The budget email marketing showdown nobody talks about honestly
Here’s the deal: if you’re a small team with under 5,000 subscribers and you’re not at least considering Brevo or MailerLite, you’re overpaying for email marketing. Both tools bill themselves as the affordable alternative to Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and the rest of the $50+/month crowd. But “affordable” means different things depending on which one you pick, and the wrong choice will cost you in ways that don’t show up on the pricing page.
We ran both platforms simultaneously for 90 days — Brevo for a B2B SaaS comparison newsletter and MailerLite for a creator resources digest. Same team, same content quality standards, similar audience sizes. We tracked everything: open rates, click rates, deliverability, time-to-send, automation reliability, and actual dollars spent.
This is what happened. Not a feature comparison scraped from their websites. Not an affiliate sales pitch. Real numbers from real sends.
Our 90-day experiment setup
We split our test like this:
- Brevo list: B2B newsletter, twice-weekly sends, targeting startup founders and ops managers. Started at 1,800 subscribers, grew to 3,240 over 90 days.
- MailerLite list: Creator resources digest, weekly sends plus one automation sequence, targeting freelancers and solopreneurs. Started at 1,750 subscribers, grew to 3,105 over 90 days.
Both lists used the same lead magnet type (a downloadable toolkit PDF), embedded signup forms on pages with similar traffic levels, and identical double opt-in settings. We wanted the variable to be the platform, not the audience.
We set a hard budget of $25/month per platform. If a tool couldn’t deliver results within that ceiling, it failed the test.
After 90 days, here’s what the numbers looked like:
| Metric | Brevo | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Final subscriber count | 3,240 | 3,105 |
| Average open rate | 24.8% | 29.3% |
| Average click rate | 3.1% | 4.4% |
| Inbox placement (tested via 10 seed accounts) | ~91% | ~93% |
| Total spend over 90 days | $52.47 | $45.00 |
| Unsubscribe rate | 0.31% | 0.24% |
| Automation revenue | $380 | $510 |
The headline: MailerLite won on almost every engagement metric. But Brevo has a few advantages that don’t show up in this table — particularly around SMS marketing and transactional email — that kept us from calling a flat winner.
Let’s dig in.
Where Brevo wins
SMS and multi-channel in one platform. This is Brevo’s killer feature and nobody else at this price point comes close. During our test, we ran one SMS campaign through Brevo promoting a webinar. It cost us $8.40 to send 280 texts, and 34 people clicked through — a 12.1% click rate that crushed our email click rates on both platforms. If you’re building a business where reaching people on their phone matters (local businesses, event companies, appointment-based services), Brevo’s SMS integration is a legitimate reason to pick it over MailerLite, which has no native SMS at this tier.
Transactional email is included. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) started as a transactional email provider, and it shows. You can send order confirmations, password resets, and triggered transactional emails from the same platform you use for marketing — without paying for a separate SendGrid or Postmark account. We piped our StackCrisp signup confirmations through Brevo’s transactional API. Setup took 20 minutes. The first 300 transactional emails per day are free on every plan. For a bootstrapped team, combining transactional + marketing email in one tool is a real cost saver.
The free plan is genuinely generous. Brevo’s free tier gives you unlimited contacts and 300 emails per day. That’s not a typo — unlimited contacts. Every other email tool we’ve tested caps your free plan by subscriber count. Brevo caps by daily send volume instead. If you have 10,000 subscribers but only email them once a week, you might never need to pay Brevo a dime. We wrote about how this model compares to others in our ConvertKit vs Mailchimp comparison, but the short version: Brevo’s free plan is the best in the business for large-but-infrequent senders.
The email builder is more capable. Brevo’s drag-and-drop editor handles complex layouts better than MailerLite’s. We built a product comparison email with a two-column grid, embedded video thumbnail, and dynamic content blocks in about 15 minutes on Brevo. The same layout in MailerLite required a custom HTML block because their editor couldn’t handle the column structure. If you send visually complex emails regularly, this matters.
But here’s where Brevo frustrated us:
The interface feels like it was designed by engineers, for engineers. Brevo’s dashboard is functional but not intuitive. Finding specific settings (like enabling re-engagement automations or adjusting sender reputation settings) took us 3-4 clicks deeper than it should have. MailerLite’s interface, by contrast, is one of the cleanest we’ve used — comparable to the project management simplicity we praised in our Notion vs ClickUp review.
Email limits instead of contact limits can backfire. During our test, we had a product launch announcement that went out to our full 3,200+ list. Brevo’s free plan limits you to 300 emails per day. We had to upgrade to a paid plan ($25/month for 20,000 emails/month) just to send that one campaign without spreading it across 11 days. That’s the hidden cost of the “unlimited contacts” model — you save money on contacts but can get burned on send volume during peak moments.
Where MailerLite wins
Deliverability was consistently better. Our 10-account seed test showed MailerLite at 93% inbox placement vs Brevo’s 91%. That 2% gap is small but consistent — across all 90 days, MailerLite never dipped below 90% while Brevo had two weeks where placement fell to 85-87%. We traced those dips to shared IP pool fluctuations. If you want to nerd out on this, we talk more about how deliverability varies by platform in our ConvertKit vs Mailchimp article.
The automation builder is shockingly good for the price. MailerLite’s visual automation workflow builder handles conditional splits, delays, goal tracking, and e-commerce triggers — features you’d expect on a $50+/month tool. We built a 7-email welcome sequence with behavioral branching (if they click the CRM comparison link, send X; if they click the project management link, send Y) in under 30 minutes. It worked flawlessly for the entire 90 days. Brevo’s automation is functional but clunkier — more steps to achieve the same logic.
Open rates and click rates were materially higher. 29.3% open rate vs 24.8%. 4.4% click rate vs 3.1%. That’s not a small gap — it’s the difference between your content getting seen and getting buried. We controlled for subject line quality, send time, and audience type. The gap persisted across every send. MailerLite’s cleaner sending reputation and simpler email structure (their templates default to clean, text-forward layouts) are the likely culprits.
The price is hard to beat. MailerLite’s “Growing Business” plan starts at $15/month for up to 1,000 subscribers and scales reasonably — we paid $15/month for our entire 90-day test because we stayed under the 2,500-subscriber threshold until the final two weeks. At 3,100 subscribers, we’d pay $25/month. The same list on Brevo costs $25/month too, but MailerLite includes more automation features at that tier without upselling you.
The interface is a joy to use. We know “clean interface” sounds like a soft compliment, but it matters when you’re sending emails weekly. MailerLite’s dashboard shows you what you need — recent campaigns, subscriber growth, automation performance — without clutter. Creating a campaign takes 4 clicks from the home screen. Brevo takes 6 clicks and you’ll pass two upsell banners on the way. In a busy workweek, that friction adds up. We found the same principle applies to productivity tools in our Asana vs Monday comparison — the tool you enjoy using is the tool you’ll actually use.
But here’s where MailerLite frustrated us:
No SMS marketing. Zero. Zilch. You want to text your subscribers? You’ll need a separate tool, and you’ll need to connect it via an automation platform, which adds cost and complexity. For our test, this wasn’t a dealbreaker, but if you run a local business or event-based operation, this is a significant gap.
The free plan is more restrictive than it looks. MailerLite’s free tier caps you at 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails/month. It also strips out several features: no e-commerce automations, no custom HTML, no deliverability insights. Brevo’s free plan, by comparison, gives you unlimited contacts and includes transactional email. If you’re genuinely bootstrapping and need maximum capability for zero dollars, Brevo wins.
Where both disappointed us
Let’s be honest about the stuff neither platform gets right.
Reporting on both tools is mediocre. Neither Brevo nor MailerLite gives you the kind of analytics that Mailchimp or Klaviyo offer. Want heat maps of where people clicked in your email? Not available on either. Want revenue attribution that ties specific emails to purchases? Brevo has basic e-commerce tracking; MailerLite added it recently but it’s still thin. Want A/B testing beyond subject lines? Brevo supports it on paid plans but the interface is confusing; MailerLite doesn’t support content A/B testing at all. We ended up using UTM parameters and Google Analytics to fill the gap, which is not ideal.
Landing pages on both are mediocre. We tested landing pages on both platforms for our lead magnet. Brevo’s landing page builder produced a page that converted at 4.2%. MailerLite’s converted at 5.1%. Both are below the 7-8% we’d consider good. We ended up building our actual landing page in a dedicated tool and just embedding the signup form. If landing pages are critical to your strategy, don’t rely on either platform’s built-in option — check out our Unbounce vs Leadpages comparison for dedicated builders that convert 2-3x better.
Both have annoying subscriber management quirks. Brevo counts “transactional contacts” separately from “marketing contacts” and it’s confusing — we had subscribers appearing in two different lists and couldn’t figure out why for two days. MailerLite doesn’t handle duplicate imports gracefully; we uploaded a CSV with 40 duplicates and it created all of them instead of merging. Small things, but they add up when you’re managing a growing list.
Neither integrates as deeply with CRMs as we’d like. We wrote about CRM integrations in our HubSpot vs Zoho CRM piece, and the short version here is: both Brevo and MailerLite have native integrations with HubSpot, but neither works well with Zoho, Pipedrive, or custom CRM setups without middleware. If your email tool and CRM can’t talk to each other, you’re creating manual work.
The failure story: MailerLite broke during our launch
Week 7 of our test. We planned a coordinated launch for a new comparison guide — the email would go out to our full MailerLite list at 9am Tuesday, paired with a social media push.
We’d built a 3-email automation sequence: launch announcement on Tuesday, testimonial follow-up on Thursday, “last chance” nudge on Sunday. We tested it the Friday before. Everything worked.
Tuesday morning, the first email sent. Thursday morning, the second email… didn’t. The automation had stalled because one subscriber had bounced between the Tuesday and Thursday sends, and MailerLite’s automation paused the entire sequence to handle that single bounce. No notification. No error email. We discovered it had stopped when we checked analytics Thursday afternoon and saw zero sends.
We scrambled to send the Thursday email manually. Then rebuilt the automation with a workaround (added a “skip bounced contacts” filter that should’ve been default). The Sunday email went out on time.
Cost of the failure: We estimate 15-20% lower engagement on the Thursday email because it went out 6 hours late, past the optimal send window. The manual send also meant we couldn’t track it within the automation’s performance dashboard, so our 90-day automation data is slightly skewed.
MailerLite’s support responded to our ticket in 4 hours (not bad) and explained the behavior was “by design to protect sender reputation.” Fair enough. But pausing an entire automation for a single bounce, silently, with no notification? That’s a design choice we strongly disagree with. Brevo handles bounces by skipping the affected subscriber and continuing the sequence — the correct behavior.
Feature comparison: What you actually get
| Feature | Brevo | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Email Editor | Drag-and-drop, handles complex layouts | Drag-and-drop, clean but simpler |
| Automation Builder | Visual, functional, more steps needed | Visual, intuitive, behavioral branching |
| SMS Marketing | Native, built-in, affordable per-message | Not available |
| Transactional Email | Included (300/day free) | Not available |
| Landing Pages | Basic builder, ~4% conversion in our test | Basic builder, ~5% conversion in our test |
| Segmentation | Contact attributes + behavior | Groups + fields + behavior |
| A/B Testing | Subject lines + content (paid plans) | Subject lines only |
| Deliverability Tools | Dedicated IP available ($$$), basic on free | Good shared IP reputation, warm-up guidance |
| Integrations | 150+ native, including Shopify and WooCommerce | 100+ native, growing marketplace |
| Free Plan Limits | Unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day | 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails/month |
| Reporting | Opens, clicks, basic e-commerce | Opens, clicks, automation stats, thin analytics |
Pricing comparison: What you’ll actually pay
Both platforms market themselves as “budget-friendly,” but the pricing models are fundamentally different. Brevo charges by email volume. MailerLite charges by subscriber count.
| Tier | Brevo | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 — Unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day, includes transactional email | $0 — Up to 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails/month, basic features |
| Entry Paid | $25/mo — 20,000 emails/month, no daily limit, A/B testing | $15/mo — Up to 1,000 subscribers, all features, no email caps |
| Mid-Tier (our test size) | $25/mo — 20,000 emails/month (covers ~3,000 subscribers with weekly sends) | $25/mo — Up to 2,500 subscribers, all features |
| Growth (5,000 subscribers) | $37/mo — 50,000 emails/month | $44/mo — Up to 5,000 subscribers |
| Scale (10,000 subscribers) | $57/mo — 100,000 emails/month | $73/mo — Up to 10,000 subscribers |
The pricing crossover happens around 5,000 subscribers. Below that, MailerLite is usually cheaper because their entry plans start lower. Above that, Brevo’s email-volume model becomes more economical, especially if you send less frequently than weekly. But if you send daily emails to a large list, Brevo’s volume caps can push you into higher tiers faster than MailerLite’s subscriber caps.
There’s also the SMS factor: Brevo charges per SMS (around $0.03-0.04 per message depending on country), which adds up but is still cheaper than running a separate SMS platform. If SMS is part of your strategy, Brevo’s pricing advantage extends to reduced tool consolidation.
Our honest recommendations
You should pick Brevo if:
- You need SMS marketing alongside email (local businesses, event companies, appointment-based services)
- You send transactional emails and don’t want to pay for a separate service
- You have a large list but email infrequently (the unlimited contacts model saves you money)
- You send visually complex emails that need a capable drag-and-drop builder
- You’re technically inclined and don’t mind a denser interface
You should pick MailerLite if:
- You’re a creator, blogger, or newsletter writer focused on written content
- You want the best engagement rates at this price point (29%+ open rates in our test)
- You value a clean, intuitive interface that gets out of your way
- You rely heavily on automation sequences (better builder, more reliable in our test — aside from the bounce issue)
- You want predictable pricing based on list size, not send volume
You should pick neither if:
- You run an e-commerce store with serious revenue (get Klaviyo or Mailchimp — the ROI from product recommendations and abandoned cart recovery justifies the higher cost)
- You need enterprise-grade analytics (neither tool’s reporting is good enough for data-driven teams)
- You’re managing multiple large client lists as an agency (look at ActiveCampaign or our comparison of CRM tools for small businesses to build a more complete stack)
The honest bottom line
If we could only keep one, we’d keep MailerLite. The higher engagement rates, better automation builder, and cleaner interface make it the more effective tool for sending words to people who want to read them. At $15-25/month for lists under 2,500 subscribers, it’s the best value in email marketing right now.
But we’re keeping Brevo too — specifically for SMS campaigns and transactional email. Running both costs us $40-50/month total, which is less than half of what we’d pay for a single mid-tier Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign plan. For a bootstrapped team, that math matters.
The real advice: start with MailerLite’s free plan. Hit 1,000 subscribers. See if the engagement numbers work for you. If you hit a wall where you need SMS or transactional email, add Brevo. Don’t try to pick the “perfect” tool upfront — pick the one that works today and migrate later if you need to. Just… migrate early, before you have months of behavioral data locked in. Learn from our ConvertKit vs Mailchimp migration disaster — switching tools after you’ve built up subscriber intelligence is painful.
FAQ
Is Brevo better than MailerLite?
For specific use cases, yes. Brevo wins on SMS marketing, transactional email, and complex email layouts. It’s also better if you have a large subscriber list but send infrequently, because its free plan doesn’t cap contacts. But in our 90-day test, MailerLite delivered higher open rates (29.3% vs 24.8%), higher click rates (4.4% vs 3.1%), and a more reliable automation experience for standard email marketing. For most creators and small teams sending weekly or twice-weekly newsletters, MailerLite is the better tool. For teams that need multi-channel outreach (email + SMS) or transactional email, Brevo has the edge.
Which is cheaper: Brevo or MailerLite?
It depends on how you send. MailerLite is cheaper for lists under 5,000 subscribers if you send at least weekly — their $15/month entry plan covers 1,000 subscribers with no email caps, while Brevo charges $25/month for 20,000 emails. But Brevo’s free plan (unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day) is cheaper than MailerLite’s free plan (1,000 subscribers cap) if you have a big list and email rarely. Above 5,000 subscribers, Brevo’s volume-based pricing often becomes more economical than MailerLite’s subscriber-based pricing. Our total 90-day spend was $52.47 on Brevo vs $45.00 on MailerLite for similar-sized lists with different send frequencies.
Can I use Brevo for transactional email?
Yes — and it’s one of Brevo’s biggest advantages over MailerLite. Brevo (which started as Sendinblue, a transactional email platform) includes transactional email on every plan, including the free tier. You get 300 transactional emails per day for free, which covers signup confirmations, password resets, order receipts, and notification emails for most small businesses. We routed our StackCrisp signup confirmations through Brevo’s transactional API in about 20 minutes of setup. MailerLite does not offer transactional email — you’d need a separate tool like SendGrid or Postmark, which adds $15-20/month to your costs.
Why did MailerLite have better open rates in your test?
We believe it comes down to three factors. First, MailerLite’s default templates are simpler and more text-forward, which tends to avoid Gmail’s Promotions tab — our seed testing showed slightly better primary inbox placement for MailerLite (93% vs 91%). Second, MailerLite maintains a strong shared IP reputation with stricter onboarding for new senders, which benefits everyone on their platform. Third, MailerLite’s cleaner email structure (less complex HTML, fewer tracking pixels) may trigger fewer spam filter signals. We controlled for subject line quality and send time across both platforms, and the engagement gap was consistent across all 90 days of testing.
Should I switch from Mailchimp to Brevo or MailerLite?
If your Mailchimp bill is over $30/month and you don’t rely heavily on Mailchimp’s e-commerce features, yes — switching will probably save you money and might improve your engagement rates. Our recommendation: switch to MailerLite if you’re a content-focused sender (newsletters, blog digests, creator content), or to Brevo if you need SMS or transactional email. But migrate early. As we documented in our ConvertKit vs Mailchimp comparison, migrating after you’ve built up months of behavioral data (purchase history, engagement scores, click patterns) means losing all that subscriber intelligence. Export your list, import it clean, and expect 4-6 weeks of rebuilding before your metrics normalize.
Prices verified as of April 2026. Both tools adjust pricing periodically — always check their current pricing pages.