whats-best.ai

Email Marketing & Newsletter

Brevo

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 2 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Sendinblue SAS · www.brevo.com

Compare with Mailchimp → Report an error on this page Is this your product? →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The CRM Manager

Weighted verdict

Owns the lifecycle programme and measures it. Wants segmentation on real behaviour, journeys that branch, and testing that reports significance rather than a bigger number. Treats a tool that can only broadcast as a mailing list with invoicing.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The CRM Manager

Campaigns & automation

How this is scored

Building the mail and the journey around it: editor, templates, segmentation, triggered sequences, A/B testing.

0 — One-off broadcasts from a fixed template; no segmentation and no automation of any kind.

3 — A drag-and-drop editor and simple list segmentation, but automation is a single welcome mail and there is no testing.

5 — Reusable templates, attribute and behaviour segmentation, multi-step automations on common triggers, and subject-line A/B testing.

8 — A visual journey builder with branching on behaviour and data, dynamic content per segment, send-time optimisation, and testing that reports significance rather than raw counts.

10 — Journeys treat the whole lifecycle: event-driven entry from other systems, branching on any attribute or event, holdout groups for measurement, and automations a marketer can read months later without a diagram.

Report an error

The CRM Manager

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. 8 9 16 17 1

Report an error

Deliverability infrastructure

How this is scored

Whether the mail arrives — authentication, sending reputation, bounce and complaint handling — judged on what the vendor documents rather than the inbox rate it advertises.

0 — No documentation of authentication or bounce handling; deliverability appears only as a marketing number.

3 — SPF and DKIM setup documented, but no DMARC guidance, no stated bounce policy and shared sending only.

5 — SPF, DKIM and DMARC documented with a custom sending domain, automatic hard-bounce suppression, and complaint-loop handling stated.

8 — The above plus dedicated-IP options with a documented warm-up, seed or inbox-placement testing, engagement-based sunsetting, and published guidance on list hygiene.

10 — Deliverability is operated as a service: reputation monitoring surfaced to the customer, per-domain and per-ISP diagnostics, enforced authentication before first send, and postmaster or blocklist handling the vendor documents doing on the customer's behalf.

Report an error

The CRM Manager

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. 17 10 11 9

Report an error

List ownership, import & exit

How this is scored

Whether the list and its history remain the sender's: import with attributes intact, full export including engagement history, deletion that executes, and no metering that prices leaving out of reach.

0 — Export is addresses only; engagement history, segments and automations cannot leave.

3 — CSV import and export of subscriber fields, but engagement history and unsubscribe state are not exportable.

5 — Full subscriber export including custom attributes, subscription status and unsubscribe state, plus API access sufficient to sync elsewhere.

8 — Everything exportable in open formats — subscribers, engagement history, campaigns and templates — with documented deletion of a subscriber across all records, and no export throttling.

10 — Exit is a documented feature: full-fidelity export of the whole account, contractual data return, deletion that is evidenced rather than asserted, and migration tooling in both directions.

Report an error

The CRM Manager

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. 14 15 12 3

Report an error

Integrations & API

How this is scored

The connection surface a newsletter lives on: shop and CRM systems, events in and out, webhooks, and an API somebody can build against without a partner agreement.

0 — No API and no named integrations; the list is maintained by CSV upload.

3 — A handful of native integrations and a read-mostly API, with no webhooks and no documented rate limits.

5 — Named integrations for common shop and CRM systems, a documented REST API with keys, and webhooks for the core subscriber events.

8 — Maintained bidirectional integrations with named systems including at least one major shop platform, event webhooks with retries, documented rate limits, and a sandbox.

10 — The tool is a component rather than a destination: transactional and marketing sending on one API, events flowing both directions, versioned API with a deprecation policy, and integrations the vendor maintains rather than lists.

Report an error

The CRM Manager

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. 17 16 9 14 2

Report an error

European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where subscriber data and behavioural tracking live, who the contracting entity is, and which subprocessors touch the send. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it — which in this category is heavily.

0 — US vendor and contracting entity, US hosting, subprocessors unnamed; subscriber behaviour leaves the EU with no stated basis.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option or for storage only, while sending, tracking or support access remains non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — sending infrastructure, analytics, support tooling — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting, sending and every subprocessor in the EU, certification published, and no transfer that needs a Schrems II argument to survive.

Report an error

The CRM Manager

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. 3 4 1 7 5

Report an error

Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a sender can compute the real invoice for their list size and send volume — including overage, extra domains and automation limits — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A headline price per contact tier exists, but send limits, overage rates or the tier where automation begins are not stated.

5 — Contact-tier prices public with the billing period stated and send limits given, but at least one commonly needed capability sits in an unpriced tier or add-on.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with contact and volume limits, overage rates, feature boundaries and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom volume lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator producing the annual invoice for a given list size and send frequency, including overage, additional domains and dedicated IPs.

Report an error

The CRM Manager

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. 17 3 2 9

Report an error

European sovereignty — proven facts

2 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency EU only ⚠ unverified 3/3 pts 1 Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Sources (17)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.brevo.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.brevo.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Terms www.brevo.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Privacy policy www.brevo.com Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Privacy policy www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Imprint www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Security / trust page — found from the homepage www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Campaigns & automation — found from sitemap www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Campaigns & automation — found from sitemap www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Deliverability infrastructure — found from sitemap developers.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Deliverability infrastructure — found from sitemap www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Consent, proof & tracking limits — found from sitemap www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Consent, proof & tracking limits — found from sitemap www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  14. 14 List ownership, import & exit — found from sitemap developers.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  15. 15 List ownership, import & exit — found from sitemap developers.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  16. 16 Integrations & API — found from sitemap www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  17. 17 Integrations & API — found from sitemap www.brevo.com Checked 30 Sep 2026 Details →