This article has been updated to maintain its accuracy and relevance.

Trying to grow your brand?

Email marketing is a must when it comes to attracting and maintaining great customer relationships.

But, with dozens to choose from, how do you know which is best?

The reality is that not all platforms are created equally.

What’s right for one business may not be right for another.

In this guide, we’ll cover two of the most popular email platforms: beehiiv and Brevo (formerly Sendinblue).

In order to make the right decision for your business, I’ve laid out the unique features, pros and cons, and pricing structures for each.

Let’s get started!

beehiiv Quick Overview

beehiiv is one of the fastest-growing email newsletter platforms on the internet. 

Founded in 2021 by Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett, and Jake Hurd, beehiiv is considered the “new kid” on the block in the email newsletter game.

beehiiv’s mission is to pave the way for the next million creators, publishers, and companies to scale and monetize their audiences.

Its easy-to-use interface allows creators, writers, and businesses to grow and manage their email audiences seamlessly. 

Along with being user-friendly, beehiiv also gives you your own website that fully integrates with your newsletter — allowing for blog creation and repurposing. 

This enhances search engine optimization (SEO) and enables you to get a wider content reach – so your newsletters don’t die in the inbox. Instead, they live on forever on your website.

Why Listen to Me? I’ve generated over $1 million with email and written over 1,000 blog posts. I run Storey Time, a newsletter where I teach people how to become full-time digital writers. Feel free to reach out to me on X anytime!

beehiiv Key Features

beehiiv has quickly risen to the top in the newsletter space and in 2024, sent a record 15.6 billion emails (or 2 emails for every person on earth).

Here are some key features of the email platform:

Full Newsletter Management

Creating, scheduling, and sending newsletters is extremely easy and efficient with beehiiv’s user-friendly delivery system.

The beehiiv calendar feature lets you manage your content calendar all in one place, and integrates perfectly with the beehiiv Ad Network and direct sponsorships (more on that below). 

Within the clean dashboard, you can manage everything from subscriber lists, newsletter content, your website, and growth tools.

Growing Your Audience

By allowing users to customize sign-up forms and create customized email segmentations, this platform makes it simple to help grow any subscriber base. 

Plus, with an integrated referral system and built-in recommendations, you can fast-track your growth better than any other email platform.

beehiiv Boosts is where the real magic happens. You can pay for other newsletters to recommend yours – and in tandem, get paid to recommend other newsletters to your subscribers. 

Multiple Earning Options

One thing that sets beehiiv apart is its integrated Ad Network.

With beehiiv, you can easily monetize your newsletter with sponsored ads by tapping into the thousands of advertisers on the platform. The deals are pre-negotiated, taking the guesswork out of finding the right sponsor.

Prefer to source your own? beehiiv also offers direct sponsorship storefronts where you can easily sell ad spots in your newsletter – fully integrated with the beehiiv calendar feature to plan your content and earning strategies. 

Plus, you can also earn with paid subscriptions, generating recurring revenue for your newsletter every month.

beehiiv Boosts lets you tap into the recommendation network by promoting other newsletters the moment someone signs up to your list, allowing you to earn passive income.

The best part about Boosts? It’s a two-sided marketplace, and you can participate on both sides. You can pay for others to recommend your newsletter and accelerate your growth.

Pro tip: You can transfer earnings in the beehiiv wallet directly into your available funds, so you never have to spend a penny on your newsletter growth.

Robust Data Tracking

Tracking key performance metrics is paramount to the success of your newsletter.

beehiiv has an impressively detailed analytics tool that tracks metrics like email open rates, click-through rates, and subscriber growth, allowing the user to make necessary changes to their newsletter strategies to optimize their success.

With beehiiv’s 3D Analytics, you can track exactly where subscribers came from, so you can double down on subscriber acquisition.

Brevo Quick Overview

Brevo was founded 13 years ago (in 2012) by Armand Thiberge.

The company’s mission is to make marketing tools accessible to all businesses.

While beehiiv’s main focus is on growing and monetizing email and web-hosted newsletters, Brevo’s is a bit broader, offering itself as a full customer relationship management (CRM platform).

They focus on reaching customers through multiple channels, including emails, SMS, marketing automation, WhatsApp, chatbots, and more.

Here are a few of Brevo’s main features:

Email Marketing

Create and manage email campaigns and build an email subscriber list. You can leverage Brevo’s segmentation and automation features to offer a unique experience for each subscriber.

SMS Marketing

Unlike beehiiv, Brevo allows you to send time-sensitive messages about your product and services directly to a customer’s smartphone via SMS marketing.

E-commerce Integration

Brevo is also unique in that it offers integrations with several e-commerce platforms, including WordPress, WooCommerce, and Shopify.

Chatbots

Brevo lets you connect with customers directly on your website through chatbots. This means if your customer service team is offline, your chatbots will continue serving and supporting your customers around the clock.

Diving Into beehiiv

What sets beehiiv apart?: beehiiv’s advanced email newsletter creation and distribution systems have helped it stand out as one of the best platforms. 

The growth-focused platform includes features like:

• Simple setup

• User-friendly interface

• Integrated growth features

• Several monetization options

• Newsletter automations

• Advanced targeted email segmentations

• Performance tracking to optimize email engagement 

Who Is beehiiv For?

beehiiv is best for creators, marketers, and bloggers, all the way to medium and enterprise-sized businesses.

Their advanced email marketing and powerful features allow these types of users and businesses to prioritize direct communication and relationship building with their subscriber list on autopilot.

Here’s a quick breakdown of who should use beehiiv:

• Newsletters and publications that are content-focused.

• Businesses that need an all-in-one solution for email, website, email, growth, and data tracking.

• People who want to own their audience.

• Enterprise solutions for big brands that need to master email.

beehiiv’s Pricing 

beehiiv offers a handful of different plans.

Plans start with a free option with basic features and work their way up to more expensive plans with increased subscriber limits, additional customization options, growth and earning options, and advanced data analysis tools. 

• Launch (free)

• Scale ($43/month billed annually)

• Max ($96/month billed annually)

• Enterprise (custom pricing)

The pricing of the plans is structured depending on the number of features the users need, the number of email subscribers they have, and the size of the business.

Every beehiiv account comes with a free trial, no credit card required, so you can try out the features for yourself. 

Pros & Cons of beehiiv

beehiiv is a versatile email newsletter platform that can help you build and nurture a relationship with your audience that’s monetizable.

Here are some pros and cons of the platform:

Pros

• Free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers

• Unlimited email sends

• All-in-one email newsletter capabilities

• Custom, no-code website 

• Simple, user-friendly interface

• Built-in growth features (Referral Program, Boosts)

• Several monetization options (Ad Network, Boosts, paid subscriptions)

• Advanced data tracking and analytics that help users track email performance and allow them to optimize emails for audience engagement.

Cons

• Limited growth features on the free plan

• beehiiv is launching new features at breakneck speed, which may include a learning curve

• Bigger plans are better for those focused on faster growth and monetization

Diving Into Brevo

What Sets Brevo Apart?: 

Brevo prides itself on being a full customer relationship management (CRM) tool. It allows users to track customer interactions and helps them engage with their audience through social media and other marketing platforms.

Brevo also offers plenty of email newsletter functionalities:

• Several newsletter templates on all plans

• Drag-and-drop email builder

• Email previewing functionality

• A/B testing capabilities

• Marketing automation

• Analytics for every campaign

• Send time optimizations

• Customizable signup forms

• E-commerce integration via plugins for WordPress, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

With its use of Facebook Ads, landing pages, and signup forms, the user can reach consumers better through various social media channels.

Brevo has created a platform that is widely known for its powerful performance and reliability. Built to manage multiple areas of digital marketing, Brevo can target audiences through automated emails, SMS, and even chatbots on websites.

Who is Brevo For?

Brevo is widely used for larger-sized businesses that have a customer base that needs to be targeted through multiple channels. 

While smaller to medium-sized businesses can leverage some of the features Brevo offers, it’s a bit more targeted towards bigger brands rather than small businesses and creators.

Here’s a quick breakdown of who should use Brevo:

• Medium to large businesses that need an all-in-one marketing solution for CRM, email, SMS, and more.

• E-commerce stores that want to manage all of their marketing

• Enterprise businesses that need a robust infrastructure.

• Businesses that are looking to leverage multiple channels at once.

Brevo Pricing

Brevo’s pricing structure ranges from a free option with basic features, up to a custom-priced option:

• Free

• Starter ($8.08/month)

• Business ($16.17/month)

• Custom (custom pricing)

The customized pricing includes sending tens of thousands of emails a month, full marketing automation, personalized support, and multi-user access. 

These plans cater entirely to the user’s specific requirements. The pricing is structured on the amount of features provided and the size of the business or team using the platform, as well as the number of emails you intend to send per month, and the number of subscribers you have.

Pros & Cons of Brevo

Brevo is an all-in-one marketing tool that you can use to master multiple channels from within one centralized dashboard.

Here are some pros and cons of the platform:

Pros

• Complex automation setup that allows the user to automate just about anything.

• Easy-to-use platform that allows users with varying levels of technical skills to operate it effectively.

• Advanced sign-up forms and landing pages that allow subscribers to sign up seamlessly.

• Several marketing channels are included.

• E-commerce integrations.

• Built-in customer relationship management (CRM).

Cons

• The number of emails you can send is not unlimited, and pricing is based on how many emails you intend to send per month.

• The number of subscribers increases with the number of emails per month, but it is very low for free subscribers and at the lowest price points. 

• Landing pages are not offered in the free version. These are critical for creating subscriber lists but are only available starting with the $16.07/month Business Plan.

• Basic level analytics prevents you from optimizing your campaigns. If you want more than just open and click data, you must upgrade to the premium plans.

• Brevo has a sending limit of 300 emails per day on the free plan. If you have more than 300 subscribers, you must upgrade to a paid plan in order to reach the rest of your subscriber list, and the cheapest plans only include 500 subscribers. 

Get Started With beehiiv Today

beehiiv and Brevo are both powerful email platforms you can leverage to nurture your audience, generate more revenue, and grow your business.

But, there isn’t a hard and fast rule as to which one you should use.

Depending on your business, your goals, and your needs, you’ll want to pick one over the other.

If your primary goal is to master multiple channels at once, including e-commerce, then Brevo is a great option.

But, if your goal is to master email with a newsletter that’s positioned to grow fast and monetize sustainably, then beehiiv is your best bet.

If you’re a creator or business owner looking to own, grow, and monetize your audience, then get started with beehiiv today.

Built by the same team that grew Morning Brew to over 1 million subscribers, beehiiv is the newsletter platform built for growth.

Get started for free today!