Brevo alternatives — what replaces it and when switching pays

Brevo is among the cheapest in our comparison, and at a large list it is the cheapest: 10,000 names cost €28 a month. Its model, though, is different from the others — it bills for emails sent, not list size — and that is exactly where the situations arise in which an alternative is worth looking at.

The short answer

• When you write often

  EmailOctopus

  €36/month for 10,000 subscribers regardless of sending pace — Brevo charges €41 for the same list with a weekly newsletter.

  Start free — 2,500 subscribers (ad)

• When the list needs cleaning

  MailerLite

  “Clean up inactive” removes the inactive in one view — at Brevo the same is done by hand with a segment — and the bill is the same every month.

  Start free — 250 subscribers

• When the free plan’s daily limit got in the way

  Systeme.io

  2,000 contacts and unlimited sending without paying anything.

  Start free — 2,000 contacts (ad)

Brevo and six alternatives

Prices are monthly prices excluding VAT, read from the services’ own price lists on 3 September 2026. For each we took the cheapest paid plan that supports that list size. Brevo’s column assumes two newsletters a month — it is the only figure in the table that also depends on sending pace.

← scroll →

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.
• EmailOctopus and ActiveCampaign: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.
• GetResponse and ActiveCampaign: the smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact column shows that price.

Three situations where switching pays

Brevo is not a bad tool, and this page does not claim it is. It is bad for three use cases, and they are worth recognising in your own situation before you compare prices.

1. You write often. In the volume-based model every extra newsletter shows on the bill. In the contact-based model it does not show at all.
2. The free plan’s daily limit cuts off a campaign. 300 emails a day means a 1,000-name list gets its newsletter over four days.
3. List cleaning is manual work. Brevo’s help page tells you to segment the inactive and blocklist them yourself — as a counterweight, Brevo is the only one that shows a deliverability score in the app.

If none of these applies to you, the bottom line is honestly this: stay with Brevo. For a large, rarely emailed list it is the cheapest option in the comparison.

Where sending pace flips the bill

This table is where to start, because it is the only thing at Brevo that changes from month to month. Below is the monthly price of a 10,000-name list by sending pace, with two contact-based tools whose price does not move at all as the reference.

← scroll →

Read from the services’ own price lists (Brevo, EmailOctopus, MailerLite) on 3 September 2026, excluding VAT. Brevo’s row is the Starter plan at that email volume; EmailOctopus’s and MailerLite’s price is the 10,000-subscriber tier and does not change with sending pace. EmailOctopus’s figure is the monthly price on annual billing. Note the bottom row: EmailOctopus’s sending quota at 10,000 subscribers is 100,000 emails a month, so the tenth newsletter hits the ceiling exactly and the eleventh exceeds it.

The turning point is at the fourth newsletter: that is where Brevo’s €41 overtakes EmailOctopus’s fixed €36. After that the gap only grows — at ten newsletters a month Brevo costs almost twice as much. MailerLite stays more expensive throughout the table, so something other than price speaks for it.

The same calculation at a smaller list does not flip as easily: a 2,500-name list with a weekly newsletter is 10,000 emails a month, but because its contact quota requires the 15,000-email package, the price is €21 and does not rise with pace until more than 15,000 emails accumulate. The rule of thumb is therefore: multiply subscribers by sends and take the figure to Brevo’s price list — and see which package it fits inside.

What replaces Brevo in which situation

• The newsletter goes out weekly → EmailOctopus: the price follows subscriber count, not sending pace, and the sending quota practically never comes up. Try it free (ad)
• List cleaning never got done → MailerLite: the built-in “Clean up inactive” picks out those inactive for six months and removes them in one go; Brevo’s help page tells you to segment and blocklist by hand. Try it free
• The free plan’s 300-email daily limit → Systeme.io: the free plan has no sending limit at all, and the list holds 2,000 contacts. Try it free (ad)
• You need conditional automation paths → ActiveCampaign: Brevo’s automation is on the Standard plan; at ActiveCampaign it is on the cheapest plan. Try it free
• You want to keep EU data and get webinars → GetResponse: Polish company, webinars built in and unlimited sending. Try it free

The free plan’s daily limit

Brevo’s free plan is unusual: list size is not limited at all, but you may send 300 emails a day, about 9,000 a month. For someone building a list that is good; for someone sending campaigns, bad. A 1,000-name campaign is spread over four days, and a scheduled newsletter does not stay together.

Among the alternatives Systeme.io gives 2,000 contacts on the free plan with no sending limit and EmailOctopus 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month. At both you can therefore send to the whole list at once. The real limits of the five free plans: free email marketing.

Deliverability is the third reason

We do not measure deliverability ourselves. Read from the help pages, Brevo is two-sided: it is the only one in the comparison that shows a deliverability score in the app (Deliverability center), but it has no tool for list cleaning — the help page tells you to segment the inactive and blocklist them by hand. A dedicated IP and a deliverability expert are only on the Professional plan.

← scroll →

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.

← scroll →

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 2017–2024 series Brevo’s average of 82.7% was the lowest of the five we compare and its range the widest, but the series has ended and the source no longer stands behind its method. The alternatives with cleaning in the app: MailerLite (“Clean up inactive”), Mailchimp (Omnivore checks imports) and ActiveCampaign (Engagement Management).

A large part of deliverability is still the sender’s own responsibility, and that part moves with you when you switch: what Gmail and Yahoo require of senders.

What you lose by switching

Brevo’s price includes things at the cheap end that narrower tools do not have. Three of them disappear the moment you move:

• Text messages and WhatsApp from the same tool. No other tool compared does this.
• Transactional emails, i.e. order confirmations and password resets, through the same account.
• CRM and online shop event tracking. Part of this is priced separately — Sales Essentials costs €26.08 a month — but it exists.

If you use any of these, switching means a second tool alongside. Then the comparison is not €28 against €36, but €28 against €36 plus that other bill.

How to migrate without the list suffering

1. Export the contacts from Brevo as a CSV file and include the subscription date and source — consent has to be demonstrable afterwards.
2. Separate marketing and transactional emails. This is a work step specific to leaving Brevo: if order confirmations go through the same account, they have to be moved separately or left at Brevo.
3. Clean the list before importing. Leave out the unsubscribed and hard bounces.
4. Authenticate the sender domain in the new service (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) before the first send.
5. Rebuild the automations before you close the old account. If the automations are on Brevo’s Standard plan, check what the alternative stretches to — not all of them have conditional branches.

The data protection side of the move: email marketing and GDPR. If one alternative remains, compare it directly: Brevo vs EmailOctopus.

For whom Brevo is still the right choice

In three situations switching would be a mistake. A large list and a sparse sending pace: there Brevo is the cheapest in the comparison, and the gap is not small. Text messages or transactional emails in the same account: no other tool compared does that. And a growing list that is not yet sent to much — the free plan does not limit list size at all.

In other cases switching is settled by one calculation: how many emails you send a month. Both the price and whether anything is worth doing fall out of that.