Brevo

ALMOST

A weekend of work, and real gaps remain.

Marketing and transactional email, SMS and a small CRM in one account, priced by emails sent rather than by contacts stored — which suits a large list that is mailed rarely.

Promptfree, for everyone, and the only version there is

Build campaign and transactional email on one provider.

STACK
- Postgres, a worker, SES or Postmark

CONTACTS
- One row per address with tags and JSON attributes
- Double opt-in; unsubscribed rows are kept, never deleted

TWO KINDS OF MAIL, ONE PIPE
- Transactional sends immediately and ignores marketing preferences
- Marketing respects unsubscribe, a weekly frequency cap and quiet hours
- Both write to the same messages table so a person's history is in one place

TEMPLATES
- MJML compiled at build; a plain-text part always generated
- Merge fields validated against the contact schema before a send is allowed

SENDING
- A queue with a rate cap under the provider quota, retries with backoff, and a dead-letter table
- Provider webhooks for bounce, complaint and delivery, applied to the contact

Include the schema, the queue and a README on separating the two reputations.

What you lose

Pricing by send rather than by contact, which is genuinely cheaper for a big, quiet list
Transactional and marketing on one sending reputation, warmed and monitored
SMS and WhatsApp alongside email without a second vendor

If you would rather not build

Postmark or SES for transactional

The escape hatch

open source · no votes, no paid placement

Listmonk

Self-hosted campaigns with SMTP or SES delivery.

knadh/listmonkfree · open source

MJML

Markup that compiles to email HTML which renders correctly in Outlook.

mjmlio/mjmlfree · open source

Why this verdict

our own opinion · changed only by a person

50/100

Verdict kinda at 50. Two pipes on one contact record is straightforward; the CRM and SMS halves are where you would stop and keep paying.

History

tracked since 10 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten

Interest · last 30 days

Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.

Questions about Brevo

answered from the record above

Is Brevo free?

No — the plan we track is $9 a month. Starter from around $9/month billed monthly for 5,000 emails; pricing is by send volume rather than contacts.

Can you replace Brevo by building your own?

ALMOST. A weekend of work, and real gaps remain. Replacement score 50 out of 100, build time a weekend. Read what you lose before you decide.

How much does Brevo cost?

$9 a month on Starter — $108 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.

What do you lose by replacing Brevo?

Pricing by send rather than by contact, which is genuinely cheaper for a big, quiet list; Transactional and marketing on one sending reputation, warmed and monitored; SMS and WhatsApp alongside email without a second vendor. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.

Is there an open-source alternative to Brevo?

Yes: Listmonk, MJML. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.

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