How to Migrate from Mailchimp to Brevo – Top Tool Guides – Best SaaS Tools Reviews & Comparisons

Item: How to Migrate from Mailchimp to Brevo
Rating: 3
Author: TopToolGuides

Quick Verdict

Mailchimp got expensive and weirdly hostile to small lists. Brevo does 90% of the same stuff for a fraction of the cost, and their free tier actually lets you send real emails to real people. The migration itself is a weekend project if you don’t overthink it.

Mailchimp ** (2/5) — fine until they price-gouge you Brevo **** (4/5) — ugly interface, great value

Why Bother

Mailchimp charges me $89/month to email 4,200 people who mostly don’t open my stuff. Brevo quoted me $29 for the same list. That’s $720 a year I was lighting on fire because I’m lazy and switching platforms sounds like a root canal.

It’s not just the price though. Mailchimp has been slowly removing features from lower tiers — A/B testing is basically paywalled now, their automation builder feels like it was designed by someone who hates you, and last month they flagged my account for a "compliance review" because I sent a newsletter about kombucha. Apparently fermented tea is a regulated substance now. Anyway.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue, they rebranded in 2023, which is confusing if you google old tutorials) does transactional email, marketing campaigns, SMS, and a CRM. Overkill for most of us. But the email part works and it’s cheap.

Step 1: Export Your Mailchimp Contacts

Go to Audience → All Contacts → Export Audience. You’ll get a CSV. Download it.

Here’s where it gets annoying. Mailchimp exports tags as a separate column with commas inside the cells, which breaks the CSV if you open it in Excel. I spent 40 minutes reformatting mine by hand before realizing I could just import it into Google Sheets and it parsed fine. Learn from my pain.

What can go wrong: If you have multiple audiences, you have to export each one separately. Mailchimp doesn’t let you bulk-export. Also, if you’re on the free plan with over 500 contacts, they might throttle the export. Cool.

Step 2: Set Up Your Brevo Account

Sign up at brevo.com. Free tier is 300 emails/day forever, which sounds small until you realize most of us don’t send daily anyway.

The onboarding flow asks you a bunch of questions about your business. Lie if you want. Nobody checks. Pick the closest category and move on.

Verify your sending domain immediately. Settings → Senders & Domains → Authenticate. You need to add DNS records (SPF, DKIM, and optionally DMARC). This takes 10 minutes if you know your way around DNS, or an hour if you’re calling your web host asking "what’s a TXT record."

What can go wrong: If you skip domain authentication, your emails land in spam. Every time. Brevo won’t stop you from sending unauthenticated, they’ll just let you fail silently.

Step 3: Import Contacts to Brevo

Contacts → Import → Upload CSV. Brevo’s importer is more forgiving than Mailchimp’s but the column mapping screen is genuinely confusing. It automatically guesses which columns are emails, first names, etc. It guessed wrong for me — mapped "Company" to "Last Name" for some reason.

Double-check every column before you hit import. If you mess it up, you have to delete all the contacts and start over because Brevo doesn’t have a bulk edit for this.

The thing nobody tells you: Brevo counts unsubscribed contacts against your plan limit. Mailchimp doesn’t. So if you have 3,000 contacts and 800 unsubscribes, you’re still paying for 3,000 people. Export your unsubscribes separately and don’t import them. Or archive them. Just get them out of your main list.

Step 4: Recreate Your Templates

This is the part that sucks. Brevo can’t import Mailchimp templates. At all. You’re rebuilding from scratch.

Their drag-and-drop builder is… fine. Less polished than Mailchimp’s, more flexible than you’d expect. I rebuilt my main newsletter template in about 90 minutes. The second one took 20 minutes once I understood the quirks.

Shortcut: If you have a Mailchimp template you love, screenshot it, then use Brevo’s "import from URL" feature on a hosted version of a past campaign. It’s not perfect but it gets you 70% there. I did this and only had to fix the footer.

What can go wrong: Brevo’s mobile preview is more accurate than Mailchimp’s, which means you’ll discover your template looks terrible on phones. Better to know now.

Step 5: Rebuild Your Automations

Brevo’s automation builder is genuinely better than Mailchimp’s. It uses a visual flowchart that doesn’t make me want to scream.

But — and this is a big but — you have to rebuild every automation. Welcome sequence, abandoned cart, birthday email, whatever. There’s no migration path.

I had a 5-email welcome sequence that took me 30 minutes to rebuild. It would’ve taken 15 if I hadn’t tried to use Brevo’s "template" automations first, which don’t fit most use cases.

What can go wrong: Automation triggers work differently. Mailchimp’s "when someone subscribes" might be Brevo’s "when contact is added to list." Subtle difference, big headache if you don’t test.

Step 6: Test Everything, Then Send

Create a test list with 3-5 email addresses you control. Send every campaign type you normally send. Check spam folders on Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo specifically.

I sent my first real Brevo campaign to 4,200 people without testing the "view in browser" link. It 404’d. Got 14 replies asking if my website was broken. Embarrassing.

Do a warmup. Don’t send to your full list on day one from a new IP. Send to your most engaged 500 first, then scale up over a week. Brevo doesn’t force this but your deliverability will thank you.

Pros & Cons

Mailchimp

Familiar interface, lots of tutorials
Free tier if your list is tiny

Pricing jumps are brutal and unpredictable
Feature creep plus feature removal, somehow at the same time
Support is slow unless you pay for premium

Brevo

Cheaper at every list size above 500 contacts
Free tier includes real automation
SMS and transactional email in one place

Interface looks like 2016
Template migration is nonexistent
Support is hit or miss

Pricing at a Glance

FAQ

Q: Can I import Mailchimp templates directly into Brevo? A: No. Rebuild them. It sucks but it’s a one-time thing.

Q: Will my emails go to spam after switching? A: Not if you authenticate your domain and warm up slowly. If you skip those steps, yes, absolutely.

Q: Is Brevo actually cheaper than Mailchimp? A: For lists over 1,000 contacts, yes, often by 50% or more. Under 500, they’re comparable.

Q: What happens to my Mailchimp account after migrating? A: Keep it active for a month in case you need to reference old campaigns. Then cancel. Don’t delete it immediately — you’ll regret it.