Brevo vs Mailchimp for a small business

Quick answer: Choose between Brevo and Mailchimp with the same list and sending calendar in both plan pickers. Brevo’s paid plans tie monthly sends to a stored-contact ceiling; Mailchimp’s contact tier carries a monthly-send multiple. For a 5,000-contact list, two full-list campaigns mean 10,000 planned sends and eight mean 40,000. Both providers have plausible paid configurations, but their public starting rates do not price these particular configurations. Brevo plans · Mailchimp plans

Check the list before the price. Five thousand people you actively mail may not equal 5,000 billable Mailchimp contacts. Its terms also count unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts in an audience, while Brevo’s selected paid send tier has its own stored-contact cap. Export the actual counts and choose the relevant tiers before comparing quotes. Mailchimp terms · Brevo plans

Put the same workload in both columns

Suppose a small business has one consented list of 5,000 contacts. It sends either two or eight campaigns to the whole list in a month. Those schedules use 10,000 or 40,000 planned marketing sends respectively. The calculation is audience size × campaign count. It excludes welcome messages, test sends, resends and any list growth; add those from your own calendar before selecting a plan. If some campaigns target a segment, use that segment’s actual recipient count instead of treating every send as a full-list campaign. Our monthly-send worksheet covers that arithmetic in more detail.

The Mailchimp plan guide states the Essentials 10× and Standard 12× monthly-send rules. The 50,000 and 60,000 figures above are multiplication, not quoted prices. Brevo’s plan table lists early paid tiers of 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 monthly sends with storage ceilings of 500, 1,500 and 2,500 contacts respectively. None can hold the modeled 5,000-contact list, even when the send total alone appears to fit. Move to a tier that holds the list as well as the calendar, then obtain its actual price. Do not infer that the lowest 10,000-send tier is the two-campaign answer.

For eight campaigns, 40,000 is close enough to an allowance that welcome emails and an unplanned sale announcement could affect the tier choice. If each of 200 new contacts receives a three-message welcome series, that adds 600 sends. One more 5,000-person campaign adds another 5,000. A forecast with those two changes becomes 45,600. Decide whether they are real parts of your schedule; do not automatically buy a large buffer without a reason. The higher Brevo send range and its matching contact allowance must be selected in the live picker. The public help page does not provide a complete configured US price for this case.

The free plans solve different small-list problems

For a business still testing a modest list, Free can be useful, but its headline limit is not the same on each service. Brevo Free documents 300 sends per day and up to 100,000 stored contacts. A business with 1,000 contacts can store that list yet cannot send one 1,000-recipient campaign on a single day within the 300-send cap. Splitting an announcement over several days changes its timing and may be unsuitable for a sale or event.

Mailchimp Free documents 250 contacts, 500 monthly sends and 250 daily sends. It can fit a very small audience with light activity, but the 5,000-contact examples do not fit. These figures compare capacity, not a promise of the same templates, automation or support. If a trial is part of the decision, test it with the workflow you actually intend to run and then price the paid plan that would serve the full list.

Count contacts the way the provider does

Mailchimp’s terms define contacts more broadly than subscribed newsletter recipients: subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts in an audience can count. Archived, cleaned, reconfirmed and pending contacts are excluded under the cited terms. The audience guidance also warns that keeping the same person in multiple audiences can raise the total contact count. An exported list of 5,000 currently subscribed people therefore is not automatically a 5,000-contact billing tier.

Open the contact summary in the existing account and record the billable count, each audience’s purpose and which suppression states must survive migration. Do not archive people merely to make a quote look smaller if the business still needs their status or history. If 5,000 active people plus retained unsubscribed and non-subscribed records push the count above a tier boundary, re-run the Mailchimp calculation at the next applicable contact tier. A higher tier also changes the 10× or 12× send figure. Mailchimp’s contact-count model may be easier to budget when the list is stable, but it can surprise a team with duplicate audiences or old inactive records.

Brevo’s plan guide likewise requires attention to storage. Some shorthand describes Brevo as charging only for sends; that misses the paid-tier contact caps. Count the contacts you would actually store, including records retained for consent or suppression purposes, and check the selected tier’s capacity. A business that has few campaigns but a sizable customer database can hit the contact gate first. Conversely, a modest database with frequent broadcasts may hit monthly sends first. Neither unit by itself settles the fit.

Match the welcome flow and team work

Campaign capacity is only one decision. Brevo’s quota documentation caps unique contacts entering active automations at 2,000 in the new editor on Free and Starter; Standard removes that particular cap. This is not a 2,000-contact storage limit and not a limit of 2,000 automated messages. A list of 5,000 existing customers could still have only 300 new people enter a welcome flow during the month. Backfilling the entire list into that flow would be a different workload. Write down the expected entrants and any planned one-time enrollment before deciding whether Starter’s automation allowance is sufficient.

Mailchimp’s plan guide lists up to four-step automation flows on Essentials and expanded automation on Standard. Sketch the actual flow before judging the feature: entry trigger, each timed message, purchase or reply exit, and any branch or exclusion. A simple welcome sequence might fit Essentials, while a journey that needs more steps or conditions calls for checking Standard in the live builder. Feature names do not tell you whether an existing automation will import intact from another service. Budget the reconstruction and acceptance test as part of the move.

If two people will use the account, include both seats and their roles in the configured quote. One may build campaigns while another approves or reads reports. Do not assume that access levels, approval workflow and extra-seat costs match because both products support teams. Ask the live plan pages or sales flow for the exact combination you need, then perform a role check during the trial. A cheap single-user quote is not the same purchase as a two-person process.

EmailTooltester’s comparison favors aspects of Mailchimp’s editor and highlights Brevo’s automation and list management from its own use. Those impressions are helpful questions for a trial: Can your teammate build the usual campaign quickly? Can you locate a segment and review a flow without workarounds? They are not measurements of your team’s speed, and editor preference should not override a failed contact or automation limit.

Compare configured prices, not starting banners

Brevo’s published Starter and Standard starting prices, and Mailchimp’s interactive marketing offers, do not quote these 5,000-contact scenarios. The apparent difference between two landing-page amounts can disappear when contact tier, send allowance, seats, automation access and billing term are aligned. Mailchimp’s marketing pricing includes promotional language; Brevo’s plan information says displayed prices exclude tax and describes annual payment separately. Compare the amount you would pay for the same period, including any promotional end and renewal conditions.

For each provider, save a dated quote with these fields:

Price the two-campaign and eight-campaign schedules separately if both represent realistic months. A business with seasonal peaks might prefer a configuration that handles the busiest month or a supported way to adjust plans; verify that option in the live checkout rather than assuming unused sends carry forward. Once the quotes use the same workload and term, the actual cost difference is easy to calculate. Until then, there is no reliable dollar winner.

If you are migrating, run a small acceptance pack

Moving vendors is more than uploading a CSV. Mailchimp documents contact export and contact import; Brevo documents its import process. These paths give you a starting point, while your account decides how much work lies in fields, tags, consent history and automations. Set a release date that leaves time to test before the next important campaign.

1. Export a representative sample and record subscribed, unsubscribed and suppressed counts separately. Keep the full backup under your normal access and retention rules.
2. Map the fields and segments you use in an actual campaign, including the status that prevents an opted-out person from receiving mail.
3. Rebuild one welcome flow with its entry, exit and timing rules. Send test messages to an approved test group and check that a person does not receive two versions after the cutover.
4. Set up the sender domain and verify a representative campaign’s links, unsubscribe path and reply address in the destination account.
5. Confirm that the teammate who needs reports or approval can perform that task. Capture the destination account’s contact and send usage after the sample.
6. Keep the original account available long enough to check reports, suppression history and rollback options under your own retention policy.

Use a pass/fail note for each step. A failure in suppression mapping is more consequential than a slightly slower editor, while a missing approval permission may block a two-person team even if campaigns can be sent. If migration is not needed because the business is starting fresh, the same small acceptance test still helps distinguish a plan that merely lists a feature from one that supports your actual process.

Brevo is worth shortlisting when its selected contact-and-send tier fits and its automation, sales or list workflow matters to your team. Mailchimp is worth shortlisting when the billable-contact tier and workflow rights fit and the team prefers its campaign-building process. The deciding evidence is your counted audience, modeled schedule, working trial and matched current quotes—not a generic ranking. For a much larger Brevo send requirement, the 50,000-email guide examines its internal plan choice; a creator selling a digital product may also want the Brevo–Kit comparison.