Brevo (Sendinblue) is a powerful email marketing platform with great reviews and a decent feature set. Started in 2007, they have proven themselves trustworthy participants in the email marketing industry.
However, because Sendinblue is getting fairly expensive and deliverability rates are falling, business owners have started exploring different alternatives to Brevo for email marketing automation.
In this post, let’s look at some strong alternatives and see which one you can use for your email marketing strategy. We’ll also share some free alternatives and give you a comparative overview of all Brevo alternatives to help you make an informed choice. So, let’s begin.
Why Consider Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternatives?
If you’re looking for an email marketing solution that’s easy to set up and configure, Brevo is a good option. It doesn’t require much technical knowledge to get started, and it allows you to send emails quickly and easily. However, there are some drawbacks associated with using Brevo, due to which many businesses keep considering alternatives like Sender, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc. Some of its limitations include:
- Lack of Integrations. It doesn’t support integrations with several common CRMs or marketing automation tools, which makes it challenging to leverage data across different systems for running efficient email marketing campaigns.
- Unprofessional Customer Support. Customers often complain that Brevo’s customer support team is unfriendly and unresponsive, and some users report getting inaccurate and misleading responses to their queries. The support team’s lack of knowledge and experience makes it difficult to navigate the platform and get answers to simple questions, which is the very reason why most businesses prefer to avoid it altogether.
- Restrictive Features. Some business owners complain that Sendinblue’s features are overly restrictive as an email marketing tool and that it limits their ability to build campaigns, especially on the free tier and lower plans.
- Limited Automation Features. You’re limited to a few simple workflows, and you can’t automate more complex tasks, such as sending emails to multiple segments simultaneously.
- Deliverability Issues. Brevo can be bad at deliverability at times, damaging your customer relationships. According to recent email deliverability report data, it has an average deliverability of just 73.70%, which is too low compared to other providers.
Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternatives in 2023
There are a lot of limitations to using Brevo for your email marketing initiatives. So, let’s look at some of the alternatives you can consider for your next email marketing campaign. Here are the most popular alternatives to Brevo in 2023:
Let’s look at each email service provider one by one.
1. Sender – Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Competitor in Marketing Automation
Sender is a powerful marketing automation solution with everything you expect with Brevo. The best thing about Sender is its forever-free plan with no feature restrictions.
- Omnichannel workflow automation builder;
- Drag-and-drop email builder;
- Powerful segmentation features with behavioral and activity-based attributes;
- In-built popup and form builder with readymade templates;
- Excellent deliverability.
Sender allows you to create, manage, schedule, and execute elaborate automation campaigns with powerful analytics capacity. You can create automation flows with ease using a drag-and-drop automation builder. Plus, amazing behavioral capabilities, combined with great deliverability, make Sender the most viable alternative for businesses looking to nurture leads and grow revenue.
Why is Sender the Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative?
- User-friendly UI with simple drag-and-drop email and automation builder;
- A generous free plan that supports all premium features for up to 2500 subscribers;
- Supports omnichannel campaigns across SMS and email;
- Better deliverability owing to dedicated IP and deliverability best practices in place;
- More affordable, even for businesses with a large email list.
Best For
eComm business owners, small businesses, and startups that want to automate marketing across email and SMS without overspending on an email marketing automation solution. Also, suitable for businesses that want to set up automatic campaigns for lead nurturing, cart abandonment, follow-ups, etc.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Omnichannel automation with drag-and-drop workflow builder | No landing page builder (in progress) |
| Most affordable pricing plans with a free tier for up to 2500 subscribers | Sender logo in the free plan |
| Behavioral segmentation and personalization features |
Pricing
- Free forever plan that allows setting up campaigns for up to 2500 subscribers without any feature restrictions;
- Paid plan starts at $8.33 per month for sending up to 30,000 emails per month.
2. Hubspot – Best Brevo Alternatives in List Management
HubSpot is a robust Brevo (Sendinblue) alternative known for its free CRM and great list management features. Its marketing automation capabilities and wide range of integrations make it a great solution for anyone who wants to set up complex workflows to achieve marketing and growth goals.
- All-in-one marketing, sales, and revenue operations platform;
- Landing page builder;
- Lead scoring and nurturing;
- Free CRM;
- Conversion journey visualization.
Hubspot is popular among the marketing, sales, and inbound community as an all-pervasive tool that can manage everything essential to set up and grow a brand. With in-built tools like a landing page builder, visual journey builder, campaign management, sales automation, and more, you can easily attract, capture, nurture, and upsell leads and prospects.
However, the platform can be costly for small businesses as their pricing plans are on the higher side, with lots of restrictions on the starter plans.
Why is Hubspot the Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative?
- Integrated platform including a CRM, email automation, sales funnel visualization, and revenue operations management;
- Valuable features like forms, email personalization, landing page builder, social media management, etc.;
- Lead scoring and visual journey builder identify their most promising leads and nurture them over time;
- Advanced analytics and reporting tools to offer deeper insights compared to Sendinblue.
Best For
Large enterprises and B2B SaaS startups with a large budget for marketing automation and eagerness to create complex lead nurturing sequences.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Powerful marketing automation capabilities | Expensive pricing plans |
| Free CRM capabilities, including lots of sales and customer service tools | Steep learning curve |
| Landing page and form builder | Limited functionality and features on starter plans |
Pricing
- Paid plans start at $45 per month for up to 1000 contacts with limits on advanced automation features;
- A free 14-day trial is available to test the platform.
3. Mailchimp – Best Alternative by the Number of Integrations
Mailchimp needs no introduction to the world of email marketing automation. Like Brevo, Mailchimp is intended to be used as an all-in-one marketing platform. They have everything you need to get started and help you leverage the power of marketing automation.
- Drag-and-drop email and landing page builder;
- Standard segmentation and personalization options;
- A/B testing and email optimization;
- Integrates with 100+ marketing tools, apps, and CRMs.
Mailchimp is no different from Brevo in terms of features. Most of them are locked behind increasingly more expensive plans. However, Brevo charges you based on the number of emails sent, while Mailchimp’s pricing is based on the number of contacts in your email list.
Mailchimp is the choice for a Brevo alternative if you want to go with a provider with a long-standing industry reputation. While they might have pretty high prices and a similar feature set to SendInBlue, you can test it out for your business goals and use cases.
Why is Mailchimp the Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative?
- Drag-and-drop landing page builder;
- Unique features like appointment scheduler and email optimization;
- Segmentation and personalization features to nurture the leads well;
- Integrations with over 100 popular tools, including social media platforms, eCommerce apps, and CRMs.
Best For
Business owners, early-stage startup founders, and enthusiasts looking to start with email marketing automation need a lot of integrations to link everything with their existing tech stack or business operations.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Drag-and-drop landing page and form builder | Predatory pricing model with paid add-ons |
| Appointment scheduling feature | Non-transparent strategy for counting the number of subscribers |
| Integrations with all major marketing, CRM, and eCommerce apps | Limited automation options |
Pricing
- Free plan available for up to 500 subscribers and 1000 emails sent per month;
- Paid plans start at $9.29 monthly (billed annually) for up to 500 subscribers and 500 email sends.
Also read: 11 Best Mailchimp Alternatives for 2023 (Incl. Free Competitors)
4. Mailgun – Best Alternative for Automation using API
Mailgun is designed primarily for developers who want to automate email operations using an API. The service markets itself as a transactional email API and is trusted by 150,000 businesses around the globe.
- Email APIs, SMTP Relay, and webhooks;
- Suppression management;
- Email tracking and analytics;
- Inbound email routing;
- Email address verification access.
Mailgun is primarily an email delivery service API and is heavily tech and developer-focused instead of being a marketing growth tool. This means it offers a slightly extended email marketing feature set, including features like send times optimization, email routing, analytics, logs, etc.
Developer-first doesn’t mean it is too complex. They have dashboards to look at analytics and a no-code email builder to give you the ability to compose emails without coding. Unfortunately, all of the features above that don’t include an email API cost extra. That means you would essentially be buying several products at once if you want to try Mailgun.
Mailgun is so focused on providing a transactional email API that buying additional add-ons won’t make it as exciting as other email marketing platforms on the list.
Luckily, the pricing is quite impressive. They boast some of the best prices per email sent in the entire industry. As such, as an alternative to Brevo (Sendinblue), Mailgun only really stands out for those who want to use their transactional email API. For everything else, there are better choices.
Why is Mailgun the Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative?
- Dedicated IP and API for large-scale transactional email campaigns;
- Powerful real-time email tracking and analytics;
- Industry-leading email deliverability with features to reduce bounce rates and spam reports;
- Email address verification features to improve the quality of email lists;
- Easily integrates with leading email suites like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
Best For
Businesses with an in-house development team that wants deeper control over their email marketing data and analytics. Also, suitable for eCommerce stores that are looking to deploy transactional emails for their business.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Dedicated IP to improve deliverability | No automation or workflow builder, apparently |
| Great API service to connect with your existing marketing stack | Pricing model can soon turn out to be expensive as you scale |
| Transactional API features that can be customized as per requirement | No landing page builder or standard features are found in other email marketing tools |
Pricing
- Free plan that allows sending up to 5000 emails per month;
- Paid plans start at $35 per month for sending up to 50,000 emails per month.
5. CampaignMonitor – Brevo Competitor with the Best Email Templates Library
CampaignMonitor is one of the few established email marketing platforms that give a strong fight to Sendinblue in terms of features. They are primarily focused on delivering outstanding email marketing experience and have a large library of responsive email templates and great automation features.
- Advanced tracking and analytics features;
- Drag-and-drop email builder;
- A/B testing and optimization;
- High email deliverability rates;
- Integrations with hundreds of popular tools.
CampaignMonitor can be amazing for professional marketers who can use all the automation and analytics. Additionally, CampaignMonitor has smart audience segmentation that allows you to squeeze out every bit of email personalization and optimization.
Additionally, there are lots of small features that are useful for SMBs. They have a visual customer journey designer that makes automation easier for those who aren’t tech-savvy. There’s also the “Link Checker” that automatically attempts to go through links that are included in emails. If the link is dead, the tool informs the user about that.
CampaignMonitor is great for data-driven marketers. Smart audience segmentation, advanced analytics, and other features will all come in handy when optimization becomes the driving force for the campaign. Yet, if one requires a larger set of more general tools, Brevo or other competitors are better.
Why is CampaignMonitor the Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative?
- Vast library of ready-to-use responsive email templates;
- Great segmentation features based on subscriber activity;
- Great email deliverability rates across geographies and industries;
- Automatic link checker to prevent any chances of goof-ups.
Best For
Businesses who want to nurture leads based on online behavior and understand what works best for growing their revenue. Also, great for eCommerce store owners that love automated campaigns across different stages of the buyer’s journey.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Advanced tracking and analytics features | Doesn’t have a landing page builder |
| Great email deliverability rates | Clunky email template builder |
| Integrates with hundreds of popular tools | Some features are only available on higher-tier plans |
Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers and 2500 emails sent per month;
- Free limited-period trial is also available.
6. Drip – Best Brevo Alternative for Landing Page
Drip is primarily designed to boost your eCommerce email automation plans. It has some amazing features to build long-term relationships through an omnichannel approach across email, website, and social media.
- Omnichannel campaign automation with a drag-and-drop workflow builder;
- Readymade automation templates;
- Personalize in-store online customer experience through forms and popups;
- Powerful segmentation and analytics capabilities.
Drip has some interesting features that will boost your store conversion rates. Take its behavioral segmentation feature, for example. You can use the dynamic segmentation feature to deliver hyper-targeted messaging across your emails and website to ensure it clicks. The readymade automation templates are a fantastic time saver.
Some powerful best practices and strategies are embedded within the platform’s flow and features, like a drive-first purchase strategy that guides you on making someone buy from your store for the first time. Then the powerful analytics dashboard is also helpful for eCommerce business owners.
Why is Drip the Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative?
- Ecommerce-centric feature set and templates designed for everyday use cases;
- Powerful integrations with all eCommerce platforms and marketing tools;
- Pre-built automation sequences to save time and grow revenue quickly;
- Smart A/B testing and in-app insights based on your growth goals.
Best For
eCommerce business owners who want to grow their revenue by leveraging marketing automation. Also, suitable for beginners who want to understand the full impact of marketing automation on nurturing leads and improving the bottom line.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Ready-to-use automation templates | Can feel costly for small business owners |
| Powerful behavioral segmentation and user journey flows | No split testing available for email content |
| Integrations with all major solutions, eCommerce stores like Shopify/WooCommerce, and marketing suites | Suitable only for eCommerce businesses that too on higher plans |
Pricing
- Paid plans start at $39 per month for up to 2500 subscribers;
- Free 14-day trial is also available with limits and restrictions.
7. SendGrid – Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative with SMTP
SendGrid is a solid email marketing service provider with SMTP features and its own API to help you achieve high deliverability rates of up to 96%. The platform comes with all the standard email marketing automation features you expect from a modern platform.
- Extensive library of responsive templates;
- Email API and SMTP service with great deliverability;
- Drag and drop email campaign editor;
- Reporting and analytics dashboard.
Sendgrid can be called a data-oriented platform with lots of features for optimization, ROI, and analytics. The platform is great for those who want to squeeze every detail out of an email campaign. Additionally, there’s a lot of utility for developers who want API access. Even the free plan can use the API for whatever reason.
SendGrid is highly accessible even to those who don’t have a lot of tech-savvy skills. While developers will be required to take advantage of all the features, SendGrid has a ton of useful guides, tutorials, and other resources that make it easier to use the platform. Very few other email marketing providers are known to support developers and noobs alike like Sendgrid.
Why is SendGrid the Best Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternative?
- Developer-focused API and documentation for scaling up email marketing operations;
- Great email deliverability owing to dedicated IPs and SMTP email support;
- Cross-team collaboration capabilities with an intuitive UI;
- Drag and drop email editor with lots of responsive templates.
Best For
SendGrid is an excellent alternative for companies with dedicated developers and data analysts. You can use it for all sorts of campaign automation use cases and improve your email analytics and deliverability with ease.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Intuitive user interface with several great features | Limited automation capabilities |
| Powerful analytics capabilities | Customer support is not very fast and responsive |
| Great reporting and analytics dashboards | Some features can become too complex for a person with a non-development background |
Pricing
- Paid plans start at $19.95 per month for sending up to 50,000 emails;
- Free plan is also available that supports sending up to 100 emails per day.
8. EmailOctopus – Best Alternative with Drag and Drop Editor
EmailOctopus is a great alternative to Sendinblue if you’re looking for a powerful drag-and-drop email builder. It has an amazingly simple UI and comes with an affordable pricing plan with all the advanced features.
- User-friendly UI with unique drag-and-drop features;
- Great automation and segmentation features;
- Integrates with Zapier for workflow automation;
- A/B testing and deep analytics.
You can use EmailOctopus to create responsive and beautiful email campaigns using its no-code builder. It also features advanced capabilities like marketing automation workflows, A/B testing, and robust analytics to automate your marketing and keep an eye on success metrics.
Additionally, the platform has integration capabilities with all the popular apps you are used to, making it easy for you to take control of your operations. The pricing plan is also more affordable than Sendinblue, making it great for small business owners.
Why EmailOctopus is the Best Brevo Alternative?
- Simple and user-friendly interface;
- Integrations with popular apps like Zapier to automate operations;
- Affordable pricing plan;
- Great segmentation and personalization features;
- Interesting dashboard UI and a transparent pricing model.
Best For
Small business owners, eCommerce stores, and marketers who want to focus on growth without the hassle of dealing with a complex platform or a clunky UI.
Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Affordable pricing plan | Not so responsive customer support |
| Great landing page builder | Lacks advanced email automation options |
| GDPR compliance and great deliverability | Not-so-responsive customer support |
Pricing
- Free plan that supports up to 2500 subscribers and 10000 emails per month;
- Paid plan starts at $8 per month for up to 500 subscribers, 10k emails, and unlimited landing pages/forms.
Free Brevo (SendInBlue) Competitors: Comparison Table
While most of these alternatives to Brevo have some form of a free trial or free plan, most of the platforms won’t get you far. You will either be severely limited in the features you can use or the subscriber counts and email volumes are so low that there’s no real way a proper business could use them. As such, we’ve decided to give you a quick rundown of the best free Brevo alternatives. These platforms have a free plan, grant enough features, and can fit a decent number of subscribers or emails before you need to upgrade.
- Aweber
- Sender
- Mailchimp
Let’s compare each one to help you make an informed decision.
| Aweber | Sender | Mailchimp | |
| Contacts | 500 | 2500 | 500 |
| Emails per month | — | 15000 | 1000 |
| Daily limits | — | No limits | – |
| Support | 24/7 Live chat, email | Only first 30 days | |
| Automation | 1 Automation Sequence | No Limits | Limited |
| Email Scheduling | — | – | |
| Advanced Reporting | – | – | |
| Contacts segmentation | — | Basic | |
| User seats | 1 | Unlimited | 1 |
| Integrations | — |
Alternatives to Brevo (Sendinblue): Price & Feature Comparison Table
| Sender | HubSpot | Mailchimp | Mailgun | CampaignMonitor | Drip | SendGrid | EmailOctopus | |
| Contacts | Up to 2 500 (Free Plan) | Up to 1,000 (free plan) | Up to 500 (Free Plan) | Unlimited | Up to 500 contacts (Starter Plan) | Up to 2500 (Starter Plan) | Up to 2000 contacts (Free plan) | Up to 2500 subscribers (Free Plan) |
| Emails | Up to 15 000 (Free Plan) | Up to 2,000 (free plan) | Up to 1000 | 5000 emails/month (Free plan) | 2500 emails per month (Starter Plan) | Unlimited | Up to 6000 emails (Free plan) | 10,000 emails per month (Free plan) |
| Daily limits (Free account) | Unlimited | 500 per day | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Support | 24/7 Live Chat + Email | Email and Live Chat (free plan) | Email-only, first 30 days | Email Support | Email Support | Email Support | Email Support | Email Support |
| WordPress Integration | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” |
| Email Automation | “+” | “+” | Basic | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” |
| Email Templates Library | “+” | “+” | Basic | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” |
| Advanced Segmentation | “+” | “+” | Basic | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” |
| Email Scheduling | “+” | “+” | – | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” |
| Advanced Reporting | “+” | Basic on Lower Plans | – | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” | “+” |
| Geography & device reporting | “+” | “+” | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Heat map reporting | “+” | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Advanced open & click stats. | “+” | Basic on Lower Plans | – | “+” | “+” | “+” | Basic | “+” |
| Multi-user access | Unlimited | – | Limited on Lower Plans | Limited on Lower Plans | Limited on Lower Plans | – | Limited on Lower Plans | Limited on Lower Plans |
| Pricing | $8.33 per month for 2500 subscribers and up to 30k emails per month | $45 per month for up to 1000 contacts (subscribers) | $9.36 per month for 500 subscribers and 5000 emails per month | Paid plans start at $35 per month for sending up to 50,000 emails per month. | Paid plan starts at $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers and 2500 emails sent per month; | $39 per month for up to 2500 subscribers | Paid plans start at $15 per month for sending up to 15,000 emails; | Paid plan starts at $8 per month for up to 500 subscribers, 10k emails, and unlimited landing pages/forms. |
Key Takeaways: Brevo (Sendinblue) Alternatives
- Always test different email marketing tools using a free plan before migrating to a paid plan;
- Never upload your customer data to a platform before you are absolutely sure of using it for your email campaigns;
- Choose a Brevo alternative that’s more affordable and gives you access to everything, plus additional features, if any;
- Pick an email marketing software with advanced features like drag-and-drop automation builder, deep segmentation, A/B testing, etc.
Also read:
Author Bio
Anmol Ratan Sachdeva is a content marketer and small business consultant who has a strong grip on topics like marketing automation, email marketing, and content marketing. He loves to write about building, improving, and growing a business.
