Brevo vs Mailchimp: Honest Comparison for 2026

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) and Mailchimp are two of the most frequently compared email marketing platforms, and for good reason. Both serve millions of businesses, both offer free plans, and both promise to handle your marketing automation needs. Under the hood, however, they take fundamentally different approaches to pricing, feature access, and channel coverage.

This comparison cuts through the marketing pages and examines where each platform genuinely excels based on architecture, pricing models, and real-world use cases in 2026.

Pricing Architecture: Volume-Based vs Contact-Based

The integration architecture of these two platforms starts diverging at the pricing model, and this single difference affects everything downstream.

Brevo charges based on email sending volume. The Starter plan begins at $9/month for 5,000 emails, and once you reach the 20,000 emails/month tier, you get unlimited contacts included. This means a business with a large subscriber list that sends moderately — say 50,000 contacts with two campaigns per month — pays dramatically less with Brevo than with a contact-based platform.

Mailchimp uses contact-based pricing. The Essentials plan starts at $13/month for 500 contacts, and costs scale with your list size regardless of how many emails you actually send. At 10,000 contacts, the Standard plan runs approximately $100/month. At 50,000 contacts, you're looking at $315/month.

Here's the practical comparison at common business sizes:

• 5,000 contacts, 20,000 emails/month: Brevo ~$29/month vs Mailchimp Standard ~$60/month
• 10,000 contacts, 30,000 emails/month: Brevo ~$39/month vs Mailchimp Standard ~$100/month
• 50,000 contacts, 100,000 emails/month: Brevo ~$69/month vs Mailchimp Standard ~$315/month

One critical detail: Mailchimp bills for unsubscribed and inactive contacts that remain on your list. Brevo doesn't penalize you for list size. For businesses with large but infrequently engaged lists, this pricing difference is substantial.

Automation Capabilities

Under the hood, both platforms offer visual workflow builders, but the depth and accessibility differ.

Brevo provides a drag-and-drop automation builder with cross-channel triggers — you can combine email, SMS, and WhatsApp messages in a single workflow. Automation is available even on the free plan (limited to 2,000 contacts), which is unusual for platforms at this price point. The workflow builder supports behavioral triggers, lead scoring, and contact management actions like removing inactive subscribers.

Mailchimp's Customer Journey Builder offers pre-built automation templates and behavioral targeting. The automation is well-designed for standard e-commerce workflows — abandoned cart, welcome series, post-purchase — and includes AI-powered send time optimization on higher tiers. However, full automation capabilities require the Standard plan ($20/month) or above. The free and Essentials tiers are quite limited in this regard.

The integration architecture tells the story: Brevo democratizes automation across price tiers, while Mailchimp gates it behind premium plans.

Multi-Channel Marketing

This is where Brevo's positioning as a unified communications platform becomes clear. Brevo offers email, SMS, WhatsApp messaging, live chat, chatbot, push notifications, and even phone support — all within a single platform. The transactional email engine is built in, so you can send order confirmations, password resets, and marketing campaigns from the same dashboard.

Mailchimp focuses primarily on email marketing with social media ad management, landing pages, and a basic website builder as supporting channels. SMS is available as an add-on. The platform is broader on the marketing side but narrower on the communications side.

For businesses that need to coordinate customer touchpoints across email, SMS, and chat, Brevo's all-in-one approach eliminates the need for separate tools. For businesses primarily focused on email marketing with some social advertising, Mailchimp's integrated approach works well.

Transactional Email

Under the hood, this is a significant architectural difference. Brevo includes transactional email (order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets) as a core feature on all plans. The same SMTP infrastructure that handles your marketing campaigns also handles your transactional messages, with separate reputation management to protect deliverability.

Mailchimp offers transactional email through a separate service (formerly Mandrill) on a pay-as-you-go model starting at $20/month for 25,000 emails. It's an add-on, not a built-in feature. This means maintaining two billing relationships and two dashboards for what many businesses consider a single communication stack.

For e-commerce stores, SaaS products, or any business sending operational emails alongside marketing campaigns, Brevo's integrated transactional email is a meaningful advantage.

Templates, Design, and Email Builder

Mailchimp has the edge in template quality and quantity. With 100+ professionally designed templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, Mailchimp makes it easy to create polished emails quickly. The content studio provides a centralized place to manage images and brand assets, and the AI content generator can help draft copy.

Brevo offers approximately 48 templates with a capable but less refined email builder. The designs are functional but lack the polish of Mailchimp's library. For brands that prioritize visual design and want to create beautiful emails without a designer, Mailchimp is the stronger choice.

CRM and Contact Management

Brevo includes a full CRM with deal pipelines, sales reports, and contact management — functionality that would typically require a separate tool like HubSpot CRM or Pipedrive. For small businesses managing their entire sales process within their marketing platform, this is valuable.

Mailchimp offers a marketing-focused CRM with audience management, tags, and segments. It's effective for marketing segmentation but doesn't provide the sales pipeline functionality that Brevo includes.

Integrations Ecosystem

Mailchimp wins on integration breadth with 300+ native integrations covering e-commerce platforms, CRMs, social media, and productivity tools. Brevo offers approximately 65 native integrations — solid for the most common use cases but more limited for niche tools. Both platforms connect to thousands of additional apps through Zapier.

For businesses with complex tech stacks that rely on multiple specialized tools, Mailchimp's integration library is a practical advantage.

Who Should Choose What

Choose Brevo if:

• You have a large contact list but moderate sending frequency
• You need multi-channel marketing (email + SMS + WhatsApp + chat) in one platform
• Transactional email is part of your requirements
• Budget efficiency is a primary concern
• You want a built-in CRM without paying for a separate tool
• GDPR compliance and EU data residency matter to your business

Choose Mailchimp if:

• You prioritize beautiful email design and polished templates
• You need extensive third-party integrations
• Your primary focus is email marketing with social advertising
• You prefer a well-established platform with abundant learning resources
• You want AI-powered predictive segmentation and send time optimization
• You're already in the Mailchimp ecosystem and comfortable with the platform

The Bottom Line

For businesses watching their budget and needing multi-channel capabilities, Brevo offers significantly more value per dollar. Its volume-based pricing, included transactional email, and built-in CRM make it the pragmatic choice for growing businesses that need a unified communications platform.

Mailchimp remains the stronger email-first marketing platform with superior design tools, a deeper integrations ecosystem, and AI-powered optimization features. If email is your primary channel and you value polish and ecosystem breadth, Mailchimp justifies its higher price point.

For teams evaluating other options, ActiveCampaign offers a strong middle ground with advanced automation and CRM capabilities. See our full best email marketing automation guide for more alternatives, or read our HubSpot vs Mailchimp comparison for another perspective on the all-in-one platform question.