Brevo in 2026: an honest email marketing review (real prices and limits)
Published on:
Reading time: 12 min
Topic: Marketing
Author: Leandro Valencia
An honest Brevo review for email marketing: what it does well, where it falls short, plans with verified prices and limits, and how it compares against Mailchimp and MailerLite.
Table of Contents
- What Brevo is and who it is for
- What Brevo does well
- What Brevo does not do well
- Brevo plans and pricing in 2026
- Brevo vs Mailchimp vs MailerLite for a LATAM small business
- Who should NOT use Brevo
- How to set up your first Brevo campaign, step by step
- Transparency note: affiliates
What Brevo is and who it is for
Brevo was born as Sendinblue, a French company focused first on transactional email, and grew into a complete marketing platform. The rename to Brevo happened in 2023; if you see old Sendinblue tutorials, almost all of them still apply.
Today it includes, in a single account:
- Email campaigns with a visual editor and templates
- Automations (welcome, reminders, flows)
- SMS and WhatsApp campaigns (WhatsApp only from the Professional plan up)
- Forms and landing pages
- A light CRM: contacts, notes, basic deals
- Transactional email via API for confirmations and notifications
Who is it for? For the one-person business or the small team: the restaurant that wants to fill Tuesdays, the dentist who needs to confirm appointments, the clothing store launching a collection, the freelancer with a newsletter. If your real problem is the sales pipeline and not the sending, Brevo's CRM will fall short for you: start by choosing a CRM for small businesses and come back here after.
What Brevo does well
The entry plan is generous. Brevo's model charges for emails sent, not for contacts stored: the free plan lets you send up to 300 emails per day (the counter resets every 24 hours and what you do not use does not accumulate) and store up to 100,000 contacts without paying anything, with no credit card and no expiration date. This changes the conversation for a small business: with tools that charge per contact, the list grows and the invoice grows with it even if you send nothing; with Brevo you can store a large database without the monthly fee moving, because what gets billed is sending volume, not list size. For someone starting out, that difference is worth more than any star feature.
The email editor is decent. Drag and drop, blocks, mobile view. It is not the best on the market, but in 20 minutes you have an email you are not ashamed of. For a small business without a designer, that is more than enough.
Everything in one platform. Email, SMS, WhatsApp, forms, and a light CRM on a single invoice. For a team of one and a half people this is money: every extra tool is another learning curve, another subscription, and another place where data gets lost.
Transactional email is included. Order confirmations, bookings, password recovery. Many "email marketing" platforms do not touch this at all or charge for it separately. For a small e-commerce or a business with bookings, having it next to the campaigns simplifies life.
SMS is worth it in LATAM. If you handle appointments —dentist, salon, medical practice—, the SMS reminder arrives while the email is still sleeping in the promotions tab. Having SMS on the same platform as email, with the same contacts, is one of the real reasons to choose it.
What Brevo does not do well
Support on low plans. On the free plan and the entry plan (Starter), support is by email, with responses that can take hours or days; chat and dedicated phone support are reserved for the higher plans. When something breaks two hours before your send, this is the debt you pay for the entry price.
Automation limits by plan. On the free plan, automation is limited —it covers a small contact base and simple triggers—; the full builder, with more steps, conditions, and A/B tests, unlocks on the paid plans. Basic automations —welcome, reminder— are within reach from the start; complex branches and advanced steps usually require a higher plan. It is the point where most small businesses get frustrated as they grow.
Sparse templates. The ones it ships with are few and generic: they look used. You have to build your own template with the editor. It is not hard, but it is an hour nobody warned you that you would spend.
Basic reports on low plans. Opens, clicks, and the general figures for each campaign are on any plan; advanced reports —click heatmaps, breakdown by geography and device— are reserved for the higher paid plans. It is enough for deciding on specific campaigns; for attributing sales across channels, it is not.
Brevo plans and pricing in 2026
Brevo's prices change frequently, and there is a difference between monthly and annual billing. I am not going to invent numbers for you: this table tells you the structure and what to confirm on the official site before deciding.
| Plan | Price | What it includes | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 300 emails/day, up to 100,000 stored contacts, templates and forms | "Sent with Brevo" branding on sends and email-only support |
| Starter | From $9/month | No Brevo branding, more sending volume depending on what you buy | Price rises with email volume; support and automation remain limited |
| Standard | From $18/month | Full automation, A/B tests, advanced reports, multi-user | Can be more than a small business needs at the start |
| Professional | From $499/month | WhatsApp campaigns, AI features, priority support | Big price jump from Standard; designed for larger operations |
| Enterprise | Quote from sales | Custom volume and features, dedicated phone support | Contract and direct negotiation |
Prices are for monthly billing in dollars, as listed on brevo.com at the time of writing; with annual billing they drop a little. Brevo moves these numbers fairly often and also varies them based on the email volume you buy within each plan: confirm them on the official pricing page before paying.
My buying criterion, so you do not depend only on the table: start on the free plan and move to paid the day the limits hold you back two months in a row. An email platform is paid for with what the list already generates, not with what you hope it will generate.
Brevo vs Mailchimp vs MailerLite for a LATAM small business
| Tool | Entry plan | Strong point | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Free: 300 emails/day, up to 100,000 stored contacts | Email, SMS, and a light CRM on a single invoice | Support and automation on low plans |
| Mailchimp | Free, but trimmed: up to 250 contacts and 500 sends per month | Known brand and integrations: it connects with everything | Price grows fast with the list |
| MailerLite | Free up to 250 active subscribers and 2,500 emails per month | Simple, clean editor, contained price as you grow | Fewer channels: the focus is email |
One fact that changed the landscape in 2026: both Mailchimp and MailerLite cut their free plans hard this year (Mailchimp went from 500 to 250 contacts, MailerLite from 500 to 250 subscribers). Brevo's free plan, with its 300 emails per day and 100,000 stored contacts, remains the most generous of the three for anyone starting out.
My reading after building campaigns for small businesses: if your operation lives on appointments and reminders (restaurant, dentist, salon), Brevo wins by unifying email and SMS over the same contacts. If your project is a newsletter or a blog with affiliate links, MailerLite is simpler and enough. If you already pay for Mailchimp and the price does not hurt, moving for the trend does not pay for the move: migrate when a specific limit or invoice bothers you, not before.
Who should NOT use Brevo
- Teams that need advanced automation on day one. If your model depends on flows with many branches, lead scoring, and fine-grained rules from the start, there are platforms focused on that —probably more expensive— and Brevo will feel small exactly when you need it most.
- High-scale transactional sending. If you send millions of transactional emails per month (app notifications, marketplace receipts), a dedicated API provider gives you better cost and control than a marketing plan.
- Businesses that need a real CRM. Brevo's is light: it works for tracking clients and simple deals, not for a sales team with a pipeline and quotas. For that, the CRM first; email connects after.
- Anyone expecting ready-made templates for their industry. There are none. You bring your own design or build one in the editor.
How to set up your first Brevo campaign, step by step
The strategy —who to send to, with what goal, what to measure— is in the email campaigns guide, which includes a plan to launch in one day. Here is just the map inside Brevo:
- Create the account and verify your sending domain. Brevo guides you through the SPF and DKIM records. It sounds like engineer stuff and it is ten minutes following the wizard; it improves the delivery of all your sends.
- Import your list with permission. Never purchased databases. If the list is new, enable double opt-in: it slows down some signups, but it saves you complaints.
- Choose a template or start from blank. For the first one: logo, one text block, one button. Nothing else.
- Define the segment. Recent buyers, 90-day inactive... The whole list only if it truly applies.
- Write the subject line and preheader. Ten options, pick two. A/B tests are not on the free plan: they unlock from the paid plans (Standard onward); if your plan includes them, use them on the subject line before sending to the whole list.
- Test send to yourself and a colleague. Check it on the phone and confirm that the unsubscribe button exists and works.
- Schedule and measure what is honest: clicks and conversion, not opens.
With that, you sent your first campaign. The five-email welcome sequence —the one that works hardest— is set up the same way: a flow you write once.
Transparency note: affiliates
Some links in this post may be affiliate links: if you buy a plan through them, Crea Cosas receives a commission at no extra cost to you. The commission does not buy the verdict. The defects are still up there, the prices were checked against the official source and will be updated if Brevo changes them, and if Brevo stops being a good option for a small business, this review will say so with the same clarity it uses today to say the opposite. That is how affiliates work across the site: criteria first, link after.
Frequently asked questions
Is Brevo really free?
Yes, it has a truly free plan: up to 300 emails per day and up to 100,000 stored contacts, with no credit card and no expiration date. It is usually enough for a small business's first campaigns; the paid plan is justified when the limits hold you back more than once a month.
Are Brevo and Sendinblue the same thing?
Yes. Sendinblue changed its name to Brevo in 2023: same company, same platform, different name. Almost all old Sendinblue tutorials still work.
Can Brevo send WhatsApp messages?
Yes, but with a nuance that changes the math: WhatsApp campaigns in Brevo are reserved for the Professional plan (from $499/month) and up, not the free plan or Starter or Standard. They run on the WhatsApp Business API —you have to link your account and go through Meta's approval— and are charged separately, per message, based on the destination country. Coverage is broad (more than 130 countries, LATAM included), but before counting on this feature, confirm that the plan fits and check the per-message price in your country.
Can I move my list from Mailchimp to Brevo?
Yes. Export your contacts with their basic history and import them into Brevo. Import only the permission-based list and, for the first weeks, send to active contacts first: a new sender's reputation is built in the first sends.
Does Brevo offer support in Spanish?
The platform is available in Spanish and support varies by plan: on the free plan and Starter it is by email, with response times that can be hours or days; chat and phone support unlock on the higher plans, and Enterprise adds a dedicated deliverability specialist. For critical decisions, assume that on low plans the answer is slow.
Brevo is not the perfect platform; it is the reasonable decision for a small business that wants email, SMS, and a light CRM on a single invoice, with an entry plan that does not scare you. But the tool matters less than you think: the asset is the permission-based list and the discipline of building campaigns, not the logo on the dashboard. Choose the platform you can pay for without thinking twice, verify the limits on the day you sign up, and spend your energy on what no platform provides: messages your people want to open.
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