Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover email marketing & automation. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| ActiveCampaign | Brevo | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $15 | From $9 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Annual only | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | None |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web |
| Covers | Email Marketing & Automation | Email Marketing & Automation, Newsletter & Email |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Email automation with a CRM underneath it
ActiveCampaign is what people move to when the sequences outgrow a newsletter tool, and its conditional logic goes deeper than anything at this price. The CRM underneath means a sponsor conversation and a subscriber record are the same object. It takes a weekend to learn, and the cheapest plan caps automations at five actions, which is not enough to try the thing it is good at.
Our note
Budget for Plus rather than Starter. The five-action cap on the cheapest plan blocks exactly the branching logic that justifies choosing ActiveCampaign over a newsletter tool, and discovering that after migrating a list is a bad afternoon.
Email, SMS and automation on one free plan
Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, prices by messages sent rather than by contacts stored, which is the cheaper shape for anybody with a big list they mail rarely. Email, SMS and WhatsApp sit in one place. The editor and templates are plainer than the newsletter-first tools.
Our note
This is the one to pick when the list is big and quiet. If you mail weekly, the send-based pricing stops being a saving and a newsletter-first tool will serve the writing better.
Only on this side
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.