Mailchimp vs Brevo: Which Email Tool Should You Pick?

2. Mailchimp vs Brevo: The Short Verdict

Quick Answer: Pick Brevo if your list is big, your sending is occasional, or your website sends order and booking emails. Pick Mailchimp if one non-technical person owns email and the list is small. Pick neither yet if nobody has decided what the emails are for — start with our simple EDM guide for Malaysian SMEs.

After running both across Malaysian client accounts, the split lands here:

• Brevo is the cheaper engine. It charges on emails sent, stores contacts for free, and throws in transactional email — the order confirmations and booking receipts your website already needs to send.
• Mailchimp is the easier handover. Templates, reports and the editor are still the friendliest in the category, and almost every marketing hire in Malaysia has already used it.
• Neither one writes the emails. Both platforms will happily bill you every month while an empty campaign list sits there — which is the same problem behind low email open rates.

If you would rather read each tool on its own before comparing, we have done both: the full Mailchimp review for Malaysian SMEs and the Brevo review as a cheaper Mailchimp alternative both go tier by tier.

3. The Two Tools Bill You for Completely Different Things

Quick Answer: Mailchimp meters contacts. Brevo meters sends. So Mailchimp punishes a big list you rarely email, and Brevo punishes a small list you email constantly. Work out which shape your list is before you compare a single price — everything else follows from it.

Put the two 2026 plan ladders next to each other and they barely look like the same product category. These figures come from the Mailchimp Help Centre pricing plans and the Brevo Help Centre pricing plans.

Read the last two rows again, because they are the whole article. A retailer sitting on 8,000 old contacts and mailing them twice a year is paying Mailchimp for storage it never uses. A consultancy with 400 contacts and a weekly newsletter would be perfectly happy on Mailchimp Essentials.

4. The Same List, Twelve Months, Two Very Different Bills

Quick Answer: Modelled on a typical Malaysian SME list growing from about 800 to 2,650 contacts over a year, with four campaigns a month, Mailchimp costs roughly RM2,220 across twelve months and Brevo roughly RM990. The gap is not the sticker price — it is what happens as the list grows.

The list-growth figures below come from our own client tracking; the bills are modelled on each vendor’s published 2026 tiering. Treat this as an illustrative scenario, not a quotation.

Notice what drives each line. Mailchimp climbs even in months when the business sends nothing new, because the list keeps growing. Brevo only climbs when sending climbs — mail once a month instead of four times and that line flattens almost completely.

It is also an argument for cleaning the list rather than switching tools. A Mailchimp account carrying dead contacts is paying rent on people who will never open anything, which is the problem behind how to clean a decaying email list.

5. Where Brevo’s Cheaper Sticker Price Quietly Stops

Quick Answer: Brevo’s USD9 Starter plan keeps the Brevo logo in your footer, gives one seat, and has no phone support. Removing the logo costs another USD9 a month; a second seat costs USD9 more. At that point the “cheaper” plan is USD27, and the gap narrows sharply.

Every email platform sells a headline number and bills a different one. Here is where the extra ringgit actually go on each side.

The logo row is the one that stings. A Malaysian SME on Brevo Starter is sending client-facing email with someone else’s brand in the footer, and the fix costs as much again as the plan. Budget for USD18 minimum, not USD9 — and even then, Brevo stays the cheaper tool at any realistic list size.

6. What Malaysian SMEs Actually Open in Each Tool

Quick Answer: On both platforms, over 90% of Malaysian SME accounts send campaigns and roughly a fifth touch automation. The one feature that genuinely separates them is transactional email: 64% of Brevo accounts use it monthly, against 6% on Mailchimp — because on Mailchimp it costs extra.

Feature lists are marketing. Usage is truth. Here is what our client accounts actually open in a given month.

Segmentation stays under 30% on both, which tells you the real bottleneck is not the software — it is that nobody has been given the job. The same pattern shows up on the SEO side in our Semrush review for Malaysian SMEs: the expensive modules stay closed. If that sounds like your account, list segmentation explained simply is the cheapest upgrade available on either platform.

7. Mailchimp’s Real Advantage Is the Handover

Quick Answer: Everyone says Mailchimp wins on ease of use. The sharper point is staffing: when your marketing executive resigns, the next hire has almost certainly used Mailchimp before and almost certainly has not used Brevo. That handover speed is worth real money to a small team.

Ease of use is a soft benefit that vanishes after the first month — you learn either editor eventually. Staff turnover, on the other hand, is a permanent feature of Malaysian SME marketing teams.

Mailchimp is the default line on a junior marketer’s CV. Brevo is not. When the person who built your automations leaves, the Mailchimp account gets picked up in a day, while the Brevo account sits untouched for a month. We have watched that gap cost more in lost campaigns than the software ever saved.

An agency-managed account never faces this, because the knowledge sits outside your payroll. It is a large part of why hiring marketing staff versus paying an agency rarely comes down to the headline salary.

8. Where Brevo Wins on Something Other Than Price

Quick Answer: Brevo bundles transactional email, SMS and a basic sales pipeline into the same account as your newsletters. For a Malaysian shop or clinic that already sends order confirmations and appointment reminders, that consolidation is worth more than the price difference.

Strip the pricing argument away and Brevo still has a case, built on one idea: fewer accounts.

• Order and booking emails live in the same place. Your receipts, shipping notices and appointment reminders send through the same domain reputation as your newsletter — which helps keep your emails out of the spam folder.
• SMS sits beside email. Useful in Malaysia, where an SMS still lands when an email does not — though most of our clients get more from WhatsApp marketing than from either.
• A free CRM you may grow into. Basic, but enough for a two-person sales team that currently tracks deals in a spreadsheet.

For e-commerce specifically, neither tool is the automatic answer — that title still belongs to a purpose-built platform, as we set out in our Klaviyo review for e-commerce. Brevo is the sensible middle: cheaper than Klaviyo, more capable than Mailchimp on the transactional side.

9. So Which One Should You Pick?

Quick Answer: Brevo suits a big list you email occasionally, and any website that already sends customers automatic emails. Mailchimp suits a small list, frequent sending, and one non-technical owner. If the budget is tight and the needs are simple, look at a third option before you commit to either.

Match your situation to the row, not to the review score.

If you land on that fifth row, the honest move is to widen the shortlist rather than force this comparison. Our MailerLite review covers the budget end properly, and the best email marketing software for Malaysian SMEs puts every serious option on one page. Whichever you choose, the tool is only ever half the job — ZenWeb plans, writes and sends the campaigns for Malaysian businesses that would rather not learn a new dashboard at all.

10. Conclusion

Quick Answer: Brevo is cheaper for most Malaysian SMEs and the only one of the two that includes transactional email. Mailchimp is easier to hand to the next hire. Choose on list shape and staffing, not on the review score — and remember the software has never once written a subject line.

The choice is settled by arithmetic, not by preference. Contacts you store versus emails you send; one login versus two; a tool your next hire knows versus one they will have to learn. Everything else is packaging.

What neither invoice covers is the part that actually earns money: deciding what to say, to whom, and how often. Get that right and both tools work. Get it wrong and you are simply paying two different companies to deliver silence. Our guide to what email marketing really costs in Malaysia puts the software line item back in proportion, and AI email marketing tools for Malaysian SMEs covers what can now be automated on either platform.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

1. Mailchimp vs Brevo — which is cheaper for a Malaysian SME?

Brevo, in almost every realistic case. Modelled on a list growing from about 800 to 2,650 contacts with four campaigns a month, Brevo comes to roughly RM990 over twelve months against roughly RM2,220 for Mailchimp. The gap narrows once you add Brevo’s logo-removal and extra-seat add-ons, but it does not close.

2. Is Brevo’s free plan really better than Mailchimp’s?

For most businesses, yes. Brevo Free stores up to 100,000 contacts and sends 300 emails a day; Mailchimp Free stops at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. If your list is bigger than 250 people, Mailchimp’s free plan has already ended and Brevo’s has not.

3. Can I move my list from Mailchimp to Brevo?

Yes — exporting contacts is straightforward. What does not transfer cleanly are automations, templates and reporting history, so budget a day or two to rebuild them. Clean the list before you import it; there is no point carrying dead contacts into a new platform.

4. Which one is better for an online shop?

Brevo, of the two, because transactional email is included — your order confirmations and shipping notices send from the same account as your marketing. If e-commerce revenue is the main driver, also look at a purpose-built option like Klaviyo before deciding.

5. Do I still need an agency if the tool is this cheap?

The software is rarely the bottleneck. Segmentation sits under 30% and automation under 25% across both platforms in our client accounts, which means most SMEs are paying for capability they never switch on. An agency’s value is in using it, not in owning the login.