Brevo vs Mailchimp

Brevo

Automation is genuinely multi-step: a workflow editor with smart triggers, website events usable as automation and engagement conditions, Shopify purchase and abandoned-cart data driving recovery, and ready welcome and anniversary journeys. Segmentation can run on web tracking, unengaged subscribers can be excluded automatically, and there is an AI send-time feature plus subject-line A/B testing. We found no public information on branching, dynamic content per segment, holdout groups, or testing that reports significance rather than raw counts, so it stops short of the top of the scale.

Mailchimp

The flow map with conditional and percentage splits, triggers filterable by segment conditions, event entry through the events endpoint and an API trigger for journeys is a genuine lifecycle tool, with dynamic content documented for the higher plans. But I found no public information on A/B testing of any kind, no significance reporting and no send-time optimisation, so the measurement half of a lifecycle programme has nothing published to stand on.

Brevo

SPF, DKIM and DMARC configuration is documented with step-by-step DNS setup, domain authentication has a documented API, dedicated IPs are offered on Professional and Enterprise plans, and a Deliverability Center surfaces a score with open-rate and bounce drivers over six months of history. Automatic exclusion of unengaged subscribers is stated. We found no public information on dedicated-IP warm-up, seed or inbox-placement testing as a tool, a stated hard-bounce suppression policy, or list-hygiene guidance; the up-to-99% figures appear as marketing copy rather than evidence.

Mailchimp

Authentication is documented properly — DKIM as two CNAME records and DMARC as a TXT record, with an automated setup path — and dedicated IPs carry a documented warm-up of roughly 30 days, while soft/hard bounce categorisation from SMTP replies factors engagement into cleaning decisions. Complaint-loop handling, inbox-placement testing and published list-hygiene guidance are unevidenced, and bounce reasons are viewable one address at a time, held only 30 days, with bulk export ruled out.

Brevo

Double opt-in is the documented default, consent groups with a self-serve preference centre give contacts topic-level granularity rather than all-or-nothing, and the GDPR pages document erasure within 30 days, access and portability rights, and forwarding of requests sent directly to the vendor. The proof layer is where the captures go quiet: we found no public information on a stored consent record with source and wording, on unsubscribe handling across lists, or on any way to limit or switch off open and click tracking.

Mailchimp

The proof side is genuinely strong: a plain-text version of the signup form with its GDPR fields is recorded per contact and viewable on the profile, editing a checkbox invalidates prior consent, and the confirmation mail is customisable. Double opt-in is offered per audience rather than being the documented default and works only on the vendor's own signup forms, and I found no public information on switching open or click tracking off per campaign or otherwise.

Brevo

Import and export are first-class API operations — asynchronous import with a callback URL and consent groups, export to CSV with selectable attributes, list memberships, timestamps, and email and SMS subscription status — and deletion of a contact erasing all their personal data is documented. We found no public information on exporting engagement history, campaigns or templates. The captured terms also make exit tight: customer content is deleted immediately and irrevocably on termination unless requested within 24 hours, recovery for the last monthly subscription amount is possible, and accounts inactive for six months can be deleted.

Mailchimp

Account export is documented as a zip of audiences, campaign content, template content, contact events and reporting data in CSV, with permanent deletion and a forget action per contact — subscribers, engagement history and templates all leave in open formats. The exit is metered though: one export at a time and only one per 24 hours, builds running minutes to days, contact exports running per audience, and activity history capped at the previous 180 days of aggregated stats.

Brevo

A real developer surface: a documented v3 REST API with key authentication, official maintained SDKs in seven languages, inbound and outbound webhooks covering delivered, opened, clicked, bounced and spam, inbound parsing, idempotency, published rate limits, and an API playground for live test calls. The marketplace names the systems a lifecycle programme lives on — Shopify syncing purchase and abandoned-cart data, WooCommerce, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Segment — and transactional and marketing sending sit on the same API on all plans. We found no public information on webhook retry policy or an API versioning and deprecation policy.

Mailchimp

Marketing and transactional sending each have documented APIs, events flow in through the events endpoint and the journey trigger and out through list and account webhooks, batch operations exist, and named integrations include a stated two-way sync with Salesforce plus Shopify, Square and Stripe. Webhook retries and a sandbox are not evidenced, and rate limits are documented only for individual endpoints, which holds this below the top.

Brevo

Contracting is with the French parent Sendinblue SAS, hosting is stated as EU-only on named providers — OVH in France and Germany, Google Cloud in Belgium, the latter a US-headquartered company — and ISO 27001:2022 certification is downloadable with a TÜV Rheinland audit of the technical and organisational measures. Non-EU transfers to the USA and India are named with their basis in adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses. Subprocessors are partly named — OpenAI and Chatbase for chatbots, Karumi, the payment providers — and the privacy policy states all subprocessors are listed in the DPA, but we found no published complete list on the captured pages, and the EU-only hosting statement sits in homepage marketing copy while AI input and output including customer content is transmitted to third-party AI providers.

Mailchimp

The contracting entity is The Rocket Science Group LLC under Intuit Inc. in the US, US hosting is the fixed default with no EU option anywhere on the captured pages, and no subprocessor list is published on the vendor's own pages. Standard contractual clauses in the data processing addendum and annual Data Privacy Framework certification state a transfer basis, and under that basis session replay through US providers, export files hosted with Google and named third-party API providers all touch the chain — this survives, if at all, on a transfer argument rather than sovereignty.

Brevo

The tiers are public with volumes and periods stated — Starter from €7, Standard from €15, Professional from €499 per month "From 150,000 emails per month", Enterprise at custom price from 1 million emails per month, and a free plan at 300 emails a day — and the terms state prices exclude VAT and additional fees, with the currency depending on region, which matches the different figures in euros and dollars across the captured pages. We found no public information on overage rates when the monthly email volume is exceeded, on the price of a dedicated IP, or on SMS beyond "volume- and destination-dependent", and there is no calculator producing an annual invoice.

Mailchimp

Monthly from-prices and send limits are public per plan — Standard at up to 6,000 emails a month, Premium at 150,000 — and the comparison table shows flow points, audiences, seats and feature boundaries per tier. The captured pages give different figures for the Essentials and Standard monthly prices (€11.50 against €11.34, and €17.45 against €17.68), the overage is stated only as extra costs with no rate, and I found no public information on the Premium tier's price, SMS add-on pricing, or VAT treatment.