Mailchimp vs Brevo
The core difference isn't features — it's how you're billed. Mailchimp charges for every contact you store, including ones who unsubscribed. Brevo charges for the emails you actually send. For most lists, that's the whole argument.
The short version: Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) prices by emails sent, not contacts stored, and every paid plan includes unlimited contacts. Mailchimp does the opposite — it counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your plan limit, so a list full of inactive addresses costs the same as an all-active one until you manually archive them.
Where Brevo wins
If you have a large or partly-dormant list, Brevo is dramatically cheaper: you pay for volume you send, not names you keep. Its free plan allows 300 emails/day with up to 100,000 stored contacts, and paid Starter plans begin at $9/month. Brevo also bundles SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, a transactional email/SMS API, and a light CRM — useful if you want more than one-way newsletters.
Where Mailchimp still leads
Mailchimp's campaign editor and reporting are more polished, its integration catalogue is larger, and features like send-time optimisation are more mature. Brevo's free tier has a daily send cap (300/day) that can be limiting if you send big one-off blasts, and its interface is busier. Deliverability on shared IPs is solid but you'll want a dedicated IP as you scale.
| Mailchimp | Brevo | |
|---|---|---|
| Bills by | Contacts (incl. unsubscribed) | Emails sent |
| Free tier | 250 contacts / 500 sends/mo | 300 emails/day, unlimited contacts |
| Cheapest paid | ~$13/mo (Essentials) | $9/mo (Starter) |
| Contacts on paid | Metered | Unlimited |
| SMS / WhatsApp | add-on | ✓ built in |
| Automation on free | removed Jan 2026 | ✓ basic |
Compiled July 2026. Sources: Brevo pricing · Mailchimp pricing
Switch to Brevo if you keep a big list, a lot of it is inactive, or you want SMS/WhatsApp in the same tool — you'll stop paying for contacts you never email. Stay on Mailchimp if you send frequently to a small, clean, active list and value its polished editor and integrations more than the billing savings.
← Back to all Mailchimp alternatives · Compare with MailerLite · Compare with Kit