Brevo vs Mailchimp: Pricing and Features Compared

Brevo charges by how many emails you send each month and lets you store unlimited contacts on every paid plan; Mailchimp charges by how many contacts you store, including unsubscribed ones on lower tiers, regardless of how often you email them. That single difference decides which tool is cheaper for most SaaS teams: if your list is large but you send occasionally, Brevo usually wins on price; if you email your full list frequently, the math can flip toward Mailchimp.

Both platforms also disagree on what they even are. Brevo bundles email with SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, and a built-in CRM. Mailchimp stays narrower and deeper on email and ecommerce marketing, with a more polished builder and reporting layer. Neither is built for behavior-triggered SaaS lifecycle email (onboarding, activation, trial-to-paid, churn win-back) as its core job, which matters if that is what you actually need. If you want the fuller landscape before narrowing to these two, see this rundown of the best email tools for SaaS.

Key takeaways

• Brevo prices by emails sent per month with unlimited contacts on every paid plan (Starter from $9/mo for 5,000 emails). Mailchimp prices by contacts stored, including unsubscribed contacts on some tiers, starting at $13/mo for 500 contacts.
• Mailchimp's free plan was cut in January 2026 to 250 contacts and 500 emails/month with no scheduling and no multi-step automation. Brevo's free plan still includes 9,000 emails/month and storage for up to 100,000 contacts.
• Multi-step, branching automation is a Mailchimp Standard-plan feature (from $20/mo); Brevo unlocks automation at its $18/mo Standard tier too, but with a lower daily and monthly send ceiling at the entry price points.
• For a list with 10,000 contacts sending twice a month, Brevo's volume-based pricing is typically far cheaper than Mailchimp's contact-based pricing; for a list you email daily, that gap narrows or reverses.
• Independent deliverability testing does not show a consistent winner between the two; several testers score them within a few points of each other, and real inbox placement depends more on authentication and list hygiene than on which platform you pick.
• Neither platform is purpose-built for SaaS product-event triggers (signup, feature use, trial expiry). If that is your actual use case, it is worth comparing both against tools built specifically for behavioral lifecycle email.

Brevo vs Mailchimp at a glance

Figures above reflect published pricing pages as of mid-2026. Both vendors change tiers periodically, so confirm current numbers before you budget.

Pricing: the model matters more than the sticker price

This is the comparison everyone searches for, and it is also the one most likely to mislead you if you only look at the entry-tier price.

Brevo bills by send volume. The Starter plan runs $9/mo for 5,000 emails, $19/mo for 20,000, $29/mo for 40,000, and $69/mo for 100,000 emails, all with unlimited stored contacts. Removing the "Sent by Brevo" footer badge on Starter costs an extra $9/mo. The Standard plan starts around $18/mo for 5,000 emails and adds multi-user access options and priority support. Professional starts near $499/mo for high-volume, multichannel senders.

Mailchimp bills by list size. Essentials starts at $13/mo for 500 contacts and 5,000 sends, but climbs fast: $75/mo at 5,000 contacts, $110/mo at 10,000. Standard, which unlocks multi-step automation, starts at $20/mo and runs $100/mo at 5,000 contacts, $135/mo at 10,000. Premium starts at $350/mo regardless of contact count below 10,000, because it is priced for scale, not entry.

The practical takeaway: model your own numbers, not the homepage price. A SaaS company with 10,000 free-trial signups on its list who sends two product emails a month will often pay meaningfully less on Brevo, because Mailchimp charges for every stored contact whether or not you email them. A newsletter business that sends daily to its full list may find Mailchimp's flat per-contact rate more predictable than Brevo's volume charges once sends climb into the hundreds of thousands per month.

One more billing detail worth knowing: Mailchimp counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts against your plan limit unless you manually archive or delete them, which quietly inflates your bill if you never clean the list. Brevo does not have this specific problem since contacts are unlimited on paid plans, but its email-credit system means a spike in send volume (a large broadcast, a re-engagement campaign) can push you into the next tier mid-cycle.

Free plan comparison

Mailchimp's free tier took a real cut in January 2026: 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, down from 500 contacts and 1,000 emails, with no campaign scheduling and no multi-step automation. It is realistically a trial, not a plan you build on.

Brevo's free plan is more usable at small scale: 9,000 emails a month (300/day) and storage for up to 100,000 contacts, plus basic automation workflows, at no cost and no time limit. If you are validating an early product and want to test triggered emails before committing to a paid tool, Brevo's free tier gives you more room to do that than Mailchimp's does.

Automation and lifecycle email

Both platforms gate multi-step, branching automation behind a mid-tier plan: Mailchimp at Standard ($20/mo, journeys with branching logic up to 200 points, predictive and behavioral segmentation), Brevo at Standard ($18/mo, workflow automation with a visual builder). At face value the feature lists look close.

Where they diverge is depth of the trigger model. Mailchimp's journeys are built around marketing events: list activity, purchase behavior, campaign engagement. Brevo's automation workflows follow a similar pattern: page visits, form fills, email engagement, and CRM deal stages. Neither one was designed around firing off a custom product event the way a SaaS app emits it, such as "trial expires in 3 days" or "user hit the usage cap on the free plan." You can often approximate it with webhooks and custom integration code, but it is glue work, not a native concept in either tool.

That gap is exactly the lane behavior-triggered SaaS lifecycle tools compete in: sequences that fire on a real product event (signup, tag, custom event, form submit, segment entry) rather than only marketing engagement signals. If most of your email program is trial-to-paid, onboarding, and churn win-back sequences tied to what a user does inside your app, it is worth comparing Brevo and Mailchimp against SaaS-native alternatives before you commit, not just against each other.

Deliverability: no clean winner

Deliverability comparisons between Brevo and Mailchimp are genuinely inconsistent across independent testers. Some third-party seed-list studies put Mailchimp slightly ahead; others score the two within a few points of each other or call it a tie. None of that testing methodology is something either vendor publishes as an official, ongoing benchmark, so treat any specific percentage you read in a comparison article as one lab's snapshot, not a permanent fact about either platform.

What actually drives inbox placement on any platform, Brevo, Mailchimp, or otherwise, is the same list of fundamentals: authenticated sending domains (SPF, DKIM, and a DMARC policy), a clean list with low bounce and complaint rates, consistent sending volume rather than sporadic spikes, and content that does not trip spam filters. Both Brevo and Mailchimp support standard domain authentication, so the deliverability outcome for most senders comes down to practices, not platform choice. For a deeper walkthrough of what actually moves inbox placement, see this email deliverability guide.

Features and channels beyond email

Brevo's pitch is breadth: email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, a chatbot builder, and a built-in Sales CRM, all under one login. If you want a single tool for marketing and lightweight sales pipeline tracking, that consolidation has real value.

Mailchimp's pitch is depth on the marketing side: AI-assisted content generation, predictive segments, customer journey builders, revenue attribution reporting, multivariate testing, and a large integration marketplace, particularly strong for ecommerce brands tracking purchase behavior.

Neither is positioned around what a SaaS growth team usually needs most: engineering-light control over transactional and lifecycle email tied to the product itself, plus true open-rate reporting that separates a human open from an Apple Mail Privacy Protection or corporate security scanner opening the email automatically.

Ease of use and support

Mailchimp is the more polished, more guided experience for a non-technical marketer: a well-known drag-and-drop builder, deep template library, and support available on every paid plan (phone support added at Premium). Brevo's interface covers more ground (multiple channels, a CRM) and that breadth shows up as a steeper learning curve for a first-time user, according to most hands-on reviews.

Support-wise, Brevo's cheaper tiers cap you at one user seat, with multi-user access requiring the $499/mo Professional plan or a paid add-on on Standard. Mailchimp includes more generous seat allowances as you move up, with unlimited users on Premium. If you have a small marketing team that needs several people logged in day to day, that difference is worth pricing out specifically, not assuming.

Who should actually pick which

Pick Brevo if: your contact list is large relative to how often you email it, you want SMS, WhatsApp, or a lightweight CRM bundled in, or you are budget-conscious and want to avoid per-contact billing on a growing list.

Pick Mailchimp if: you send frequently to your full list, you run ecommerce and want purchase-behavior segmentation and revenue attribution out of the box, or you need a polished builder and support experience for a non-technical team.

Look elsewhere if: your email program is really a SaaS lifecycle problem, onboarding sequences, trial-to-paid nudges, usage-based triggers, and product-event automation, rather than a general marketing newsletter. That is a narrower, harder-to-fill gap that general-purpose tools like Brevo and Mailchimp were not built to close, and it is worth comparing purpose-built options before you default to the platform everyone already knows. If Mailchimp specifically is the one you are trying to replace, this list of Mailchimp alternatives for SaaS and this Mailchimp vs Klaviyo breakdown cover more of the field.

This is also where a tool like Meisa fits into the picture, not as a Brevo or Mailchimp replacement for broad marketing newsletters, but as an option for SaaS teams that specifically want their lifecycle email running on infrastructure they control. Meisa can run on your own AWS SES sending setup, so your sender reputation belongs to you rather than sitting inside a shared platform pool, alongside sequences that fire on real product events like signup, tag changes, or custom triggers.

FAQ

Is Brevo cheaper than Mailchimp?

Usually, if you have a large contact list and send infrequently, because Brevo charges by emails sent with unlimited contacts on paid plans, while Mailchimp charges by contacts stored regardless of send frequency. If you send to your full list often, the gap narrows and can flip toward Mailchimp depending on your exact volume.

What is the difference between Brevo and Mailchimp?

The core difference is the billing model: Brevo prices by monthly email volume, Mailchimp prices by contact count. Beyond pricing, Brevo bundles SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, and a CRM into one platform, while Mailchimp focuses more narrowly on email and ecommerce marketing with a more polished builder and reporting suite.

Is Brevo good for small businesses?

Brevo's free plan (9,000 emails/month, up to 100,000 stored contacts) and low-cost entry tiers make it a reasonable starting point for small businesses with growing lists and modest send frequency. It suits businesses that want multi-channel messaging (SMS, WhatsApp) without paying for separate tools.

Does Brevo have better deliverability than Mailchimp?

There is no consistent answer across independent testing; some studies favor Mailchimp slightly, others score the platforms close to even. Actual inbox placement on either platform depends more on domain authentication, list hygiene, and sending consistency than on which vendor you choose.

Is Sendinblue the same as Brevo?

Yes. Sendinblue rebranded to Brevo in 2023. Any pricing or feature information referencing Sendinblue applies to the same platform now operating under the Brevo name.

Can I switch from Mailchimp to Brevo without losing my list?

Contact lists, tags, and campaign history can generally be exported from Mailchimp and imported into Brevo, though automation workflows and journey logic will need to be rebuilt manually since neither platform offers a native one-click migration between the two.