MarketingComparison
Brevo vs MailerLite: Email Marketing Platforms Compared
Brevo vs MailerLite compared for SMBs and creators: CRM-lite features, automation, pricing by contacts, and which ESP fits your list size and workflow.
Affiliate disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you sign up through one of our links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This does not change our comparisons below.
Brevo vs MailerLite compares two affordable ESPs popular with SMBs, and the most important thing to understand before comparing feature lists is that they don’t even bill the same way. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) bundles email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, and a lightweight CRM into one login, and prices by how many emails you send each month while keeping contacts unlimited on every paid plan. MailerLite stays narrower — simple newsletters, forms, and automations — and prices by how many subscribers you store, the more familiar model for this category. That structural difference means the “cheaper” platform depends heavily on your specific list size and sending cadence, not just which one has the lower sticker price. This guide covers current pricing, CRM and multichannel depth, and automation on both platforms so you can match the choice to your actual list size and sending habits. Read Brevo review and MailerLite review for creators.
See also MailerLite vs Brevo for MailerLite-first readers. MailerLite Comfort limits monthly sends; Power includes unlimited emails under fair use—factor that into send-frequency comparisons with Brevo’s volume tiers.
Quick verdict
Choose Brevo if you want multi-channel (email plus SMS, WhatsApp, and live chat) and CRM-lite features in one login, especially if your list is large but you don’t email it especially often — Brevo’s send-based pricing rewards exactly that pattern.
Choose MailerLite if you want cleaner email UX and lower complexity at many list sizes, particularly if you send frequently to a smaller, steadily growing list and don’t need SMS, WhatsApp, or CRM functionality bundled into your email tool.
Neither pricing model is objectively cheaper — they’re built for different sending patterns, so the most useful first step before comparing feature depth is figuring out which model actually favors your list size and how often you plan to email it.
Comparison table
| Factor | Brevo | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Channels | Email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, web push, transactional email/SMS API | Email-first — email, landing pages, websites, forms |
| Automation | Multichannel workflow builder with CRM hooks (deal pipelines, meeting scheduling) | Visual automations focused on straightforward tag-and-trigger flows |
| Pricing model | Emails sent per month; contacts unlimited on every paid plan | Subscriber count tiers (renamed Comfort/Power in 2026) |
| Free plan | 300 emails/day (~9,000/month), unlimited contacts | Roughly 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month |
| Best for | SMB marketing ops wanting multichannel consolidation | Creators and lean teams with a large, steadily growing list and simple sending needs |
Compare pricing: MailerLite pricing.
Pricing and plans, in detail
Brevo’s paid tiers scale with monthly email volume rather than list size: Starter runs from $9/month for 5,000 emails but doesn’t include automation, while Standard runs from $18/month for 5,000 emails and adds automation, A/B testing, and landing pages. Both scale up from there as your monthly send volume grows. A newer Professional tier, priced from around $499/month, represents a roughly 668% jump from Brevo’s previous top-tier price of about $65/month — a dramatic increase mainly relevant to larger senders evaluating Brevo’s higher tiers rather than anyone comparing entry-level plans. Brevo’s free plan allows 300 emails a day (roughly 9,000 a month) to an unlimited contact list, with no credit card required.
MailerLite’s tiers scale with subscriber count instead. Its paid structure — renamed from Growing Business and Advanced to Comfort and Power during 2026 — starts around $12/month for Comfort and $25/month for Power at the 500-subscriber level, both scaling upward with list size. MailerLite’s free plan has been reduced more than once and now covers roughly 250 subscribers and 2,500 monthly emails, a real step down from the far more generous 500-subscriber, 12,000-email free tier it offered a couple of years earlier.
The practical upshot mirrors what you’d expect from the two pricing philosophies: a large list emailed infrequently tends to cost less on Brevo, since MailerLite would charge for storing all those contacts regardless of how often you actually send to them. A smaller list emailed very frequently can tip the other way, since Brevo’s cost climbs with every email sent while MailerLite Power offers unlimited monthly emails (fair use) and Comfort enforces a 10× tier send cap—Free remains capped at 2,500 sends/month. Estimate total monthly sends (broadcasts plus automation steps) and check that figure against Brevo’s volume tiers and MailerLite’s Comfort cap or Power policy, then check your raw contact count against MailerLite’s subscriber buckets in MailerLite pricing, rather than comparing headline prices directly.
CRM and multichannel depth
Brevo’s built-in CRM is a real differentiator from MailerLite: deal pipelines, meeting scheduling, and contact-level activity tracking sit alongside the email and campaign tools, letting a small sales-adjacent team manage leads without a separate CRM subscription. Layered on top of that, Brevo’s SMS, WhatsApp Business messaging, and live chat features, plus a genuinely capable transactional email and SMS API, mean a business can run order confirmations, shipping alerts, and marketing campaigns from a single platform rather than stitching together several point tools. For a small ecommerce operation specifically, this consolidation can mean replacing a separate transactional-email provider and a basic CRM tool entirely, folding their cost into the same Brevo subscription that already covers marketing email.
MailerLite doesn’t attempt this breadth, and deliberately so — it stays focused on email marketing, landing pages, websites, and straightforward automation, without SMS, WhatsApp, or CRM features competing for interface space. That narrower scope is a real advantage for a newsletter-first creator who doesn’t want those extra modules adding decision fatigue, but it does mean pairing MailerLite with separate tools if your workflow genuinely needs SMS or CRM functionality — a cost and integration burden that Brevo’s bundle is specifically designed to avoid.
Automation and ease of use
Brevo’s automation builder supports more complex, multi-channel workflows — combining email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications with conditional logic in a single journey — though user reviews on sites like G2 and Capterra fairly consistently note that its multi-step workflows feel more restrictive than dedicated automation-first platforms once you push into genuinely complex branching logic. For most small business and creator use cases short of that complexity ceiling, Brevo’s automation is more than sufficient, and the ability to trigger an SMS follow-up from the same workflow that sent an email is a genuine capability MailerLite simply doesn’t have.
MailerLite’s automation builder favors straightforward tag-and-trigger flows — a welcome sequence, a post-purchase follow-up, a simple re-engagement campaign — with a visual interface that stays approachable even for a first-time user. It isn’t trying to support deeply branching, multi-channel customer journeys, and for a large share of newsletter-first users, it doesn’t need to. Dashboard friction stays low on MailerLite specifically because it doesn’t surface modules — SMS, CRM, live chat — that a user isn’t using.
Deliverability, support, and integrations
Both platforms have reasonable general deliverability reputations, though the dynamics differ given their different pricing models. Because Brevo charges by volume sent rather than list size, it has less built-in incentive to nudge users toward pruning inactive contacts the way contact-based pricing implicitly does, so list hygiene is worth actively managing on Brevo regardless of what the platform charges for storage. MailerLite’s contact-based pricing more directly rewards keeping an engaged, pruned list, since every stored contact counts toward your tier regardless of engagement.
Support structure differs by tier on both platforms. MailerLite offers 24/7 email support broadly with live chat on higher tiers, while Brevo’s support depth varies more by tier, with features like phone support and a dedicated IP option reserved for its Professional and Enterprise tiers. On integrations, Brevo’s library runs deeper and more commerce- and CRM-oriented — over 150 native integrations — consistent with its broader platform ambitions, while MailerLite covers the essentials most creators need (Shopify, WordPress, Stripe, Zapier) without an exhaustive catalog.
Who should choose which
Brevo fits local businesses using SMS reminders and contact pipelines alongside email — a service business confirming appointments by text, or a small sales team managing leads through Brevo’s built-in CRM rather than paying for a separate one.
MailerLite fits newsletters, lead magnets, and coach welcome sequences — creators and small businesses whose whole email program is genuinely just email, sent on a predictable cadence to a growing list, without a near-term need for the extra channels Brevo bundles in.
If your business sits genuinely in between — meaningful email volume alongside a real interest in SMS or CRM consolidation — it’s worth trialing both against your actual contact list and typical monthly send count rather than choosing on brand reputation alone, since both platforms’ free tiers make that a low-cost way to compare firsthand before committing budget.
See also MailerLite vs GetResponse for another ESP comparison in our catalog if neither platform’s specific trade-offs fit your workflow.
FAQ
Which is cheaper at 10K contacts?
It depends heavily on how often you email that list, since the two platforms bill on different units entirely. If you send to your full 10,000-contact list only a few times a month, Brevo’s send-based pricing likely comes out cheaper, since MailerLite would charge based on the full 10,000-subscriber tier regardless of send frequency. If you send frequently — multiple campaigns a week — MailerLite’s subscriber-tier pricing may work out cheaper when Power unlimited sends or Comfort’s 10× cap still beats Brevo’s per-email meter at your list size (confirm in both calculators). Run both official calculators with your actual list size and sending cadence rather than comparing headline tier prices, since plan tier features matter as much as the price itself.
Does Brevo include CRM?
Yes — Brevo bundles a lightweight sales CRM with deal pipelines and meeting scheduling into its platform, which is a genuine differentiator from MailerLite, which has no equivalent CRM feature at all. Verify current CRM feature depth against your specific needs, though, since a bundled lightweight CRM is a different product than a dedicated, full-featured CRM platform, and Brevo’s version is built to complement its email and marketing tools rather than replace a standalone CRM for a sales-heavy organization.
Can I migrate between them?
Yes, but plan to rebuild rather than transfer directly: export your subscriber list and any tags or custom fields first, since those generally move over in a straightforward file import. Automations, however, need to be rebuilt manually inside the new platform’s workflow builder — automation logic isn’t portable 1:1 between Brevo and MailerLite, given how differently their automation builders and available channels (SMS, WhatsApp, CRM triggers on Brevo) are structured.
Does either platform’s free plan hold up for a growing business?
Both free plans are usable for testing but tight for sustained use. MailerLite’s free plan (roughly 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month) suits a very small, low-frequency sender, while Brevo’s free plan (300 emails/day, unlimited contacts) suits a larger list emailed rarely rather than a smaller list emailed often. Which one “holds up” longer depends entirely on which of those two patterns matches your actual usage — a fast-growing list will likely outgrow MailerLite’s contact cap sooner, while a business ramping up send frequency will hit Brevo’s daily email cap sooner. Either way, treat the free tier as a genuine test bed rather than a long-term home once your business has real, sustained sending activity.
Is Brevo’s recent pricing volatility a concern for budgeting?
It’s worth factoring in. Brevo restructured and renamed plans multiple times through the first half of 2026 and added a new Professional tier priced from around $499/month, a roughly 668% jump from its previous top-tier price. That specific change mainly affects larger senders evaluating Brevo’s higher tiers, but it signals that Brevo’s pricing — like several other tools in this category during 2026 — has moved more aggressively than its historically stable, budget-friendly reputation might suggest, so avoid assuming today’s entry-level pricing will necessarily hold steady indefinitely. MailerLite has moved too, though less dramatically — its free tier shrank in stages and its paid plans were renamed, so neither platform’s pricing should be treated as fixed when budgeting more than a few months out.
Does this article use affiliate links?
Yes. Some links are affiliate links; we may earn a commission if you purchase through them. That relationship does not change the comparison above—recommendations follow pricing behavior and feature fit described in the article.