Brevo vs Kit

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.

Kit, known as ConvertKit until its 2024 rebrand, is an email marketing platform built for creators: newsletter writers, course creators, podcasters, coaches and YouTubers who earn money directly from an audience. Founded by Nathan Barry in 2013 and based in Boise, Idaho, the company has stayed focused on one job, helping a single creator or a small media business grow and monetize an owned email list.

The product favors substance over design. The editor is text-first, which keeps emails personal and helps deliverability, while subscribers are organized with tags and segments rather than separate lists, so one person is never counted twice. A visual automation builder reacts to form signups, link clicks and purchases, and landing pages, forms and a link-in-bio page are included. Kit Commerce sells digital products, paid newsletters and tips; the Creator Network lets other newsletters recommend yours, and a referral program rewards readers who share. The free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends; Creator and Pro plans are priced by list size and add unlimited automations, integrations, subscriber scoring and deeper reporting.

Kit fits independent creators who value simple, reliable automation and built-in monetization. It is a poor match for image-heavy retail campaigns or B2B lead management. beehiiv is the main rival for media-style newsletters with an ad network, Substack suits writers who want a social platform and take a revenue share, and Mailchimp or Klaviyo are better for online stores.