The two benches lean in opposite directions. Brevo is ahead on integrations (8.0 vs 7.7; two judges lean Brevo, four tie), sovereignty (6.7 vs 1.5; six judges lean Brevo) and pricing transparency (6.2 vs 5.3; four lean Brevo). Mailchimp is ahead on list data control (7.0 vs 5.5; six judges lean Mailchimp, resting on a documented whole-account export), campaign and automation (7.0 vs 6.5; three lean Mailchimp, three tie), deliverability (6.8 vs 6.3; four lean Mailchimp) and consent and proof (5.5 vs 5.2; three lean Mailchimp). The weighted totals split as well: Brevo leads with the data protection officer, integrator and skeptic; Mailchimp edges ahead with the CRM manager and deliverability engineer. Sovereignty attributes: Brevo lists a German legal entity and EU-only data residency; Mailchimp lists a US legal entity, foreign-controlled ownership and US-default data residency; both list US Cloud Act subprocessor exposure.
Choose Brevo if
You need EU-only data residency for your subscriber data — Brevo's data residency attribute is EU-only, and the sovereignty lean runs six judges for Brevo (6.7 vs 1.5).
Your developers build against a documented API — Brevo's integrations mean is 8.0 to Mailchimp's 7.7, with two judges leaning Brevo and zero leaning Mailchimp, on a REST API with published rate limits, seven official SDKs and real-time webhooks.
You want published tier prices before committing — pricing transparency leans four judges to Brevo with zero for Mailchimp (6.2 vs 5.3), with Starter from €7, Standard from €15, Professional from €499 and Enterprise custom.
Your data protection officer signs off on the tool — that judge's weighted total reads 6 for Brevo vs 4.6 for Mailchimp.
Choose Mailchimp if
You must be able to export your whole account on demand — list data control reads 7.0 vs 5.5 with six judges leaning Mailchimp, resting on a documented whole-account export as a zip.
Your team runs journeys with conditional and percentage splits — campaign and automation leans three judges to Mailchimp with three ties (7.0 vs 6.5).
Deliverability is your top criterion in the scorecard — four judges lean Mailchimp there (6.8 vs 6.3).
Your CRM manager or deliverability engineer has the final call — their weighted totals read 6.7 vs 6.6 and 6.3 vs 6.1 in Mailchimp's favor.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Deliverability Engineer
Cares about one number nobody publishes honestly: what reaches the inbox. Reads for authentication, IP and domain reputation, bounce discipline and sunsetting. Ignores every advertised delivery rate on principle — the infrastructure either is documented or it is not.
Brevo
Mailchimp
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Campaigns & automation
Brevo
A workflow editor with smart triggers across the platform, Shopify purchase and abandoned-cart events driving recovery flows, behaviour segmentation from website tracking, AI best-time sending and subject-line A/B testing on top of ready-made workflows and templates. I found no public information on branching journeys, per-segment dynamic content, or tests reporting statistical significance.
Mailchimp
Automation flows are documented as a visual journey map with conditional and percentage splits, wait steps, webhooks and up to three segmentable triggers, plus dynamic content on paid tiers and an API trigger that starts journeys from outside events. We found no public information on send-time optimisation, holdout groups, or A/B testing that reports significance, which keeps a genuinely strong journey builder short of the top band; flow depth is also tier-gated to four steps on the entry paid plan.
Deliverability infrastructure
Brevo
Automatic SPF, DKIM and DMARC configuration is documented alongside a domain-authentication flow, shared IPs on all plans and a dedicated IP option on Professional and Enterprise, with automatic exclusion of unengaged subscribers and a Deliverability Center surfacing a score plus open and bounce drivers over six months of history. I found no public information on automatic hard-bounce suppression, dedicated-IP warm-up, or seed and inbox-placement testing — and the advertised 99% inbox-placement figures count for nothing with me.
Mailchimp
Authentication is documented properly — domain verification first, then two CNAME records for DKIM and one TXT for DMARC, with an automated setup method and guidance on the Gmail and Yahoo DMARC requirements — and bounces are categorised soft or hard from SMTP replies with subscriber engagement factored into cleaning decisions. Dedicated IPs are provisioned with a roughly 30-day warm-up and custom reverse DNS on the transactional side. We found no public information on inbox-placement or seed testing, complaint-loop handling, or sunsetting of inactive subscribers, so the top of this band stays out of reach.
Consent, proof & tracking limits
Brevo
Double opt-in is documented as the default with opt-in-only language, consent groups give contacts a self-serve preference centre with topic-level granularity, and access, erasure within 30 days and forwarded data-subject requests are all documented. I found no public information on what the stored consent record contains, on one-click unsubscribe mechanics, or on limiting or switching off open and click tracking.
Mailchimp
Double opt-in exists per audience with a customisable confirmation mail, the captured pages show a plain-text record of the GDPR form wording stored on each contact profile, and exports carry SMS consent source and revocation times — consent evidence a long way past a bare timestamp, with a forget endpoint and per-audience contact export behind it. But double opt-in is offered as one of two opt-in methods rather than a documented default and can be enabled only on Mailchimp signup forms, and we found no public information on switching open or click tracking off, pixel-free sending, or unsubscribe honoured across audiences.
List ownership, import & exit
Brevo
Import and export run through documented endpoints with selectable attributes, email and SMS subscription status, timestamps and csv output, the GDPR page pledges export for transfer to a third party or competitor, and customer content is downloadable in an interoperable format for as long as the subscription runs. The captured terms give only a 24-hour window after termination before immediate and irrevocable deletion, and I found no public information on exporting engagement history, campaigns or templates.
Mailchimp
Exit is documented as a real feature: a whole-account zip with audiences, campaign content, templates, gallery assets, contact events and reporting data, plus per-contact CSVs that include opens, clicks and campaign interactions, and API actions that delete all personally identifiable information or forget a contact. The captured pages also state only one export can be generated per 24 hours and that contact-level exports must be repeated per audience when a contact sits in several, and the migration services we can see run inbound only, for Premium customers or the first 30 days of an account.
Integrations & API
Brevo
Official, maintained SDKs in seven languages, documented rate limits of 1,000 requests per second on all plans, real-time webhooks for delivered, opened, clicked, bounced and spam events, inbound parsing, an API playground for live endpoint tests, transactional sending on every plan, and a marketplace with named Shopify, WooCommerce and WordPress integrations — Shopify syncing purchase data and abandoned carts. I found no public information on webhook retry behaviour or a versioning and deprecation policy for the API.
Mailchimp
Over 300 integrations included in every plan, named two-way sync with Salesforce and a Shopify connection, and two documented APIs — marketing (version 3.0.91, batch operations, list webhooks) and transactional (raw MIME sending, scheduled mail, SMS, subaccounts, inbound routes, tracking domains). Per-endpoint rate limits are stated and deprecation is practised openly, with the legacy export API given an end date; we found no public information on a sandbox or documented webhook retries.
European sovereignty
Brevo
EU hosting is standard on named infrastructure — OVH in France and Germany plus Google Cloud in Belgium — under a French contracting entity, with a downloadable ISO 27001:2022 certificate and transfers to the USA and India named with their Data Privacy Framework or standard-contractual-clause basis, while the privacy policy names OpenAI, Chatbase, Karumi and the payment providers. It stops short of the top rung: the complete subprocessor list could not be confirmed on the vendor's own pages, Google Cloud is a US-headquartered host, and customer content including AI input and output is passed to third-party AI providers.
Mailchimp
Sovereign this is not: the contracting entity is The Rocket Science Group LLC under Intuit Inc. in Mountain View, US storage is the fixed default with no EU hosting option on any captured page, and even export files are hosted by Google. Transfers do carry a stated basis — annual EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification with SCCs folded into the data processing addendum as fallback — and some processors are named, but we found no public information confirming a complete subprocessor list, and session replay runs through FullStory and Medallia.
Pricing transparency
Brevo
Public tier prices with volume limits and the billing period are stated — Starter from €7 per month at 5,000 emails, Professional from €499 per month from 150,000 emails, a yearly toggle at minus 10% — and the terms state that prices are exclusive of VAT with a 30-day price-change notice. I found no public information on how email-credit pricing scales, on the cost of a dedicated IP address, or on contact limits above the free plan's 2,000.
Mailchimp
Monthly prices are public with send limits per plan, automation flow depth per tier, and feature boundaries down to audiences, seats and onboarding sessions — enough to price the shape of a plan before talking to anyone. But overage is only ever stated as extra costs applying when limits are exceeded, we found no public information on VAT treatment or a Premium price figure, and the captured pages give different figures for the same plans — Standard at €17.45/Monat and at €17.68/Monat, Essentials at €11.34/Monat and at €11.50/Monat — which we do not choose between.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Brevo
Mailchimp
Legal entity
Incorporated in DE
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Foreign-controlled
Data residency
EU only
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.