Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an all-in-one email and SMS marketing platform — the free tier covers 300 emails/day and unlimited contacts, making it the most generous entry point in the category.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the most generous free tier in email marketing. While Mailchimp limits free accounts to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month, Brevo's free plan allows unlimited contacts and up to 9,000 emails per month — the same volume that Mailchimp charges $40–50/month to reach. The product covers email marketing, SMS, WhatsApp messaging, transactional email, landing pages, a built-in CRM, live chat, and marketing automation in one platform. For most growing SaaS companies, Brevo replaces three or four separate subscriptions.
Brevo's architecture separates marketing emails, transactional emails (receipts, password resets, notifications), and SMS into distinct sending streams with shared contacts. The drag-and-drop email builder includes 40+ responsive templates. Automation workflows use visual if/then builders — for example, trigger a three-email onboarding sequence when a user signs up for a free trial, or send a winback SMS 30 days after a subscription lapses.
The built-in CRM connects contact properties to email behaviour: open rates, click history, purchase events, and custom attributes all feed into segmentation rules. This eliminates the need for a separate CRM for early-stage teams. For developer-heavy teams, Brevo's SMTP relay and transactional API handle 99% of what Postmark or SendGrid do at a significantly lower per-email cost at most volume tiers.
The free plan sends up to 9,000 emails per month with no contact limit and no expiry — a threshold that most growing newsletters and SaaS products do not exceed for the first 12 to 18 months. The Starter plan at $25/month removes the daily sending limit and adds basic reporting. The Business plan at $65/month adds full marketing automation, A/B testing, and advanced analytics.
The JoinSecret deal delivers 75% off annual Starter and Standard plans for 12 months. At the Starter annual rate (approximately $25/month), the effective cost after the discount is $6.25/month — less than a single professional email newsletter subscription. This is the best-value deal in the email marketing category on JoinSecret.
| Tool | Free contacts | Free sends/month | Transactional email | Built-in CRM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Unlimited | 9,000 | Yes (same dashboard) | Yes |
| Mailchimp | 500 | 1,000 | Via Mandrill (paid add-on) | Limited |
| Klaviyo | 250 | 500 | No | No |
| ActiveCampaign | No free tier | — | Yes (add-on) | Yes (paid tiers) |
| ConvertKit | 1,000 | Unlimited | No | No |
Brevo's free tier alone outperforms Mailchimp's paid plan for teams under 10,000 contacts. Add the 75% JoinSecret discount and you have the most cost-efficient email marketing stack available to a bootstrapped founder or early-stage growth team. Start free, stay free until you need automation workflows, then upgrade at a fraction of list price.
Try Brevo free — 9,000 emails/month, unlimited contactsRun your entire onboarding sequence, product newsletter, and transactional email from one Brevo account. Stay on the free plan until you genuinely need advanced automation — most founders get 12–18 months of runway on the free tier.
Manage your subscriber list, design emails with the drag-and-drop builder, and track open and click rates without paying anything until your list grows past roughly 9,000 active subscribers who open every issue.
Connect Brevo's CRM to your email behaviour data. Score leads based on email engagement, trigger sales follow-ups when high-intent contacts visit your pricing page, and manage deals without paying for HubSpot.
Trigger SMS and email sequences based on purchase events from Shopify or WooCommerce. Brevo's automation builder handles the most common e-commerce flows — abandoned cart, post-purchase review requests, winback campaigns.
Bonus credits redeemable on partner tooling.
We re-verify the offer every quarter so it never goes stale.
Hit the button on this page — opens the partner site in a new tab.
Check your investor or accelerator benefits portal for the Brevo partner code. Y Combinator, Sequoia, and most Tier 1 VCs have codes available.
Renewals stay at the same rate — verified by us, not the vendor.
| Feature | Brevo |
|---|---|
| Free trial | 14 days |
| Cheapest paid plan | $0/mo |
| Annual discount | Up to 25% |
| Refund window | 30 days |
| Setup time | < 1 hour |
| Best for | Founders |
“SMS + email in one tool makes sense for retail campaigns”
“Email + transactional in one platform saves $50/mo”
“Unlimited contacts on the free plan is the decision for small businesses”
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