European all-in-one marketing platform with generous contact-unlimited pricing
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a France-based all-in-one marketing platform offering email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and CRM capabilities with a uniquely contact-unlimited pricing model — you pay for sends, not list size. Its GDPR-native architecture, EU data hosting, and competitive pricing make it the leading alternative for European businesses and privacy-conscious teams worldwide.
Brevo is a strong fit if its core strengths match your workflow, budget, and support needs. Use the quick signals below before opening the full review.
Brevo, rebranded from Sendinblue in 2023, has carved a distinctive position in the email marketing market through two structural advantages: its contact-unlimited pricing model (you pay for sends, not stored contacts) and its GDPR-native European infrastructure. For businesses with large contact lists who send infrequently, and for European organisations with data sovereignty requirements, these advantages are genuinely compelling.
The pricing difference between Brevo and list-size-based tools like Mailchimp is most visible at scale. A business with 50,000 contacts sending two campaigns per month (100,000 email sends) pays approximately $700/month on Mailchimp's Standard plan and around $65/month on Brevo's Business plan. The difference is structural: Mailchimp charges for the contacts you store, Brevo charges for the sends you make.
For e-commerce brands with large subscriber lists and high send frequency, this difference favours Mailchimp or Klaviyo. For B2B businesses, non-profits, educational institutions, or media publishers with large audiences that they email monthly rather than weekly, Brevo's pricing model can produce savings of 60–80% versus list-size-based alternatives.
The free plan allows 300 emails per day (9,000/month) to unlimited contacts — the most generous free tier in the category for businesses with existing large lists.
Brevo processes and stores marketing data exclusively in European data centres, with its legal entity headquartered in France under French and EU data protection law. This means customer data subject to GDPR never leaves the EU, consent management is built into the platform's opt-in tools, and data processing agreements are structured for EU regulatory compliance from the first day of use.
For European businesses required by their legal team to use EU-hosted SaaS providers, or for organisations with DPAs that prohibit storing personal data in US-jurisdiction cloud infrastructure, Brevo eliminates the compliance overhead that US-based alternatives introduce.
Brevo's platform covers email, SMS, WhatsApp Business, live chat, and push notifications — all managed from a single dashboard with unified contact profiles. The breadth is unusual: competing tools typically require separate platforms (or Twilio integrations) for SMS and WhatsApp. For businesses that want multi-channel marketing reach without vendor proliferation, Brevo's unified model has operational efficiency value.
The built-in CRM adds pipeline management, deal tracking, and contact notes — basic but functional for small sales teams using Brevo as their primary contact management system.
Brevo's transactional email (SMTP relay) is included in all plans, including the free tier. For SaaS products and developers, this eliminates the need for a separate SendGrid, Mailgun, or Postmark account. Transactional and marketing emails share the same contact database and reporting dashboard, providing a unified view of all email touchpoints — a material operational simplification for small development teams.
Brevo's automation builder handles standard workflows — welcome series, cart abandonment, lead nurturing — through a visual drag-and-drop interface. For multi-branch conditional logic at the sophistication level of ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo's flow system, Brevo's automation feels simpler. Teams with complex automation requirements should evaluate whether Brevo's automation meets their specific workflow needs before committing.
Brevo is the best email marketing platform for European businesses with GDPR requirements, and the most cost-effective option for organisations with large contact lists and moderate send frequencies. Teams needing advanced automation or e-commerce-native revenue attribution will find Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign more suitable.
Score: 8.3/10 — Best pricing for large contact lists and best GDPR compliance posture; automation depth lags behind specialist alternatives.
Free
Free billed annually
$25/mo
$270/mo billed annually
$65/mo
$702/mo billed annually
Brevo is best for European businesses subject to GDPR that need EU-hosted marketing infrastructure with GDPR-compliant consent management, Businesses with large contact lists who send infrequent campaigns and want to avoid Mailchimp's per-contact pricing penalty, SaaS products and developers needing transactional email + marketing email in a single platform without separate SMTP provider costs.
Yes. Brevo currently lists a free plan in ToolRankr data.
It has a free plan.
Brevo is reviewed using ToolRankr's scoring model for ease of use, value, features, support, and overall quality. Affiliate links may earn a commission, but sponsored labels do not change editorial scoring.
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