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

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

The Deliverability Engineer

Weighted verdict

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.

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

Scored by The Deliverability Engineer

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.

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The Deliverability Engineer

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. 8 9 16 17

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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.

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The Deliverability Engineer

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. 9 10 11 17

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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.

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The Deliverability Engineer

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. 3 12 14 15

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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.

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The Deliverability Engineer

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. 2 9 16 17

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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.

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The Deliverability Engineer

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. 1 3 4 7

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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.

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The Deliverability Engineer

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. 2 3 9 17

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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 →