Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) Review

Brevo Review: 1-minute summary

First off, for anyone confused about who Brevo is, it’s important to note that the company recently underwent a name change. Originally known as Sendinblue, the company rebranded itself as Brevo.

To give you a quick summary of my impressions of the Brevo tool: Brevo offers an all-in-one marketing solution at a fairly affordable price. However, while it’s cost-effective, I’ve noticed that it might not be the most user-friendly option out there. This is something to keep in mind if ease of use is a top priority for you.

Brevo Pros

• Competitive pricing
• Great newsletter segmentation features
• 300 email lists for you to create
• Broad set of marketing automation tools
• Transactional SMS/emailing feature (SMTP service)
• SMS campaigns feature
• WhatsApp campaigns feature
• Free Sales CRM feature
• Free inbox feature

Brevo Cons

• Cumbersome process for setting up double-opt-in
• Cumbersome process when creating automation emails
• In multiple cases, it requires the use of formulas or variables
• No popup feature

You can trust our reviews✔️ We spend days testing and comparing this software to help you find the best marketing tool. Click here to find out more about how we test products.

Why use Brevo?

If you’re looking for an email tool that will not break the bank, Brevo might be an excellent option. Brevo has a different pricing model than most competitors, i.e., the price goes up when you send more newsletters monthly and goes down when sending fewer. Especially if you send one or two emails to each contact, monthly Brevo might be the most cost-effective way to do email marketing. Tip: check out our pricing comparison table below.

Aside from its price, Brevo offers many more marketing features than only newsletters, e.g., excessive email automation, transactional emails, SMS campaigns, WhatsApp campaigns, a free CRM and inbox feature, etcetera. Because it offers all of these features, it makes a great alternative to ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review) and HubSpot (HubSpot review), as these two tools are way more expensive than Brevo.

Why not use Brevo?

After thoroughly testing Brevo, I can’t say it’s the most user-friendly and intuitive software, e.g., it uses a weird process for setting up the double-opt-in and creating automation emails. More on that later in this review.

Another downside of Brevo is that it often uses jargon, which makes it more challenging to follow for non-tech-savvy people (including me). Moreover, sometimes, it requires you to use formulas or variables to accomplish something, making it unnecessarily complicated.

See the screenshot below for one practical example. The screenshot shows that you have to enter the formula COUNT[ORDER_ID] (see the screen on the left) to showcase the total number of orders on the contact detail page (see the screen on the right).

And this is just one of the many examples where they require and use formulas and jargon. So instead, why not add a checkbox to show or not show the total number of orders? Why do we, as users, have to use formulas? 

To gain a better understanding of how to build formulas and use different types of contact attributes in Brevo, consider checking out these articles on their website. However, it’s important to note that these resources, while helpful, might not offer extensive guidance for beginners. This could reflect the complexity of using Brevo and the limited amount of straightforward help available for newcomers:

1. Building and Using Formulas
2. Contact Attributes Overview
3. Creating and Managing Contact Attributes
4. Adding Global Computed Values to Your Dashboard

On the other hand, if you’re a fan of using Excel, including all its formulas, you’ll probably love Brevo. So, for example, see this page on Brevo’s website, where they explain the use cases of these formulas in more detail.

Click here to sign up for Brevo.

Sendinblue to Brevo

Sendinblue started in 2012 as a company that helped send newsletters. Now, they’ve grown and changed their name to Brevo. They’ve added more services like managing customer relationships (CRM), sending messages through SMS, WhatsApp, and chat. The new name, Brevo, is like saying “Bravo” to celebrate their clients’ success. It’s a new start for the company and shows their commitment to working with clients and partners. You can read more about Brevo’s name change from Sendinblue here: Brevo’s blog post.

Brevo review: Pricing

Competitive pricing for monthly newsletters.

Pros

• Three options: subscription pricing, pay-as-you-go email credits, transactional emails
• Subscription pricing based upon number of emails instead of contacts
• Relatively inexpensive if you have a monthly newsletter (sending one newsletter monthly)
• Add-ons you can purchase

Cons

• When sending multiple emails monthly to the same contact, it becomes less financially attractive

The bottom line is that Brevo offers competitive pricing, especially if you only send one or two monthly emails to your entire list. More monthly emails to the same contact equal a more costly plan.

Furthermore, I like that Brevo has different add-ons, e.g., you have to pay extra to remove Brevo’s branding, or you have to pay extra if you need more users or more landing pages, etcetera. 

I like it because you’re paying for what you need. Most other mail marketing companies keep adding more and more features to their various tiers, bumping up the tier’s prices. Brevo gives you control over what you need and don’t need.

Click here to sign up for Brevo.

The above link is our partner link. If you sign up through our link, you’ll receive free goodies at no extra cost. For more information on how to receive the free goodies, click here.

Brevo subscription pricing (Marketing Platform)

Brevo’s subscription pricing structure works differently than most of its peers because it calculates the monthly cost based on how many emails you send instead of the number of subscribers. Most email tools calculate the monthly price based on the number of contacts in your account.

The bottom line is that Brevo offers a great deal when you have a monthly newsletter, i.e., sending a maximum of one newsletter monthly. Depending on the number of contacts in your account, it can save you thousands of dollars annually when comparing Brevo to one of the cheapest email tools on the market – MailerLite (MailerLite review). 

The table I’ve included below displays the regular prices for Brevo’s email marketing tool. In the top row of the table, you’ll find the number of emails that can be sent each month. An important feature is that all plans offer unlimited contacts/subscribers. A couple of key points to note about the pricing:

1. The Starter tier prices already have the cost for removing Brevo’s branding included. Because I feel most people want to remove the Brevo logo, I included that in comparing prices.
2. The prices shown are based on an annual payment and reflect a 10% discount for this payment mode.

Company	Tier	20,000	40,000	60,000	100,000	150,000	250,000	350,000	500,000	750,000	1,000,000
Brevo	Starter	$396	$504	$660	$876	x	x	x	x	x	x
Brevo	Business	$696	$804	$960	$1,392	$1,824	$2,580	$3,120	$4,308	$6,036	$7,224

The table below shows the annual prices of the most popular email marketing companies, including discounts for purchasing annually. Remember that Brevo isn’t included in the table below because it doesn’t calculate its price based on the number of subscribers in your account.

By scrolling to the right, you can find higher contact numbers up to 20,000.

	500	1,000	1,500	2,000	2500	3,000	4,000	5,000	6,000	7,000	8,000	10,000	15,000	20,000	20,000	50,000	100,000	200,000	300,000	500,000	700,000	900,000	1,200,000	1,500,000	2,000,000	2,500,000	3,000,000	4,000,000	5,000,000
MailerLite Growing Business	$10	$15	$25	$25	$25	$39	$39	$39	$59	$59	$59	$73	$109	$139	$139	$289
MailerLite Advanced	$20	$30	$40	$40	$40	$50	$50	$50	$80	$80	$80	$110	$150	$180	$180	$340	$440	$820	$1,200	$1,900
ConvertKit Creator	$29	$29	$49	$49	$49	$49	$79	$79	$99	$99	$99	$119	$149	$179	$179	$379	$679	$1,279	$1,879
ConvertKit Creator Pro	$59	$59	$79	$79	$79	$79	$111	$111	$139	$139	$139	$167	$209	$251	$251	$519	$879	$1,579	$2,179
Zoho Standard	$4	$7	$17	$17	$17	$18	$24	$31	$35	$38	$41	$49	$61	$74	$74	$138	$242
Zoho Professional	$6	$12	$29	$29	$29	$30	$40	$52	$58	$63	$69	$81	$101	$123	$123	$230	$403	$748	$1,035	$1,380
Sender Standard	$19	$19	$19	$19	$19	$33	$33	$33	$57	$57	$57	$57	$87	$107	$107	$227	$367	$697
Sender Professional	$35	$35	$35	$35	$35	$60	$60	$60	$120	$120	$120	$120	$200	$250	$250	$460	$860	$1,660
Constant Contact Lite	$12	$30	$50	$50	$50	$80	$80	$80	$120	$120	$120	$120	$180	$230	$230	$430
Constant Contact Standard	$35	$55	$75	$75	$75	$110	$110	$110	$160	$160	$160	$160	$210	$260	$260	$460
Constant Contact Premium	$80	$110	$150	$150	$150	$200	$200	$200	$275	$275	$275	$275	$325	$375	$375	$575
ActiveCampaign Marketing Lite	$39	$39	$61	$61	$61	$99	$99	$99	$174	$174	$174	$174	$286	$286	$286	$486
ActiveCampaign Marketing Plus	$70	$70	$125	$125	$125	$186	$186	$186	$287	$287	$287	$287	$474	$474	$474	$699
ActiveCampaign Marketing Professional	$187	$187	$187	$187	$187	$262	$262	$262	$424	$424	$424	$424	$686	$686	$686	$1,011
ActiveCampaign Bundles Plus	$116	$116	$171	$171	$171	$232	$232	$232	$333	$333	$333	$333	$520	$520	$520	$745
ActiveCampaign Bundles Professional	$482	$482	$482	$482	$482	$557	$557	$557	$719	$719	$719	$719	$981	$981	$981	$1,306
GetResponse Email Marketing	$19	$19	$29	$29	$29	$54	$54	$54	$79	$79	$79	$79	$174	$174	$174	$299	$539
GetResponse Marketing Automation	$59	$59	$69	$69	$69	$95	$95	$95	$114	$114	$114	$114	$215	$215	$215	$359	$599
GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing	$119	$119	$139	$139	$139	$169	$169	$169	$199	$199	$199	$199	$299	$299	$299	$444	$699
Mailchimp Essentials	$27	$45	$45	$75	$75	$110	$110	$110	$180	$180	$180	$180	$230	$270	$270
Mailchimp Standard	$20	$45	$45	$60	$60	$100	$100	$100	$135	$135	$135	$135	$230	$285	$285	$450	$800
Mailchimp Premium	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$465	$535	$535	$815	$1,025	$1,600
AWeber Lite	$15	$25	$25	$25	$25	$45	$45	$45	$65	$65	$65	$65	$145	$145	$145	$388	$788
AWeber Plus	$30	$40	$40	$40	$40	$60	$60	$60	$80	$80	$80	$80	$160	$160	$160	$403	$803
AWeber Unlimited	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899
Klaviyo Email	$20	$30	$45	$60	$60	$70	$100	$100	$130	$150	$150	$150	$350	$375	$375	$720	$1,380	$2,070
Klaviyo Email & SMS	$35	$45	$60	$75	$75	$85	$115	$115	$145	$165	$165	$165	$365	$390	$390	$735	$1,395	$2,085
Beehiiv Launch	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0
Beehiiv Grow	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49
Beehiiv Scale	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Starter	$20	$20	$40	$40	$60	$60	$78	$96	$112	$128	$144	$176	$256	$336	$336	$816	$1,616
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Professional	$890	$890	$890	$890	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,390	$1,390	$1,640	$1,890	$1,890	$3,190
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Enterprise	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,700	$3,700	$3,700	$4,000	$4,450	$5,250	$5,950	$7,350	$8,550	$9,750
Moosend Pro	$9	$16	$24	$24	$32	$32	$48	$48	$64	$64	$64	$88	$160	$160	$160	$315	$624	$1,216	$1,808	$2,896	$4,080	$5,840

Example calculation 1

• You have 10,000 subscribers/contacts
• You send two newsletters weekly
• You have a dozen or so automated emails for every new subscriber that joins your list
• You have around 50 to 100 new people joining your list daily

In the above situation, you probably send around 120,000 emails monthly. The cheapest email tool for subscribers will be MailerLite (MailerLite review) ($924) for up to 15,000 subscribers. When choosing Brevo, you pay $1,560 annually for the 125,000 emails of Brevo’s Business tier. 

Example calculation 2

• You have 5,000 subscribers/contacts
• You send one newsletter every month
• You have no automated campaigns

In the above situation, you send roughly 5,000 emails monthly. Since you don’t use email automation, you don’t need Brevo’s Business tier. Instead, you choose the Starter plan for $372 annually. MailerLite’s Growing Business tier costs $348 yearly.

Example calculation 3

• You have 7,000 subscribers/contacts
• You send one newsletter every single day
• You have no automated campaigns

In the above situation, you pay $2,256 yearly for the Brevo Business tier for up to 225,000 monthly emails. MailerLite charges you $372 annually for up to 7,000 subscribers and unlimited emails.

Click here to check out our MailerLite review, or go to MailerLite’s website directly.

Example calculation 4

• You have 200,000 subscribers/contacts
• You send one newsletter monthly
• You have no automated campaigns

In the above situation, you pay $2,256 yearly for the Brevo Business tier for up to 200,000 monthly emails. MailerLite charges you $8,280 annually for up to 200,000 subscribers. If you instead send weekly emails, Brevo still comes out on top as the cheaper email tool.

Example calculation 5

• You have 10,000 subscribers/contacts
• You send two newsletters every month
• You have no email automation

In the above situation, you probably send around 20,000 emails monthly. The cheapest email tool for subscribers will be MailerLite (MailerLite review) ($564) for up to 10,000 subscribers. When choosing Brevo, you pay $480 annually for the 25,000 email-sending plan of Brevo’s Starter tier.

Brevo pay-as-you-go email credits

Aside from its subscription pricing model, they also offer pay-as-you-go credits (see table below). The left column shows the number of email credits, columns 2 and 3 show the total price, and columns 4 and 5 show the cost per email credit.

	Brevo	Mailchimp	Brevo	Mailchimp
5,000	$32	$200	$0.0064	$0.0400
10,000	$59	$260	$0.0059	$0.0260
15,000	x	$390	x	$0.0260
20,000	$95	x	$0.0048	x
50,000	$165	$1,300	$0.0033	$0.0260
75,000	x	$1,950	x	$0.0260
100,000	$275	x	$0.0028	x
200,000	x	$2,600	x	$0.0130
500,000	$940	x	$0.0019	x
1,000,000	$1,600	x	$0.0016	x
2,000,000	x	$3,300	x	$0.0017
5,000,000	x	$6,500	x	$0.0013
25,000,000	x	$13,000	x	$0.0005

Mailchimp is another email tool that offers pay-as-you-go email credits, but they are more expensive when purchasing a lower number of email credits, as you can see in the table above. Mailchimp becomes cheaper once you buy 2,000,000 or more email credits.

Remember that Mailchimp’s email credits expire after 12 months, and Brevo doesn’t have an expiration date on its email credits.

Example calculation

• You’re an infrequent email sender, i.e., you send one email every month and don’t use any email automation
• You have 10,000 subscribers/contacts, i.e., you send 120,000 emails per year

In the above situation, you can purchase 500,000 Brevo email credits for $940 or $0.0019 per email credit. Brevo’s email credits do not expire, so using those credits for multiple years is no problem. Assuming that you will send 10,000 emails monthly, these 500,000 credits allow you to continue sending emails for another four years.

Let’s now compare this to one of the cheapest email tools, MailerLite. When choosing MailerLite with 10,000 subscribers, you pay $565 annually. Times four, that’s $2,260, i.e., double the price of Brevo’s pay-as-you-go credits of 500,000 email credits for $940.

So, in a nutshell, in this case, Brevo offers you the best deal regarding price.

Click here to sign up for a free or paid Brevo plan (our partner link).

Different plans

• Free plan (forever free)
• Starter (starting from $25/mo) 
• Business (starting from $65/mo)
• Enterprise (starting from $1,000/mo)

Starter Plan Review

• Removing Brevo’s logo requires an add-on purchase
• You can use your monthly emails for marketing & transactional emails
• Limited to 100,000 monthly emails
• No access to its landing page builder (only available on the Business tier and Enterprise)
• Maximum 2,000 unique contacts can enter your automations
• No chat support

The biggest drawback of Brevo’s Starter tier is that 2,000 unique contacts can enter your automations. After 2,000 contacts have entered an automated campaign, your automations no longer work. Remember that this isn’t a monthly limit; it’s forever, and you can only remove this limitation by purchasing the Business plan.

“It’s a way for our users to test our automation feature without paying for it,” Michael, Brevo’s Customer Experience Representative, told me. Suppose, for example, five new subscribers enter your automated workflow per day; you have 400 days until Brevo’s automated workflows stop working.

Another thing that might be frustrating from time to time is that there’s only email support and no chat support on the Starter plan. So, especially in the beginning, when you’re learning the software and implementing your email strategy, you probably run into issues where chat support will come in handy.

So, in a nutshell, if you don’t need marketing automation or chat support, the Starter tier might be all you need. 

Click here to sign up for Brevo.

Business Plan Review

• One landing page included, and if you want more, you have to pay extra
• One user included, and if you need more, you have to pay extra
• You can use your monthly emails for marketing & transactional emails
• Phone & chat support

For a more detailed look into the differences between all the plans, see Brevo’s pricing page.

Discounts

Brevo offers a 10% discount when you pay for an annual subscription.

Does Brevo offer any discounts for non-profit organizations?

Brevo only offers a 15% discount to non-profit organizations that subscribe to their most expensive plan, the Enterprise plan, which starts from $1,000 per month. For more information, visit this page on Brevo’s website.

Cancellation process

You can easily cancel a paid Brevo subscription inside your account. Remember that another email tool, Constant Contact, requires you to call if you want to cancel.

For more information regarding its cancellation policy, see this page on Brevo’s website.

Refunds

Brevo doesn’t offer a refund for unused credits, unused months, or if you forgot to cancel your subscription.

For more information regarding its refund policy, see this page on Brevo’s website.

Extra discounts (special occasions)

Brevo rarely has other discounts besides the default 10% discount when purchasing yearly. In November 2022, they had a 30% discount for annual purchases. In 2023, they offered a 50% discount on annual plans for Black Friday. This was a significant increase from their regular 10% off, making it a really good deal for the first year with Brevo.

On a side note, another email tool, GetResponse (GetResponse review), has multiple times per year significant discounts. The cool thing about some of GetResponse’s discounts is that it sometimes offers lifetime deals instead of this 30% one-time discount of Brevo.

Brevo Review: Free plan

Does Brevo offer the best free plan compared to its competitors? The short answer is no – you can find a more detailed explanation here, where we compare the best free email marketing tools.

Forever free plan	✔️
Maximum subscribers/contacts	Unlimited
Maximum monthly emails	n/a
Maximum daily emails	300
Email automation	😕 (maximum 2,000 unique contacts)
Support	✔️ (email support)
Remove branding	❌
Maximum signup forms	✔️ (Unlimited)
Landing pages	❌ (Landing pages not available)
Email scheduling	✔️
CRM features	✔️

Maximum 2,000 contacts

The biggest drawback of Brevo’s Free plan (and its Starter plan) is that 2,000 unique contacts can enter your automations. After 2,000 contacts have entered an automated campaign, your automations no longer work. Remember that this isn’t a monthly limit; it’s forever, and you can only remove this limitation by purchasing the Business plan.

“It’s a way for our users to test our automation feature without paying for it,” Michael, Brevo’s Customer Experience Representative, told me. Suppose, for example, five new subscribers enter your automated workflow per day; you have 400 days until Brevo’s automated workflows stop working.

Daily limitation

You can send a maximum of 300 emails per day. For example, suppose you have more than 300 subscribers. In that case, you need to use Brevo’s Requeue feature if you don’t want to upgrade to a paid plan.

CRM features

Brevo is one of the few email marketing tools that offer CRM features. Its free plan allows you to use its CRM features to create pipelines, deals, and tasks.

No landing pages

Most email tools allow their free plan users to create a landing page, but Brevo doesn’t allow access to its landing page builder. Instead, you must be subscribed to the Business tier to access the landing page builder.

Brevo Review: Newsletter Features

This section only covers Brevo’s newsletter features and not its automation features

Pros

• Great set of features for the best price if you send one or two monthly newsletters
• Unlimited contacts
• Google Analytics UTM builder
• 42 pre-designed email templates
• Ability to create up to 300 email lists

Cons

• Not the best marketing tool for ecommerce companies
• Becomes less financially attractive when sending many emails to the same contact

In a nutshell, Brevo offers a great set of newsletter features for the best price IF you send a maximum of one or two newsletters monthly. If so, Brevo can be an excellent alternative for MailChimp (MailChimp review), Constant Contact (Constant Contact review), AWeber (AWeber review), ConvertKit (ConvertKit review), and MailerLite.

Moreover, if you aren’t into email automation, don’t look at tools like ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review) or GetResponse (GetResponse review). These two email tools are more expensive and are more focused on email automation.

Regarding its newsletter features, Brevo offers similar features to many other email tools: A/B split testing, Send Time Optimization, dynamic email content, etcetera. 

Maximum contacts & monthly emails

	Starter	Business	Enterprise
Max contacts	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Max monthly emails	100,000	1,000,000	Unlimited

Most email marketing companies limit the number of contacts instead of the number of monthly emails. Brevo does it the other way around; there’s no limit to how many contacts you can have in your account. Instead, it charges you for the number of emails you send monthly.

Remember that financially speaking, Brevo is most appealing to the ones that only send one or two monthly newsletters. So if you send more than two emails to your contacts monthly, other email tools like MailerLite (MailerLite review) and ConvertKit (ConvertKit review)

are probably cheaper, but double-check in the pricing table above since it depends on your subscriber count and how many emails you plan to send exactly.

Google Analytics UTM builder

Brevo allows you to automatically add Google Analytics (GA) UTM tracking codes to your website links in your emails. Using Google Analytics is necessary if you’re serious about your online marketing game. Remember there are tools, e.g., AWeber (AWeber review) and Constant Contact (Constant Contact review), that do not have this functionality, forcing you to create UTM parameters for the links in your emails manually. Imagine the time you save.

Newsletter

Free plan users have access to the most important email newsletter features, including its 42 pre-designed email templates

The bottom line is that Brevo offers an excellent newsletter service with an extensive library of ready-to-go blocks you can add to your email. 

Brevo has this cool and timesaving feature called My content, where you can save content blocks to reuse later in another newsletter.

When creating your newsletter, Brevo allows you to choose one of its layouts, including a simple text email. Free plan users also have access to these layouts.

But you can also select one of its 42 pre-designed email templates, use one of the templates you created and saved previously (i.e., my templates), or code your own template.

Segmentation

• Segmentation options are available on all plans, including the free plan

Some of the emails you send will probably be to a segment of your audience instead of your entire list. For example, I sent a promotional email the other day with a discount code for my self-published books. I created a segment before sending it so the people who bought my products won’t receive this email.

In a nutshell, like many other email tools, Brevo offers plenty of segmentation features.

Another cool feature Brevo has is the Preferences form, which is available to every user, including free plan users. This feature allows you to create a form like in the screenshot below. You can then link to this form in your emails so your subscribers can update their preferences. In the example below, subscribers can choose whether to hear from you weekly or monthly. 

Email Scheduling

• Email scheduling is available on all plans, including the free plan

Like every email tool, Brevo allows you to schedule your emails next to send them immediately. 

There’s also an option to send the email at the best time. The Send Time Optimization feature is only available on the Business and Enterprise tiers. The best send time is calculated for each recipient and optimized for the best open rates (vs. sending in bulk all at once).

For more information about Send Time Optimization, see this page on Brevo’s website.

Audiences / Email lists

• Brevo limits you to a maximum of 300 lists per account

Some email tools like MailChimp (MailChimp review) and Brevo allow you to create multiple email lists – Mailchimp calls them audiences. 

So, why would you need multiple email lists or audiences? The idea of a second email list is if you have a newsletter for your employees or a B2B and B2C side to your business.

If several lists contain duplicate contacts, emails won’t be sent several times.

For more information on organizing your contacts with lists, check out this page on Brevo’s website.

Ecommerce

Once you have connected your ecommerce store, e.g., Shopify, the new menu item, eCommerce, will appear on your Brevo dashboard. All your contacts, orders, and products will be synchronized.

The next time you create a new email campaign, you can select the Product block where you can select one of the products from your store. The product name, image, price, etcetera, will be automatically imported.

My opinion:

Brevo can work fine for ecommerce but is it the best? No, it’s not the best. In my opinion, you’re better off with email tools that are 100% focused on ecommerce businesses like Klaviyo. 

Klaviyo allows for much more customization. For example, Klaviyo lets you create a product recommendation on products a customer recently viewed, products a customer may also like, products that the customer has added to their cart, the newest products, etcetera. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; you can add rules if the customer has limited purchase history, and you can add filters, e.g., categories, prices, and stock.

The bottom line? For the best user experience, I recommend choosing an email marketing tool solely focused on ecommerce, like Klaviyo, if your emails are mainly about promoting your ecommerce products. 

Note that Klaviyo is relatively expensive compared to other email tools and might also be more costly than Brevo, depending on how many monthly emails you send.

Brevo Review: Email Marketing Automation

Pros

• Many different and great automation tools for a reasonable price
• Dynamic content features

Cons

• The free plan and Starter plan are both limited to 2,000 contacts
• Creating automated emails is a complicated process

Pricing

The Free and Starter plans for Brevo limit you to 2,000 unique contacts in your automations. Once these 2,000 contacts have entered an automated campaign, the automations will stop working. This is not a monthly limit but a permanent one that can only be removed by upgrading to the Business plan.

“It’s a way for our users to test our automation feature without paying for it,” Michael, Brevo’s Customer Experience Representative, told me. 

If, for example, five new subscribers enter your automated workflow daily, you have 400 days until Brevo’s automated workflows stop functioning. On the other hand, if you have 50 new subscribers joining your automated workflow daily, you will reach the limit in 40 days.

Creating emails is a complicated process

Creating emails for an automated email series is complicated because you must create separate templates for each email you make. I haven’t encountered another email marketing tool that requires me to create templates for every automated email I create. It’s so weird, and I can’t wrap my head around how they set this up. Please fix this, Brevo!

Brevo’s competitors use email templates when you want to re-use an email more than once and prefer to save that email layout, which makes far more sense. 

For example, suppose you have 30-50 emails in your automated workflows. In that case, the email template section will be full of emails, and keeping track of it will be more challenging.

Many different (and great) automation features

Brevo offers more automation features than Mailchimp, Constant Contact, MailerLite, ConvertKit, and AWeber.

Firstly, you can trigger an automated workflow in multiple ways, i.e., you can start a workflow when someone joins your list, and/or subscribes to one of your signup forms, and/or when a contact attribute changes, etcetera. 

Some email tools allow you only to select one way to trigger the workflow. Brevo, on the other hand, allows you to choose multiple entry points.

Next, you can click the plus icon (+) (see image above) to add a step to your workflow. It can be an action, e.g., an email, SMS, etcetera. Or a condition, e.g., delay, if/else condition, A/B split test, etcetera. 

Especially all the different steps you can add to your workflow is where Brevo differentiates itself from its peers since it’s an extensive list of automation features. As a quick reference, Constant Contact (Constant Contact review) only allows you to add an email or a delay to your workflows.

Dynamic content

Brevo has a cool way how you can personalize your emails. See the screenshot below for a quick and easy example. Usually, you start your newsletter with: Hi {first_name}. If you have a contact’s first name in your database, the newsletter will automatically enter the first name.

Brevo differentiates itself by offering the option to enter another value if the {first_name} is empty, i.e., my friend, which I find pretty cool!

Below’s screenshot shows another example of advanced personalization.

Another dynamic content example is showing or hiding your emails’ blocks (see screenshot below). For example, you can use this feature if you don’t want to show everyone your Black Friday discount code.

The downside is that the filter conditions are limited to only contact attributes and transactional parameters, i.e., you cannot filter on segments or tags.

For more information regarding how to set up your transactional emails, including dynamic content, see these recourse pages on Brevo’s website: 

• About Brevo Template Language
• Customize your emails with Brevo Template Language 
• Customize your emails using transactional parameters
• Also, see this page for more information on its SMTP service

Brevo Review: Signup Form Features

Pros

• Unlimited signup forms on all plans, including the free plan

Cons

• Brevo doesn’t offer popups
• No pre-designed templates
• Double-opt-in process is cumbersome

No popup feature

Brevo might be the only email tool I’ve tested that doesn’t offer a popup feature. In other words, you cannot create an exit-intent popup, a welcome popup, etcetera. Instead, you can use third-party software to create a popup, which requires another subscription. Remember, most email tools allow you to create a popup.

Embedded forms

• Unlimited embedded forms
• No pre-designed templates

You can use the embedded form inside blog posts, in the widget area of a website, in the footer, etcetera.

In the screenshot below, you can see the signup form builder where I added most of the available elements for example purposes. Remember that you can tweak and delete any of them. 

As you can see, there are options available to require your audience to select a list or a preference, e.g., weekly or monthly newsletter. Brevo also allows you to add permission checkboxes to ensure you comply with the GDPR guidelines.

Again, you don’t have to add these elements to your signup form – these are all optional.

Other than that, there aren’t any other customization options. For example, I cannot change the layout to show the image on the left, right side, or below.

Double-opt-in setup

• There’s no option to edit or create a custom thank you page for the confirmation email button (the double-opt-in button.)
• Brevo’s double-opt-in process is one of the worst/most cumbersome I’ve experienced

When creating a signup form, you can use the double opt-in tactic. 

Let me explain how Brevo’s double-opt-in settings work and my opinion. First, the screenshot below shows a signup form I created with Brevo.

If you enabled the double-optin setting everyone signing up will receive the email below. It’s called the confirmation email. The idea of this email is that the person that signed up has to first click on a link to confirm their subscription with your newsletter before receiving the free ebook/checklist.

Every email marketing tool has a different way of setting up these double-opt-in emails. I’m not a big fan of Brevo’s process of setting up these double-opt-in settings because it’s cumbersome and relatively complex compared to other email tools.

1. First, you must create the double opt-in confirmation email and select it in step 1. The problem is that you have to make a template of that email before you can choose it, i.e., you have to open a new window to create and write that email. Secondly, you must remember the name you give to that email. And lastly, you must add the tag optin to the email template, or else you won’t be able to select it in the dropdown at step 1 (see screenshot below). The frustrating part is that they don’t mention this, and I had to find out by contacting support. For more information, see this page on Brevo’s website.
2. In the second step, you can select a confirmation page one will see after they submit their contact details into the signup form. Sadly, Brevo doesn’t allow us to create a custom thank you page inside the form builder, adding another (unnecessary) step to make our thank you page.
3. In step 3, we can add a custom link to the confirm my subscription button in the confirmation email. Remember that you cannot add a file, e.g., a Google Drive direct download link, to the double opt-in confirmation button inside the confirmation email. Instead, you first need to create a web page. You can link to the Google Drive file on that web page, which is a cumbersome process compared to its competitors.
4. In step 4, we can send the new subscriber a confirmation email once they confirm their email address. Again, you must create an email template for this email, and afterward, you can select the correct email template.

All-in-all, Brevo’s process for setting up a double-opt-in email system is one of the worst I’ve come across. I’m not a fan. Luckily, this isn’t something you do regularly.

Still, hopefully, they will rethink/recreate this entire process to make it easier for their customers.

Brevo Review: Support

• Only email support for free plan & Starter plan users
• Chat & Phone support is available on the Business plan, and higher
• Receiving an answer by email might take a few hours to a day

Although Brevo doesn’t have chat support for its free & Starter plan users, I like their customer service ticket system. You can upload images when opening a new ticket, and you can see all your past tickets in one overview in your dashboard, so you don’t have to search your email inbox if you forgot the answer to one of your questions. Furthermore, you can also see the ticket’s status and whether you’ve received a reply. 

Moreover, you can see your initial question. 

Keep in mind that some email tools only respond by email, but you can’t read your initial question. Especially if you send many emails daily and don’t recall the question asked, it’s nice to re-read it when receiving an answer.

One thing I don’t like about their ticket system is that if a customer service employee replies to one of your tickets, it sometimes automatically changes the status of that ticket to ‘Resolved.’ My preference would be that the customer should decide whether it is resolved. I had a situation recently where I contacted customer service about an issue, and their reply did not solve my problem. However, they changed the status to resolved, making it harder to find if you have created multiple tickets. So I had to take the time to find that unresolved ticket. It’s frustrating because it creates extra work for the customer. So I think it would be much simpler if the customers could mark their own tickets as ‘Resolved’ when they are satisfied with the response.

Brevo Review: Reporting

The bottom line is that its reporting features could use some improvements.

Pros

• Newsletter campaign reports are available
• Transactional email reports are available

Cons

• No report of subscriber growth
• No report of your automation emails/workflows
• No sign up form reports

Keep track of subscriber growth

Sadly, there’s no dashboard or report where you can track your subscriber growth. Yes, you can see how many contacts/subscribers you have in your account, but you can’t see past results. Please fix this, Brevo!

Email reporting

When visiting the statistics page, you can select a custom period to see how many emails you sent. You can see the open rate, click rate, etcetera. The bottom line is that this feature is good enough to create month-on-month reports as an online marketer for a client or your manager. A comparison feature would make it better to compare period X with period Y.

Good to know that the screenshot below only shows the stats of the campaigns you sent and not your automation campaigns, which is good because you don’t want to have that data mixed by default.

You can also see individual newsletters you have sent (see screenshot below), but every email tool offers these insights, so that’s not that special.

Automation reports

Sadly, there’s no dashboard or report where you can track or see how many automated emails you sent in any given period.

Why is there a need for this information? Well, knowing what’s happening is the best way to improve your business. That includes how many automated emails you sent, how many got opened, how much revenue you generated through your automated emails, etcetera. Especially when deciding where to invest new/more recourses, you must have access to this information.

All the time I have worked as an online marketer, we compared month-by-month results and reported those results to our clients so they could see the performance at a glance.

Please fix this, Brevo!

Signup form reports

Sadly, there’s no dashboard or report where you can track or see how many people signed up for all your sign up forms in total for a custom period. So yes, you can see the number of subscriptions your individual forms got in total but again, not for a custom period and not in total. 

What would be the ideal scenario? If you can see the total views, the total number of people that entered their contact details, AND the total number of people who confirmed their subscription.

All-in-all, as of now, it’s not helpful. 

Transactional email reporting

Brevo shows you how many transactional emails you sent in real-time, i.e., you can see the last 30 minutes and on a minute-by-minute basis.

The Statistics tab allows you to view the stats of your transactional emails with the ability to add filters, define a custom period, and sort your items by selecting a sender and/or a tag in particular.

For more information on what you can do with the transactional reports, see this page on Brevo’s website.

Transactional email (SMTP service)

If you want to send transactional emails with Brevo, you can use its regular subscription to send marketing emails, including transactional emails (see screenshot below).

Remember that you cannot do it the other way around, i.e., you can’t use its transactional subscription to send marketing emails. Check out Brevo’s pricing page for more information.

For more information regarding how to set up your transactional emails, see these recourse pages on Brevo’s website: 

• About Brevo Template Language
• Customize your emails with Brevo Template Language 
• Customize your emails using transactional parameters
• Also, see this page for more information on its SMTP service

Frequently asked questions

Click here to sign up for Brevo.

Brevo Alternatives

If you’re looking for Brevo alternatives I suggest reading my best email marketing software article and/or watch the video below.

Additional Resources

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