Choosing the right email marketing and CRM platform can have a major impact on how effectively a business communicates with its customers, manages leads, and grows its audience.

For years, Mailchimp has been one of the best-known names in email marketing. But today, businesses have more powerful alternatives, and Brevo has become one of the strongest options for companies looking for an affordable email marketing platform combined with CRM and multichannel communication.

So, which one is actually better: Brevo or Mailchimp?

Our verdict: For most small businesses, startups, agencies, freelancers, and growing companies, Brevo offers better overall value because it combines email marketing, CRM, automation, transactional messaging, SMS, WhatsApp, and sales tools in one platform.

However, Mailchimp remains a strong option, particularly for marketers who prioritize its mature email-marketing ecosystem, templates, audience tools, and advanced marketing features.

Let's compare them in detail.

What Is Brevo?

Brevo is an all-in-one customer relationship and marketing platform designed to help businesses communicate with customers across multiple channels.

Originally known primarily for email and transactional messaging, Brevo has expanded into a broader platform covering:

• Email marketing

• Marketing automation

• CRM

• SMS marketing

• WhatsApp campaigns

• Transactional email

• Sales pipelines

• Live chat

• Meeting scheduling

• Contact management

• Segmentation

• Analytics

• AI-powered marketing features

This makes Brevo more than just an email newsletter tool.

Brevo's platform is designed around the idea that businesses should be able to manage customer communication from one place instead of connecting multiple tools together.

Its automation system can trigger communications based on actions such as subscribing to a list, purchasing a product, or abandoning a shopping cart.

What Is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is one of the most established email marketing platforms in the market.

It started primarily as an email marketing service and has expanded into a broader marketing platform with features such as:

• Email campaigns

• Marketing automation

• Audience management

• Segmentation

• A/B testing

• Landing pages

• Marketing CRM

• Behavioral targeting

• Predictive demographics

• Generative AI

• Reporting and analytics

Mailchimp remains a very capable platform, especially for marketers who want sophisticated email creation and marketing automation capabilities.

The question, therefore, isn't whether Mailchimp is good.

It is.

The more important question is whether it offers the best overall value for your particular business.

Brevo vs Mailchimp: Quick Comparison

1. Email Marketing

Both platforms are excellent for creating and sending professional email campaigns.

Brevo provides a drag-and-drop email editor, reusable templates, campaign analytics, automation, segmentation, and AI-assisted features.

Mailchimp also provides a powerful email builder, templates, A/B testing, dynamic content, automation, and content-generation tools.

So, when it comes purely to basic email marketing, there isn't a huge difference.

Winner: Tie

Mailchimp has an extremely mature email marketing experience, while Brevo provides everything most businesses need without requiring a large marketing stack.

2. CRM Features

This is where Brevo becomes particularly interesting.

Brevo combines marketing and sales functionality in the same platform. Its CRM and sales tools include contact management, deals, pipelines, meeting scheduling, tasks, reports, and conversations.

Brevo's free sales features include a sales pipeline, open deals, meeting scheduling, live chat, and sales reporting. More advanced sales capabilities are available through paid packages.

Mailchimp also has marketing CRM capabilities and strong audience-management tools. Its strength, however, is still primarily on the marketing side.

If your goal is to manage leads and marketing communications in one system, Brevo has a particularly compelling advantage.

Winner: Brevo

3. Marketing Automation

Automation is essential if you want to build customer journeys instead of manually sending every email.

With Brevo, you can create workflows based on customer behavior and events. For example:

1. A visitor subscribes to your newsletter.

2. Brevo sends a welcome email.

3. The customer receives educational content.

4. The customer visits a product page.

5. A follow-up campaign is triggered.

6. The customer makes a purchase.

7. A transactional confirmation is sent.

8. The customer enters a post-purchase campaign.

Brevo also supports automation across channels such as WhatsApp, allowing businesses to create workflows around events such as purchases, abandoned carts, and new subscriptions.

Mailchimp also has powerful marketing automation flows, segmentation, and behavioral targeting. Its Standard plan, for example, includes expanded automation flows and pre-built segments.

Winner: Brevo for multichannel automation; Mailchimp for sophisticated email-focused marketing workflows.

4. SMS and WhatsApp Marketing

This is one of Brevo's biggest advantages.

Modern businesses don't communicate only through email. Customers may prefer SMS, WhatsApp, chat, or other channels.

Brevo brings email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and other communication tools into the same ecosystem. It also supports WhatsApp campaigns and automated WhatsApp messages.

This can be extremely useful for:

• Ecommerce stores

• Online courses

• SaaS businesses

• Service companies

• Appointment-based businesses

• Agencies

• Local businesses

• Customer-support teams

Instead of maintaining separate systems for email, CRM, SMS, and customer conversations, you can centralize more of your communication in Brevo.

Mailchimp also offers SMS marketing capabilities, but its overall positioning remains more centered around marketing and audience management.

Winner: Brevo

5. Transactional Email

Transactional email is different from marketing email.

Marketing email includes newsletters, promotions, product announcements, and campaigns.

Transactional email includes things such as:

• Password resets

• Order confirmations

• Account notifications

• Shipping updates

• Verification emails

• System notifications

Brevo supports transactional messaging through its transactional platform and email API. This makes it particularly attractive for SaaS products, ecommerce stores, and websites that need both marketing and system-generated emails.

Winner: Brevo

6. Pricing and Value

Pricing is one of the biggest reasons businesses consider Brevo.

Brevo's current Free plan includes up to 300 email sends per day and allows storage for up to 100,000 contacts. Its Starter plan starts at $9/month, while the Standard plan starts at $18/month according to Brevo's current pricing information.

One important difference is the pricing philosophy.

Brevo's paid plans are largely structured around the amount of email you want to send, while Mailchimp's paid pricing is primarily influenced by the number of contacts in your account and the plan you choose.

Mailchimp's current free plan supports up to 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends. Its paid plans increase their limits based on contact count, with additional charges possible if contact or sending limits are exceeded.

This distinction can make a major difference.

Imagine you have 10,000 contacts but only send a few campaigns each month.

A contact-based pricing model can become expensive because you are paying to store a large audience even if you don't email everyone frequently.

For businesses with large contact lists and moderate sending volumes, Brevo can therefore provide attractive economics.

Winner: Brevo for many small and growing businesses

Pricing should always be checked before purchasing because plans, limits, promotions, and regional pricing can change.

7. Ease of Use

Both platforms are designed for non-technical users.

You don't need to be a developer to create campaigns, manage contacts, build automation workflows, or analyze campaign performance.

Mailchimp has an especially mature interface and a large ecosystem of tutorials, integrations, templates, and marketing resources.

Brevo is also relatively straightforward and focuses on putting multiple communication channels into one dashboard.

For a beginner who only wants to send newsletters, both are good.

For a business that wants email, CRM, sales, SMS, WhatsApp, and transactional messaging in one place, Brevo can feel more practical because fewer separate systems are required.

Winner: Brevo for an all-in-one setup; Mailchimp for a mature email-first experience.

8. Templates and Design

Mailchimp has built a strong reputation for its email templates and email design experience.

Its content tools include email templates, dynamic content, a content studio, generative AI, and subject-line assistance.

Brevo also offers a drag-and-drop email editor, reusable sections, custom templates, AI features, and campaign-design tools.

For most businesses, both platforms provide more than enough design capability.

Winner: Slight advantage to Mailchimp

This is one area where Mailchimp's long history in email marketing gives it an advantage.

9. Integrations

Mailchimp has a large and mature integration ecosystem, which can be important for businesses already using a wide range of marketing and ecommerce tools.

Brevo also supports integrations and APIs and provides transactional email integrations for platforms such as WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento.

If your business already has a deeply integrated Mailchimp setup, switching platforms may not be worth the migration effort.

But if you're starting from scratch, Brevo's broader combination of marketing, CRM, sales, and communication tools can be attractive.

Winner: Mailchimp for ecosystem maturity; Brevo for an integrated all-in-one approach.

Brevo vs Mailchimp: The Real Verdict

So, is Brevo actually better than Mailchimp?

For most small businesses and growing companies, our answer is yes.

But that doesn't mean Mailchimp is a bad product.

Far from it.

Mailchimp remains one of the strongest email marketing platforms available. It has excellent design tools, sophisticated audience management, powerful automation, segmentation, testing, and a large ecosystem.

The reason we give Brevo the overall edge is that modern businesses often need more than newsletters.

They need:

• Email marketing

• CRM

• Sales pipelines

• Automation

• Transactional email

• SMS

• WhatsApp

• Customer conversations

• Contact management

• Lead nurturing

Brevo brings many of these functions together in one platform.

That can reduce the number of separate tools a business needs to pay for and manage.

Who Should Choose Brevo?

Brevo is an excellent choice if you are:

• A startup trying to keep software costs under control

• A small or medium-sized business

• An ecommerce company

• A SaaS business

• An agency managing multiple campaigns

• A freelancer

• A business that needs transactional emails

• A company using SMS or WhatsApp

• A business that wants CRM and marketing in one platform

• A company with a large contact database but moderate email-sending requirements

Brevo is especially compelling when you want one platform instead of stitching together several different marketing and communication tools.

Who Should Choose Mailchimp?

Mailchimp can be the better choice if:

• Your business is heavily focused on email marketing

• You already have a mature Mailchimp workflow

• You rely heavily on Mailchimp's ecosystem

• You prioritize its email templates and content tools

• Your marketing team already knows Mailchimp

• You need specific Mailchimp integrations or features

• Your organization has complex email-marketing requirements

Mailchimp's current platform offers advanced segmentation, automation, A/B and multivariate testing, behavioral targeting, predictive features, and other marketing capabilities.

Final Rating

Our Final Recommendation

If you're looking for the best email marketing CRM tool for a modern small or medium-sized business, Brevo is our overall recommendation.

It offers a strong combination of email marketing, CRM, automation, transactional messaging, SMS, WhatsApp, and sales functionality.

Mailchimp is still an excellent choice, particularly for businesses that are heavily invested in email marketing and its ecosystem.

But if you're starting fresh and want a platform that can grow beyond newsletters into a broader customer-communication system, Brevo offers the better overall balance of features, flexibility, and value.

In simple terms:

Choose Brevo if you want an affordable all-in-one marketing and CRM platform.

Choose Mailchimp if your priority is a mature, email-first marketing platform with a large ecosystem.

For most startups, freelancers, agencies, ecommerce businesses, and growing companies, Brevo gets our vote.

Bottom Line

Brevo isn't automatically better at everything. Mailchimp still wins in some areas. But when you consider the complete package—email marketing, CRM, automation, transactional messaging, SMS, WhatsApp, sales tools, and pricing flexibility—Brevo is the more compelling choice for many businesses today.

The best tool is ultimately the one that matches your audience size, sending volume, marketing strategy, integrations, and budget. But if you're choosing between Brevo and Mailchimp from scratch, Brevo is the platform we'd recommend starting with.