Brevo vs Mailchimp

At a Glance

This is not a comparison between two European platforms. Mailchimp is the default name in email marketing — an Atlanta company owned by Intuit since 2021, with servers in the United States and a brand most marketers learned first. Brevo is the Paris-built platform that grew up as Sendinblue and now positions itself as the European answer. The real question is not which tool has more features. It is whether Mailchimp's polish justifies its pricing and US data jurisdiction once your business sits under GDPR.

Pricing and Contact Economics

Both platforms now scale their prices with list size, but they start from very different places.

Mailchimp charges by contact count. Essentials starts at $13 per month for 500 contacts, Standard at $20, and Premium at $350 for 10,000 contacts. Send allowances scale with the plan — 10x contacts on Essentials, 12x on Standard, 15x on Premium. Two details deserve attention. Unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts still count toward the billed limit, so a list you cannot legally email continues to cost money. And the free plan now stops at 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends, which rules it out for most active businesses.

Brevo restructured its plans in late 2025 and now prices by contact bands too. Paid plans on brevo.com start at EUR 7 per month (Starter) and EUR 15 (Standard) for small lists. A slider then scales each plan's price by contact count — Standard quotes up to 500,000 contacts, the Professional plan (from EUR 499) up to two million. Brevo's old promise of unlimited contacts on cheap send-based plans is gone, so compare quotes at your actual list size rather than the headline "from" prices. The free plan still works differently: 300 emails per day, a ceiling most small senders hit on volume rather than list size.

Mailchimp's model does suit one profile: a small, clean, highly engaged list that gets mailed constantly, where generous send multipliers matter more than list headroom.

Edge: Brevo, at the entry level. A EUR 7 starting price undercuts Mailchimp's $13, and the free tier's daily send allowance is far more usable than Mailchimp's 250-contact cap. At larger list sizes the gap narrows — price both calculators before assuming either is cheaper.

Email Editor, Templates, and AI Features

Credit where it is due — Mailchimp remains the benchmark for the campaign creation experience. Its drag-and-drop editor is more refined than Brevo's, its template library is larger and better designed, and Intuit has pushed genuinely useful AI assistance into subject lines, content generation, and campaign recommendations. Reporting is deep, and the onboarding is famously smooth for first-time senders.

Brevo covers the same ground functionally: a capable editor, responsive templates, A/B testing, and send-time optimisation. Its editor has improved but still feels utilitarian next to Mailchimp's. Where Brevo pulls ahead is breadth of channel. SMS and WhatsApp campaigns run from the same contact base as email, a built-in CRM tracks deals alongside marketing activity, and a dedicated transactional SMTP relay ships with every plan — including the free one. Mailchimp offers transactional email only through its separate, separately billed Mailchimp Transactional add-on (the former Mandrill).

Edge: Mailchimp for the editing and template experience. Brevo for multi-channel scope and bundled transactional email.

Data Protection, GDPR, and EU Hosting

Here the gap is structural, not cosmetic.

Mailchimp states plainly that its servers are located in the United States, and it offers no EU data residency option. For European customers, lawful transfers rest on its certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, with Standard Contractual Clauses incorporated into its Data Processing Addendum as fallback. That is a legitimate compliance posture today. It is also a dependent one: the DPF's predecessors, Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield, were both struck down by the EU Court of Justice, and legal challenges to the current framework continue. A Mailchimp customer's subscriber data additionally sits inside a US financial-software group, subject to US jurisdiction, including CLOUD Act reach.

Brevo removes the question rather than answering it. The company is French, data is stored and processed in the EU by default, and no transatlantic transfer mechanism is needed for the core service. GDPR tooling — double opt-in, consent tracking, DPAs — is native, and the platform carries SOC 2 certification. For businesses in regulated sectors, or any team that would rather not re-audit its email stack each time transfer law shifts, that is a materially quieter position.

Mailchimp is usable in a GDPR-compliant way. Brevo is GDPR-boring, and boring is what a data protection officer wants.

Edge: Brevo, decisively. Default EU hosting under EU jurisdiction beats a transfer framework with a contested legal history.

Deliverability and Ecosystem

Mailchimp's integration ecosystem is enormous — hundreds of connectors, first-party plugins for every major e-commerce and CMS platform, and near-universal support from third-party tools. Since the Intuit acquisition it also ties into QuickBooks, which matters for small US businesses running their books there. Its sending infrastructure is mature, and deliverability for well-managed lists is consistently solid.

Brevo's ecosystem is smaller but covers the platforms European SMBs actually run: Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Salesforce, and Zapier, plus a well-documented API and webhook support. Its transactional heritage shows in the separation of marketing and transactional sending streams, so a promotional misfire does not drag down order confirmations. Neither platform publishes deliverability guarantees, and list hygiene decides more than vendor choice here.

Edge: Mailchimp for sheer integration breadth and brand-name third-party support.

When to Choose Brevo

Choose Brevo if your budget is tight and your list is small to mid-sized — its entry pricing starts at roughly half of Mailchimp's, and the free tier is genuinely usable. It is also the pick when GDPR posture is a hard requirement rather than a checkbox — French company, EU servers by default, no transfer framework to monitor. E-commerce teams get a further reason: transactional email, SMS, WhatsApp, and a basic CRM ship in one account instead of three subscriptions.

Brevo is the right pick when you want EU-jurisdiction email marketing at a lower entry price, and you can live with a plainer editor.

When to Choose Mailchimp

Choose Mailchimp if you are a small team sending your first campaigns and want the gentlest learning curve in the category. Its editor, templates, and AI-assisted content tools produce professional campaigns faster than any rival here. Deep integration coverage — including QuickBooks under the Intuit umbrella — makes it the path of least resistance inside a US-centric tool stack. It also works for compact, engaged lists where contact-based pricing stays cheap and generous send multipliers do the heavy lifting.

Mailchimp is the right pick when creative polish and ecosystem reach outweigh billing economics and data location — and your compliance team is comfortable relying on the Data Privacy Framework.

The Verdict

Credit first: Mailchimp earned its position honestly. It is still the smoothest campaign builder in email marketing, with the largest template and integration catalogue and real AI tooling behind it. None of that has changed since Intuit bought it.

What has changed is the context for European buyers. Billing that counts unsubscribed contacts, a shrunken free tier, US-only servers, and a dependent transfer framework all carry a running cost in money and compliance attention. A French platform with EU-default hosting avoids the compliance half of that cost entirely. Brevo gives up editor polish and ecosystem depth, and gains a lower entry price, bundled SMS and transactional email, and jurisdictional quiet.

For European businesses, Brevo is the stronger default in 2026, and the case gets stronger the larger the list. Mailchimp stays the better tool for design-led teams with small engaged lists, US-anchored stacks, or a genuine dependence on its template and integration catalogue. If neither fits, the wider field of European Mailchimp alternatives covers more specialised needs.

FAQ

Is Brevo better than Mailchimp?

For most European businesses, yes — on economics and compliance rather than polish. Brevo starts at a lower price point, hosts data in the EU by default, and bundles SMS, WhatsApp, transactional email, and a CRM. Mailchimp remains ahead on editor quality, templates, AI content tools, and integration breadth, so design-led teams with small lists can still reasonably prefer it.

Is Mailchimp GDPR compliant?

It can be used in a GDPR-compliant way, but Mailchimp's servers are in the United States and it offers no EU data residency. Transfers rely on its EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification, with Standard Contractual Clauses as fallback. That framework's predecessors were both invalidated by the EU Court of Justice, so customers carry ongoing legal-monitoring overhead that an EU-hosted platform avoids.

Why switch from Mailchimp to Brevo?

The two common triggers are cost and jurisdiction. Both platforms now price by list size, but Brevo's plans start lower and its free tier is more forgiving. Smaller senders usually pay less — run both pricing calculators at your list size to be sure. The second trigger is data protection: Brevo keeps data in France under EU law, which simplifies GDPR paperwork and removes transatlantic transfer risk.

Is Mailchimp still free?

Barely. The free plan is now limited to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month with basic templates, which most active businesses outgrow immediately. Brevo's free plan allows 300 emails per day — roughly 9,000 per month — making it the more usable long-term free tier.

Who owns Mailchimp?

Intuit, the US maker of QuickBooks and TurboTax, completed its $12 billion acquisition of Mailchimp in November 2021. The platform operates as The Rocket Science Group LLC d/b/a Mailchimp, an Intuit company under US jurisdiction. Brevo, by contrast, remains an independent French company headquartered in Paris.