Mailin Pricing, Reviews, Pros and Cons (Now Brevo) in 2026

TL;DR

• Mailin no longer exists under that name. It launched in 2012, was renamed Mailinblue in 2013, became Sendinblue, and has been Brevo since May 2023. Searches for "Mailin pricing" now lead to Brevo's plans.
• Brevo charges by the number of emails you send, not by contacts. It has a free plan of about 300 emails a day. Paid Starter plans begin around $9/mo for 5,000 emails, and Business/Standard begins around $18/mo.
• Reviewers like the price and the all-in-one suite. The common complaints are strict account compliance reviews, slow support on lower tiers, and shared-IP deliverability.
• Add-ons raise the bill. Logo removal, a dedicated IP, SMS/WhatsApp credits, and extra users can push your real cost well above the advertised price.
• Brevo is built for permission-based email, not cold outreach. If you prospect, find and verify contacts in a separate tool and keep cold sends off your Brevo account.

What is Mailin, and why does it now redirect to Brevo?#

Mailin was a French email newsletter tool launched in September 2012. In 2013 the founders renamed it Mailinblue. It became Sendinblue soon after, and on May 4, 2023 the company rebranded again as Brevo. The company explained the change in its becoming Brevo announcement: only about 31% of customers used it just for newsletters, so a name built around "send" no longer fit a product that now includes a CRM, automation, SMS, WhatsApp, and a sales pipeline.

The old name still matters because it never fully disappeared. Developers still run into mailin-api-php and similar legacy V2 wrappers on GitHub and Packagist, and some older integrations still call the platform "Mailin." If you inherited one of those stacks, or a colleague told you to "check Mailin's pricing," you are looking at Brevo. The Wikipedia entry for Brevo has the full corporate timeline.

One practical point: the legacy mailin-api libraries call the deprecated V2 API. Any integration still on V2 has to move to the V3 API and SDKs. If a migration is coming, include the engineering time in your total-cost estimate.

How does Mailin (Brevo) pricing actually work?#

Brevo prices on email volume, and most competitors don't. Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign charge mainly by how many contacts you store. Brevo charges mainly by how many emails you send each month. That difference decides whether Brevo is a bargain or a poor fit for you:

1. Large list, low send frequency. Brevo is usually much cheaper. A list of 40,000 contacts that gets one newsletter a month costs a fraction of what contact-based tools charge.
2. Small list, heavy automation. The savings shrink. Daily drip sequences, transactional receipts, and re-engagement flows use up volume quickly.
3. Monthly volume tiers. Each paid plan has a volume ladder (5k, 20k, 40k, 100k emails and up), and the price rises at each step. Unused volume does not carry over on subscription plans.
4. Prepaid email credits. Brevo also sells pay-as-you-go credits that don't expire. They suit seasonal senders who send in bursts, such as event promoters or ecommerce brands at holiday peaks.
5. Separate channel billing. SMS and WhatsApp use their own credits, priced by destination country. They are not included in any email plan.

Third-party pricing trackers don't agree on Brevo's exact numbers. Plan names differ by region ("Business" in some places, "Standard" in others), and Brevo has adjusted its tiers more than once. The figures below match what most 2026 sources report. Before you budget, check them on Brevo's official pricing page.

What does each Brevo plan cost in 2026?#

Price is not your only cost, though. A typical Starter bill grows like this:

• Base plan at 20,000 emails/mo. Sources quote roughly $29–$32/mo.
• Logo removal. Usually listed at about $9–$12/mo extra on Starter.
• Dedicated IP. A paid add-on on higher tiers. Worth it once you send hundreds of thousands of emails a month, wasted below that.
• SMS credits. Pay per message, priced by country.

That is how a "$9 plan" ends up costing $40–$60 a month. Brevo is still competitive at that price. It just isn't $9.

What are real users saying in Mailin and Brevo reviews?#

Brevo has thousands of reviews on platforms such as G2 and Capterra, and its average rating is in the mid-4s out of 5. The themes repeat across most of them.

What reviewers praise

• Price per email. Volume-based billing is the most-cited advantage, especially for nonprofits, publishers, and SMBs with large, low-engagement lists.
• All-in-one breadth. Email, transactional SMTP, SMS, WhatsApp, landing pages, a free CRM, and a meetings tool all sit under one login. Small teams don't need four separate subscriptions.
• Ease of use. The drag-and-drop editor and the automation builder are easy to learn for non-technical marketers.
• Transactional email in the same account. Developers like being able to run password resets and receipts next to marketing sends.

What reviewers complain about

• Account suspensions and compliance reviews. This is the most common serious complaint. Brevo checks new accounts and imported lists, and a high bounce or complaint rate can freeze your sending without much warning.
• Support on lower tiers. Free and Starter users report slow, email-only support. Phone and priority support come with the higher plans.
• Shared-IP deliverability. On shared infrastructure your inbox placement partly depends on other senders. Some reviewers report Gmail Promotions or spam placement until they warm up a dedicated IP.
• Reporting depth. Analytics are adequate but thinner than in Klaviyo or HubSpot, particularly revenue attribution.
• Frequent pricing changes. Long-time Mailin and Sendinblue customers say plan structures have shifted several times, which makes long-range budgeting harder.

Note the first complaint in particular. Most Brevo suspensions follow from imported list quality, which you control. We cover that further down.

What are the pros and cons of Mailin (Brevo) at a glance?#

Is Mailin (Brevo) better than Mailchimp or other alternatives?#

It depends on how your list size compares with how often you send. Here is a fair comparison with the tools most often weighed against it:

Choose Brevo if you have a large opt-in list, send moderately often, and want marketing and transactional email in one place for little money. Choose something else if you need deep attribution (Klaviyo, HubSpot), sophisticated B2B lead scoring (ActiveCampaign, HubSpot), or a dedicated cold outreach tool, which Brevo was never built to be.

Can you use Mailin (Brevo) for cold B2B outreach?#

Not safely. Brevo's anti-spam policy requires recipients to have opted in. Sending cold prospecting emails from a Brevo marketing account is the fastest way into the compliance reviews reviewers complain about. One bad import with a high bounce rate can get your account paused, and that pause also stops your newsletters and transactional mail.

The usual B2B setup splits the work:

1. Find prospects with an email finder, searching by name and company domain.
2. Verify every address with an email verifier before it goes into any sending tool.
3. Run cold sequences from a dedicated outreach platform on separate, warmed-up sending domains.
4. Move engaged replies (people who said yes, booked a call, or asked for content) into Brevo, where they become an opt-in nurture audience.

Brevo then does what it is good at: cheap, high-volume, permission-based nurture. Your main domain's reputation stays separate from cold outreach. If you are setting up new sending domains, plan a ramp-up with an email warmup calculator rather than guessing at daily volume.

How do you avoid the hidden costs of Brevo?#

Most Brevo bills that surprise people come from a handful of decisions you can make in advance:

• Clean the list before you import. Bounces cost you twice: once in wasted send volume and again in compliance risk. Your hard-bounce rate should be well under 2%. A list from an old CRM export or a trade-show badge scan can easily bounce at 8% or more.
• Size the volume tier to real sends. Multiply contacts by sends per month, then add automation and transactional volume. Teams often forget that every welcome email and receipt counts toward the tier.
• Weigh logo removal against an upgrade. If you also need A/B testing or advanced automation, moving to Business/Standard can cost less than Starter plus add-ons.
• Buy a dedicated IP only when the volume justifies it. Under roughly 100k emails a month, a dedicated IP often hurts deliverability because you can't keep it warm.
• Prefer prepaid credits for bursty senders. If you send a lot in Q4 and almost nothing in Q1, prepaid credits that don't expire beat paying for a subscription year-round.
• Watch SMS country rates. SMS pricing varies widely by destination. Model the cost before launching an international SMS campaign.

Is Mailin (Brevo) worth it in 2026?#

For most SMBs, nonprofits, and EU-based senders with real opt-in lists, yes. Brevo is one of the best-value email platforms available. The free plan is enough to test properly, Starter and Business are cheap at moderate volume, and getting transactional email and a CRM in the same subscription saves money.

It's not worth it if you expect to use it as a cold-email engine, if you need enterprise attribution, or if your list is small and your automation heavy. In the last case, a contact-priced tool can cost the same and give you more.

On reviews: the strongest praise (price, breadth, ease of use) and the strongest complaint (compliance freezes) both follow from Brevo's volume-based, permission-first design. If you respect that design, keep lists clean, verify before importing, and keep cold outreach elsewhere, you get the benefits without the suspensions.

Find verified contacts before they reach your email platform#

Whatever platform you send from, the number that protects your account is the bounce rate on what you import. Tomba Email Finder looks up professional addresses by name, company, or domain and checks them before they reach your list, so your campaigns start with deliverable contacts. The free tier includes 25 searches a month, and paid plans start at $49/mo (see Tomba pricing). Try Tomba Email Finder and import clean data into Brevo or any other sender.

Related guides#

• Brevo Pricing, Reviews, Pros and Cons: Full 2026 Breakdown
• Brevo vs Instantly 2026: Which Email Platform Wins?
• 9 Best Brevo Alternatives for 2026 (Features & Pricing)
• Brevo vs Salesforce in 2026: Which CRM Should You Pick?