into a full customer relationship platform encompassing email campaigns, SMS marketing, WhatsApp messaging, CRM, marketing automation, transactional email, and more. With over 500,000 businesses worldwide relying on the platform, Brevo has established itself as the leading European alternative to Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and HubSpot.

What makes Brevo genuinely different from its US competitors is its pricing model. While most email marketing platforms charge based on the number of contacts in your list -- which penalizes you for growing your audience -- Brevo charges based on the number of emails you send per month. This means you can store unlimited contacts on most plans without incurring additional costs. For businesses with large contact lists that send infrequently, or those that maintain segmented lists for targeted campaigns, this pricing structure can represent dramatic savings compared to Mailchimp's per-contact model.

Email Campaign Builder and Templates

Brevo's drag-and-drop email editor is intuitive enough for marketing teams without design resources, yet flexible enough for brands with specific visual requirements. The editor includes a library of responsive templates covering common use cases -- newsletters, promotions, product launches, event invitations -- all optimized for mobile rendering. For more advanced users, the platform supports full HTML editing and dynamic content blocks that personalize email content based on contact attributes or behavior.

The platform also includes AI-powered features that assist with copy writing and subject line generation. The predictive send time optimization feature analyzes each contact's historical engagement patterns and delivers emails at the time they are most likely to open them. This kind of machine learning-driven optimization was previously available only in enterprise-tier tools like HubSpot's Marketing Hub Professional, but Brevo offers it at a fraction of the cost.

Marketing Automation Workflows

Brevo's automation engine lets you build multi-step workflows triggered by user actions such as email opens, link clicks, form submissions, website visits, or purchase events. The visual workflow builder uses a drag-and-drop interface with branching logic, delays, and A/B testing paths. Common automation scenarios include welcome sequences for new subscribers, abandoned cart recovery emails for e-commerce stores, re-engagement campaigns for inactive contacts, and lead nurturing flows that move prospects through your sales pipeline.

What sets Brevo's automation apart from simpler tools like Mailchimp is the ability to combine email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages within a single workflow. A cart abandonment sequence might start with an email, follow up with an SMS two hours later if the email was not opened, and send a WhatsApp message the next day with a discount code. This multi-channel orchestration runs from a single visual builder, eliminating the need for separate tools or complex integrations.

CRM and Sales Pipeline

Brevo includes a built-in CRM that tracks contacts through your sales pipeline without requiring a separate tool like HubSpot or Salesforce. You can create custom deal stages, assign contacts to sales team members, set follow-up tasks, and track revenue attribution back to specific campaigns. The CRM integrates natively with the email and automation features, so marketing-qualified leads flow directly into sales pipelines without manual handoff.

For small and mid-size businesses that cannot justify the cost of a dedicated CRM system, Brevo's built-in sales tools represent significant value. The pipeline view is clean and functional, contact records show the complete history of interactions across all channels, and the task management features keep sales follow-ups organized. It is not a replacement for Salesforce at the enterprise level, but for SMBs managing dozens to hundreds of deals, it is more than adequate.

Transactional Email and SMTP

Beyond marketing campaigns, Brevo operates one of Europe's most reliable transactional email services. Transactional emails -- order confirmations, password resets, shipping notifications, account verification -- require high deliverability and low latency, and Brevo delivers on both counts. The platform provides RESTful APIs, SMTP relay, and webhooks for real-time delivery tracking. All plans include unlimited log retention, which is valuable for compliance and debugging delivery issues.

The transactional email service includes dedicated IP addresses on higher-tier plans, which is essential for businesses sending high volumes and wanting full control over their sender reputation. Brevo also provides deliverability optimization tools including domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), bounce management, and blacklist monitoring. For European businesses that need their transactional email infrastructure running on EU servers, Brevo's Paris-based infrastructure provides that guarantee.

SMS and WhatsApp Marketing

Brevo was one of the first marketing platforms to integrate SMS marketing alongside email from the early days of its existence. You can send SMS campaigns to segmented contact lists, include SMS steps in automation workflows, and track delivery and click-through rates. WhatsApp Business integration is a more recent addition, allowing businesses to send approved template messages and run conversational marketing campaigns through the world's most popular messaging app.

For European businesses, SMS remains a highly effective marketing channel with open rates exceeding 95%. Brevo's SMS pricing is competitive and transparent, with per-message costs that vary by country. The ability to orchestrate SMS and WhatsApp alongside email campaigns from a single platform eliminates the complexity of managing separate messaging vendors and consolidates analytics into a unified dashboard.

Segmentation and Personalization

Brevo's segmentation engine allows you to create contact segments based on demographic attributes, behavioral data (email opens, clicks, website visits, purchase history), and custom properties. Segments update dynamically, so contacts are automatically added or removed as their behavior changes. You can use these segments to target specific audience groups with personalized campaigns, or to trigger automated workflows based on segment membership.

Advanced personalization goes beyond inserting a first name into a subject line. Brevo supports conditional content blocks that show or hide email sections based on contact attributes, product recommendation blocks for e-commerce stores, and dynamic send time optimization per contact. These features enable genuinely personalized communication at scale without requiring a team of data scientists.

Pricing and Plans

Brevo's free plan is one of the most generous in the email marketing industry: you can store unlimited contacts and send up to 300 emails per day at no cost. The Starter plan begins at around 9 USD per month (approximately 8 EUR) for 5,000 emails per month with no daily sending limit. The Business plan starts at approximately 18 USD per month and adds marketing automation, A/B testing, advanced statistics, and multi-user access. Enterprise plans with custom pricing are available for organizations with high-volume needs and dedicated account management.

The email-based pricing model means that growing your contact list does not trigger price increases, which is a significant advantage over Mailchimp (where crossing a contact tier can double your monthly bill overnight). For businesses with large dormant segments that they email infrequently, the cost difference can be substantial.

GDPR Compliance and European Data Sovereignty

As a French company headquartered in Paris, Brevo is natively GDPR compliant. Data is processed and stored on European infrastructure, and the company provides built-in tools for managing consent, honoring unsubscribe requests, and maintaining compliant contact lists. The platform includes consent management features such as double opt-in forms, automatic unsubscribe link insertion, and GDPR-specific data export and deletion capabilities.

For European businesses, choosing Brevo over Mailchimp or Constant Contact eliminates the legal complexity of transferring customer data to US servers. With the ongoing uncertainty around EU-US data transfer mechanisms, using a French marketing platform that processes all data within the EU provides a straightforward compliance position that any DPO can defend.

Who Should Use Brevo?

Brevo is ideal for small and mid-size European businesses that need an all-in-one marketing platform without the enterprise price tag. E-commerce businesses benefit from the multi-channel automation (email + SMS + WhatsApp), transactional email capabilities, and integration with platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. Marketing agencies appreciate the multi-user access and white-label options. Startups and growing businesses value the generous free tier and the pricing model that does not penalize list growth.

Larger enterprises with complex CRM needs or very high email volumes may outgrow Brevo's built-in CRM in favor of dedicated tools like HubSpot or Salesforce, though Brevo's API and integration ecosystem can bridge many of those gaps. For the vast majority of European SMBs looking to replace Mailchimp with a GDPR-native platform that does not compromise on features, Brevo is the strongest option on the market.