Attio vs Brevo

Attio is a CRM from London-based Attio Ltd that is built like a database rather than a fixed sales pipeline. Objects (people, companies, deals or anything you define, such as workspaces or subscriptions), attributes and relationships are fully customizable, and every list is a filterable, sortable view over that data. Connecting Gmail, Google Calendar or Outlook lets Attio create records automatically and enrich people and companies, so the CRM fills itself as the team works.

On top of the data model sit workflows with triggers, branches and AI steps, reports for pipeline and activity, email sequences and, on Pro, call recording with AI summaries. The REST API and webhooks are first-class, which attracts startups that want product usage data to live next to customer data. Pricing is per seat: a free plan for up to three seats, then Plus, Pro and Enterprise, with SAML SSO, unlimited objects and audit logs at the top.

Attio suits startups and tech companies whose go-to-market teams like Notion- or Linear-style software and want to model their own business. It is thinner on marketing automation, support ticketing and ready-made integrations than HubSpot, and lacks the enterprise depth of Salesforce. Folk is a lighter relationship CRM for small teams, while Pipedrive remains simpler for classic deal pipelines.

Brevo, known as Sendinblue until its 2023 rebrand, is a French marketing and sales platform founded in Paris in 2012. It started with email marketing and transactional email and now covers SMS, WhatsApp campaigns, marketing automation, a sales CRM, live chat and landing pages, with a focus on small and mid-sized businesses.

Its pricing model is the main differentiator: marketing plans are based mainly on the volume of emails sent rather than the number of stored contacts, so companies with large but infrequently emailed lists pay much less than with contact-based tools. The free plan stores a large contact list but caps sending at 300 emails per day and adds Brevo branding. Starter removes the daily limit, Business adds marketing automation, A/B testing, send-time optimization and phone support, and Enterprise adds dedicated IPs, SSO, sub-accounts and service levels. Transactional email and SMS are also available through APIs, often used by developers for password resets and order notifications.

Brevo suits European SMBs, e-commerce stores and startups that want email, SMS and a light CRM in one place at a reasonable price, with GDPR-native data handling. Its template editor and automation builder are capable but less refined than the leaders. Mailchimp is more polished but costlier as lists grow, Klaviyo is stronger for Shopify-focused e-commerce, MailerLite is simpler and cheaper for newsletters, and ActiveCampaign offers deeper automation. For transactional email alone, Postmark or Amazon SES are more specialized.