Brevo alternatives for small businesses

Which alternative answers which complaint

What email-volume pricing means for a real list

The $9 starting price belongs to the 500-contact tier

The headline numbers on Brevo's page are $9 for Starter, $18 for Standard and $499 for Professional. They are the first rung of a ladder in which every email tier carries a limit on stored contacts. Brevo's plans article pairs 5,000 monthly emails with up to 500 contacts, 10,000 with up to 1,500, 15,000 with up to 2,500, and the 20,000-and-above band with up to 500,000. The capture agrees: with the selector at 5,000 emails a month it lists 500 contacts as included, and it labels the volume as covering campaigns and transactional mail together.

Here is what that does to a 1,200-contact list. Mailed weekly it sends about 5,200 emails a month (1,200 × 52 ÷ 12), and the contact ceiling already rules out the 5,000-email tier. Mailed twice a week it sends about 10,400, which passes the 10,000 mark by 400 and moves the account to the 15,000-email tier. One extra weekly send changes the plan, and the plan is chosen by whichever limit you hit first, volume or contacts.

On the free plan, 300 a day sets the pace of every campaign

Brevo's free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts and runs automation for up to 2,000 of them, but sends are capped at 300 a day. By simple division a campaign to 2,500 people needs nine days of sending (2,500 ÷ 300 = 8.3, rounded up) and one to 5,000 people needs 17. Across a month the ceiling is 9,000 emails (300 × 30). A flash sale, an event reminder or a time-limited discount does not fit that pace. Starter removes the daily limit, which is why it is the first paid step.

Starter and Standard are further apart than $9

The capture lists Starter as email and SMS with a drag-and-drop editor, forms, advanced segmentation and basic reporting. Standard adds marketing automation, A/B testing, advanced email reporting, AI send-time optimization, web and event tracking and one landing page, and it shows "No Brevo logo". Starter emails carry a "Sent by Brevo" footer logo, and the logo is removed by a paid add-on that shows $10.80 a month on the yearly view. Starter at $8.08 plus that add-on is $18.88, against $16.17 for Standard on the same view. If you want your own branding, the real choice is between Standard and a different vendor, not between Starter and Standard.

The fourth editor costs $499

Free includes one seat. The plans article says Standard can add marketing seats up to a maximum of three users, and that Professional, which starts at $499 a month ($449.08 on the yearly view in the capture), includes 10 users with sends from 150,000 a month and storage for up to 2 million contacts. A team of four editors sending 30,000 emails a month fits Standard's volume tier but not its seat limit, so it faces a jump from the $18 range to $499. That gap, more than any single feature, is why teams of that shape go looking.

Six alternatives, one reason each

Sender: more headroom before you pay

Sender's free plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with its branding on messages. Next to Brevo's free plan the difference is felt in timing: a 2,500-person list can get one campaign in a single go instead of over nine days. Paid, Standard shows $6.30 a month for 500 subscribers and 6,000 emails (the page applies a 30% first-year discount to what it displays), and Professional shows $10.50 for 12,000 emails with 10 role-based seats. That last detail answers the seat complaint above, though a seat count on a pricing page says nothing about how the roles behave, so test them in a trial.

MailerLite: the price follows subscribers

On MailerLite, a bigger send does not raise the bill; a bigger list does. Comfort is $12 a month at 500 subscribers ($10.80 billed annually), $19 at 1,000, $49 at 5,000 and $89 at 10,000, and Power runs $25, $39, $69 and $129 across the same sizes. Power has no monthly email limit, so a list mailed daily costs the same as one mailed weekly, which is the reverse of Brevo's model. The free plan allows 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month with two seats, and MailerLite says transactional email comes from its sister product MailerSend, so it will not replace Brevo's transactional side.

SendPulse: a small list on a small plan

SendPulse offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers with 15,000 emails a month, which is 30 emails per subscriber and compares with Brevo's 9,000-a-month ceiling for any list size. Its paid plans appear as Standard at $9.60 a month, Pro at $11.52 and Enterprise at $16.13, and the page says Enterprise needs at least 2,500 contacts. Those are starting prices on a selector, so the figure you pay depends on your subscriber count; confirm it before you budget.

Mailjet: marketing and transactional from one vendor

Mailjet sells both campaign tools and an email API with SMTP relay, plus segmentation, automations and landing pages. Free allows 6,000 emails a month and 200 a day for up to 1,000 contacts. Starter is $9 for 8,000 emails and 2,000 contacts, which compares with 5,000 emails and 500 contacts at Brevo's $9 tier. Essential is $19 for 15,000 emails with unlimited contacts, and Premium is $29 for 15,000 emails with no daily sending limit. Check whether the plan you want carries a daily cap, because the page names one for Free and an absence of one for Premium.

Elastic Email: a generous send allowance per contact

Elastic Email's marketing plans start with a free tier of 1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month, with a separate limit of 100 emails a day. Starter is $29 a month for up to 2,500 contacts and 37,500 emails, which is 15 emails per contact, where Brevo's 15,000-email tier at the same contact ceiling is six. Pro is $49 for the same contact and email limits and adds advanced automation and user management. It also sells a separate email API product that supports SMTP and HTTP, which is relevant if your transactional mail is the part of Brevo you use most.

ActiveCampaign: when automation is the reason you are leaving

ActiveCampaign prices by contacts and bills annually: Starter is $15 a month at 1,000 contacts with one user and 5 actions per automation, Plus is $49, Pro is $79 with advanced segmentation and three users, and Enterprise is $145. Five actions per automation is the ceiling to test against your longest welcome series before you choose a tier. It has no free plan, so use the trial to rebuild one real workflow before you decide. The ActiveCampaign alternatives page covers the reverse trip.

What the options cost at four list sizes

A worked case: a bakery with 2,400 contacts mails weekly, about 10,400 emails a month (2,400 × 52 ÷ 12). Brevo's 2,500-contact ceiling puts it in the 15,000-email tier, priced on the selector. Mailjet Essential at $19 covers the volume with unlimited contacts. Elastic Email Starter at $29 covers it with room for more than three times as many emails. Sender's free plan holds the list and the volume for nothing, with branding. And on Brevo's own free plan each campaign would take eight days to send (2,400 ÷ 300), so a weekly newsletter would overlap itself.

Getting your contacts out of Brevo

1. Split by status first. The contact export lets you pick which subscription status to include, and Brevo's export guide shows a filter (Add filter, Marketing, Email, Email campaigns subscriptions, Subscribed) that limits the selection to people who can still be mailed. Run one export for them and a second for blocklisted contacts, so suppression travels with the list.
2. Open CRM, then Contacts. To export everyone, make sure no list or segment is loaded and no filter is applied. To export one list or segment, load it with Load a list or segment.
3. Select all. Tick the checkbox in the CONTACT column, then click Select all contacts at the top right of the table, so the export covers the whole database and not just the visible page.
4. Choose More actions, then Export. Under Attributes, tick the standard and custom attributes you need. EMAIL, LAST CHANGED and CREATION DATE are selected by default. Under System data you can add List ID, and under Subscriptions you pick the status.
5. Pick the file settings. You choose semicolon or comma as the CSV field separator. Match it to what the new tool's importer expects, because a wrong separator turns every row into a single column. You can also have the download link emailed to the account owner.
6. Start the export and download it. Click Start export, then use the bell icon next to your account name and Download the file on the notification. It can take a few minutes, and refreshing the page brings up the notification if it has not appeared.
7. Check your integrations. The same article says daily contact exports were deprecated on May 30, 2025, and that any webhook or API integration built on them stopped working. Past files are still listed under Contacts, Settings, Daily exports.
8. Treat transactional mail as its own move. The plans article lists transactional email and SMS among the Free plan's features. If order confirmations run through Brevo, decide separately whether they move, and test the new sender before cutting over.

When Brevo is still the right answer

Staying is sensible if your list is under 500 contacts, you send weekly or less, and you need automation or the logo removed, since Standard at $18 ($16.17 on the yearly view) covers all three. It is also sensible if your transactional and marketing mail share one sender reputation you have already warmed. Move when the contact tiers or the seat limit start pushing you towards $499, not before.

FAQ

Is Brevo really free forever?

Brevo's plans article says the Free plan is free forever with no credit card and no time limit. It sends 300 emails a day, stores up to 100,000 contacts, includes one user seat and runs automation for up to 2,000 contacts. The daily cap, not the price, is what most people outgrow.

Why can I not use the $9 Starter plan for 1,000 contacts?

Because each Starter tier is paired with a contact ceiling. The $9 tier is 5,000 emails with storage for up to 500 contacts, and the next tier up holds 1,500. With 1,000 contacts you need the 10,000-email tier, so read its price on the selector rather than quoting $9.

Is there a Brevo alternative with unlimited contacts?

Mailjet's Essential plan at $19 a month lists 15,000 emails with unlimited contacts. Brevo itself stores up to 100,000 contacts on the free plan, so storage is rarely what pushes people off. The limit that bites is the email volume or the contact ceiling of the paid tier.

Can I move marketing email and keep transactional mail on Brevo?

Technically yes, since the plans article lists transactional email on the Free plan, but volume is shared: Brevo's selector counts campaigns and transactional mail together. Keep an eye on the 300-a-day cap if you leave order messages on a free account.

Do Brevo daily contact exports still work?

No. Brevo's export guide says daily exports have been deprecated since May 30, 2025, so webhooks or APIs integrated with them stop working. You can still view files from earlier exports under Contacts, Settings, Daily exports. Run a manual export before you move.

What is the cheapest option for a 2,400-contact weekly newsletter?

Sender's free plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with branding. The cheapest paid choices from the pages above are Mailjet Essential at $19 and Elastic Email Starter at $29, and both state a monthly email allowance in the plan, which you should compare with your real send count before choosing.