Quick Answer
60-second read
Brevo wins on pricing, free plan generosity, and multichannel features — Mailchimp wins on email design, ecommerce depth, and integrations. For most businesses, especially European ones or those with growing contact lists, Brevo delivers 80% of what Mailchimp offers at roughly 20% of the cost. Mailchimp’s free plan was cut to just 250 contacts in January 2026, making Brevo’s free tier (9,000 emails/month, 100,000 contacts) the clear winner for budget-conscious marketers. EUR prices approximate — always verify at official pricing pages.
This article was last updated May 2026 with verified current pricing, Mailchimp’s January 2026 free plan changes, and Brevo’s October 2025 pricing restructure. EUR prices are approximate conversions — always verify at official pricing pages before committing.
I’ve spent weeks testing both platforms across real campaigns — looking at deliverability, automation workflows, template quality, and how the costs actually scale. If you’re looking for the broader picture first, our guide to the best email marketing software compares eight platforms head-to-head.
🔬 How I Compared Brevo and Mailchimp
This comparison is based on hands-on platform testing, analysis of 14 independent reviews, and data from G2 (3M+ verified reviews). Pricing originally verified in March 2026 and reviewed in May 2026. EUR prices are approximate — always verify at official pricing pages.
14
Sources reviewed
13
Features compared
3M+
G2 reviews analysed
May 2026
Pricing reviewed
What Are Brevo and Mailchimp — and Who Are They For?
Brevo is an email and multichannel marketing platform founded in 2012 (originally as Sendinblue, rebranded 2023) and headquartered in Paris, France. It serves over 600,000 businesses globally and plans range from €0 to approximately €430/month on paid tiers, with pricing based on emails sent rather than contacts stored.
Mailchimp is the granddaddy of email marketing — founded in 2001 in Atlanta, Georgia, acquired by Intuit in 2021, and now used by over 11 million customers worldwide. It charges by contact count. Plans range from €0 to approximately €302/month (starting tiers), though the free plan was significantly cut back in January 2026.
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What Is the Difference Between Brevo and Mailchimp? (Quick Overview)
Brevo charges by emails sent per month — your contact list size doesn’t affect the price. Mailchimp charges by contact count, including unsubscribed contacts you can no longer email. For a list of 5,000 contacts sending 2 emails per month (10,000 emails total), Brevo Standard costs approximately €15.52/month. Mailchimp Standard costs approximately €86.25/month for the same audience — that’s a 5.5x price difference for identical outreach. All EUR prices approximate — verify at official pricing pages.
| Feature | Brevo | Mailchimp | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting paid price (approx.) | ~€7.76/mo ($9/mo) | ~€11.21/mo ($13/mo) | 🏆 Brevo |
| Pricing model | Email volume (unlimited contacts) | Contact count (incl. unsubscribed) | 🏆 Brevo |
| Free plan | 9,000 emails/mo · 100,000 contacts | 500 emails/mo · 250 contacts ⚠️ | 🏆 Brevo |
| Automation on free plan | ✅ Basic included | ❌ Removed June 2025 | 🏆 Brevo |
| SMS & WhatsApp | ✅ All plans + WhatsApp | ⚠️ US-only add-on | 🏆 Brevo |
| Transactional email | ✅ Included (all plans) | ❌ $20/25K add-on | 🏆 Brevo |
| Email editor & templates | 48 templates, solid builder | 100+ templates, best-in-class | 🏆 Mailchimp |
| Analytics & reporting | Solid; real-time stats | Advanced; predictive AI | 🏆 Mailchimp |
| Ecommerce features | Good; Shopify app migrated Aug 2025 | Excellent; shoppable pages, CLV | 🏆 Mailchimp |
| Integrations | 150+ | 250+ | 🏆 Mailchimp |
| GDPR / European compliance | ✅ EU-based, GDPR-native | ⚠️ US-based (EU-US Framework) | 🏆 Brevo |
| CRM included | ✅ Full CRM + pipeline | ⚠️ Marketing CRM only | 🏆 Brevo |
| G2 support rating | 8.8/10 | 8.0/10 | 🏆 Brevo |
| 🏆 Best For | Budget, multichannel, EU/GDPR, large lists | Email design, ecommerce, advanced analytics |
EUR prices approximate. Always verify at official pricing pages before committing. Quick verdict: Choose Brevo if budget, list size, or European compliance drives your decision. Choose Mailchimp if email design quality and deep ecommerce integration are non-negotiable.
The short answer: Brevo and Mailchimp are both solid email platforms — but they serve different priorities. Brevo is the budget-smart, multichannel choice for growing businesses and EU-based companies. Mailchimp is the premium option for teams that live inside their email editor and need sophisticated ecommerce analytics. For most small businesses and anyone with a list over 2,500 contacts, Brevo will cost dramatically less for the same output.
How Much Does Each Platform Cost in 2026? (EUR + USD Pricing)
Brevo starts at approximately €7.76/month (from $9/month) for 5,000 emails with unlimited contacts on all paid plans. Mailchimp starts at approximately €11.21/month ($13/month) for 500 contacts, scaling steeply — at 5,000 contacts, you’re looking at approximately €64.69/month on Essentials or €86.25/month on Standard. EUR prices are approximate — always verify at brevo.com/pricing and mailchimp.com/pricing.
💡 The Pricing Model Difference You Must Understand
Brevo charges by emails sent per month — contact list size doesn’t affect price. Mailchimp charges by contact count, including unsubscribed contacts who can’t receive your emails. At 5,000 contacts sending 2 campaigns/month, Brevo Standard costs approximately €15.52/month vs Mailchimp Standard at approximately €86.25/month. That’s a 5.5x price difference for identical outreach volume. Prices approximate — verify at official sites.
Brevo pricing plans (2026)
Pricing based on emails sent per month, NOT contact count. EUR prices approximate — always verify at brevo.com/pricing.
Free
€0/month
- ✅ 9,000 emails/month (300/day)
- ✅ Up to 100,000 contacts
- ✅ Basic automation workflows
- ✅ Basic CRM + pipeline
- ✅ SMS credits (extra)
- ⚠️ Brevo branding on emails
Best for: Testing, early-stage businesses
Starter
~€7.76/month
from $9/month · 5,000 emails/mo
- ✅ No daily sending limit
- ✅ Unlimited contacts
- ✅ 24/7 email support
- ⚠️ Brevo logo (+~€9.31/mo to remove)
- ⚠️ No landing pages
Best for: Small businesses, newsletters
Standard
~€15.52/month
from $18/month · 5,000 emails/mo
- ✅ Logo removal included
- ✅ Landing pages + popups
- ✅ A/B testing
- ✅ Multi-user access
- ✅ Priority support
Best for: Growing businesses, agencies
Professional
~€430/month
from $499/month · 150,000+ emails/mo
- ✅ AI segmentation
- ✅ WhatsApp marketing
- ✅ Web push notifications
- ✅ Phone support
Best for: High-volume, multi-channel teams
Mailchimp pricing plans (2026)
Pricing based on contact count — costs scale with list size. EUR prices approximate — always verify at mailchimp.com/pricing.
Free
€0/month
- ✅ 500 emails/month
- ⚠️ 250 contacts max (cut Jan 2026)
- ❌ No multi-step automation
- ❌ No scheduling
- ⚠️ 30-day support only
Best for: Absolute beginners only
Essentials
~€11.21/month
from $13/month · 500 contacts
⚠️ Scales to ~€64.69/mo at 5,000 contacts
- ✅ A/B testing
- ✅ Landing pages
- ✅ Branding removal
- ⚠️ No multi-step automation
Best for: Simple newsletters, small lists
Standard
~€17.25/month
from $20/month · 500 contacts
⚠️ Scales to ~€86.25/mo at 5,000 contacts
- ✅ Multi-step automation
- ✅ Dynamic content
- ✅ Predictive segmentation
- ✅ Up to 5 users
Best for: Growing businesses with ecommerce
Premium
~€302/month
from $350/month · 10,000 contacts
- ✅ Unlimited users
- ✅ Phone support
- ✅ Personalized onboarding
- ✅ Up to 200,000 contacts
Best for: Large enterprises
💰 Real Cost Comparison at Different List Sizes (approximate)
Brevo Standard vs Mailchimp Standard. EUR prices approximate — verify at official pricing pages.
Brevo Standard stays at ~€15.52/month whether you have 500 or 50,000 contacts (same email volume). Prices approximate.
⚠️ Mailchimp Free Plan Changes — January 2026
As of January 2026, Mailchimp cut its free plan from 500 contacts / 1,000 emails per month down to 250 contacts / 500 emails per month. Multi-step automation was already removed in June 2025. Brevo’s free plan offers 18x more email volume and 400x more contacts at zero cost.
Which Has the Better Free Plan in 2026 — Brevo or Mailchimp?
Brevo wins this comparison without much debate. The Brevo free plan gives you 9,000 emails per month, up to 100,000 contacts, and access to basic automation workflows — all at no cost. Mailchimp’s free plan was cut in January 2026 when Mailchimp halved both the contact limit (to 250) and email volume (to 500/month). Multi-step automation was removed the previous June. For anyone with real marketing ambitions, Mailchimp’s free tier now functions mainly as a trial — not a working solution.
🇪🇺 European Business? This Matters More Than You Think
Brevo is headquartered in Paris, France — an EU company with GDPR compliance built into its infrastructure from day one. Mailchimp, owned by US company Intuit, stores data on US servers under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. For businesses processing European customer data, Brevo carries lower regulatory risk. EmailToolTester explicitly recommends Brevo or MailerLite over Mailchimp for EU GDPR compliance.
What Can Each Platform Actually Do? (Full Features Comparison)
Brevo outperforms Mailchimp on multichannel features, automation accessibility, and value-per-tier because it includes SMS, transactional email, and full CRM on every plan. Mailchimp outperforms Brevo on email design quality, analytics depth, and ecommerce integration maturity.
Email editor and templates
Mailchimp’s email builder is genuinely the best in this category — the drag-and-drop editor is intuitive, the 100+ templates are well-designed, and rendering previews across devices are accurate. Brevo’s editor with 48 templates is functional and perfectly adequate for most campaigns, but it’s not as visually refined. If your brand identity lives in beautifully crafted emails, Mailchimp’s editor will make your designer’s job easier.
Marketing automation
One of Mailchimp’s most frustrating recent moves: multi-step automation now requires a Standard plan at $20/month minimum. The Classic Automation Builder was deprecated in June 2025, cutting off free and Essentials users from any meaningful automated sequences. Brevo includes automation workflows on its free plan — up to 2,000 contacts in active automations. For email marketing automation on a budget, Brevo is significantly more accessible.
SMS marketing and multichannel
Brevo supports SMS marketing across all plans, with pay-as-you-go credits for over 100 countries. WhatsApp campaigns are available as an add-on on Professional and Enterprise plans. Mailchimp offers SMS only in the US and a handful of countries — European users cannot access SMS through Mailchimp at all. For any business wanting a unified email + SMS marketing workflow, this is a hard stop for Mailchimp.
Ecommerce features
Mailchimp is the stronger ecommerce platform. Shoppable landing pages, Customer Lifetime Value analytics, predictive segmentation based on purchase behavior, and deep integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce make it a natural fit for online stores. Brevo’s ecommerce capabilities are solid — abandoned cart emails, product recommendation blocks, and transactional email included — but its Shopify integration was migrated to a new PushOwl/Brevo app in August 2025, which required existing users to migrate. For a landing page comparison, our best landing page builders guide goes deeper.
⭐ G2 Feature Ratings: Brevo vs Mailchimp
Source: G2 head-to-head comparison, 3M+ verified reviews.
Customer Support
Brevo: 8.8 vs Mailchimp: 8.0
Campaign Performance
Brevo: 9.0 vs Mailchimp: 8.8
Template Creation
Brevo: 8.7 vs Mailchimp: 8.2
Ease of Use
Brevo: 8.4 vs Mailchimp: 8.6
The short answer: Brevo bundles more tools into lower price tiers — automation, CRM, SMS, and transactional email are all included from the start. Mailchimp reserves its most powerful features for Standard and Premium plans. On G2 ratings across 3M+ reviews, Brevo scores 9.0/10 for campaign performance versus Mailchimp’s 8.8/10 — a meaningful edge at a fraction of the price for large lists.
Which Has Better Email Deliverability — Brevo or Mailchimp?
Both platforms deliver acceptable inbox rates for most users. Under EmailToolTester’s 2025 methodology, Brevo edges ahead — it includes a setup wizard, IP warmup support, and dedicated IP options. In the final ETT seed list test (January 2024), Brevo achieved 88.3% inbox placement.
For high-volume senders, both offer dedicated IP options: Brevo at $251/year, Mailchimp at $29.95/month (~$359/year) — Brevo is cheaper here too. New Brevo accounts on shared IPs can show variability during warmup — plan 2–3 weeks if you’re migrating a large list.
Brevo and Mailchimp Pros and Cons
✅ Brevo Strengths
- Best-in-class free plan: 9,000 emails/month, 100,000 contacts, automation included
- Email volume pricing: Unlimited contacts; costs stay flat as your list grows
- Multichannel from day one: Email, SMS, WhatsApp, web push, and chat
- Transactional email included: No add-on needed — saves money vs Mailchimp
- EU-based, GDPR-native: Lower regulatory risk for EU businesses
- Full CRM included
- Higher G2 support scores: 8.8/10 vs Mailchimp’s 8.0/10
❌ Brevo Weaknesses
- Fewer templates (48): Mailchimp offers 100+ more polished templates
- Less polished email editor
- Deliverability can vary: Shared IPs require warmup
- Shopify app migrated (Aug 2025): Disrupted some merchants during transition
- No mobile app
- Weaker analytics: Lacks Mailchimp’s predictive insights
✅ Mailchimp Strengths
- Best email editor: Industry-leading with 100+ polished templates
- Advanced analytics: Predictive segmentation, CLV analytics, send-time optimization
- Strongest ecommerce: Shoppable landing pages, deep Shopify/WooCommerce integration
- 250+ integrations: Largest library in the category
- Easier for beginners: Exceptionally clean UI
❌ Mailchimp Weaknesses
- Gets expensive fast: ~€86.25/mo at 5,000 contacts vs Brevo’s ~€15.52
- Charges for unsubscribed contacts until manually archived
- Free plan nearly useless (Jan 2026): 250 contacts / 500 emails
- Automation requires paid upgrade
- No SMS for European users
- Transactional email costs extra
The Honest Controversy Around Both Platforms
Mailchimp’s billing practices around unsubscribed contacts have frustrated thousands of users — you can be paying for 3,000 contacts when only 1,800 are actually subscribed, because Mailchimp counts everyone until you manually archive them. Multiple Reddit threads in r/emailmarketing describe this as a deliberate design choice, not an oversight.
⚠️ Mailchimp’s Unsubscribe Billing Trap
Mailchimp accounts are billed for all contacts — subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed. You must manually archive unsubscribed contacts to stop being charged for them. Most users don’t know this until they see their bill jump. This catches businesses off guard regularly and has pushed many to look at Mailchimp alternatives.
Brevo isn’t without its own controversy. The Shopify migration in August 2025 disrupted merchants who’d built workflows around the old integration — some reported syncing issues during the transition that took weeks to resolve. And on the Starter plan: you pay an extra ~€9.31/month to remove the Brevo logo, which more than doubles the effective cost for businesses that need unbranded emails.
Who Should Choose Brevo — and Who Should Choose Mailchimp?
✅ Choose Brevo if you: have a contact list larger than 2,500 (or expect to get there); are based in Europe and prioritize GDPR-native infrastructure; need SMS, WhatsApp, or transactional email without extra cost; want automation on a budget; or need a full CRM included.
✅ Choose Mailchimp if you: run an ecommerce store with deep Shopify/WooCommerce integration needs; prioritize email design quality; need advanced predictive analytics and CLV-based segmentation; have a small, stable contact list (under 2,000) where scaling cost is manageable; or need 250+ third-party integrations.
❌ Skip both if you: have a list of 50,000+ and need enterprise-grade deliverability (look at ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo); need advanced B2B sales automation (consider GetResponse or HubSpot); or run a high-volume webinar or event-based business (see our best webinar platforms guide).
The short answer: For most small and medium businesses — especially in Europe — Brevo is the better long-term choice. It’s cheaper at scale, GDPR-native, includes SMS and transactional email, and its free plan is genuinely useful. Mailchimp makes sense when email design polish and ecommerce depth genuinely justify the price premium. EmailToolTester named Brevo “Best Email Marketing Tool for 2026” in their head-to-head methodology.
Start With Brevo — It’s Free
9,000 emails/month · 100,000 contacts · Automation included · No credit card required
Are There Better Alternatives to Both?
GetResponse — best for automation-heavy workflows
GetResponse offers genuinely advanced automation with a visual builder, plus built-in landing pages, webinars, and a website builder. Our full GetResponse review has the complete breakdown, and we’ve also done a head-to-head GetResponse vs Brevo comparison. → Try GetResponse free for 30 days
Moosend — best budget pick
Moosend includes unlimited emails, automation, landing pages, and analytics even on its entry plan. Excellent pricing transparency and a competitive automation builder. → Try Moosend free for 30 days
MailerLite — worth noting (with a caveat)
MailerLite has genuinely clean design, strong automation on the free plan, and solid deliverability. Worth trialing carefully — I’ve seen multiple users report abrupt account terminations for platform misunderstandings. → Try MailerLite here. See our full best email marketing software guide for a complete comparison.
Frequently Asked Questions About Brevo vs Mailchimp
Ready to Make Your Decision?
Both platforms offer free tiers — test them before committing. Brevo’s free plan is genuinely useful for live campaigns.
Brevo link is an affiliate link. Mailchimp link is not affiliated.
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