Mailchimp vs Brevo: Which Email Platform Should You Choose?

Mailchimp and Brevo both send newsletters, run automated email sequences and manage your contact lists. The real difference is how they charge you and what else they do. That decides which one is cheaper and simpler for your business.

The short answer

• Brevo if you have a large contact list that you email occasionally, or you want email, SMS and WhatsApp in one place.
• Mailchimp if you want the most polished email design tools and the widest range of integrations, and your list is a manageable size.

The pricing model is the real difference

	Mailchimp	Brevo
You pay for	Contacts in your audience	Emails you send
Big list, few sends	Gets expensive	Stays cheap
Small list, frequent sends	Reasonable	Reasonable
Free plan	Small, limited contact cap	Unlimited contacts, daily sending limit
SMS and WhatsApp	Limited, by market	Built in (paid per message)

Mailchimp bills on audience size, including people who rarely open your emails. Brevo bills on sending volume and lets you store as many contacts as you like. If you’ve collected thousands of contacts over the years but only email them once or twice a month, Brevo is usually much cheaper.

Both companies change their plans regularly, so check current prices for your exact list size before you decide.

Mailchimp: polish and integrations

Mailchimp’s email builder and templates are among the best available. It connects to almost every ecommerce platform, CRM and form tool, and its reporting is clear enough for a busy owner to read at a glance.

Choose it when design matters a lot, you sell online and want product recommendations in emails, or your team already knows it.

Watch out for costs rising as your list grows, even when much of the list is inactive. Clean your audience regularly.

Brevo: more channels for less

Brevo started as an email-sending service and has grown into a marketing platform. It covers email, SMS, WhatsApp, a simple CRM, and transactional emails such as password resets and order confirmations, all in one account.

Choose it when you have a big list, you want WhatsApp or SMS follow-ups (popular with our clients in Egypt and the Gulf), or you want marketing and transactional email on one platform.

Watch out for an editor and templates that are good but less refined than Mailchimp’s, and the daily sending limit on the free plan.

What matters more than the platform

Whichever you pick, three things decide whether email works for you:

1. Authentication. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain. Without them, Gmail and Outlook will send more of your emails to spam.
2. Automation, not just newsletters. A welcome sequence, a follow-up after every enquiry and a re-engagement email bring in more business than a monthly newsletter.
3. A connected website. Your forms should feed the platform directly, tagged by source, so every lead gets the right follow-up.

Next step

We set up both platforms, connect them to your website and CRM, and build the sequences that follow up with every lead. Tell us about your audience and we’ll recommend one, or see our email automation service.