Brevo vs Mailchimp: Which Email Tool Is Better in 2025?

Email marketing continues to evolve rapidly, and choosing the right platform can significantly impact your marketing efficiency, lead nurturing, and long-term business growth. In 2025, Brevo and Mailchimp remain two of the most popular email tools—but they serve slightly different needs, budgets, and marketing styles.

This comparison breaks everything down clearly, from pricing to automation to real usage considerations. The goal is simple: help you decide which platform feels right for your workflow—not sell you any single tool.

Brevo vs Mailchimp: Detailed Comparison for 2025

1. Brevo vs Mailchimp Overview

Brevo Overview

Brevo is known for being an all-in-one communication suite, offering email marketing, transactional emails, automation, live chat, CRM, SMS, and WhatsApp—all under one ecosystem. It’s built for businesses that want a unified tool without needing multiple platforms or heavy integrations.

It’s particularly appreciated for its transparent pricing, unlimited contact storage, and easy-to-understand automation builder, which makes it helpful for both beginners and growing teams.

Mailchimp Overview

Mailchimp is one of the most recognized email marketing tools globally. It offers a polished interface, strong email templates, robust analytics, and a large marketplace of integrations. Over time, Mailchimp has expanded into an “all-in-one marketing hub” with features such as CRM, landing pages, and basic automation.

Mailchimp is favored for design flexibility, brand assets management, and beginner-friendly onboarding.

2. Pricing Comparison (2025)

Pricing often becomes the biggest deciding factor between these two tools.

Brevo Pricing Approach

Brevo charges based on the number of emails you send each month—not the number of contacts you store. This is ideal for:

• businesses with large lists
• senders who want predictable costs
• marketers scaling across multiple channels

The unlimited contact model means you can grow without worrying about rising per-contact fees.

Mailchimp Pricing Approach

Mailchimp uses a subscriber-based pricing model. As your list grows, the monthly cost grows as well. Additionally, unsubscribed contacts may still count toward billing until manually cleaned.

For small lists, it may feel affordable. For high-growth companies, it can become expensive quickly.

3. Ease of Use

Brevo

Brevo’s interface is clean and straightforward. The automation builder uses a visual workflow layout that beginners can understand without training. The simplicity is intentional, making it easy to implement foundational strategies like welcome sequences or lead nurturing.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp has a more modern, polished interface with extensive visual options. However, it can feel more complex due to the breadth of features and navigation layers. It excels in drag-and-drop design but the tool can be overwhelming for complete beginners.

4. Email Builder & Templates

Brevo

Brevo’s email builder is intuitive and supports dynamic content, personalization, and reusable design blocks. Templates are clean and business-focused, ideal for newsletters, promotions, and transactional messaging.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s builder is one of the best in the industry for design flexibility. You’ll find more artistic templates and creative layouts compared to Brevo. It’s a great fit for brands that prioritize visual identity and storytelling-heavy newsletters.

5. Automation & Workflows

Automation has become essential for modern digital marketing, especially when implementing strategies like those discussed in How to Turn Website Visitors Into Email Subscribers.

Brevo Automation

Brevo’s automation is intentionally simple yet capable. Common workflows include:

• welcome sequences
• abandoned cart emails
• lead scoring
• transactional flows
• customer segmentation
• marketing + transactional coordination

Brevo also integrates SMS and WhatsApp into automation, which is useful for multi-channel campaigns.

Mailchimp Automation

Mailchimp offers a variety of automation features including customer journeys, behavioral triggers, birthday emails, and e-commerce flows. The automation builder is powerful, but advanced flows may require higher-tier plans.

6. CRM & Contact Management

Brevo

Brevo includes a built-in CRM that connects directly with email, SMS, chat, and deal pipelines. This integrated system helps businesses manage customer touchpoints in one place.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp provides basic CRM features with segmentation, tags, and contact scoring. However, businesses needing deeper CRM capabilities may have to integrate with external CRM systems.

7. Deliverability

Both platforms offer strong deliverability. Performance often depends more on sender practices than the platform itself—list hygiene, authentication, and content quality matter significantly. For additional guidance, you can explore foundational strategies in Building Your Online Presence with Email Marketing, where consistent brand engagement improves deliverability organically.

Value Addition: The CLEAR Decision Framework

Use this framework to decide between Brevo and Mailchimp based on real-world priorities.

✅ C.L.E.A.R Framework

C — Cost Structure

• You prefer sending-based pricing → Brevo
• You prefer subscriber-based pricing → Mailchimp
• You want scalable monthly costs → Brevo

L — List Growth

• You have or expect a large list → Brevo
• You run small campaigns with low volumes → Mailchimp or Brevo both work

E — Ease of Use

• You want clean, simple workflows → Brevo
• You prefer flexible, high-design tools → Mailchimp

A — Automation Needs

• You need multichannel automation → Brevo
• You want deep email-only automation → Mailchimp (higher-tier plans)

R — Range of Features

• You want CRM + email + SMS + chat → Brevo
• You want email marketing with extensive design → Mailchimp

This framework makes the decision more structured rather than relying on opinions.

Comparison Table (Text Version)

Feature	Brevo	Mailchimp
Pricing	Send-based	Contact-based
Contact Storage	Unlimited	Limited (paid per subscriber)
Automation	Visual, simple, multichannel	Advanced, email-focused
Design Templates	Clean & functional	Highly creative
Ease of Use	Beginner-friendly	Feature-rich but complex
CRM	Integrated CRM	Basic CRM
Best For	Growing businesses, automation beginners, multichannel marketers	Visual brands, design-heavy newsletters, ecommerce marketers

Expert Insight

After working with more than 20+ email tools in different client environments, one pattern consistently stands out: the best tool is the one that aligns with your workflow, not the one with the longest feature list. For businesses that want multichannel communication, predictable pricing, and simple automation, platforms like Brevo tend to provide more clarity. On the other hand, creative-first brands—especially those producing visually driven newsletters—often prefer the design flexibility that Mailchimp provides. This is why understanding your own marketing process is more important than chasing the “best” tool on paper.

Conclusion

Choosing between Brevo and Mailchimp in 2025 depends on how you send emails, how fast your list grows, and what channels you want to incorporate. Brevo excels in unified communication, transparent pricing, and automation simplicity. Mailchimp remains a great choice for visually-rich campaigns, detailed analytics, and a polished design experience.

If you’re just building your presence, guides like Building Your Online Presence with Email Marketing or What Is Brevo? Complete Beginner’s Guide (2025 Edition) can help you understand foundational strategies before committing to a tool.

No matter which platform you choose, focus on providing value, segmenting your audience, and creating meaningful automated journeys—those are the strategies that drive long-term results.

FAQ

1. Is Brevo better than Mailchimp for beginners?

Brevo is generally easier for beginners due to its clean interface and simple automation. Mailchimp is also beginner-friendly but can feel more complex because of its wide range of features.

2. Which platform is more cost-effective in 2025?

For most growing businesses, Brevo tends to be more cost-effective due to its send-based pricing. Mailchimp can become expensive as your subscriber count increases.

3. Which tool is better for advanced automation?

Mailchimp offers advanced email automation on higher-tier plans, while Brevo offers powerful multichannel automation that includes SMS and WhatsApp.

4. Does Brevo include CRM features?

Yes, Brevo includes an integrated CRM, making it convenient for managing contacts, deals, and conversations in one place.

5. Is Mailchimp good for ecommerce?

Yes. Mailchimp integrates with major ecommerce platforms and offers features like abandoned cart emails and personalized product recommendations.

6. Can I migrate contacts between Brevo and Mailchimp?

Yes. Both tools allow CSV import/export, making migration straightforward.

7. Which is better for design-rich newsletters?

Mailchimp typically offers more creative templates and design freedom, making it ideal for brand-heavy, visually-driven newsletters.