Finding the Right Email Marketing Tool: Mailchimp vs. Brevo Compared

Mailchimp has millions of users worldwide and offers an easy-to-use email marketing tool with great features. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is another great choice if you’re looking for an easy-to-use tool with solid features and cheaper pricing – because Sendinblue, unlike Mailchimp, doesn’t set a cap on contacts and instead only charges per the number of emails sent. Mailchimp vs Brevo (Sendinblue) ⇣.

This Mailchimp vs Brevo comparison reviews two of the best email marketing software out there right now.

In this day and age, you may think email is a thing of the past. Yet, data says otherwise.

According to oberlo.com, the number of email users continues to grow, as 100 million accounts are being created each year. Approximately, more than 300 billion emails are sent and received daily, and the figure will only continue to increase.

While social media marketing’s importance can’t be overlooked, email is still the main instrument for small and midsize businesses that want to grow. As reported by Emarsys, about 80% of SMBs are still depending on email to acquire more customers and retain them.

Emails are here, and they’re here to stay.

Now we know that email is still a relevant and essential tool to raise brand awareness. But it’s time to talk about email marketing. Simply put, email marketing is the act of promoting products or services through email.

It’s so much more than just sending customers emails about your products. You’ll also need to develop a relationship with them. This includes building a sense of comfort by keeping them informed with appropriately customized messages.

The problem is that with thousands or more customers you want to reach, it wouldn’t be ideal to handle their emails one at a time. That’s why you need the best email tool to help you do the work.

So, what kind of tools are those, and which one should you use? We’ll take a look at two of the leading competitors: Mailchimp and Brevo (formerly Sendinblue).

What are Mailchimp and Brevo?

Mailchimp and Brevo are what people often call bulk email services. Not only you can send emails to thousands of people at once, but these tools also work as autoresponders. They can automatically send the right email according to your subscribers’ activity.

These kinds of emails can only bother people if you don’t personalize your message to suit the situation. With these tools, however, you can target the right people, at the right moment, with the perfect message. That way, there is a smaller chance that your email will be considered spam.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about each service individually.

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms. Launched in 2001, the service makes it easier for small and midsize businesses to get the professional email marketing they need.

One great feature Mailchimp has is transactional messages. You can create special types of messages involving transactions, like order notifications. Although, some features like this one are not accessible for free.

Considering more and more competitors are entering the market, we can hardly say that Mailchimp is the best choice these days. People argue that to get the best features of Mailchimp, you need to pay the premium price. Some other services, like Brevo, are cheaper and offer more features than Mailchimp.

Brevo is a newer service launched in 2012. It can do most of the things Mailchimp does, plus a few other things. For example, apart from email marketing, you can also do SMS marketing and chat marketing.

These features should help you if you want to include other messaging media to market your goods. Additionally, the transactional email is specialized, triggered by the recipient’s action or inaction.

Mailchimp is more popular and has more history compared to Brevo. According to Google Trends, Mailchimp still dominates the market. The graph below shows the daily search rate of the two in the last five years:

However, we can’t just look at the market share alone as the older service is usually more popular. To get the right service, you need to consider several factors. Luckily, we can help you in your search to determine which one is the right option for you.

Ease of use

In terms of ease of use, both Mailchimp and Brevo are both pretty decent. Mailchimp, for instance, has an intuitive backend control for more convenient activity. Still, some important functions maybe not be so obvious to find, such as setting up the landing page.

Overall, however, Mailchimp is a satisfactory choice if you want to have an easy-to-use platform to create your campaign.

Yet, Brevo is not behind in this department either. You will be introduced to a drag & drop function to edit the campaign components, along with the pre-set options that make your work simpler than ever. If you are not satisfied with how things look, you can always go back to the previous versions. Here’s how it looks:

🏆 Winner is: Tie

Both win! Mailchimp and Brevo are easy to pick up. Although, you may opt for Brevo if you are a complete beginner for a more minimalistic and easier-to-use interface.

Email templates

A template is there to make your email beautiful. So, naturally, ready-to-use templates should be provided in case you don’t wish to design it on your own. Since you want to pick the template that suits your preference, the more the options, the better it will be.

Mailchimp offers more than 100 responsive templates for you to choose from, tailored for both mobile and PC users. You can modify them as needed. If you want to find a specific template, just search by category and you are good to go.

On the contrary, Brevo doesn’t provide as much as template options. Don’t get us wrong though, they still provide various templates to get you started.

Otherwise, you can always use the template you already have. Either make it on your own or use the design from other sources. Simply copy and paste the template’s HTML into the Brevo editor to use it.

🏆 Winner is: Mailchimp

Because Mailchimp offers more options for creating, designing, and putting your unique style to email templates.

Signup forms and landing pages

If you have a website, you can’t leave out subscription forms when talking about email marketing. This tool can make the job of creating email lists much simpler. Luckily, the two platforms deliver.

With Mailchimp, you can do just that. But, it may not be that easy since there’s no obvious method when you are new to the platform. For your information, the form can be found under the ‘Create’ button.

Regarding the type of forms, there are a few options you can choose. It can be either a pop-up form, embedded form, or signup landing page. The biggest downside with the Mailchimp forms is responsiveness, they are not perfectly tailored for mobile users yet.

Now, this is the section where Brevo comes out on top. Not only does it offer decent responsive design but also adds additional features not present at Mailchimp. When users signup for the newsletter, they can select which category they want to subscribe to.

For instance, a user may only be interested in emails based on specific topics. The drag and drop process of creating one also makes the whole process a lot faster.

🏆 Winner is: Brevo

Because Brevo provides a more intuitive way to create forms whilst delivering a better result.

Check out my detailed Brevo review for 2024 here.

Automation and Autoresponders

Both Mailchimp and Brevo boast automation as part of their service. While this is true, the degree isn’t at all the same. For Mailchimp, some folks may find it confusing in setting it up. The reason being the workflow to do so isn’t laid out clearly.

Again, Brevo has the advantage. With the platform, you can create an advanced campaign that triggers actions based on data such as customer behavior.

It’s simple to use as you can use the 9 goal-based autoresponders to apply for different circumstances, e.g. after a customer purchases a product or visits certain pages.

You can also test your campaigns before activating them and there’s also the ‘best time’ feature. Using machine learning, it can decide when to send emails based on previous campaigns.

One last thing, Brevo provides advanced automation and autoresponder for all packages—that includes the free one. This is one thing that you have to pay first before you can use them in Mailchimp.

🏆 Winner is: Brevo

For automation, Brevo wins by a landslide if we also take into account the pricing.

Analytics, reporting, and A/B testing

Testing & analysis tools are needed if you want to get the best possible return on investment.

With Brevo, you can get seamless access to analytics and A/B testing according to various components such as message content, subject lines, and the emails send time. The ‘best time’ feature we mentioned earlier is also available for you in certain packages.

At the home page, you can view the statistic reporting including click rates, open rates, and subscriptions. The feature is straightforward to use, and all packages including the free tier have access to it.

However, higher tiers include more advanced reports. The data is shown as fancy graphs, thus you can grasp the reports more clearly.

With that said, Mailchimp also offers a comprehensive experience when it comes to A/B testing. In addition, you get more advanced A/B testing tools at the right price. For example, with $299 per month, you can test 8 different campaigns and see which one is the most effective.

Still, that may be too expensive especially for newer businesses, although you can settle with 3 variants at lower plans.

Furthermore, there’s no machine learning in Mailchimp, unlike Brevo. Reporting is still available, albeit not in graphs so it’s not as convenient. One thing Mailchimp has that Sendinblue doesn’t is the ability to compare your reports against industry benchmarks.

🏆 Winner is: Brevo

Brevo. It offers decent visual reporting and A/B testing while being cheaper. However, Mailchimp has more tools you may be interested in if you are willing to pay more.

Deliverability

The design and content of emails aren’t the only essential things. You need to make sure that the mail you send to your subscriber arrives at their mailboxes just as it should be in the primary inbox or at least the secondary tab instead of the spam folder.

A clean list, engagement, and reputation are some of the things you should consider when building an email marketing campaign.

This helps prevents your emails to be treated as spam. Other than that, they found that the deliverability rates of various platforms range differently. Take a look at this table provided by tooltester:

From this result, we can see that Brevo has been trailing behind Mailchimp in the past years. But, we can see that it has overtaken Mailchimp recently by a huge margin.

In fact, Brevo has the best deliverability rates among prominent newsletters in the latest test.

Plus, emails from Brevo are less likely to be considered spam. Based on the same source, only 11% of Brevo’s emails are categorized as spam by email providers like Gmail or Yahoo, while spam emails from Mailchimp reached 14.2%.

This aspect can’t be overlooked since it won’t do business any good if your emails arrive as spam, even if they are successfully delivered.

🏆 Winner is: Brevo

Based on recent data (from Jan 2019 to Jan 2024), Brevo wins by a small margin on average. Not only in terms of deliverability but also the spam rate.

Apps & Integrations

Mailchimp is compatible with more than 230 integration tools. That means you can connect with more plugins such as Grow and WordPress.

In a different circumstance, Brevo only provides 51 integrations so far. Although, there are some well-known ones that Mailchimp doesn’t have such as Shopify, Google Analytics, and Facebook Lead Ads.

🏆 Winner: Mailchimp

With 230+ tools, Mailchimp wins this round. In case you want to know which plugins are available for each of them, here’s the link for Mailchimp and Brevo.

Plans and Prices

Now, this section is probably what some people are most concerned about. For small or new companies, budget is arguably one of the top priorities. You need to spend efficiently to get the most of the revenue you would likely get as a starting business.

For this, Brevo and Mailchimp are luckily offering free packages. From this tier, you can send up to 2000 emails each day with Mailchimp. That’s not a bad number for a free service.

Nonetheless, you can only have a maximum of 2000 contacts and almost all of the advanced features are not available, except for basic 1-click automation.

Brevo, on the other hand, supplies more features for zero cash. You’ll have access to unlimited contact storage, advanced segmentation, transactional emails, and the ability to add custom-coded HTML templates.

These functions are not available in the free package of Mailchimp. Unfortunately, the platform has a sending limit of 300 emails a day. Not the ideal number to be fair.

Of course, you’ll get more tools and more quota with the paid versions. To get a better view of the plan comparison between these two, look at this table:

To summarize, Brevo is the best choice for those who want to have an unlimited number of contacts but don’t send emails too often.

You can send slightly more emails per buck with Mailchimp, but even then, you have to pay a considerable amount of money if you want to start using the advanced features. These are things you can get for free with Brevo.

🏆 Best value for money is: Brevo

Brevo. No contest! They offer far more features for a significantly cheaper price.

Pros and Cons

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of Mailchimp and Brevo.

• Target Audience: Mailchimp suits those who need an all-in-one marketing platform with advanced features and are willing to pay for them. It’s ideal for businesses with a focus on social media marketing and e-commerce. Brevo, on the other hand, is more suitable for businesses looking for a cost-effective solution with strong automation and list management capabilities, especially if they are integrating email with other communication channels like SMS and WhatsApp.
• Budget Considerations: If budget is a primary concern, Brevo presents a more economical option, especially for businesses just starting to build their email list or those who need to send a high volume of emails. Mailchimp’s pricing can escalate quickly with the increase in contacts.
• Ease of Use vs. Advanced Features: Both platforms are user-friendly, but Mailchimp has an edge in modern design and user experience. However, for more advanced automation features and list management, Brevo stands out.

Our Verdict ⭐

We’ve learned that a big name doesn’t guarantee the best solution for everyone. To get the best service, a proper evaluation of each of these options can find you the most efficient and effective tools.

Taking all of these into account, we believe that Brevo is the best email marketing platform of the two, especially for newer businesses. If you’re still not convinced, you can do a DIY Mailchimp vs Sendinblue experiment.

How We Review Email Marketing Tools: Our Methodology

Choosing the right email marketing service is more than just picking a tool for sending emails. It’s about finding a solution that enhances your marketing strategy, streamlines communication, and drives engagement. Here’s how we evaluate and review email marketing tools to ensure you get only the best information before you make a decision:

1. User-Friendly Interface: We prioritize tools that offer a drag-and-drop editor. This feature is crucial for crafting unique email templates effortlessly, eliminating the need for extensive coding knowledge.
2. Versatility in Campaign Types: The ability to support various email formats is key. Whether it’s standard newsletters, A/B testing capabilities, or setting up autoresponders, versatility is a significant factor in our evaluation.
3. Advanced Marketing Automation: From basic autoresponders to more complex features like targeted campaigns and contact tagging, we assess how well a tool can automate and tailor your email marketing efforts.
4. Efficient Sign-up Form Integration: A top-tier email marketing tool should allow easy integration of sign-up forms on your website or dedicated landing pages, simplifying the process of growing your subscriber list.
5. Autonomy in Subscription Management: We look for tools that empower users with self-managed opt-in and opt-out processes, reducing the need for manual oversight and enhancing user experience.
6. Seamless Integrations: The ability to seamlessly connect with other essential platforms – such as your blog, e-commerce site, CRM, or analytics tools – is a critical aspect we examine.
7. Email Deliverability: A great tool is one that ensures your emails actually reach your audience. We assess the effectiveness of each tool in bypassing spam filters and ensuring high deliverability rates.
8. Comprehensive Support Options: We believe in tools that offer robust support through various channels, be it a detailed knowledge base, email, live chat, or phone support, to assist you whenever needed.
9. In-depth Reporting: Understanding the impact of your email campaigns is vital. We delve into the kind of data and analytics provided by each tool, focusing on the depth and usefulness of the insights offered.

Learn more about our review methodology.