Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue before its 2023 rebrand, has spent the last several years positioning itself as the all-in-one marketing platform for growing businesses: email, SMS, WhatsApp, CRM, transactional messaging, and even landing pages, all under one roof. What sets Brevo apart from nearly every other tool on this list is its pricing model. Instead of charging based on how many contacts you have, Brevo charges based on how many emails you send per month. For businesses with large but infrequently-emailed lists, this can mean dramatic savings. For businesses that send daily campaigns to smaller lists, it can mean the opposite. Let’s dig into how Brevo actually works in 2026.

What Is Brevo and Why the Volume-Based Pricing Matters

Brevo is a Paris-based marketing platform that has grown into one of the most feature-dense tools in the industry. Its core differentiator, pricing by email send volume rather than contact count, is worth understanding before anything else, because it fundamentally changes how you should evaluate the platform relative to competitors like Mailchimp or Klaviyo. If you have 50,000 contacts but only send a monthly newsletter, Brevo can be dramatically cheaper than a contact-based competitor. If you have 5,000 contacts but send daily automated flows, that same volume-based pricing can push your bill higher than expected.

Core Features

Brevo’s feature set is genuinely broad, which is part of its appeal as an “all-in-one” platform:

• Email campaign builder with a solid drag-and-drop editor and transactional email API
• SMS and WhatsApp marketing built directly into the platform, metered and billed separately from email
• Marketing automation with visual workflow building, available from the Starter tier upward with usage caps, and unlimited on Standard and above
• A built-in CRM for tracking deals and contact history alongside marketing activity
• Landing pages, available on Standard tier and higher
• A/B testing and advanced reporting and analytics, also gated to Standard and above
• Transactional email infrastructure, useful for developers who want marketing and transactional email under one account
• A free plan allowing up to 300 emails per day, useful for very small operations testing the waters

Brevo Pricing in 2026

Brevo’s pricing structure has multiple tiers, and the details matter because the entry-level plan is more limited than it first appears.

• Free Plan: Up to 300 emails per day, a genuinely usable amount for small senders, but automation is capped at 2,000 contacts and lacks advanced reporting or landing pages.
• Starter Plan: Begins around $9/month for 5,000 emails per month, scaling up to roughly $29/month for 20,000 emails and $69/month for 100,000 emails. This tier removes daily sending limits but keeps the Brevo logo in your email footer unless you pay an additional $10/month to remove it, and it does not include landing pages or advanced reporting.
• Standard Plan: Begins around $18/month for 5,000 emails, scaling to roughly $65/month at 20,000 emails and $129/month at 100,000 emails. This unlocks landing pages, A/B testing, advanced analytics and reporting, and unlimited marketing automation.
• Professional Plan: Priced around $499/month starting at 150,000 emails, aimed at high-volume senders who need AI-powered features and deeper channel integration across email, SMS, and WhatsApp.
• Enterprise: Fully custom pricing, typically for large organizations with complex multi-brand or multi-team needs.

One detail that surprises a lot of new users: SMS and WhatsApp messaging are never bundled into any email plan. They are metered and billed separately, so a campaign that mixes channels generates a second, separate charge on your bill. Similarly, SAML single sign-on is available as an add-on priced around $324/month, a detail that does not appear on the main pricing page and only shows up if you go looking for it.

The Good: What Brevo Does Well

Brevo’s core strength is breadth. Very few platforms in this price range bundle email, SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM, transactional email, and landing pages into a single account. For businesses that want to consolidate their marketing stack rather than juggling separate subscriptions for each channel, that consolidation has real value, both financially and operationally. The volume-based pricing model can also be a genuine advantage for businesses with large, low-frequency lists, something contact-based platforms like Mailchimp or Klaviyo simply cannot match at scale. The free plan, while limited, is also one of the more usable free tiers in the industry thanks to its daily (rather than monthly) send allowance.

The Bad: Where Brevo’s Pricing Gets Tricky

The volume-based pricing cuts both ways. High-frequency senders, especially ecommerce brands running daily promotional campaigns or multiple automated flows per subscriber per month, can find their Brevo bill climbing quickly compared to a contact-based platform. The jump from Standard ($18 to $129/month depending on volume) to Professional ($499/month) is also unusually steep, leaving a gap where businesses that have outgrown Standard but do not need Professional’s full AI suite may feel stuck. The logo-removal fee on the Starter plan, and the fact that landing pages and reporting require an upgrade to Standard, mean the advertised low starting price does not reflect what most serious users will actually end up paying.

Who Should Use Brevo?

Brevo makes the most sense for businesses that want a genuinely all-in-one marketing stack, particularly those already interested in combining email with SMS or WhatsApp outreach. It is also a strong fit for businesses with large contact lists that email relatively infrequently, such as a monthly newsletter to a list of 50,000 or more, where volume-based pricing works in your favor. Developers who want transactional and marketing email under a single API and account will also appreciate Brevo’s dual capability. On the other hand, ecommerce brands running frequent, high-volume automated flows should carefully model their expected send volume before committing, since costs can escalate faster than they would with a contact-based competitor.

Brevo vs. the Competition

Against Mailchimp, Brevo is generally cheaper at comparable usage levels while offering a broader multichannel feature set, particularly around SMS and WhatsApp. Against MailerLite and ActiveCampaign, Brevo’s all-in-one CRM and transactional capabilities give it an edge for businesses wanting fewer tools in their stack, though MailerLite remains cheaper for straightforward email-only use cases. Against HubSpot, Brevo offers a similar “email plus CRM” combination at a dramatically lower price point, though HubSpot’s CRM depth and enterprise integrations go considerably further.

The CRM and Sales Features

Beyond email, Brevo’s built-in CRM lets you track deals, log contact interactions, and assign follow-up tasks to team members, all connected to the same contact records used for email and SMS campaigns. This is a genuinely useful feature for small sales teams who want basic pipeline visibility without paying for a dedicated CRM tool like HubSpot or Pipedrive. It is not as deep as a purpose-built sales CRM, there is no advanced forecasting or complex multi-stage automation tied to deal movement, but for a small business that just wants to know which leads are in which stage of their sales process, it covers the basics well and comes bundled into the same subscription as your email marketing.

Transactional Email Capability

Brevo’s dual capability as both a marketing and transactional email platform is worth calling out specifically, because it means developers can use the same account and API to send both promotional campaigns and system-triggered emails like password resets, order confirmations, and shipping notifications. This consolidation can meaningfully simplify a company’s tech stack, since many businesses otherwise run a separate transactional email service like SendGrid or Postmark alongside their marketing platform. Brevo’s transactional email is billed based on the same volume-based model as marketing email, so high-volume transactional senders should factor that into their cost calculations carefully.

Onboarding and Ease of Use

Brevo’s interface, while feature-dense, is organized in a way that keeps core email marketing functions accessible without requiring users to wade through SMS, WhatsApp, or CRM settings they may not need immediately. New users can build and send their first campaign relatively quickly using the drag-and-drop editor, though unlocking the platform’s full multichannel potential, connecting SMS, WhatsApp, and CRM workflows together, does involve a real learning investment as you move up through the tiers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to pay for SMS and WhatsApp separately even if I’m on Brevo’s Professional plan? Yes, regardless of your email plan tier, SMS and WhatsApp messaging are always metered and billed as a separate line item based on volume sent. Is Brevo a good fit for a business with a very small, highly engaged list that emails daily? Not necessarily the best fit financially, since Brevo’s volume-based pricing means frequent senders to a small list may find a contact-based platform like Mailchimp or MailerLite more cost-effective. Can I remove Brevo’s branding on the free plan? No, branding removal requires at least the Starter plan plus the additional $10/month add-on fee.

Final Verdict

Brevo has built one of the more genuinely useful all-in-one marketing platforms available in 2026, and its volume-based pricing model is a real point of differentiation that can save money for the right kind of business. But that same pricing model means Brevo is not automatically the cheapest option for everyone, particularly high-frequency ecommerce senders. If your business would benefit from consolidating email, SMS, WhatsApp, and light CRM functionality into one platform, and your sending patterns are moderate rather than extreme, Brevo is well worth serious consideration.