Brevo Review (2024)
$25.00/month
Email Marketing
Our Research
Campaigner Pros & Cons
Pros
- Simple and easy to use
- Great email builder and template customization
- SMS and WhatsApp marketing support
- Good range of automation and integrations
- Free tier
Cons
- Limited landing pages
- Some features use credits and cost extra
- Occasionally lethargic loading
- Some finicky data importing
Brevo at a Glance 9.0 Editor Score
Features & Integrations
8.5
Analytics & Reporting
8.9
Ease Of Use
9.9
Pricing & Packages
10.0
Customer Service
8.9
9.0 Editor Score
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Why Choose Brevo
The ability to combine Ecommerce email marketing solutions with automations and general email marketing is the true benefit of Brevo. For an online business that sells a variety of products, Brevo can help manage and create optimized email marketing campaigns. Combining SMS reminders with transactional follow-ups is a powerful asset for any digital business.
Brevo’s pricing is affordable and appropriate for the number of features offered. Its free plan caps at 300 emails per day, but the paid plans start at only $25 per month for up to 40,000 emails and no daily sending limit.
Standard Features:
- Transactional emails
- SMS messaging
- Mobile-responsive templates
- API Integrations
- Plugins
- Autoresponders
- Automation
- List segmentation
Templates
Brevo offers 60 templates, however they aren’t segmented into industry or use like many other services, and it’s a bit difficult to switch back and forth between the different pages to choose a template.
With that said, all of the templates are mobile-responsive. It is apparent that Brevo puts more effort into the flexibility of the email editor to customize campaigns, rather than in providing a large number of templates.
The drag-and-drop editor isn’t as intuitive as some other services. It comes off as a bit complicated and it’s not friendly to email beginners when compared to other services like Constant Contact.
Navigating Brevo
Brevo is a wonderfully user-friendly platform with a clean user interface (UI) that’s easy to understand. In addition to the prominent welcome message whenever you log into your account, Brevo offers a handy list of suggested tasks for you to complete to optimize your reach. If you have a more pertinent task to handle, all the vital work-related tabs, including campaigns, automation, and contacts, can be found on the left side of the screen.
We like that Brevo is liberal with its suggestions, making it extremely easy for beginners to get started. Pop-up messages and windows are packed with help whenever you initiate a task, be that a campaign, segmentation, or automation, highlighting some of the more common tasks within the category. For example, when creating a new segment, Brevo suggests pre-defined segments, such as ones for engaged email subscribers, inactive email subscribers, contacts from a specific country code, or contacts with a pending task. It’s quite handy, and we appreciate the helpful suggestions, even though a seasoned professional might find the tips and onboarding a bit excessive.
The only real criticism here is the sluggish loading at times. Brevo is responsive overall, but swapping to new tasks or different pages feels oddly sluggish. This did not lead to major issues during testing, but it did make using the tools feel a little clunky on occasion.
Managing Contacts and Campaigns With Brevo
The first thing you want to do after creating an account is upload your contacts. We modified an Excel sheet with our test emails for this purpose, to match the fields Brevo suggested. During our initial contact upload, some information was not correctly transferred. You can opt to not upload unmatched fields, or create a new attribute and field type in the Settings section of the Contacts tab. For instance, you could add a date field for birthdays and a text field for gender. The issue was relatively minor, and Brevo highlights inconsistencies before saving your data, so you can make the appropriate changes. The process wasn’t quite as straightforward as Campaigner, which provides you with a sample Excel sheet to edit and upload, but the inconvenience was relatively minor overall.
Once your clients are saved, you can return to Contacts to segment them into whatever categories you need for your campaign tasks. Brevo’s dedicated Segments section makes it easy to create as many as you need based on your own criteria or one of Brevo’s predefined segments. You don’t necessarily need to do this to start campaigning, but it is an invaluable tool when you cater campaigns to specific clientele in the future.
Creating a campaign is also a cinch. Choose email, Facebook Ads, SMS, Web Push, or WhatsApp if you integrate with it. You can also create custom automations. With email, you can either create a regular campaign or choose an A/B test to send different versions of a campaign to two different test groups. Either way, you select the campaign name, subject line, and sender email. You can even use AI to let Brevo cook up a subject line for you, but the results were fairly bland and robotic in our testing. Once done, you can jump into the design module to create the face for your campaign.
Brevo offers more than 40 handsome templates, but it also gives you six clean layouts that you can customize to your liking. The drag-and-drop editor lets you move and adjust elements with ease. You can manually add code if you are comfortable with HTML or Rich Text Editor (or have someone on staff who is). Once you finalize the look of the email, you can preview it in your browser and then schedule it as needed.
Automation and Integrations With Brevo
Brevo’s marketing automation features are also surprisingly easy to understand and use. The tool features basic workflow templates that you can further edit and redesign for the tasks you need. Examples include welcome messages, birthday messages, activity-based templates, and notifications triggered by abandoned carts, page visits, website visits, or product purchases. Most of these workflows are automated in their own right, with pop-up messages that ask for information such as targeted contacts, a time frame, and an email template. These are a great starting point for commerce-focused and drip campaigns.
If you need something more specialized, you can start a custom workflow with the following types: a basic contact file, a contact who has completed an email or website activity, a contact who has submitted data, or a contact who was tagged while visiting your website. Once you’ve determined which contact to add to your workflow, you’ll base your sequence on a series of if/then conditions to determine what to send in your follow-up communication. There is no limit to the number of interactions you can create, but your account is still restricted by the volume of emails you pay for per month.
These robust automation features are also what enhance Brevo’s CRM integrations. The convenient subscription tracking, analytics tools, and seamless contact management give you all the tools you could want to capitalize on the opportunities your campaigns create. Overall, Brevo’s automation features stand out because they are fairly robust, given the platform’s relatively low price point. Admittedly, Brevo aims its solutions squarely at SMBs. For email marketing and automation tools that cater to enterprise-sized businesses, consider HubSpot Marketing or Salesforce Pardot.
Pricing
Brevo offers a free option of up to 9,000 emails/month (300 max per day), with unlimited contacts. Users can get a feel for the program via the free option, but will need to get a paid version to take full advantage. This basic option is inexpensive at only $25 for 20,000 emails per month. The only downside is that Brevo branding will still be on all of the emails, and that doesn’t go away until the $39 per month plan.
Even at its most expensive listed option – $66/month for 120,000 emails, unlimited contacts, SMS features, Ecommerce integrations and advanced reporting – Brevo is a solid value. The company must be contacted for prices above 120,000 emails per month.
| Pricing Plans | Starting Price | Number of Emails | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | 300/day | Unlimited contacts |
| Lite | $25/month | 20,000/month | No daily limits |
| Essential | $39/month | 60,000/month | Advanced stats |
| Premium | $66/month | 120,000/month | No automation limits |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Dedicated account manager |
Ease of Use
Brevo’s interface is not as easy to use as services like Constant Contact or Mailchimp. It presents its features and options in a more esoteric fashion, which is fine for those who are tech-savvy. However, for absolute beginners, it takes a while to get used to the platform. The layout and overall user interface (UI) are simple, but once you dig into the individual tools, it can be a bit overwhelming.
Setting up Brevo takes slightly longer than other services. It’s stricter on proving identity authentication (phone verification, more form fields), and it will take some time hooking up the SMS service and connecting Ecommerce solutions to the program. However, users will find that the end product is well worth the effort.
The plugins and integrations are easy to use, and a lot of Brevo’s added value comes from the ability to seamlessly integrate itself with the user’s digital Ecommerce platform. If Brevo is trying to be the best email marketing platform for Ecommerce businesses, it has succeeded in that mission.
Features
The SMS messaging, transactional emails and wide variety of Ecommerce plugins and integrations are unique to Brevo. There is not a better platform for integrating email marketing with an online store. In addition, the ability to segment lists based on who opens what product emails is a very useful tool.
One downside is that while Brevo excels at Ecommerce marketing, it falls short in a few key email marketing areas, including RSS feeds, good A/B testing and a robust automation system. It has an automation system that is in beta at the moment, so it’s working on that feature, but for those looking for more of a CRM/marketing tool, Constant Contact or ActiveCampaign should be considered. Consider how important the transactional emails and SMS messaging systems are to your business, and use that as the basis for you decision.
Customer Service
Brevo does not offer 24/7 support or live chat. The best way to get in touch is either via phone or through the contact form. While Brevo doesn’t have as many industry-specific materials as Benchmark Email or Constant Contact, it does have a general FAQ/walkthrough section that covers the majority of basic questions and best practices for succeeding on the platform.
The phone support system is efficient and connects you to a real person, without having to go through an automated system. During weekdays, it usually takes about 3 minutes to get your call answered, and the staff is happy to advise on both platform use and best practices.
Users would be well advised to take advantage of the support staff’s knowledge as they’re getting used to and setting up the platform. For those who would rather not phone, the email support typically responds within a few hours.
Bottom Line
Brevo offers the best email marketing platform for small- to medium-sized Ecommerce businesses. With a large variety of plugins and integrations that allow Brevo to seamlessly integrate itself with a user’s existing Ecommerce platform, it’s the obvious choice for online stores offering a variety of products.
With transactional emails, SMS messaging, automation capabilities and effective list segmentation, Brevo succeeds in hitting all the aspects of Ecommerce email marketing.
About Brevo
Founded in 2012 by Armand Thiberge with offices in Paris, Berlin, Seattle, Toronto, & New Delhi, Brevo is an all-in-one marketing platform that serves more than 175,000 customers in 160 countries and sends more than 70 million email/SMS messages each day. Brevo offers Ecommerce transactional emails and integrations, which is different from many other email marketing platforms. In 2016, Forbes chose Brevo as one of the must-follow startups of the year, and Brevo is currently continuing its international expansion efforts by launching capabilities in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian.
