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 Skeptic
Has seen every vendor claim 99% deliverability and GDPR compliance on the same page. Reads for the contact-tier staircase, the overage rate, the feature that begins two tiers up, and whether "EU hosting" covers the sending infrastructure or only the database.
Brevo
This judge's pick
Mailchimp
Criterion by criterion
Campaigns & automation
Brevo
A drag-and-drop editor, ready-made and custom workflow builders, welcome, birthday and abandoned-cart automations, segmentation that includes website tracking, AI send-time selection, and subject-line or content A/B testing are all documented — comfortably past the middle level. We found no public information on branching journeys on behaviour and data, dynamic content per segment, holdout groups, or testing that reports significance.
Mailchimp
The flow builder is the real thing — conditional and percentage splits, wait-for-trigger, webhooks and API-triggered entry, dynamic content from Standard up — but flow depth itself is metered by plan (200 flow points on Standard versus 4 steps per flow below). We found no public information on A/B testing, send-time optimisation or holdout groups.
Deliverability infrastructure
Brevo
Automatic SPF, DKIM and DMARC configuration with a custom sending domain is documented, dedicated IPs sit on Professional and Enterprise, a Deliverability Center surfaces a score with open-rate and bounce drivers over six months of history, and unengaged subscribers can be excluded automatically. We found no public information on dedicated-IP warm-up, seed or inbox-placement testing, or an explicit automatic hard-bounce suppression policy, and the 99% inbox-placement figure appears only as a marketing number.
Mailchimp
Authentication is documented down to the DNS records — two CNAMEs for DKIM, one TXT for DMARC, with an automated setup path — plus dedicated IPs with a roughly 30-day warm-up and automatic soft/hard bounce categorisation that factors engagement into cleaning. We found no public information on complaint-loop handling or seed and inbox-placement testing, and bounce reasons expire after 30 days with no bulk export.
Consent, proof & tracking limits
Brevo
Double opt-in is documented as the default, opt-in-only collection with pre-checked boxes prohibited, a preference centre with consent groups gives per-topic granularity, and handling of access, erasure and portability requests with 30-day erasure is written down. We found no public information on what the stored consent record contains beyond the opt-in itself, on one-click unsubscribe mechanics, or on whether open and click tracking can be limited or switched off.
Mailchimp
Double opt-in exists per audience but only for Mailchimp signup forms — contacts added via API cannot get it — and single opt-in is offered equally, so it is a choice rather than a default. The versioned form wording retrievable on each contact's profile is genuinely proof-grade consent evidence; we found no public information on switching open and click tracking off, or on unsubscribe honoured across audiences.
List ownership, import & exit
Brevo
Import and export run through a documented API with selectable attributes including marketing subscription status and contact metadata, and the terms grant download of customer content in an interoperable format during the subscription, with deletion on request. We found no public information on exporting engagement history, campaigns or templates; the captured terms delete all content immediately and irrevocably on termination unless it is requested within twenty-four hours, and inactive accounts are deleted after six months — the exit door exists, but it is narrow and time-boxed.
Mailchimp
Exit is materially supported: an account export as a zip with audiences, campaign and template content, contact events and reporting, opens and clicks files per contact, and documented permanent deletion endpoints. What caps it is the metering — one export per 24 hours, per-audience exports for access requests, and files hosted by Google behind signed URLs that skip user verification.
Integrations & API
Brevo
A marketplace naming Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, HubSpot and dozens more, one-click WordPress, Shopify and PrestaShop connections, a documented REST v3 with api-key authentication, published rate limits rising from 1,000 to 2,000 requests per second by plan, real-time webhooks for delivered, opened, clicked, bounced and spam events, inbound parsing, official SDKs in seven languages, an API playground, and transactional and marketing sending on one API. We found no public information on webhook retry behaviour or an API versioning and deprecation policy.
Mailchimp
Named integrations for the shops and CRMs that matter — Shopify, Square, Lightspeed, a two-way Salesforce sync — across 300+ apps, with marketing and transactional APIs, webhooks in both directions and batch operations. We found no public information on a sandbox or webhook retries, and rate limits appear only for a single search method at 20 calls per minute.
European sovereignty
Brevo
Hosting on named EU providers (OVH in France and Germany, Google Cloud in Belgium) and an EU contracting entity — the French parent Sendinblue SAS — are documented, third-country transfers to the USA and India are named with adequacy or standard-clause bases, and ISO 27001:2022 has a downloadable certificate. The complete subprocessor list is stated to sit in the data processing agreement but we found no public confirmation of it, the named processors include US providers such as OpenAI receiving AI input and output that can include customer content, and the EU-hosting statement sits in homepage marketing copy — we found no public information on where the sending infrastructure itself is located.
Mailchimp
US contracting entity under Intuit, US hosting with no EU option anywhere on the captured pages, and no published subprocessor list — names like Twilio, FullStory, Medallia and Google appear only incidentally in the privacy statement. Transfers do carry a stated basis (annual DPF certification with SCCs as contractual fallback), which is more than nothing, but the entire structure rests on the framework this buyer does not trust, and this category weighs it heavily.
Pricing transparency
Brevo
Public tier prices carry monthly and annual billing and per-tier email volumes — Starter from €7 at 5,000 emails per month, Standard from €15, Professional from €499 at 150,000, Enterprise custom from one million — VAT exclusion is stated, and add-ons such as branding removal at €8.10 per month carry prices. We found no public information on contact limits for the paid tiers, on email-credit or overage rates, or on the price of a dedicated IP, and the captured pages give different figures for the free plan's contacts and daily sends.
Mailchimp
Headline monthly prices and per-tier send limits are public — Standard with 6,000 emails per month, the captured pages giving different figures for Essentials (€11.34 versus €11.50 per month) and Standard (€17.45 versus €17.68 per month) — with feature gating laid out per tier. Overage rates, VAT treatment and the price of the SMS add-on, dedicated IPs and high-volume plans are not stated, and the captured pages describe exceeding the limit both as incurring extra costs and as paused sending.
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.