Brevo Review – All-in-one Email Solution for Small Business

34-year-old Steve Jacob, has been running his own ad agency for 5 years now. This ad agency started with a mere five clients for the first two months. The secret of Steve’s agencies’ client retention rate being more than 85% is that they didn’t ignore nurturing their customers at the right moment.

They struck the needs of their clients with the right marketing tactics out there. As the agency grew, their marketing needs grew exponentially and Steve knew the importance of retaining customers through email marketing.

The agency now boasts of having 60 people on board and the technical team have tried and tested almost every email marketing solution for their sales funnel.

According to Hubspot Inbound report, 91% of consumers check their emails daily and 77% of consumers prefer email for marketing communications.

Since the consumers use the email as a channel of their own, it makes it imperative for the email marketing automation software to have all the features to make the emails highly personalized according to the buyer’s persona. For the first one year of business, Steve’s engineering team was using Mandrill, which was working fine, until Mandrill announced to merge with MailChimp recently.

GDPR and CCPA is applicable in Europe and Brevo is GDPR and CCPA compliant. It is providing features which help Brevo users to manage their European subscribers. These features include right to rectification, right to be forgotten, right to portability, right to object and right to access. You can find complete detail about Brevo GDPR and CCPA and consent compliance from here.

Their marketing team was using Aweber and alternatives for email campaigns when the client base was manageable. Over time, as the demand increased and the client’s base increased, the marketing team shifted their email marketing operations to Aweber from Infusionsoft.

After restructuring, Steve’s marketing team decided that they needed an all-in-one marketing software for their use. After days of research and careful consideration of many services, they decided to use Brevo, which had all the feature they were looking for.

 Their expectations matched the requirements and they excelled in fields like customer retention in no time with this fully automated, yet personalized email marketing software. This was something that they were not able to achieve using other platforms.

Brevo is a remarkable software that provides you with an intuitive interface with a gamut of services and functionality, that the marketers bet it is the best in class email marketing campaigns software. How?

1. Email Campaigns

Brevo easy template designer platforms which are mobile – friendly and personalized, is a help in need to the marketers out there who can also be creative without any designing skills.

2. Marketing Campaigns

Brevo defines Marketing campaigns as a new level. It’s easy and encourages target based actions. Smart email marketing automation should be easy and well targeted that would require effortless marketing.

Brevo user interface has multi step, multi channel campaign set up, that makes your marketing effort a cake walk.

3. Triggered Campaigns

Campaigns that are driven by targeting and behavior. Take this instance- You have a customer who has your products in his cart and you want him to pay?

Brevo will detect that and send the prospect a personal email that would remind him of the cart and pay for the items in his cart or send out password resets email or welcome email when somebody create a new account.

4. Transactional Email and SMS

Want to ensure your customer gets his shipping notification based on their contacts? Are you finding it hard to make your prospects aware of the clearance sale that is going to happen next week?

App Alerts and push notifications automations are all the features of Brevo that will make sure that your customers get the welcome SMS, order confirmation messages, shipping, and delivery information tracking, and other important alerts to reach their inbox.

Brevo also has logs to search for the historical transaction emails and messages. Not only this, you can get delivery messages and engagement metrics to see what is happening to your SMS sent to the customers.

5. Marketing Automation and Workflow Creation

With Brevo you can create easy Automated Workflow channel which will allow you to create multi step and multi channel campaigns with unlimited variables in just a few minutes.

This is the same marketing automation workflow design that we feature in Drip automation tool.

But Brevo takes this to next level as you want to reach your customers through SMS or Email, through this easy management system, you will be able to choose the preferred device and reach your customers at the right moment and right time.

Brevo smart re-targeting function, allows you to track and engage with the visitors on landing pages.

Segmentation and targeting is also easy with your available contacts.

6. Brevo Chat

Brevo chat is available as website widget and integrates with Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp. You can engage your with your customers thorough the Chatbot & targeted messages.

Visitors list & detailed information are also available with Chat Ratings & Report. Form & Lead-capture Bot also make the Brevo Chat widget a must have for small business.

7. Brevo Sales CRM

Brevo has launched a full fledged CRM for sales professionals. Currently the sales CRM is available for free of cost. The Brevo Sales CRM has following features:

Brevo unique contact builder that segregates the prospects according to their age, city etc.

Apart from Mailerlite which only has email marketing feature, Brevo is another all-in-one MailChimp alternative that is very light on the pocket and very effective for small business.

If you are in a fix as to which one to use for integrating all your marketing activities, then we provide you with a comparative analysis that will help the users make an informed decision.

Brevo helps create professional looking email templates at a cost that is four times cheaper than MailChimp.

We should note that Brevo charges on per email sent basis while MailChimp charges per subscriber basis. So if the marketers have a high number of subscribers and they can send them a low number of emails per month, then Brevo is a cheaper option.

Checkout the Reddit discussion and review snapshot below where you can find what other people say about Brevo.

Brevo is all in one solution for email marketing automation and communication, whether it is Email Marketing, Transactional Emails, SMS marketing, Transactional SMS or Marketing automation.

Brevo user interface is attractive and easy to use. It’s clear simple drag and drop email builder, deep subscriber segmentation feature is another feature that Brevo is providing that has a solid competition with MailChimp.

MailChimp doesn’t let you send emails to your contacts automatically under free plan, while Brevo, for unlimited time, does offer automation in their free plan itself.  This, in turn, gives the users enough time to decide about the purchase – as to which service you ultimately want.

Founded by Armand Thiberge, who created this software to “democratize email marketing” and especially making the facilities available to small businesses, helped formulate an efficient, simple yet powerful alternative of MailChimp.

You can start integrating their MailChimp contacts to Brevo here.

Aweber doesn’t provide 24×7 support services through phone or online, and pricing starts from $19 per month. Aweber users are devoid of good support. Aweber doesn’t provide SMS integration which is a very useful marketing technique used nowadays.

Aweber also doesn’t have ecommerce and web analytics feature which Brevo has.

While both have a free trial facility for the marketers, where first time users don’t need to enter their credit card details to sign up in Brevo. Brevo customers have the privilege of getting online, phone support and knowledge base Aweber can only support a subscriber base up to 25,000 on their plans while Brevo can support unlimited contacts.

Deep customer segmentation is not possible in Aweber but Brevo makes it easy.
We have already talked about the importance of segmenting the campaigns in marketing, which Aweber is lacking, while one of the best catch for Brevo is the campaign segmentation feature.

Here’s a comparison table of Brevo vs. AWeber:

WordPress and Brevo Integration

Brevo is a WordPress friendly solution for email marketing and plugin so you can keep their audience updated with all the awesome things that you are publishing and grow your business.

You can send transactional emails via SMTP or APIs. Brevo WordPress integration has been kept very simple and easy to install for non-techies as well. After installation, you can start creating your campaigns from your WordPress website itself.

However, Brevo free membership has a monthly limit of 9000 emails the newsletter builder is available for forever.

PrestaShop and Brevo Integration

Brevo also allows the businesses operating in Prestashop to integrate the plugin in the website. You can start effective email marketing strategies, with the tools you incorporate, using Brevo.

Brevo has always ensured to provide their customers with a very easy installations process. For installation, one need to log in with their PrestaShop account; going to extensions and adding a zip file – Brevo-Prestashop.zip.

For the on screen installation process here to complete installation and start email marketing campaigns for the customers.

With the installation of Brevo, you can easily segment your customers or visitors on site and track their orders. With this tracking code for each visitor, it is easy to segment your customer according to who placed an item more than a certain amount.

Even with the total amount spent you can create your campaigns. With this facility, Brevo makes it the best email marketing integration for the eCommerce merchants using Prestashop.

Brevo for Magento Integration

Magento is another ECommerce platform simplifying your product content management. Brevo comes with integration with Magento as well. Synchronizing Brevo with Magento is extremely easy and easy to manage.

Brevo provides plugins you need to incorporate to effectively run your email marketing campaigns for your prospects and customers. SMS transaction is also done through the plugin that will quickly send an SMS when the order is confirmed and shipped.

Brevo SMS service makes it easy to track, monitor and optimize the results with real time analytics and better user experience platform.

Setting up Brevo plugin is very simple. If Magento users don’t have a Brevo account, then they need to create one. Some of the intuitive feature that helps Magento users are – easy segmentation of subscribers, newsletter builder, monitoring of transactional email templates and easy to use real time detailed reports.

This also comes with a dedicated IP for the protection of reputation. All this comes with unbeatable costs that are the best in the industry.

Choosing the right email marketing tool often boils down to pricing and features that align with your business needs. Below is a detailed comparison of Brevo pricing against ten other popular tools in the market. Each tool has varying starting costs and feature inclusions that cater to different business sizes and requirements, from basic email campaigns to advanced automation.

Brevo offers a robust free plan and a competitive starting price that appeals to small and medium businesses. While some tools like Moosend and Mailchimp offer lower starting prices, Brevo unique combination of multi-channel marketing, automation, and SMS integration makes it a strong contender. When selecting the right tool, consider not just the price but also the features that align with your marketing strategy and business goals.

Here is a detailed table highlighting the pros and cons of using Brevo as an email marketing tool:

Choosing the right email marketing tool depends on your business size, needs, and budget. Here’s a breakdown of who should choose Brevo and why it could be the right fit:

Brevo is versatile but particularly shines for those needing multi-channel marketing at an affordable price.

Who should not choose Brevo?

Brevo may not be the best choice for large enterprises or businesses requiring highly advanced analytics, deep segmentation, and extensive customization options. Companies needing a full-featured CRM or complex, data-driven marketing strategies may find Brevo CRM and reporting capabilities limited compared to robust platforms like HubSpot or Salesforce.

Additionally, advanced users who require extensive design flexibility, A/B testing capabilities, or premium template options might feel constrained by Brevo’s relatively basic offerings. Those heavily reliant on high-level integrations with niche software might also encounter compatibility challenges.

Brevo is the most used email marketing tool used in small business, because of the pricing and all-in-one emailing tool. Being the direct communication between a brand and a customer, the beneficial aspects of email marketing for small businesses for retention and delighting the customers, cannot be overlooked.

Even if someone is from a nontech background, i.e, having no knowledge of coding at all, Brevo doesn’t make it hard for them to operate. It’s professional looking HTML email are very easy to create. It is because of these factors that Brevo makes it difficult for the small business owners to think of any other alternative.

Check the below review from a Quora user :

Brevo superior reporting and analytics system is very easy to interpret and with the help of the reporting system of telling the campaign owner – who clicked what – it becomes very easy for the person to target the customers who are inclined towards a certain product.

With this information, the small business owner can make personalized emails to further attract a prospect.

Another review by a user of this tool:

Source: Brevo Review at TrustRadius

Another review states that, by far, the best customer support has been that of Brevo. They are very quick to answer any technical query or any other kind of support needed. With the quick automate process, Brevo automatically generates newsletter of by curating information from the website and sent it to the contacts.

Brevo has provided support and value to small businesses by establishing all the functions that they need without having to pay a lot for it. It is one of the things that people like about Brevo and often mention it in their review.

Enough of keeping you in dark, let’s come to money! 

Let’s see how is Brevo an all rounder in email marketing software and still is easy on pockets for the businesses and freelancers. For beginners, it comes with storing unlimited subscribers details and 9000 emails per month, which is a free plan.

The best part is, you don’t have to sign up with your credit card, unlike many other email marketing software to enjoy the privileges that Brevo provides.

Brevo has been mentioned by Capterra under 10 Free Email Marketing Software Solutions for Small Business Marketers. Apart from real-time reporting, mobile-friendly email designer, email template library, and personalization of emails, the prospects will be receiving the emails with Brevo logo.

Brevo Starter pack has a limit of 20,000 emails per month with unlimited subscribers and contacts. Unlike the free plan that comes with daily sending limit, lite allows the users to send as many emails as they require per day. Brevo’s starter is priced at $25/month.

Business pack would have the more features that the starter pack provides with an additional 20,000 emails per month and is priced at $65/month. With this plan and the above plans, the users can remove the Brevo logo from emails that are sent to their prospects.

The premium pack also comes with an advanced reporting system that includes geography and device reporting, heat map reporting, and an advanced campaign statistics system that helps look for the open rate and click rate.

It helps the marketers immensely to optimize the campaigns and take necessary steps to modify them, according to statistics. The business pack is priced at $65/month. Premium pack users get to send 20,000 emails per month. With these great features and an advanced reporting system, Brevo pricing plans are the most affordable email marketing solution out there for the business.

BMW and Rakuten are the clients that Brevo boasts of. And why not?

Update October, 2021: Brevo has acquired Chatra, Metrilo and PushOwl. Chartra is Livechat messenger for business, Metrilo is into customer analytics for ecommerce business and PushOwl is into push notification for Shopify. This clearly indicates, Brevo is getting full fledged into  building marketing platform for ecommerce business.

Brevo features let you get the most out of an email marketing campaign and as such they have some great options to help optimize your email marketing efforts.

Their landing pages, segmentation, send transactional email, emails and sms messages features with personalization can really help marketers to propel their conversion rates. Brevo offers an affordable option where you get a generous free plan, and the paid plan starts at $25 for 29,000 emails. So, if you ever want to switch to Brevo you can always check out their free plan.

I like that you get 300 emails per day features that Brevo offers with their free version. The customer service is also one of the best and the Brevo review on Capterra have a decent overall rating.

Here is a table representing key features of Brevo and their ratings :

Brevo Review – All-in-one Email Solution for Small Business

• 1Inside Brevo
• 2Brevo vs Mailchimp
• 3Brevo vs Aweber
• 4Brevo Integrations
• 5Price Plan comparison
• 6Who should choose Brevo?
• 7Brevo for Small Business
• 8Brevo Price Plans
• 9Quick Overview
• 10Our Experience
• 11FAQ