Shortlist Brevo first if you want campaigns, transactional email and basic sales tools in one account. Keep Mailchimp on the shortlist when its marketing workflows and your existing store connections do the job you need. The familiar claim that Brevo charges only for sends is now incomplete: its lower paid tiers also limit stored contacts.
The important choice is how to serve your audience without a sending interruption or unexpected upgrade. Count the people you store, the messages you send and the automation you need separately.
Table of Contents
The free plans solve different problems
| Limit | Brevo Free | Mailchimp Free |
|---|---|---|
| Stored contacts | Up to 100,000 | Up to 250 |
| Email allowance | 300 per day | 500 per month; 250 per day |
| User access | One user | One seat |
| Main planning constraint | Delivering a campaign to everyone on the same day | List size and the monthly sending allowance |
These limits come from Brevo’s Free plan FAQ and Mailchimp’s pricing page. Brevo’s unused daily sends do not accumulate. Its storage allowance is therefore not a promise that you can immediately email every contact.
Brevo says campaigns larger than the daily allowance need manual requeuing to reach the remaining recipients over subsequent days. That is a material drawback for a product launch, event deadline or time-sensitive offer. A daily limit should be tested against the biggest individual campaign, rather than converted into a theoretical monthly total.
Brevo’s paid contact limits change the calculation
Starter and Standard currently begin with tiers of 5,000 monthly emails and 500 stored contacts, 10,000 emails and 1,500 contacts, or 15,000 emails and 2,500 contacts. Higher tiers have different storage allowances. Moving from Free to paid does not automatically preserve the much larger Free storage limit. Brevo’s current plan guide.
For Mailchimp, subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts can count towards the bill. Archived contacts do not. Ask for a price using the chargeable contact total, rather than only the subscribers receiving your next campaign. Mailchimp explains contact status.
The consequence is simple: neither product can be priced accurately from email volume alone. Write down your current stored audience, how that number is likely to change and the sending peak you must support. This is particularly useful when moving an old customer database into a marketing platform.
An illustrative training-business example
Imagine a training provider with 1,500 contacts sending two newsletters a month, plus 200 booking confirmations. That is 3,200 messages if every newsletter reaches the full list. This is an illustrative workload, not a vendor benchmark.
Brevo’s 5,000-email paid tier looks sufficient when you examine sends alone, but its 500-contact cap would not fit that database. The 10,000-email tier accommodates 1,500 contacts, though the business would still need to choose the feature level required. Brevo Free could store the audience, but sending a 1,500-recipient campaign takes at least five days at 300 sends daily, assuming no other email uses the allowance.
Mailchimp Free cannot accommodate that contact count. A paid quote must include the appropriate audience tier and any transactional service needed. Once those requirements are written down, the comparison becomes a practical quote exercise instead of an argument over two starting prices.
Our email marketing software guide gives a wider shortlist if both quotes are unsuitable.
Campaign email and operational messages
Brevo lists transactional email among its Free features, alongside campaigns and a limited set of sales tools. Starter removes the daily send cap; Standard adds features including A/B testing, advanced reporting and automation without the lower plan’s automation-contact restriction. Removing Brevo branding is an add-on on Starter and included on Standard. Brevo plan differences.
Mailchimp offers a separate Transactional service that can be added to Standard or Premium monthly marketing plans. Its documentation describes a developer-oriented service using APIs. Treat that as a separate implementation and budget item, rather than assuming a newsletter subscription covers all application-generated messages. Mailchimp plans and add-ons.
For either product, map operational and promotional messages separately. Decide which system owns an appointment confirmation, which owns a newsletter subscription, and what should happen after an unsubscribe. Mixing those responsibilities can produce duplicate messages and make faults harder to investigate.
Test the automation with a real business event
Use one journey that affects revenue: a prospect asks about a course, receives relevant information, books, then leaves the prospect sequence. Check the actual trigger, delay, condition and exit rule. The word “automation” on a feature list does not explain how your particular journey will work.
Brevo Free permits up to 2,000 unique contacts to enter active automations; storing more contacts does not expand that limit. Existing contacts continue through their workflows when that ceiling is reached, while new contacts cannot enter. Brevo automation limits.
Also test the source of truth. If your sales team updates a separate CRM, confirm whether that change reaches the email platform and stops the right sequence. Our CRM with email marketing guide can help you decide where customer and sales records should live.
What to include in the final quote
- Both audience and sends. Include retained contacts that do not receive regular campaigns and one unusually busy month.
- The complete workflow. Check automation limits, reporting, branding removal and who needs separate access.
- Operational messages. Include transactional email implementation and any separately purchased credits or services.
- The billing commitment. Brevo offers monthly billing or annual prepayment with a published 10% discount. Compare like-for-like commitments and renewal costs.
- UK payment details. Confirm currency and tax at checkout. Mailchimp describes non-USD pricing as an exchange-rate estimate; avoid treating it as a guaranteed pound charge.
Do not move a mailing list solely because a comparison promises better deliverability. Test your own domain setup, sample messages, subscription handling and reporting. This article provides no evidence that either platform will generate more sales or inbox placements for your particular audience.
The decision
Choose Brevo when its combination of messaging and sales functions meets a defined process and the quoted tier covers both contacts and sends. Choose Mailchimp when its existing marketing connections and workflows justify the complete cost, including any add-ons. For an established business, a successful small migration rehearsal is better evidence than a headline price or a generic winner.
Checked 9 September 2026 against official documentation. Examples are illustrative.
