Brevo passed my strict criterias and earned a Recommended Status. If you are interested the use cases, scroll all the way down. Otherwise, happy reading. This is a discovery-style review.
Hmm….I should start scoring. Scoring reviews are pro blogging business.
-5• for the re-naming. Probably consultants were involved. Sendinblue sounded fine. Made sense. You are sending out of the blue to unsuspecting prospects.
But Brevo? What is that? Are you now brevoing unprospering suspects?
I remember when I first Sent the blue. It was one of those low-cost low-expectation tools, along with EmailOctopus, Sendgrid and Mimi.
But Brevo changed completely, and not just the haircut. It greww big and muscular, got tattoos and probably piercings in weird places.
Unlike many, who just changed their names to a meaningless made up word (“to better express their values”), but remained the same inside, Brevo came back as a stranger.
Let’s see if it’s for the better…
Who do you want to be, son?
I want to be a king. And a knight. And the horse. Aaand just the top of my head:
- A simple list based email tool,
- with a very good drag-n-drop-your-jaw HTML editor,
- but also fully featured email marketing tool,
- with visual automations able to update contants on the go,
- and a multi-channel omni-harass marketing automation tool,
- with push notifications, SMS and Whatsup messages,
- and FB ads (What?) Yea…like an ads manager just within…
- and I still want to be a transactional SMPT mailer too,
- and a chatbot like Intercom,
- and a CRM like Pipedrive,
- and an appointment manager, scheduler like Calendly, now that you asked,
- ah…almost forgot … a call funtionality too, like in Close.io.
- and landing pages.
I don’t like Jack of All Trades, feature-creep tools.
I don’t like when they chase ‘the only thing you ever need’ idea rather than keeping a clear concept on the type of business served. It usually results in confusing mess of mediocre tools jammed together like in a useless multi-tool. Multiple menus pointing to the same place like it was in Active Campaign and GetResponse for long. Every part being mediocre in its field compared, with the attention stretched paper thin.
With this being said…
Brevo for the first impression looks very good.
They somehow kept the UI likeable and relatively uncluttered, while the individual function families – at least on the surface look surprisingly usable.
Now if you look deeper … there are some signs of trouble.
over-automate the sh*t out of you
The automation is packed with options, but it’s more complicated that it should be.
For example for jumping the subscriber forward in the automation – it took me quite some time to find the ‘Goal’ or ‘Event’ step. There are just too many similar options.
(It’s called ‘Wait until’ here.)
But, to give you options to make a mess, there is also an exit/restart condition. (btw. why would you want to restart?)
There is a jump to step, but that jumps when you get there. You may combine it with if conditions, but there are some pitfalls. It can also jump to an another workflow. Which is also a separate option.
Why are you able to jump to a previous step? Even the alert says that it’s bad mojo, creating a loop. (for example keep resending the same email)
Let’s say you want to stop sending this drip sequence to Bob, because he clicked to the ‘opt-out from topic’ link you provided. (smart move)
There are no tags to use as an exclusion. Probably a tool this advanced should use those. So it’s in the exit condition section.
But is it this one under Website activity?
Probably not? Or Under Email activity / marketing emails? Probably, maybe, hopefully?
Regular expression? What is that? On my face? Why does this have to be so complicated?
The two examples above are pretty standard stuff and good practices. Not sending irrelevant or unwanted.
I imagine the dread, when a new client says, that they use Brevo and need you to fix their mess. “Yeah we had 2 different colleagues and 2 freelancers worked on it over the years and we don’t know what it’s doing. Brr.
Just ticking in the back of my head, why do you have an option to exit the automation at their Annivesary? What is the practical, real-life usage of that?
There are too many options with too many pitfalls and traps. And if you don’t use half of them to stay out of trouble, then why have them? I had a similar issue with ActiveCampaign or Drip as a consultant.
By the way, what Brevo wants to become feels like what ActiveCampaign or InfusionSoft is/were. And there’s was a reason for their nicknames. (ActivePain, ConfusionSoft)
Now the million $ question is:
Who needs all this?
I’m trying to imagine what business uses (properly) all this galore of functions and options?
Many of the funtions are tailored to have a phone number, so it narrows down to businesses whose leads are willing to share theirs.
A consulting business? CRM & Scheduler. Highly customizable marketing automation … maybe, although I would rather use a cold outreach tool like Woodpecker or MixMax. But if you fuse consulting with courses then it makes sense.
Or maybe a SaaS for higher ticket B2B, where a few calls and demos are needed before the purchase.
An ecommerce webhop? Probably that makes the most sense. The Ecommerce integrations are there, although mapping conversion events looked quite daunting for the first look.
If you are sending emails, SMS alerts, pushes, reminders, & Buy-my-shit-last-chance-don’t-hide promos on every door to your prospects…
Now I imagine we could make a case in any of these, but I think most people would just pick Brevo, because wow how many things they’ll theoretically be able to do. (And then either not use 80% or try to use all and make a mess. – I’ve seen both plenty of times believe me)
I don’t want to be unfair, so I’ll be also listing the things I like in Brevo in a bit.
But before that, I want to look at what we need to pay for all this.
And this is where the good news come in, because the
Pricing is Very generous!
but can get tricky.
The fee is tiered by both functions and sending limit. I like full access and cost-by-list size more, but to be fair :
- The Starter tier is fully capable and enough for a well built email marketing system of any business model, and
- the fee is extremely affordable, particularly if you segment sending and keep it around 5 email / user / month.
I really appreciate that the usability is not compromised on the lower tier, like with most other tools. You can use the automations (up to 2k triggers!), a few hundred pushes, the CRM, the booking, the SMS. That’s neat.
At the Starter Plan, 20k email / month is $25/mo.
Double that, 40k is still just $35/mo.
I think that’s more than fair for the depth you are getting.
They smartly encoded progression to higher tiers. Because of the 2k automation limit, eventually you will have to upgrade to the business tier ($65/mo).
Now on the trickiness. The send limit can exceed quickly if you run a seasonal campaign and send more than usual. (hopefully you earn more too by it) Unlike with a list size based price, it’s a floating thing. Your automated sending grows as the list, but then the usage depends on the broadcasts and your segmentation.
Then SMS & Whatsup are by credit, so if you using that in non-US countries the fee will stack up quickly. (in US it’s cheap)
Btw, having to pay an extra 12/mo just to remove their logo from the footer is also cheap just not in the right way.
the price in context
To put the pricing into perspective, with infrequent, well segmented sending (avr. 5 email / month / user)
Brevo is among the most affordable tools, costing less on average under a 10k list* than pretty much any other tool worthy to constider (eg. less than SendX, BirdSend, CakeMail, Campayn, Benchmark, Buttondown, Audienceful or GetResponse and of course much less than Convertkit, or ActiveCampaign.)
*the average of all price steps until 10k of a list size. This is the most transparent way to compare prices of email tools.
This much depends on the sending frequency. If you are a bombarding your list every other day (not that you should) then a tool priced by list based would fit you better.
But Christmas is not over yet
for a starting project – buy credits
There is also a Pay As You Go option!
For starting projects prepaying credits is always more advantageous than being locked in a recurring expense, while setting things up might get prolonged.
With Brevo you can buy 5k emails ($30) and refill when needed, only switching to a plan once your business solidified itself.
To be honest, unless there is something you particularly hate…or another tool you are in love with – price on the value Brevo makes a lot of sense.
Let’s summarize the pros and cons, I’m still due with a few positives.
All the things I like about you
After my long rant about the unreasonable options and traps of the automation tool, I have to confess that some other parts of the tool are very my to my liking.
The Editor mirrors your brand from your site
Starting with the Editor, although it is a block drag-n-drop, not inline it is relatively fast and annoyance free to work with. (much better than the white-labeled Beefree editor everyone just rents)
There’s no clock, but other than that, pretty much everything you’d need for a well crafted, quality looking HTML email.
I like that it’s structure keeps it lean, while there are some very beneficial nuances within.
What I loved the most, is that you can pull your typography* & colors right from your site just by adding the URL, than save it as your brand template. I haven’t seen that anywhere else.
+30☀ for the Brand library function.
*As long as you use free Google fonts. Also, keep in mind that it may not show as such in Gmail.
You can hide/show blocks based on conditions, although without tags it’s a bit limited.
Similarly you can insert conditional text (or fields) although it is much more confined than using liquid coding freely, like in Convertkit or Drip. You can put in one liners basically.
For the links, there are some interesting options, such as calling a number right away. (there are again some excessive complications most people don’t need, understand or ever use.)
Campaign setting is warm apple pie
Sending 1-offs is a straightforward, linear process.
Importantly you can control who should not get your email.
Even set additional conditions, like last email sent, to avoid swarming your subs accidentally. +7points
All the default templates are already adapted your brand fonts, and you can write them on spot, or in advance and just pick them. If you don’t trust the deliverability, you can send plain text instead, or if you miss clocks, you can insert HTML from Bee-free or Stripo.
Even if the campaign is sent right away, you have a few minutes to suspend if you carried a small heart attack from forgetting something. That’s nice. +5☀
I will not go through and test the CRM, I’m not into that kind of a kinky weirdo sh*t anyway. Joking aside, we’d sit here all day if I were to thoroughly test the Chatbot, Booking, Calling and CRM functions too with their respective automation functions.
For the first gasp, they looked usable, but probably not as chiselled as the best in these categories.
So time to make the decision.
Final verdict – Is Brevo your tool?
After reviewing Brevo for a couple days, my experience is mostly positive.
Some parts feels like a children’s book written by lawyers. Charming looks, but every.possible.damn.option included. Many of these choices, particularly in the automation builder are not only impractical, but can lead to stupid errors.
On the other hand automations are a one-time pain, as you initially set things up.
As for the day-to-day work, Brevo is fast and pain free to work in, with a nice editor and a refined campaign sending process.
And, unlike most email tools I reviewed here of late:
Brevo checks all 10 of my hardass criterias.
- Good pricing ✔ – fantastic, especially with the prepaid option
- Integrations ✔ – rich and popular (Zapier, SureTriggers, Pabbly, Make and Thrive Automator, Uncanny are all supported + a lot of native ints.)
- Autoresponder ✔ – messaging to every ear and keyhole you can imagine
- HTML form embed ✔
- Uncluttered UX, efficient workflow ✔ – pretty streamlined
- Segmentation ◐ – would be more versatile with tags, but you can set custom field (numbers, values etc.)
- Good Email editor ✔ – a very good one among drag-n-drops, especially with the auto branding
- Click-the-link preference ✔ – doable, just not as convenient
- Basic contact management automation ✔ – quite advanced
- Usable reports ✔ – more elaborate on higher plans, but you see engagement metrics fine even on the free tier
But what category it fits?
That’s my pickle. Brevo isn’t weak at anything really. But if I put it in the advanced…I don’t think I would choose it over Convertkit.
While Brevo is a fully overequipped email marketing tool, able to build manage sophisticated seasonal and evergreen promotions, Convertkit (the No.1) is easier to set, yet more capable. (Tags, sequences, liquid and snippets allow a more refined segmentation and personalization, than what you can do in Brevo. But I like it more than what Drip became, and much more than ActiveCampaign, Ontraport or InfusionSoft. (not to forget that it costs a fraction of those)
While most of the extras here I would prefer not having at all, to some they may come handy. I can imagine a hybrid freelancing, consulting, coaching business, that collects leads from a newsletter/membership to then call and schedule.
A Phase-1 starter?
As an affordable starting tool…Brevo has a very compelling case with the prepaid-credits options, which pricing favors infrequent mailing. (ideally bi-weekly newsletters max)
Advantage: You can set up multiple domains and sending addresses, and organize your lists into folders to separate your different side businesses.
This means that you can start at a $30 1-time cost till one of your business grows. And once you are in game, you can freely add new endeavours to your account with one payment.
I would prefer a more writing centric minimalist tool for a starting project, but unfortunately those cost unfairly more.
As an Ecommerce mailer
This is where I think Brevo makes the most sense. While I didn’t test the Shopify or Woo integrations I assume they work.
If you have a busy webshop with low-mid tier products , the SMS, push etc. makes sense. Particularly if you offer pay-on-delivery – you need to call them to confirm the order or your margin will be eaten by undelivered returns. And I certainly liked the editor better than Klavio’s.
Because of this – and because most most designated ecommerce mailers overpriced and suck, presently Brevo is my
I recommend using Brevo if you run an busy webshop and want to use multi-channel harassment reminders.
not a good pick if
Brevo is probably less ideal if you
A) send 3+ newsletters/week, or
B) long sequences with 1-2 day intervals, or
C) if you want to create more simple emails faster
In this case of A) choose a tool with list size based pricing is better.
For B) Convertkit, or Birdsend have native sequence management so you don’t have to waste time setting up these long send-wait-send-wait automations.
Convertkit has a faster /command type editor and of course Audienceful, Loops and Buttondown are the kings there. (all 3 costs more though)