Brevo vs Mailchimp

Why Switch from Mailchimp to Brevo?

Mailchimp is owned by Intuit, a US corporation, and processes data on US infrastructure. For European senders, that creates two problems. First, Mailchimp’s pricing scales with stored contacts — meaning every dormant subscriber on your list costs you money even if you never email them again. Second, every campaign you send routes customer email addresses, open data, and click data through US servers, exposing you to US surveillance law and adding friction to GDPR compliance reviews.

Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a Paris-based platform built from day one around European data protection. Pricing is based on emails sent, not contacts stored. Data lives in the EU by default. And the product combines marketing email, transactional email, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging in one platform — covering most of what marketers and developers actually need.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Brevo	Mailchimp
Marketing emails	Yes	Yes
Transactional SMTP/API	Yes (included)	Mandrill (separate paid add-on)
SMS marketing	Yes (native)	Limited
WhatsApp campaigns	Yes	No
Marketing automation	Yes	Yes (more polished)
Landing pages	Yes	Yes
Pricing model	Per email sent	Per contact stored
Free tier	300 emails/day forever	500 contacts, 1,000 emails/month
Data location	EU (France)	United States
GDPR compliant	Full (French entity)	Partial (US entity)

Pricing

Brevo’s pricing model is the clearest single differentiator from Mailchimp:

• Brevo Free: 300 emails/day, unlimited contacts
• Brevo Starter: From €7/month, 5,000 emails
• Brevo Business: From €15/month, marketing automation, A/B testing
• Brevo BrevoPlus: Custom enterprise pricing with dedicated IP
• Mailchimp Free: 500 contacts, 1,000 emails/month
• Mailchimp Essentials: From $13/month for 500 contacts
• Mailchimp Standard: From $20/month for 500 contacts (price climbs with list size)

If you have a 50,000-contact list that you email once a month, Mailchimp will charge for storing all 50,000 contacts every month. Brevo will charge for the single send.

Privacy & Data Sovereignty

Brevo’s French headquarters provide concrete GDPR advantages:

• Headquartered in Paris under French and EU jurisdiction
• Data stored on EU infrastructure with an EU-only option for regulated customers
• Standard Data Processing Agreement available in the dashboard
• Subject Access Requests, deletion, and portability built into the product
• Not exposed to the US CLOUD Act as a US-headquartered provider would be
• Consent fields and double opt-in flows are first-class features, not bolt-ons

Migration Guide

Moving from Mailchimp to Brevo typically takes a day for a straightforward setup. Estimated time: 4-8 hours. Difficulty: Easy to Moderate.

1. Create a Brevo account at brevo.com and verify your sending domain via DNS records (SPF, DKIM). This protects deliverability.
2. Export contacts from Mailchimp as CSV including consent timestamps and source. Import into Brevo via the contacts dashboard, preserving consent metadata.
3. Recreate key templates using Brevo’s drag-and-drop editor. Most Mailchimp templates port cleanly with minor adjustments.
4. Rebuild automations for welcome series, abandoned cart, and post-purchase flows in Brevo’s workflow builder.
5. Switch transactional email by pointing your application’s SMTP credentials at Brevo’s relay (or the API).
6. Run parallel for a week, monitor deliverability, then deprecate the Mailchimp account.

Real-World Use Cases

French DTC brand consolidating channels: A Lyon-based skincare company replaced Mailchimp plus a separate SMS tool with a single Brevo account. The combined view of email and SMS engagement per contact unlocked better segmentation and cut tool costs by 40%.

German SaaS company unifying product and marketing email: A Hamburg B2B SaaS moved transactional emails (signups, invoices, alerts) and marketing emails into Brevo. Engineering used the SMTP relay for product emails; marketing used the campaign builder. Both teams shared the same suppression list, eliminating a common deliverability problem.

Belgian publisher reducing per-contact costs: A Brussels media company with a 200,000-strong newsletter list moved off Mailchimp to escape per-contact pricing. Since they send two campaigns per week, Brevo’s per-send model cut their email costs by more than half.

Company Background

Sendinblue was founded in 2012 in Paris by Armand Thiberge. The product started as a transactional email tool for small businesses and gradually expanded into marketing email, marketing automation, SMS, and WhatsApp. The company rebranded to Brevo in 2023 to reflect its scope beyond email.

Brevo is headquartered in Paris with additional offices in Berlin, Sofia, Seattle, and Bengaluru. The company serves more than 500,000 customers globally and has raised funding from Bridgepoint, Bpifrance, and others. As a French SAS, it is subject to French data protection law (CNIL) and the broader EU GDPR framework — and it has built its product features around those requirements rather than retrofitting them.

Security & Compliance

• GDPR compliant by design as a French entity
• ISO 27001 certified data centers
• Sender authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) enforced for all senders
• TLS 1.2+ for data in transit, AES-256 at rest
• Optional EU-only data residency for regulated customers
• Built-in consent management and double opt-in workflows
• Data Processing Agreement available in-app

Who Should Switch?

Brevo is ideal for:

• European SMBs that want EU data residency without a price premium
• DTC and e-commerce brands that need email plus SMS in one tool
• Developers who need a clean transactional SMTP relay
• Companies with large dormant lists that want to escape per-contact pricing
• Teams that want a GDPR-native platform rather than a US tool retrofitted for Europe

The Bottom Line

Mailchimp built the consumer category for email marketing and still has a more polished template editor, a richer integration marketplace, and stronger brand recognition. For very small senders with very small lists, the free tier remains compelling.

But for European senders at any meaningful scale — and especially for teams that combine marketing email with transactional email, SMS, or WhatsApp — Brevo is the more honest choice. The pricing model fits how Europeans actually email, the data stays in the EU, and the company answers to a French regulator rather than to US courts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Brevo really the same product as Sendinblue?

Yes. Sendinblue rebranded to Brevo in 2023. The underlying company (Sendinblue SAS, headquartered in Paris) and product are the same — the new name reflects expansion beyond email into SMS, WhatsApp, CRM, and conversations. Existing Sendinblue accounts migrated automatically.

How is Brevo's pricing different from Mailchimp?

Mailchimp charges per contact stored, which gets expensive as your list grows even if you rarely email those contacts. Brevo charges per email sent, regardless of list size. For senders with large but infrequently-emailed lists, Brevo is typically far cheaper. There is also a free tier of 300 emails/day forever.

Can I use Brevo for transactional email like password resets?

Yes. Brevo provides a dedicated SMTP relay and API for transactional email — order confirmations, password resets, receipts, notifications. This is included in all paid plans and uses separate sending infrastructure from marketing email so deliverability is not affected by promotional content.

Is Brevo compliant with GDPR for EU senders?

Yes. Brevo is a French SAS regulated under EU and French law. Data is stored on EU infrastructure (with EU-only option for sensitive customers), data processing agreements are standard, and consent management is built into all signup forms. As a European entity, Brevo is not exposed to the US CLOUD Act in the way Mailchimp is.

Can I migrate existing Mailchimp automations into Brevo?

Brevo offers contact import from Mailchimp CSV exports and templates can usually be rebuilt with the drag-and-drop editor. Automations need to be recreated manually — the trigger/condition logic is similar but the workflow builder is different. Plan a few hours per complex automation for a clean rebuild.