Brevo vs MailerLite

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.

MailerLite is an email marketing platform from Vilnius, Lithuania, founded in 2010. The same company also makes MailerSend for transactional email and MailerCheck for list verification. MailerLite is known for a clean interface, good deliverability and prices that stay among the lowest in its category as a list grows.

The product covers drag-and-drop, rich text and custom HTML editors, automation workflows with triggers, conditions and delays, segmentation, A/B testing, landing pages, a simple website builder, signup forms and pop-ups. Creators can sell digital products and paid newsletter subscriptions through Stripe, and e-commerce integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce and others support product blocks and abandoned cart flows. An AI assistant helps with subject lines and copy. A free plan covers small lists, and paid plans scale by subscriber count, with higher tiers adding unlimited users, custom HTML, Facebook integration and more automation options.

MailerLite fits small businesses, bloggers, creators and nonprofits that want a polished tool at a fair price. New accounts go through an approval process that can delay launch, and reporting and automation are less advanced than ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo. Mailchimp has more integrations and brand recognition at a higher price, Brevo is attractive when you also need SMS and transactional email, and Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is more creator-focused.