Brevo vs Mailchimp: The Complete 2025 Email Marketing Showdown

An in-depth, hands-on comparison of Brevo and Mailchimp covering features, pricing tiers, automation workflows, and deliverability rates — so you can pick the right tool without second-guessing yourself.

Quick Verdict (Read This First)

If you're short on time, here's the short version:

Choose Brevo if you have a growing contact list but don't email every day, want SMS and WhatsApp built in, or are budget-conscious and scaling a newsletter, SaaS product, or digital business.

Choose Mailchimp if you have a small list under 500 contacts, run a Shopify store and want tight native integrations, or want the most polished drag-and-drop editor on the market.

Everything below is the "why" behind those calls.

The One Thing You Need to Understand Before Comparing Prices

Most people compare Brevo and Mailchimp on a feature-by-feature basis and miss the single biggest difference between the two platforms — the pricing model.

Brevo charges based on how many emails you send per month.

Mailchimp charges based on how many contacts you have stored.

This changes everything. If you have 10,000 subscribers but only send two newsletters a month, Brevo's math works heavily in your favor. If you have 400 hyper-engaged contacts you email daily, Mailchimp might actually be competitive.

Keep this in mind as you read through the pricing section below — it's the lens that makes every other comparison make sense.

Pricing Breakdown: Brevo vs Mailchimp

Brevo Pricing in 2025

Brevo's Marketing Platform has four main tiers, all priced by monthly email volume.

Free Plan — $0/month

• 300 emails per day (roughly 9,000/month)
• Unlimited contacts
• Marketing automation included (for up to 2,000 contacts)
• Basic CRM, transactional email, drag-and-drop editor
• "Sent with Brevo" footer on all emails
• No credit card required

Starter Plan — from $9/month

• From 5,000 emails/month, no daily sending cap
• Everything in Free, plus basic reporting and analytics
• Still shows Brevo branding in email footer (remove it for ~$9–12/month extra)
• Best for: Solo creators and small businesses just getting started

Business Plan — from $18/month

• From 5,000 emails/month
• A/B testing, advanced automation, landing pages, advanced analytics
• Brevo branding removed automatically
• Phone support included
• Best for: Growing teams, SaaS newsletters, ecommerce brands

Professional / Enterprise — custom pricing

• Starts from 150,000 emails/month
• AI segmentation, WhatsApp campaigns, multi-user access, dedicated IP, CSM support
• Best for: High-volume senders and agencies

Mailchimp Pricing in 2025

Mailchimp's pricing scales by how many contacts you store. Every plan has a base contact tier and a monthly send limit (typically 10–15x your contact count).

Free Plan — $0/month

• Only 250 contacts (down from 2,000 in 2022 — yes, really)
• 500 email sends per month
• No automation (fully removed from the free tier in 2025)
• Basic templates, single audience, 30-day email support only
• Realistically only useful for testing the interface

Essentials Plan — from $13/month

• From 500 contacts, up to 50,000
• 5,000 monthly sends (10x contact count)
• A/B testing, 3 audience lists, chat and email support
• Best for: Small businesses with a stable, small list

Standard Plan — from $20/month

• From 500 contacts, up to 100,000
• 6,000 monthly sends (12x contact count)
• Automation workflows, predictive segmentation, send-time optimization, dynamic content
• Up to 5 user seats
• Best for: Marketers who want AI-assisted tools and deeper campaign analytics

Premium Plan — from $350/month

• From 10,000 contacts, up to 200,000+
• 15x monthly send limit
• Unlimited users, multivariate testing, advanced segmentation, priority phone support
• Best for: Large brands and enterprise teams

What Does It Actually Cost? A Real-World Scenario

Say you have 5,000 contacts and send 4 emails per month (20,000 total sends):

With Brevo Business, you'd pay around $18–25/month.

With Mailchimp Standard (5,000 contacts tier), you'd pay around $75–100/month.

That's the same workload, roughly 4x the price on Mailchimp. The gap only widens as your list grows. Brevo's send-based model rewards you for building a large list — you don't get penalized just for having subscribers.

One important watch-out on Mailchimp: real-world costs tend to run 20–40% higher than the listed plan price. Unsubscribed contacts still count toward your contact limit, SMS is a separate paid add-on, and transactional email requires a completely separate product (Mandrill) at additional cost.

Features Side by Side

Rather than a table, here's how each platform lines up across the features that actually matter:

Free Plan Generosity

Brevo wins clearly. Unlimited contacts, automation, CRM, and transactional email — all on the free tier. Mailchimp's free plan caps you at 250 contacts with no automation at all.

Email Automation

Brevo includes automation on the free plan (up to 2,000 contacts) and makes it fully unlimited starting at $18/month. You get visual workflow builders, conditional logic, and multi-channel triggers across email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

Mailchimp now calls its automation "Marketing Automation Flows" (rebranded mid-2025). It requires the Standard plan at $20/month minimum. The UX is polished with strong visual journey mapping, and ecommerce triggers like cart abandonment and post-purchase flows are tightly integrated — especially for Shopify users.

Winner: Brevo for accessibility and price. Mailchimp for ecommerce automation depth.

SMS and WhatsApp

Brevo has SMS and WhatsApp built directly into the platform. You buy credits and send from the same dashboard — no third-party app required.

Mailchimp offers SMS as a paid add-on to any paid plan. WhatsApp is not available.

Winner: Brevo, no contest.

Transactional Email

Transactional emails — receipts, password resets, order confirmations — are included in Brevo's core platform via API and SMTP on every plan, including free.

Mailchimp requires a separate product called Mandrill for transactional email, which adds cost and a separate setup process.

Winner: Brevo for anyone who needs transactional + marketing email under one roof.

Built-in CRM

Brevo includes a basic CRM across all plans — contact management, deal pipelines, and behavioral scoring on higher tiers.

Mailchimp does not have a built-in CRM. You'd connect it to Salesforce, HubSpot, or another tool via integration.

Winner: Brevo for solo operators and small teams. Mailchimp users will need a separate CRM.

Ecommerce Integrations

Mailchimp has the deeper native ecommerce integrations — particularly with Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Product sync, purchase-triggered flows, and revenue tracking work out of the box.

Brevo supports Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and Prestashop, plus the full standard Zapier/Make/API stack. Functional, but Mailchimp's ecommerce DNA runs deeper.

Winner: Mailchimp for ecommerce-first businesses.

Email Editor and Templates

Mailchimp's drag-and-drop editor is genuinely the best in its class among email marketing tools. Template library is large and well-designed. Onboarding is smooth.

Brevo's editor is clean and functional, but more utilitarian. It gets the job done without the same level of visual polish.

Winner: Mailchimp for design and UX quality.

Removing Platform Branding

On Brevo's Starter plan, you need to pay an extra ~$9–12/month to remove the "Sent with Brevo" footer. Business plans and above remove it automatically.

On all Mailchimp paid plans, branding is not added to your emails.

Note for Brevo users: If you go with the Business plan at $18/month, branding removal is included — so this only matters if you're considering the $9 Starter plan.

Deliverability: Will Your Emails Actually Reach the Inbox?

Both platforms perform well on deliverability — this isn't a major differentiator between the two. But there are some nuances worth knowing.

Brevo has made significant investments in deliverability infrastructure. Independent benchmarks have shown inbox placement rates above 96% for Brevo campaigns. Dedicated IPs are available as an add-on (~$251/year), and higher-tier plans include access to a deliverability specialist.

Mailchimp operates on shared IP pools on lower plans, which means your deliverability can be indirectly affected by other senders on the same IP. Higher plans get better infrastructure and priority sending queues.

For transactional email specifically, Brevo's inclusion of SMTP and API in every plan — including free — gives it a practical advantage for developers and founders who need reliable delivery for both marketing and product emails.

Ease of Use

If you've never used an email marketing platform, Mailchimp is the easier first experience. The interface is polished, the onboarding flow is guided, and there's a large library of tutorials and community resources built up over years.

Brevo's interface has improved considerably. It's not difficult to use, but it's more "dashboard" and less "guided experience." The upside is that everything — email, SMS, CRM, automation, transactional — lives in one place without jumping between products or paying for add-ons.

Who Should Choose Brevo?

• Newsletter creators and bloggers building a large subscriber list
• SaaS founders who need transactional + marketing email in one platform
• Digital product sellers who want multi-channel outreach (email + SMS)
• Budget-conscious marketers who want automation without paying Mailchimp's contact-tier prices
• Agencies managing multiple brands or client accounts

👉 Start with Brevo's free plan — no credit card required. [Insert your Brevo affiliate link here]

Who Should Choose Mailchimp?

• Small Shopify or WooCommerce store owners who want deep native ecommerce automations
• Businesses with under 500 contacts who want the most beginner-friendly editor
• Teams already embedded in the Mailchimp ecosystem with years of campaign history
• Brands where the Mailchimp name/reliability carries weight with stakeholders

Final Verdict

Mailchimp built its reputation as the friendly entry point into email marketing, and for a narrow use case — small ecommerce lists, polished editor, native Shopify integrations — it still delivers.

But for the kind of digital businesses this site covers — SaaS tools, newsletters, content sites, digital products — Brevo is the stronger platform in 2025. The send-based pricing model scales affordably as your list grows. Transactional email, SMS, automation, and a basic CRM are all included without paying for separate products. And at $9–18/month to unlock the full feature set, the value is genuinely hard to argue with.

Mailchimp's trajectory in 2025 hasn't helped its case either. The free plan has been cut from 2,000 contacts down to just 250, automation was removed from the free tier entirely, and pricing has crept up while competitors have gotten sharper.

Start with Brevo. If you outgrow it or find a specific reason Mailchimp serves your workflow better, switching is straightforward. But most people building digital businesses today won't need to.

Pricing data verified from official Brevo and Mailchimp pricing pages as of June 2025. Prices may vary by region and plan configuration.

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