# Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) Review: Priced in Emails, Tiered by Contacts > A measured Brevo review: the public pricing API, Starter from $9, the contact cap inside every email tier, automatic upgrades, cancellation as the only way down, published suspension thresholds and a Trustpilot score at odds with recent reviews. _Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/brevo-review β€” The Professional's Toolkit Β· updated 2026-10-09_ --- Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, prices its email marketing by how many emails you send rather than by how many contacts you keep. That is the first thing every comparison says about it, and it is only half true. The email tier you buy also sets how many contacts you may store, and on the cheapest paid tiers that number is far below what the free plan allows. Understanding that coupling is the whole job of choosing a Brevo plan. People search `brevo pricing` 880 times a month in the United States and `what is brevo` 480 times. The old name still carries more: `sendinblue` alone draws 6,600 searches a month. This review uses both names, because many buyers still know it by the first one. ## What Brevo is Brevo is the broadest product in our email set. One account covers email, SMS, WhatsApp, web and mobile push, live chat, a chatbot, wallet passes and phone, plus a sales CRM with deals, a customer data platform, loyalty programmes and transactional email [20]. Its navigation describes the integrations as "150+ digital tools like Shopify, WordPress, Stripe, Zapier and more." [2] The company renamed itself from Sendinblue in 2023. The product kept its old strengths, a generous free plan and a transactional email service that developers use through its API, and added channels and a sales platform around them. The result is a product that can replace three or four tools for a small business, at a price that starts at $9 a month. The cost of that breadth is complexity: plans, credit tiers, add-ons and channel packs that combine into a price you have to assemble. Our composite score is 3.58 out of 5, fourth in our email set behind Klaviyo at 3.88, MailerLite at 3.71 and Constant Contact at 3.63, and ahead of Mailchimp at 3.46 and ActiveCampaign at 3.44. It scores highest of all of them on capability and lowest on support and reliability. > πŸ’‘ **undefined:** Choose the email tier by your contact count first. ## The price list is public, in a form built for machines Brevo's pricing page is a calculator, and its rendered text carries no prices at all. That would normally be a transparency failure. Here it is not, because the vendor publishes the catalogue behind the calculator through a public pricing API, and through a Markdown version of it that describes itself as a "Machine-readable pricing reference generated from the Brevo pricing API" [3]. It covers seventeen currencies, every email-credit tier and every add-on. Read in US dollars on 9 October 2026, the entry prices are: | Plan | Monthly | Yearly total | Emails a month at entry | |---|---|---|---| | Free | $0 | $0 | 300 a day | | Starter | $9 | $97 | 5,000 | | Standard | $18 | $194 | 5,000 | | Professional | $499 | $3,780 plus credits | 150,000 | | Enterprise | custom | custom | custom | The Markdown warns the reader how to use it: "Monthly prices are monthly charges. Yearly prices are annual totals for annual billing, not monthly equivalents." [3] That one sentence is clearer than most pricing pages manage in a screen. No other product we have measured publishes its price list this completely. MailerLite comes close, with a 29-band ladder in its page script. Brevo goes further: the API is documented, versioned and explicitly meant to be read by software, including AI assistants. ## How the price is built A Brevo bill has three layers. A base fee for the plan. An email-credit tier added to it. And optional add-ons, from extra seats to logo removal to channel packs. The email-credit tiers are where the price moves. From the vendor's catalogue [3], monthly, in dollars added to the base: | Emails a month | Starter | Standard | |---|---|---| | 5,000 | +$0 | +$0 | | 10,000 | +$8 | +$17 | | 20,000 | +$23 | +$51 | | 50,000 | +$47 | +$79 | | 100,000 | +$73 | +$121 | | 150,000 | n/a | +$161 | | 500,000 | n/a | +$411 | So Starter at 20,000 emails costs $32 a month and Standard at the same volume costs $69. Standard at 100,000 emails is $139. Starter stops at 100,000 and Standard at 500,000. Professional is built the same way. Its $499 entry price is a $350 base plus $149 for the first 150,000 emails, which matches the pricing page's "From $499". The step from Standard at 150,000 emails, $179, to Professional at the same volume is 2.8 times. Unused emails expire at the end of each month [7]. Prepaid credit packs, which never expire, are a separate purchase. > πŸ’‘ **undefined:** Price Standard before buying logo removal on Starter. ## Emails name the price, contacts choose the tier Here is the rule that changes everything. The help centre states it directly: "your chosen email volume determines both your pricing tier and the maximum number of contacts you can have in Brevo." [7] The contact caps on Starter and Standard are [5]: | Monthly emails | Contacts you may store | |---|---| | 5,000 | up to 500 | | 10,000 | up to 1,500 | | 15,000 | up to 2,500 | | 20,000 and above | up to 500,000 | The free plan, by contrast, lets you "store up to 100,000 contacts in your account" [6]. So the free plan stores two hundred times more contacts than the cheapest paid tier. A free account with 3,000 contacts that wants to escape the 300-a-day sending limit cannot buy the $9 Starter tier. It must buy the 20,000-email tier, $32 on Starter or $69 on Standard, because that is the first tier whose contact cap holds 3,000 people. A customer in Brevo's own community forum described exactly this. They saw Starter advertised as being without a daily limit, then found the plan required a 5,000-email tier whose contact cap was below what their free account already held. Their question was simple: "how come now I can’t take my contacts, that fit into a free plan, into an upgraded plan?" [19] ## When the plan moves by itself On the first three tiers, crossing the contact cap upgrades the plan. "If you reach or exceed that limit, we will automatically upgrade your plan to the next tier." [8] The vendor sends warnings as you approach the line, which is more notice than several rivals give. The terms add a ceiling to this behaviour: "There is no more automatic upgrade once your Subscription has reached 20,000 emails." [14] Above 20,000 emails the contact cap is 500,000, so in practice few accounts meet it. Adding emails by hand is charged at once: "When adding emails to your plan, you are charged immediately, with a pro-rated charge from the date of your purchase to your next billing date." [7] Removing them waits for the next billing date. And you cannot step down while you hold too many contacts: "If you have more contacts than the limit allowed for a given tier, you won’t be able to select that lower tier." [7] The way down runs through deleting contacts first. > πŸ’‘ **undefined:** Verify and clean your list before the first campaign. ## The way down is a cancellation Brevo has no simple downgrade button. "To downgrade a paid subscription, you first need to cancel it." [9] You then stay on Free or buy a lower plan when the current one ends. Two consequences follow. Prepaid credits do not survive the move: "If you downgrade and still have prepaid credits, you will lose these credits." [9] And a downgrade after a failed payment has to go through support rather than the account. The terms make the commitment explicit: "These Terms are non-cancellable by You prior to the end of your ongoing Subscription, and We will not provide refunds for any prepaid or unused fees." [14] A yearly plan is a year. Professional is stricter still. "To cancel a yearly Professional plan, contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account." [10] The terms require written notice of non-renewal for Professional, with "the minimum notice period of non-renewal is fifteen (15) calendar days" [14]. There is a gentler option for a short break. Monthly plans on current pricing can pause for one, two or three months [11]. ## The free plan Brevo's free plan is unusual in this category: generous on storage, tight on sending. It stores up to 100,000 contacts and sends 300 emails a day [6]. It includes campaigns, transactional email, the drag-and-drop editor, templates, automation for up to 2,000 contacts, basic sales features and the Aura AI assistant [5]. The daily limit shapes everything. "The Free plan includes 300 email sends per day." [6] Unused sends do not roll over. A campaign to a larger list reaches 300 people on the day: "if you send a campaign to more than 300 recipients, only 300 contacts will receive it on the scheduled day" [6], and the rest must be resent by hand over the following days. Every email carries Brevo's branding: "Emails sent from the Free plan always include the Sent with Brevo sticker." [6] There is one rule that can cost you everything. The cancellation page warns that free users must "log into Brevo every four months to prevent the automatic deletion of your Free account" [10]. The terms describe a six-month inactivity period instead [14]. Whichever applies, a dormant free account can be deleted, data included. > ⚠ **undefined:** A second suspension cannot be reactivated, and billing continues during one. ## Suspensions: published thresholds, severe consequences The sharpest complaint about Brevo is account suspension, and the vendor is unusually open about how it works. Campaigns to new contacts are tested: "Brevo assesses engagement indicators from a random subset." [13] If the early results are negative, the campaign and the account are suspended. The published triggers include a hard bounce rate above 2%, an unsubscribe rate above 1% and a complaint rate above 0.2% [13]. Those are tight thresholds for an imported or older list. The first suspension can be reactivated from the Deliverability center. The second cannot: "If your account is suspended again, we won’t be able to reactivate it." [13] And billing continues throughout: "Note that your subscription remains active during the suspension." [13] In our sample of 100 recent Trustpilot reviews, 20 describe a suspended account, and every one of them is a one- or two-star review [15]. That is double the share we measured at MailerLite. The thresholds are industry-standard hygiene. The risk is not that they exist, but that a first send to a list nobody has emailed in a year can cross them within hours. ## Support Support is tiered by plan. Free and Starter get email support, in six languages according to the pricing page [2]. Standard gets priority email. Phone support starts at Professional, along with three hours a year with a deliverability specialist [5]. The reviews are not kind. Support appears in 47 of our 100 sampled reviews, and 27 of those are negative against 19 positive [15]. Most negative support reviews are about suspensions, which makes sense: a suspended account needs a person, and below Professional the person is reached by ticket. That is the main reason Brevo scores 2.6 on our support and reliability axis, the lowest of the six email products we have measured. The status page itself looks healthy. It tracks 34 components in ten groups and showed full uptime for July to October 2026 [18]. The weakness is access to the account, not availability of the platform. > ⚠ **undefined:** Downgrading means cancelling; prepaid credits are lost. ## What the reviews say Trustpilot shows 3.9 from 7,235 reviews [15]. That is a respectable badge. The 100 most recent reviews we retrieved tell a different story: 47 one-star, 39 five-star and only 14 in between, a mean of 2.85. Both numbers are true. The badge reflects years of reviews, many from the Sendinblue era. The sample reflects what people are writing now. We report both and name the method, because either alone would mislead. The themes are clear. Suspension in 20 reviews, all negative. Support in 47, mostly negative. Product issues in 17, contact management in 14, deliverability in 8. Price is a complaint in only two. People are not unhappy with what Brevo costs. They are unhappy when they lose access. The official WordPress plugin, published by Brevo, scores 4.1 from 285 ratings [16], with 206 five-star and 45 one-star reviews. It is the brightest surface the vendor has. ## Where the vendor contradicts itself Three places, all on the vendor's own pages. **Inactivity.** The cancellation help says free accounts must be logged into every four months. The terms say "We may terminate your account if You have not logged in the Software or not performed one action or command in the Software for a period of six (6) months or more." [14] Plan on four. **Enterprise.** The pricing page shows "Custom price" for Enterprise. The vendor's own public pricing API returns a monthly price for the same plan, $1,000 [4]. We record it as what the API returns, not as a quote anyone has been offered. **The upgrade screen.** As the community thread shows, Starter can appear as a plan without a daily limit, while the purchase requires choosing an email tier whose contact cap may be lower than the free plan's [19]. None of these is hidden. Each is a sign of a large product whose pages are maintained by different teams. > ⚠ **undefined:** Free accounts can be deleted after a period without login. ## Shopify: the listing is gone For e-commerce buyers, one finding matters more than the rest. Brevo's Shopify App Store listing, at its long-standing address, reads: "This app is not currently available on the Shopify App Store." [17] Search engines still show an old rating of 4.9 for it. That rating no longer describes anything a store can install from the Shopify store today. Brevo still lists Shopify among its integrations, and connecting a store through other routes may be possible. But a store choosing an email platform should confirm the integration path with Brevo before committing, and should not rely on a rating attached to a listing that is withdrawn. For a store, Klaviyo's Shopify app, at 4.7 from more than 3,000 reviews in our Klaviyo measurement, is the benchmark Brevo now cannot be compared against on the same storefront. ## Who Brevo fits Brevo fits a business that wants many channels in one place at a low entry price: email plus SMS or WhatsApp, a light CRM with deals, transactional email for an app, and a chat widget. For that buyer, nothing else we have measured covers as much for under $100 a month. It fits a developer or a product team that needs transactional email and marketing on one account, since email credits serve both [7]. It fits less well a newsletter or creator with a growing list, because the contact caps on the first tiers push the price up sooner than the email volume would suggest. MailerLite is simpler for that buyer. And it fits poorly any account that will import an old or purchased list. The suspension thresholds are published and strict, and a second suspension is final. ## FAQ **How much does Brevo cost?** Starter is $9 and Standard $18 a month at 5,000 emails; Professional starts at $499. Prices rise with email volume, and each email tier also caps how many contacts you may store: 500, 1,500, 2,500, then 500,000. **Is Brevo the same as Sendinblue?** Yes. Sendinblue renamed itself Brevo in 2023 and broadened the product into SMS, WhatsApp, a sales CRM and more. **Why was my Brevo account suspended?** Brevo tests early campaigns and suspends when results cross published thresholds, including hard bounces above 2%, unsubscribes above 1% or complaints above 0.2%. A second suspension cannot be reactivated. **Is Brevo free?** Yes, with 100,000 contacts stored and 300 emails a day, Brevo branding on every email, and automation for up to 2,000 contacts. ## Our score, axis by axis The composite is 3.58, with the category's weights: value and capability at 0.229 each, ease and integrations at 0.146, AI and support at 0.083, sentiment and documentation at 0.042. **Capability 4.2**, the highest in our email set, for the breadth of channels and platforms. **Documentation 4.0**, for explicit help pages and a machine-readable price list. **Integrations 3.6**, for an open API, an MCP connection for AI assistants and a strong WordPress plugin, held down by the missing Shopify listing. **Value 3.5**, cheap to enter and fully published, held down by the contact caps, the cancellation route to a downgrade and the non-refundable terms. **AI 3.5**, **ease 3.4**, **sentiment 2.9** and **support 2.6**. The shape is a product with the most to offer and the least forgiveness. Plan your tier on contacts as well as emails, keep your list clean before the first send, and Brevo is one of the best-value platforms in the category. **Our scorecard β€” 3.6/5** - Value for money: 3.5/5 - Capability & depth: 4.2/5 - Ease of use: 3.4/5 - Integrations: 3.6/5 - AI: 3.5/5 - Support & reliability: 2.6/5 - User sentiment: 2.9/5 - Docs & learning resources: 4.0/5 ## Sources [1] Brevo vendor pricing page β€” https://www.brevo.com/pricing/ (2026-10) [2] Brevo machine-readable pricing reference β€” https://www.brevo.com/pricing.md (2026-10) [3] Brevo public pricing API β€” https://pricing-backend.brevo.com/public/pricing/api/plans/all?currency=USD (2026-10) [4] Brevo help: about pricing plans β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/208589409-About-Brevo-s-pricing-plans (2026-10) [5] Brevo help: limits of the Free plan β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/208580669-FAQs-What-are-the-limits-of-the-Free-plan (2026-10) [6] Brevo help: add or remove emails β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/8292912279954-Add-or-remove-emails-from-your-plan (2026-10) [7] Brevo help: upgrade to a higher plan β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/209296725-Upgrade-to-a-higher-plan (2026-10) [8] Brevo help: downgrade β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/17629099685394-Downgrade-to-the-Free-plan-or-a-lower-plan (2026-10) [9] Brevo help: cancel your subscription β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/208593449-Can-I-downgrade-to-a-free-plan-or-cancel-my-subscription (2026-10) [10] Brevo help: pause your subscription β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/8817303571602-Can-I-pause-my-subscription (2026-10) [11] Brevo help: permanently close your account β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/208677629-Permanently-close-your-Brevo-account (2026-10) [12] Brevo help: account and campaign suspensions β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017299259 (2026-10) [13] Brevo Terms of Use β€” https://www.brevo.com/legal/termsofuse/ (2026-10) [14] Trustpilot aggregate and review corpus for Brevo β€” https://www.trustpilot.com/review/brevo.com?languages=all (2026-10) [15] WordPress.org listing for the Brevo plugin β€” https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailin/ (2026-10) [16] Brevo's Shopify App Store listing β€” https://apps.shopify.com/sendinblue (2026-10) [17] Brevo public status page β€” https://status.brevo.com/ (2026-10) [18] Brevo community forum thread β€” https://community.brevo.com/t/free-plan-5-000-contacts-payed-plan-500-contacts/3423 (2026-10) [19] Brevo full feature comparison β€” https://www.brevo.com/pricing/see-all-features/ (2026-10) [20] Brevo help: plan add-ons β€” https://help.brevo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409354969746-Customize-your-plan-with-add-ons (2026-10) [21] Brevo vendor comparison page against Mailchimp β€” https://www.brevo.com/mailchimp/ (2026-10) [22] Brevo transactional email product page β€” https://www.brevo.com/products/transactional-email/ (2026-10) [23] Mailchimp vendor pricing page β€” https://mailchimp.com/pricing/ (2026-09) [24] Trustpilot aggregate score for Mailchimp β€” https://www.trustpilot.com/review/mailchimp.com (2026-09) [25] MailerLite vendor pricing page β€” https://www.mailerlite.com/pricing (2026-10) [26] MailerLite vendor documentation on billing β€” https://www.mailerlite.com/help/plan-and-billing (2026-10)