Brevo vs Capsule CRM

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.

Capsule is a CRM made by Zestia, a Manchester, UK software company founded in 2009 by Duncan Stockdill, Phil Haines and Wendy Rule. It launched as Javelin and was renamed Capsule in 2010. Its core job is giving small teams one tidy place for contacts, companies, sales pipelines, tasks and follow-ups without the setup burden of larger CRMs.

The product covers contact and company records, multiple sales pipelines with custom milestones, project boards for post-sale delivery, tasks and calendar sync, email tracking via Gmail and Outlook, workflow automation and reporting dashboards. Recent AI features include a pipeline generator, AI summaries, contact and business enrichment and meeting prep. Transpond, Capsule's own marketing tool, is an add-on from $11 a month. A free plan supports two users; paid tiers are Starter, Growth, Advanced and quote-based Ultimate.

Capsule fits agencies, consultancies, B2B service firms and small sales teams that value simplicity and strong accounting links (Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent). It is not built for high-volume outbound teams or complex enterprise processes. Pipedrive is stronger for activity-driven selling, folk is lighter for relationship-led networking, and HubSpot or Zoho CRM suit companies that want marketing and service hubs too.

Buying tip: workflow automation, multiple pipelines and most AI features start on Growth, so Starter mainly suits one to five people with one pipeline. Annual billing saves 10 to 18 percent depending on tier, and the 14-day trial needs no card and unlocks every feature.