Systeme.io vs Brevo — which should you choose?

Systeme.io and Brevo are both EU providers, both have a usable free plan, and neither is expensive. So the usual differentiators do not help. The difference is in what they count: Systeme.io counts contacts, Brevo emails sent — and that dictates both free plans’ limits as much as the price.

The short answer

Choose Systeme.io if the list is under 2,000 names and you write to it often, or if you sell a course or coaching. The free plan has no sending limit, and funnels and a course platform come in the same price.

Choose Brevo if the list is large but the newsletter goes out rarely, or if you need text messages, a CRM or online shop events in the same tool. A 10,000-name list costs €28 a month when two newsletters go out a month.

Comparison table

The recommendation concerns this page’s most common reader: a list under 2,000 names that is written to regularly. With that profile Systeme.io is free and Brevo’s daily limit comes up — that is a figure that has been read, not an assessment. Systeme.io is also the only one of these two that pays us a commission, so the basis is written out and turns the other way further down. How ad links affect the content.

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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.(ad) = ad link

• The price is the monthly price of the cheapest paid plan at that list size. The Free plan column shows when you do not have to pay.

The free plans limit from different ends

This is the most important point in the comparison, because at both the free plan is genuinely usable — unlike MailerLite’s and Mailchimp’s 250-contact plans, which are only enough for trying things out.

• Systeme.io: 2,000 contacts, sending is not capped. The features are limited: three sales funnels, one automation rule and one online course.
• Brevo: list size is not limited, but you may send 300 emails a day, about 9,000 a month.

The practical difference shows in the very first campaign. To a 1,500-name list Systeme.io sends the newsletter in one go and as often as you like. On Brevo’s free plan the same campaign takes five days, because 300 emails is a daily limit, not a monthly quota. On the other hand, if you are building a 20,000-name list and not yet sending it anything, Systeme.io’s limit came up long ago and Brevo’s never does. Five free plans side by side and who lacks one: free email marketing.

The pricing model decides on the paid plans too

The same difference continues on the paid plans. Systeme.io sells a contact quota, Brevo a sending quota, so the same list costs different amounts at different sending paces. Below are both sets of tiers in their own currency — we do not convert dollars to euros, because the rate cannot be read from a price list and carries no date.

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Read from the services’ own price lists (Systeme.io, Brevo) on 3 September 2026, monthly prices excluding VAT. Systeme.io does not bill in euros at all, so the exchange rate comes on top of the bill. Brevo’s annual billing is 10 per cent cheaper; on Systeme.io’s annual billing two months are free. Brevo’s marketing automation and A/B testing are on the Standard plan, not on Starter.

One step in Brevo’s table is worth noting: at 20,000 emails the contact quota jumps from 2,500 to 500,000. After that list growth does not raise the price at all, only sending pace does. That is why a large, rarely emailed list is unusually cheap at Brevo — and why the same list gets expensive quickly if you start writing weekly.

At Systeme.io the logic is the reverse: sending pace does not affect the bill at all, but the contact ceiling comes up in steps. The rule of thumb is the same as throughout the comparison: multiply subscribers by sends per month, and take that figure to Brevo’s price list. Both models opened up: two pricing models.

What the price includes

• Only at Systeme.io: sales funnels, online courses and their payment handling, order management and your own affiliate programme.
• Only at Brevo: text messages and WhatsApp, transactional emails, a CRM and online shop event tracking. Some are on a different plan or priced separately: marketing automation and A/B testing require the Standard plan, Sales Essentials costs €26.08 a month and removing the Brevo logo on the Starter plan €8.10 a month.

The extra fees are worth counting in before you compare Brevo’s €7 starting price with anything. Logo removal and automation are exactly the two things a small business usually wants — and neither is part of the cheapest package.

How contacts are counted

In the contact-based model the counting rule is part of the price, and it is on the help page, not the price list. Of these two the question only concerns Systeme.io — and that is exactly where it cannot be read.

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The rules are read from the providers’ own help pages. “Not read” means the rule could not be opened in the original source — we do not guess it in either direction.

• Brevo. The price is set by monthly sending volume rather than contact count, so the question of counting unsubscribed contacts does not apply to Brevo the way it does to the others. The flip side is that the same list costs more the more often you write to it.
• Systeme.io. The plan limits are contact counts (free plan 2,000, Startup 5,000, Webinar 10,000). All nine contact-management articles in the help centre were read on 5 September 2026: none of them says which contact statuses count toward the plan limit. The guides advise cleaning the list, but the counting rule is not published. So we claim nothing either way until it can be read or has been asked from support.

At Brevo the question does not exist the same way, because the price does not follow contact count. At Systeme.io it exists but is unanswered: the help centre’s contact-management articles tell you to clean the list but do not say which statuses count toward the 2,000-contact limit. We claim no rule either way until it can be read. The rules for all seven services: how contacts are counted.

Deliverability: only one of them has a meter

We do not test deliverability ourselves. Below are two things: Tooltester’s 2017–2024 series as history — it ended in January 2024, and the source no longer stands behind its method — and eight points from the services’ own help pages, which are the current basis of this comparison.

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Tooltester ended the series with the January 2024 round and explained why in August 2026: seed lists proved unreliable and providers started optimising for them. The figures are therefore history, not a measurement of current deliverability.

Source: Tooltester deliverability test, 12 rounds 8/2017–1/2024. About 80 seed addresses, 28 providers, shared IP addresses. Average across all platforms in the latest round 83.1%. Average and range calculated from the published rounds.

Deliverability features from the help docs

Eight points read from each provider’s own help pages on 13 September 2026. This replaces percentages as a buying basis: a feature can be checked and dated, a seed-list result no longer can. Every cell links to the article it was read from.

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Yes = the help page describes the feature. No = the help page says it is absent or points to an external tool. — = not found in the help pages; that does not mean the feature is absent.

As history: in Tooltester’s series Brevo’s average was 82.7% and its range the widest of the five we compare; Systeme.io was not in the series. The series ended in January 2024.

Read from the help pages, Brevo offers three things Systeme.io does not. The Deliverability center shows a deliverability score and recommended actions on every plan; a dedicated IP with automatic warm-up and a deliverability expert only on the Professional plan. Systeme.io’s help page tells you to start with small volumes without a schedule and points record checking to external tools. The basics are at both.

Most of deliverability is still the sender’s own responsibility — authentication, list quality and sending pace: what Gmail and Yahoo require of senders.

Data location: both in the EU

Brevo is a French company and stores the data in the EU. Systeme.io is operated by Irish ITACWT Limited, and according to the privacy policy the data is in AWS’s Irish data centre and is not transferred outside the EU. Both read from the policies on 3 September 2026.

Neither therefore requires recording a transfer basis outside the EU, unlike Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign. What to check with the processor: email marketing and GDPR.

A third option if you only want a newsletter

If you do not sell a course and do not need text messages, both hold a lot you will never open. EmailOctopus is deliberately narrow: 2,500 subscribers free, a paid plan at €16 a month at 2,500 subscribers, and no funnels, CRM or text messages included. The line between the two cheapest runs at about 5,000 subscribers: Brevo vs EmailOctopus.

If, on the other hand, you want a predictable bill by contact count without sending pace affecting it, MailerLite does that for €29 at 2,500 subscribers.

Which one for you