Email marketing
Mailchimp vs Brevo
Brevo is cheaper for big lists you email now and then, and includes transactional sending and SMS. Mailchimp has the better templates, reporting and integration ecosystem, and charges you for every contact whether you email them or not.
- No affiliate links
- Public pricing only
- Updated by hand
The pricing model is the story here. Mailchimp bills on contacts stored; Brevo's core plans bill on emails sent, with a permanent free daily allowance. A 40,000-contact list you email monthly costs very different amounts on each.
Feature-wise both cover campaigns, automations, forms and landing pages. Mailchimp is more polished, Brevo is broader — it also does transactional email, SMS and a basic CRM.
Side by side
Mailchimp and Brevo in short.
Mailchimp
The best-known email marketing platform, now part of Intuit, priced per contact.
- Free
- Free plan for small lists with limited monthly sends and Mailchimp branding.
- Paid from
- Essentials from roughly $13/month, rising with contact count
Good at
- Template editor and pre-built campaign designs are the best of the mainstream tools
- Enormous integration ecosystem — almost every ecommerce and CMS plugin supports it
- Reporting and A/B testing are mature
Weak at
- You pay for unengaged contacts, so costs creep
- Automation depth is limited unless you pay for higher tiers
Brevo
Email, SMS, transactional sending and a light CRM, priced mainly on emails sent.
- Free
- Free plan with unlimited contacts and a daily send allowance.
- Paid from
- Paid plans from roughly $9/month
Good at
- Unlimited contacts on the free plan — you pay for sending, not storing
- Transactional email API and SMS in the same account
- Cheaper at almost every list size above a few thousand
Weak at
- Templates and editor feel less refined
- Fewer third-party integrations than Mailchimp
The differences
Where they actually diverge.
Pick one
Which one fits you.
Choose Mailchimp if
- You want templates that look good with no design work
- Your ecommerce or CMS plugin only supports Mailchimp cleanly
- The list is small and reporting matters more than price
Choose Brevo if
- You have a big list you email irregularly
- You need product emails and marketing emails from one place
- SMS is part of the plan
When neither is the answer
Selling on Shopify? Klaviyo's ecommerce automations will out-earn either of these, and the extra cost is usually covered by abandoned-cart flows alone.
Questions
Common questions.
Should I keep unengaged contacts?
No. People who haven't opened in six months drag your deliverability down and, on Mailchimp, cost you money. Run a win-back sequence, then remove the ones who ignore it.
Is migrating hard?
Exporting contacts is trivial. Rebuilding automations and templates is the work — budget a day or two, and keep the old account live until the new flows have run once.
Prices are list prices published by each vendor and change often — check the linked pricing pages before you buy. We take no affiliate commission and nobody pays to appear here.
gtm.help
Skip the tool research. Get the plan first.
Paste your website and gtm.help reads it, then writes a ranked growth plan for your business — with the tools each task needs, what they cost, and what to do first. Free to start.