Email Marketing Software: Complete Beginner’s Guide
Email remains one of the most useful channels for businesses that want to build direct relationships with customers. But modern email marketing software is no longer limited to sending newsletters. Today’s platforms can combine email campaigns, automation, customer data, CRM, transactional messaging, SMS, WhatsApp, analytics, and ecommerce workflows in a single system.
For beginners, the challenge is choosing a platform that offers enough functionality to grow without introducing unnecessary complexity or cost.
One platform worth examining is Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue. It combines email marketing with CRM, automation, transactional messaging, conversations, SMS, and WhatsApp capabilities. Its pricing structure is also different from many traditional email platforms, making it particularly relevant for businesses with growing contact databases.
This guide explains how email marketing software works, what features matter, how Brevo compares with major alternatives, and what beginners should consider before choosing a platform.
Quick Verdict
Best suited for: Small and midsize businesses, ecommerce operators, agencies, and growing brands that want email marketing, automation, CRM, and multiple communication channels in one platform.
Consider alternatives if: Your business requires extremely specialized ecommerce automation, highly advanced enterprise CRM functionality, or a platform built specifically around one narrow use case.
Brevo Scorecard
| Category | Rating |
|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 4.5/5 |
| Deliverability Tools | 4.5/5 |
| Multi-Channel Features | 4.5/5 |
| Marketing Automation | 4.5/5 |
| CRM | 4/5 |
| Value for Money | 4.5/5 |
These ratings are editorial assessments rather than guarantees of performance. Actual results can depend heavily on list quality, authentication, sending practices, content, and account configuration.
What Is Email Marketing Software?
Email marketing software is a platform that helps businesses collect subscribers, organize customer information, create email campaigns, automate messages, and measure results.
A basic system might let you send a newsletter to a list. Modern platforms go considerably further.
For example, a customer could:
- Subscribe through your website.
- Receive a welcome email automatically.
- Be added to a customer segment.
- Receive educational emails based on their behavior.
- Receive an abandoned-cart reminder.
- Make a purchase.
- Receive a transactional confirmation.
- Enter a post-purchase automation sequence.
Instead of manually managing every interaction, automation software coordinates these events based on predefined rules.
This is why choosing email marketing software should not be based only on the email editor. The underlying contact database, automation engine, deliverability controls, integrations, analytics, and pricing model can have a much larger impact as your business grows.
Core Features to Look For
1. Email Marketing and Drag-and-Drop Editor
The email builder is usually the first feature beginners evaluate.
A good editor should allow you to create professional campaigns without requiring HTML knowledge. Typical functionality includes:
- Drag-and-drop content blocks
- Responsive layouts
- Pre-designed templates
- Buttons and calls to action
- Images and videos
- Personalization fields
- Mobile previews
- Basic content formatting
- Reusable templates
Brevo provides a drag-and-drop email editor and campaign tools as part of its platform. Its current free plan also includes the drag-and-drop editor.
Dynamic personalization
Personalization can go beyond inserting someone’s first name.
Depending on the platform and data available, marketers can customize content according to:
- Customer attributes
- Previous purchases
- Geographic information
- Segments
- Website activity
- Ecommerce behavior
- Lifecycle stage
For beginners, the important distinction is between personalized content and genuinely useful segmentation. Adding a first name is easy; delivering the right message to the right customer is where email marketing becomes more valuable.
2. Multi-Channel Campaigns
Email is only one part of modern customer communication.
Businesses increasingly combine email with channels such as:
- SMS
- Web push notifications
- Live chat
- Transactional messaging
Brevo positions itself as an all-in-one customer relationship platform covering email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and other communication tools.
The advantage is centralization. Instead of maintaining completely separate systems for every communication channel, a business can keep customer information and campaign activity within a broader marketing platform.
However, businesses should still evaluate each channel separately. SMS and WhatsApp messaging can involve additional costs, consent requirements, regional regulations, and different customer expectations.
3. Marketing Automation and Workflows
Automation is where email marketing software becomes significantly more powerful than a simple newsletter tool.
A workflow can trigger an action when something happens.
For example:
Visitor subscribes → Welcome email → Wait 2 days → Educational email → Link clicked → Add to segment → Sales follow-up
Common automation use cases include:
- Welcome sequences
- Lead nurturing
- Abandoned-cart reminders
- Customer onboarding
- Birthday campaigns
- Re-engagement campaigns
- Product recommendations
- Post-purchase follow-ups
- Lead qualification
Brevo’s automation capabilities are designed to connect customer behavior and contact information with automated marketing actions.
The exact workflow capabilities available can depend on the subscription level, integrations, and use case, so businesses should verify current plan requirements before committing.
4. Sales CRM and Pipeline Management
Email marketing and CRM are increasingly interconnected.
A CRM stores information about prospects and customers, while marketing automation helps communicate with them.
A small business might use a CRM to track:
- Leads
- Companies
- Contacts
- Deals
- Sales stages
- Tasks
- Notes
- Follow-ups
Brevo includes a Sales CRM alongside its marketing functionality. Its API documentation also lists Sales CRM, contact management, events, ecommerce, conversations, and related capabilities.
For a small business, having marketing and sales data in the same ecosystem can reduce the need to connect multiple applications.
However, businesses with complex sales operations may still prefer a dedicated enterprise CRM with deeper customization, forecasting, permissions, and reporting.
5. Transactional Email
Marketing emails and transactional emails serve different purposes.
Marketing email might include:
- Promotions
- Newsletters
- Product announcements
- Educational content
Transactional email is usually triggered by an individual action, such as:
- Password reset
- Order confirmation
- Account verification
- Shipping notification
- Invoice
- Receipt
Transactional email infrastructure therefore needs reliability and developer-friendly integration.
Brevo provides transactional email functionality and APIs. Its developer documentation includes an Email API as well as transactional SMS and WhatsApp APIs.
Brevo can therefore be relevant to businesses that want marketing and transactional communication under one provider.
One important qualification: no email platform can guarantee inbox placement. Deliverability depends on authentication, reputation, recipient engagement, list quality, content, sending patterns, and mailbox-provider policies.
Brevo Pricing: Why the Model Is Different
One of Brevo’s most notable characteristics is its pricing structure.
Rather than making the size of your contact database the only major pricing variable, Brevo emphasizes the volume of messages sent.
Its current plans include Free, Starter, Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. The Free plan starts at $0, Starter from $9/month, Standard from $18/month, Professional from $499/month, while Enterprise uses custom pricing.
The current Free plan includes up to 100,000 stored contacts and 300 email sends per day, alongside features such as email campaigns, transactional emails, SMS campaigns, and the drag-and-drop editor.
Important pricing clarification
Older articles and templates may refer to Brevo plans as “Free, Starter, Business, and Enterprise.” Brevo’s current pricing documentation uses Standard and Professional rather than the older Business naming. Therefore, businesses researching pricing should rely on the current plan page rather than outdated comparison articles.
Why the model can matter
Imagine a business with a large database that does not email every contact frequently.
A contact-based pricing model can make list growth itself a major cost consideration. A sending-oriented model can be more attractive when the business stores many contacts but sends relatively controlled volumes.
That does not automatically make Brevo cheaper for every business. The correct comparison depends on:
- Number of contacts
- Monthly email volume
- Automation requirements
- SMS usage
- WhatsApp usage
- Required users
- Advanced features
- Support requirements
Always calculate the total cost based on your actual usage rather than comparing headline prices.
Pros and Cons
Pros
1. Broad feature set
Brevo combines email marketing, automation, CRM, transactional messaging, and additional communication channels in one ecosystem.
2. Large contact-storage allowance on the Free plan
The current Free plan allows storage for up to 100,000 contacts, although sending is restricted to 300 emails per day.
3. Useful transactional infrastructure
The combination of marketing tools and transactional APIs can be useful for businesses that want fewer separate systems.
4. Multi-channel capabilities
Email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, and CRM functionality make the platform broader than a basic newsletter service.
5. Flexible entry point
The Free and Starter tiers give smaller organizations a way to begin without immediately adopting an enterprise platform.
Cons
1. Free sending limits
The Free plan’s 300-email-per-day limit can become restrictive for an active newsletter or ecommerce operation.
2. Advanced functionality can require higher tiers
As with most SaaS platforms, some advanced capabilities and larger-scale requirements require upgrading to higher plans.
3. Not necessarily the best specialist platform
Businesses with highly sophisticated ecommerce personalization or advanced enterprise CRM requirements may find more specialized platforms better suited to their workflows.
Brevo vs. Major Alternatives
| Platform | Pricing Structure | Contact Model | Multi-Channel Capabilities | Built-in CRM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Primarily sending/usage-oriented | Large contact storage on Free plan | Email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat and more | Yes |
| Mailchimp | Contact and send limits vary by plan | Contact-based tiers | Email plus additional marketing channels | Limited CRM-style functionality |
| ActiveCampaign | Primarily contact/plan based | Contact-based pricing | Email, automation, messaging and sales tools | Yes |
| Klaviyo | Contact/profile and usage based | Profile-based | Strong ecommerce email/SMS focus | Customer-data and commerce focused |
Mailchimp’s current marketing pricing uses contact limits and monthly email-send limits that vary by plan. Its Free plan is limited to 250 contacts and up to 500 monthly sends, while paid plans scale according to audience size and sending allowances.
The comparison demonstrates why pricing should be evaluated against your own database and sending volume rather than simply asking which platform has the lowest advertised starting price.
How to Set Up Email Marketing Correctly
Step 1: Create Your Account and Sender Identity
Start by creating your account and choosing a professional sender address, preferably using your business domain.
For example:
Avoid building a business email operation around a free personal mailbox.
Before sending campaigns, configure your sender identity and verify ownership of your domain.
Step 2: Authenticate Your Domain
Domain authentication is one of the most important technical steps in email marketing.
Brevo currently uses domain authentication involving records such as its verification code, DKIM, and DMARC. Brevo states that authentication helps mailbox providers verify legitimate senders, improves deliverability prospects, and protects against spoofing.
Brevo’s current setup flow can guide users through adding the necessary DNS records automatically when supported, or manually through their domain provider.
What the records do
- DKIM: Adds a cryptographic signature to outgoing messages.
- DMARC: Defines how receiving mail servers should handle messages that fail authentication checks.
- Brevo verification record: Confirms ownership/control of the sending domain.
DNS changes may take time to propagate. Brevo notes that authentication can sometimes take up to 48 hours to appear as verified.
Do not blindly replace an existing DMARC record. If your domain already has one, review the configuration carefully before changing it.
Step 3: Import and Organize Your Contacts
Import only contacts you are permitted to email.
A clean database is generally more valuable than a large database full of inactive or unengaged addresses.
Organize contacts using relevant information such as:
- Customer status
- Purchase history
- Signup source
- Product interest
- Location
- Engagement
- Lifecycle stage
Use segmentation to make campaigns more relevant.
For example:
All contacts → Customers → Repeat customers → High-value customers
This allows you to communicate differently with each group instead of sending every message to everyone.
Step 4: Launch Your First Campaign
Before sending your first large campaign:
- Create a simple email.
- Add a clear subject line.
- Use one primary call to action.
- Preview the email on desktop and mobile.
- Send test messages.
- Check links.
- Confirm unsubscribe functionality.
- Review sender authentication.
- Send to a small, appropriate audience first.
- Monitor delivery and engagement.
Avoid purchasing email lists. Permission-based acquisition and good list hygiene are fundamental to sustainable email marketing.
How to Evaluate Email Deliverability
Deliverability deserves more attention than simply looking at an advertised “delivery rate.”
A platform can successfully accept an email for delivery while the recipient’s mailbox provider still places that message in spam.
Evaluate:
- Domain authentication
- Bounce rate
- Spam complaints
- Unsubscribe rate
- Engagement
- Sender reputation
- List hygiene
- Suppression handling
- Authentication alignment
- Reporting capabilities
Your software is only one component of deliverability.
A poorly maintained list can damage sender reputation regardless of which provider you choose.
Who Should Choose Brevo?
Brevo is particularly interesting for:
Small and midsize businesses
Businesses that want marketing automation, CRM, transactional email, and customer communication without assembling several separate systems may find the all-in-one approach practical.
Ecommerce businesses
Stores can use email automation for customer onboarding, promotions, abandoned-cart communication, post-purchase messaging, and other lifecycle campaigns.
Budget-conscious businesses
The sending-oriented pricing approach can make sense for companies with many stored contacts but relatively controlled email volume.
Businesses using multiple channels
If your strategy includes email alongside SMS, WhatsApp, or chat, having those capabilities available from one provider can simplify the technology stack.
Who Should Consider Alternatives?
Brevo is not automatically the right choice for every organization.
Consider alternatives if you need:
- Highly specialized ecommerce segmentation
- Extremely advanced customer-data modeling
- Enterprise-level CRM customization
- Very complex sales forecasting
- Specialized marketing automation features
- A platform optimized around one particular industry
For example, Klaviyo can be attractive to ecommerce teams that prioritize sophisticated customer-data and commerce workflows, while ActiveCampaign is worth considering for businesses focused heavily on advanced automation and CRM-oriented sales processes.
The right platform depends on the complexity of your operation, not simply the number of features on a comparison chart.
Final Recommendation
For beginners, the best email marketing platform is not necessarily the one with the longest feature list. It is the one that provides the functionality you actually need while remaining affordable and manageable as your business grows.
Brevo is a strong all-in-one option for small and midsize businesses that want email marketing, automation, CRM, transactional messaging, and multiple communication channels without maintaining a collection of separate tools.
Its sending-oriented pricing approach is particularly worth investigating if you maintain a relatively large contact database but do not send huge volumes of email every month.
At the same time, buyers should compare the platform against their actual contact count, sending volume, automation requirements, integrations, and future growth. More specialized platforms may be preferable for advanced ecommerce or enterprise use cases.
Our Verdict
Overall: 4.5/5
Brevo earns a strong overall rating because it combines a broad feature set with an accessible entry point and a pricing model that can be attractive for certain growing businesses. Its biggest limitations are the restrictions associated with lower tiers and the fact that specialized competitors may offer deeper functionality for particular use cases.
Best for: SMBs, ecommerce businesses, agencies, startups, and budget-conscious growing brands.
Not ideal for: Organizations requiring highly specialized enterprise CRM or extremely advanced industry-specific automation.
Ready to Explore Brevo?
If Brevo’s combination of email marketing, automation, CRM, and multi-channel communication matches your requirements, you can evaluate the platform using the link below.
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Editorial disclosure: LedgCraft may earn a commission when readers purchase or sign up through qualifying affiliate links. This does not change our assessment of the products we review. We aim to evaluate software based on features, usability, pricing, limitations, and suitability for different business needs.