Comparing Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp

While Mailchimp raises its prices, Sendinblue is as affordable as ever. Don’t pay more to grow your business.

Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp: Sendinblue up to 6 times cheaper for bulk emails!

If you’re a high volume sender, switching to Sendinblue will generate serious savings, especially after Mailchimp announced an 11%+ price increase for existing users from February 2022.

When it comes to sending bulk email campaigns, Sendinblue is the cheaper option. As a Mailchimp alternative, Sendinblue can work out up to 6 times cheaper per month in certain cases. Take a look at some of these email sending scenarios.

  Sendinblue Mailchimp
< 2,000 contacts FREE FREE
1 email / month to 2500 contacts $25 $34
1 email / month to 5000 contacts $25 $59
1 email / month to 10,000 contacts $25 $87
1 email / month to 20,000 contacts $25 $189
1 email / month to 50,000 contacts $45 $299
1 email / month to 75,000 contacts $65 $475
1 email / month to 100,000 contacts $65 $605

Source: Mailchimp.com pricing calculator. Date: 02/15/2022.

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Choosing Sendinblue over Mailchimp means big savings on your bulk email campaigns.

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Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp Free Plans: Get more features for $0 with Sendinblue

If you’re on a budget or just starting out, you’ll be glad to know that both Sendinblue and Mailchimp offer free plans. The majority of Sendinblue’s email marketing features are available for free. Mailchimp in comparison has less features on its free plan. Here’s what to expect for $0.

Free Plan Features Sendinblue Mailchimp
Contact storage Unlimited 2,000
Email send limits 9,000/month (300/day) 10,000/month (2,000/day)
Advanced segmentation Only on Premium Plan ($299/month)
Marketing automation workflows Up to 2,000 contacts Basic 1-click automations
Transactional emails
Email templates 40 + 6
HTML editor for custom-coded templates
CRM Unlimited contacts 2,000 contacts
Live chat
Customizable signup forms
RSS to email

Mailchimp: the more contacts you have, the more you pay

Mailchimp’s free plan is limited to 2,000 contacts across all lists. If one contact is on two lists, it’ll count as 2 contacts. The moment you hit 2001 subscribers you’ll need to upgrade to the Essentials plan. Since the lowest tier of the Essentials plan ($11/month) is limited to only 500 contacts, you’ll have to upgrade to the $34/month Essentials plan.

Mailchimp’s base plans are cheap for anyone starting out $11 for Essentials, $17 for Standard. But keep in mind, the price is recalculated according to the number of contacts as your business grows.

Don't pay more to grow your business

Sendinblue: only pay for what you send and enjoy unlimited contacts

With Sendinblue there’s no limit to the number of contacts per plan. Sendinblue’s entire pricing structure is based on the number of emails sent, not the number of contacts stored. For most businesses this works out cheaper because you only pay for the amount of emails you plan to send.

Sendinblue gives you the flexibility to grow your list as large as you want. Once you’re ready to scale up your sending volume you can upgrade to the baseline plan, Lite, starting at $25 for 20,000 emails/month.

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Enjoy Sendinblue's built-in transactional email functionality at no extra cost

To send transactional emails with Mailchimp (i.e. personalized one-to-one emails like shipping notifications and password resets), this service is charged as a paid add-on on top of your monthly plan.

If your small business relies on transactional emails, Mailchimp’s transactional email API will be an added expense to take into account. On top of that, transactional emails are only available in blocks of 25,000 and expire after one month. 

On the other hand, Sendinblue lets you send transactional emails as part of your monthly plan via our SMTP server — at no extra cost.

Because transactional emails often contain sensitive information, you don’t want them to wind up in Junk Mail or the Gmail “Promotions” tab. That’s why it’s best to separate promotional and transactional emails into separate streams using different domains/IP addresses.

Sendinblue has the complete transactional functionality available natively within its email marketing solution. You can also send transactional SMS messages.

Features available Sendinblue Mailchimp
Email Marketing
Transactional emails Paid add-on
SMS Marketing Text Marketer plugin
Transactional SMS
Marketing Automation
Free unlimited contacts
Email client testing
Advanced statistics
Email support
Phone support From $65 From $299
Video tutorials

Another important consideration when it comes to ecommerce and Mailchimp is the transaction fees. Users on the free Websites & Commerce plan can create a Mailchimp store online, but every transaction is hit with a 2% fee.

On top of that, you’ll have to pay their payment platform’s transaction fees. These vary based on location, but European cards incur a 1.4% + $0.25 fee on every transaction. For non-European cards, it’s even higher— 2.9% + $0.25.

On the paid plans, Mailchimp applies slightly lower transaction fees, but still leaves you with the credit card fees.

Sendinblue, on the other hand, doesn’t have any transaction fees. Our ecommerce features are perfect for businesses who want to automate and streamline their sales at little to no cost.

Get cheaper transactional emails with Sendinblue

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Sendinblue vs Mailchimp on Marketing Automation

Both solutions let you send personalized emails based on subscriber behavior but Sendinblue offers other automation possibilities, such as:

  • Setting up multichannel workflows for both email and SMS 
  • Triggering automation workflows based on webpage visits using the Sendinblue Tracker

With Sendinblue’s Free Plan you can use our intuitive workflow editor to set up automation workflows (as simple or as complex as you need) for up to 2000 contacts. Unlimited marketing automation starts at $65 / month.

Mailchimp’s event based automation is part of their Standard plan starting at $17 for 500 contacts. This price increases the more contacts you have, e.g. 5000 contacts will cost $90.

Feature Sendinblue Mailchimp
Pre-made workflows
Custom Workflows All Plans Only from Standard Plan
Database automation
Webpage visit triggers
Send automated SMS
Send contact information to a Webhook
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Undoubtedly one of the best Mailchimp alternatives available.

We switched from Mailchimp to Sendinblue for everything in camp CodeinWP more than 4 years ago. We found a lot more value with Sendinblue for the price because we pay for the volume of emails sent rather than the number of contacts we store. Additionally, the marketing automation features are much more robust, making Sendinblue undoubtedly one of the best Mailchimp alternatives available.

Ionut Neagu
CodeinWP

Deliverability: Get your emails to the inbox with Sendinblue

At Sendinblue, we take email deliverability seriously. So you can rely on our shared IPs to get your campaigns to the inbox. Here are some ways we ensure our sender reputation:

  • Rigorous account validation process to keep spammers out
  • Dedicated team of deliverability experts to actively monitor our servers and support clients with any issues
  • Automatic removal of hard bounce contacts from your campaigns

Plus, you can take control of your email deliverability with dedicated IPs for high volume senders and the option to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication. These are also possible with Mailchimp.

Switching is easy!

Sign up for free to get started with Sendinblue and easily migrate your contacts.

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Got contacts in the EU? Sendinblue will help set you up for GDPR compliance

Sendinblue’s multi-list subscription feature on signup forms separates your contacts into lists according to the type of email consent provided. For example, those who sign up for your newsletter are added to a “Newsletter” list, those wanting promotional offers to a ‘Promotional Offers’ list, and so on. If a person wants to receive both types of communication, they are added to both lists.

This way you can be sure that everyone on the list has consented to receive this type of content from you. Simply select the list, send your campaign, and that’s all there is to it. Easy. And unlike Mailchimp, we don’t charge per contact stored so having a contact on multiple lists incurs no extra cost with Sendinblue.

Here are some other reasons to choose Sendinblue for GDPR compliancy:

  • Informational resources via our Help Center and customer support available in 6 languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German)
  • Easy to implement double opt-in confirmation to confirm subscriber consent
  • Proof of consent record in contact profiles
  • An unsubscribe link in all emails
  • Airtight data transfers and storage on servers hosted in Europe
Learn more about Sendinblue's GDPR policy

They won't be going back to Mailchimp!

Switched from Mailchimp

"So far the transition from using another service (Mailchimp) has been seamless. I noticed that the Sendinblue platform is more user friendly and not as clunky as MC. We were looking for a platform that was a bit smarter/easier to use."

Read Katherine's Sendinblue review

Great customer service — awesome system

"Their subscription model (emails sent, not number of people in your database) makes it a perfect option for any size company. No need to worry about growing your database and seeing your costs explode. The only thing that matters is how many emails you sent per day (free plan) or month (paid plan)."

Read MRB's Sendinblue review

Sendinblue is the best!

"I switched from Mailchimp to Sendinblue because of their great service and all that they provide, even to people like me with small email lists. Now I am growing my list and better yet, bringing great value to my readers.
Thanks, Sendinblue."

Read Mark's Sendinblue review

Ready to try it?

Get started with Sendinblue for free with up to 300 emails/day and unlimited contact storage. If you're looking for more than just email marketing, we've got you covered. Your free account also includes access to our sales CRM, chat, and transactional platforms.

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