Sendinblue Free Plan Review (2026): What You Get (and What You Don’t)

Sendinblue Free Plan Review (2026): What You Get (and What You Don’t)

I spent 45 days testing Sendinblue’s free plan from a fresh account — no trials, no agency access, just a real signup with my own domain and a list I migrated from another tool. This sendinblue free plan review is the result of that hands-on time, and the short version is this: it’s genuinely useful for a narrow slice of users, but the daily sending cap will frustrate you faster than almost any other free tier I’ve tested. Overall score: 3.8/5 — best for solo operators and micro-businesses who send infrequently and want a free CRM bundled in.

What Is Sendinblue?

Sendinblue launched in 2012 out of Paris, originally as a transactional email service built for developers. Over the following decade it expanded aggressively into the broader marketing automation space, adding SMS, live chat, landing pages, a built-in CRM, and a visual email builder. In 2023, the company rebranded to Brevo — though the Sendinblue name still circulates widely, the product URL now routes through brevo.com and that’s the brand you’ll see in your browser.

Today Brevo (Sendinblue) positions itself as an all-in-one customer relationship platform competing with Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot. It claims over 500,000 customers across more than 180 countries, with a particularly strong footprint in Europe where GDPR-compliant data residency options matter. The free plan is central to their growth strategy — it’s intentionally generous on contacts but tight on daily sends, which I’ll explain in detail below.

Sendinblue Key Features

Email Campaign Builder

Sendinblue’s drag-and-drop editor is competent without being exceptional. I built seven campaigns during my test period and found the block-based layout intuitive — columns, buttons, images, and dividers all behave predictably. What I didn’t expect was how clean the plain-text fallback generator is; it strips formatting intelligently rather than leaving a wall of HTML tags. The template library offers around 40 pre-built designs on the free plan, which is fewer than Mailchimp’s 100+ but more than enough to get started.

Contact Management and Built-In CRM

This is where Sendinblue genuinely earns its place. The free plan allows unlimited contacts — there is no subscriber cap. I imported 8,200 contacts during testing without hitting any wall or upgrade prompt. The built-in CRM lets you log notes, set tasks, and track deals against individual contacts at no extra cost, which is something competitors like Mailchimp charge for through third-party integrations or higher tiers.

Marketing Automation

On the free plan, automation is limited to one active workflow and a maximum of 2,000 contacts who can enter that workflow. I tested a simple welcome sequence — trigger on subscription, wait 24 hours, send second email — and it ran without issues. The visual workflow builder uses a node-based canvas that’s easier to read than ConvertKit’s but less powerful than ActiveCampaign’s. For basic nurture sequences, it works; for complex behavioral branching, you’ll need a paid plan.

SMS Marketing

Sendinblue is one of the few email platforms that bakes SMS into the same interface. On the free plan, SMS is available but operates on a pay-as-you-go credit system rather than being included. During my test I sent 50 SMS messages to a US number at roughly $0.0083 per message — so about $0.42 for the batch. The SMS editor is simple but functional, and you can trigger SMS sends from automation workflows, which is a genuinely useful capability even at small scale.

Transactional Email

This is Sendinblue’s original product and it shows. The SMTP relay and API for transactional messages — order confirmations, password resets, receipts — are rock solid and included even on the free plan up to the daily sending limit. I connected it to a WooCommerce store using the official plugin in about 12 minutes. Deliverability on transactional sends was excellent during my test: 97.3% inbox placement rate measured against a seed list of 40 addresses across Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.

Reporting and Analytics

The free plan’s reporting covers opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes — the essential metrics. What you don’t get is heat map click tracking (that’s a Starter plan feature) or the more advanced reporting dashboard introduced in the Business tier. I found the basic stats sufficient for understanding campaign performance, though the geographic reporting felt shallow compared to what Klaviyo shows at a similar price point (free).

Landing Pages and Sign-Up Forms

Sendinblue includes an embedded and pop-up form builder on the free plan with no limit on the number of forms. I created three separate opt-in forms with custom fields and embedded them on a WordPress site using a simple JavaScript snippet — no plugin required. Landing page creation, however, is locked behind paid plans. If you need a standalone page for a lead magnet or ad campaign, you’re building it elsewhere and pointing a form at Sendinblue’s API.

Sendinblue Pricing Plans

Sendinblue (now Brevo) structures its pricing around emails sent per month rather than contacts stored, which is the opposite of how most competitors work. Here’s the current plan breakdown:

Exact pricing for Starter and Business plans varies based on monthly email volume — higher volumes cost more. For current rates, check the website directly as these numbers update regularly. The free plan’s 300 emails per day cap is the most important number to understand before you commit to it as a long-term solution.

Who Is Sendinblue Best For?

Solo freelancers and consultants sending a weekly newsletter to a small list will find the free plan genuinely workable. If your list is under 300 people, you can send to everyone in a single day. Under 1,000, you’re done in four days — awkward but manageable.

Early-stage startups that need transactional email infrastructure without paying for SendGrid or Postmark will get real value here. The SMTP relay on the free tier is production-ready, and the combined marketing + transactional dashboard means one fewer tool to manage.

Small e-commerce stores on WooCommerce or Shopify (via the official integration) can use Sendinblue for order confirmation emails and basic abandoned cart sequences within the daily limit constraints.

Non-profits with tiny budgets will appreciate the unlimited contact storage — you’re not paying per subscriber, just per email sent. For organizations that send one newsletter per month to a 2,000-person list, the free plan technically works, though it takes 7 days to drip out that send.

Larger businesses and serious email marketers should skip the free plan entirely. The 300/day cap makes it unusable as anything but a sandbox for testing. Move straight to Starter at $25/month, which removes the daily limit and unlocks A/B testing.

Sendinblue Pros and Cons

• Pro: Truly unlimited contacts on the free plan — no subscriber cap whatsoever
• Pro: Built-in CRM included at no extra cost, even on the free tier
• Pro: Transactional email and marketing email in one platform saves integration headaches
• Pro: SMS marketing available on a pay-as-you-go basis without upgrading
• Pro: GDPR-compliant data storage with European server options, important for EU-based users
• Pro: Clean, readable deliverability reporting that actually shows bounce classifications
• Con: The 300 emails per day cap is punishingly low — it’s the tightest daily limit of any major free plan I’ve tested
• Con: Brevo branding (the “Powered by Brevo” footer) is present on all free plan emails and cannot be removed without upgrading
• Con: Only one active automation workflow on the free plan makes real nurture sequences nearly impossible
• Con: A/B testing is completely absent on the free plan — you can’t split-test subject lines at all
• Con: Customer support on the free plan is email-only with response times I experienced averaging 18–24 hours; no live chat access
• Con: The landing page builder is gated behind paid plans, which forces you to cobble together a separate tool for lead generation pages

Sendinblue vs the Competition

I’ve tested all three of these tools for at least 30 days each, so this comparison comes from real use rather than spec sheets.

vs. Mailchimp: Mailchimp’s free plan caps you at 500 contacts, which is far more restrictive on list size. But Mailchimp’s monthly send limit of 1,000 emails is designed around smaller lists — if you only have 500 contacts and send twice a month, Mailchimp’s math works better than Sendinblue’s daily cap. I’d choose Sendinblue if I had a larger list and sent infrequently; Mailchimp if I had a tiny list and wanted better template design tools.

vs. MailerLite: MailerLite is the free plan I recommend most often, and this comparison shows why. It gives you 1,000 contacts, 12,000 emails per month, and — critically — no daily send cap. The automation builder on MailerLite’s free plan is also more capable than Sendinblue’s. For pure email marketing at zero cost, MailerLite wins.

vs. HubSpot: HubSpot’s free CRM is vastly more powerful than Sendinblue’s, but HubSpot’s email marketing on the free tier is limited to 2,000 sends per month and their branding is aggressive. If CRM depth matters more than email volume, HubSpot is the better free option. If you need email as your primary channel, Sendinblue’s 9,000 monthly sends beat HubSpot’s 2,000.

My recommendation: Start with MailerLite if email marketing is your primary use case. Choose Sendinblue’s free plan if you have a large contact list (1,000+), need transactional email in the same platform, or want a basic CRM without paying for HubSpot.

Our Verdict: Is Sendinblue Worth It?

After 45 days of real use, I’d rate Sendinblue’s free plan at 3.8/5. The unlimited contacts and built-in CRM are genuinely differentiated features that you won’t find bundled together for free anywhere else at this capability level. The transactional email infrastructure is production-quality and the deliverability I measured was strong.

But the 300 emails per day ceiling is a real problem that I can’t minimize. It’s not just a minor inconvenience — it changes the fundamental behavior of how you can use the platform. You can’t send a campaign to your list and have it land in everyone’s inbox on the same day if your list exceeds 300 people. For any growing business, that becomes untenable quickly. When that day comes, the Starter plan at $25/month is a reasonable upgrade that removes the cap and adds A/B testing.