Mailchimp vs Brevo for Churches (2026)

Mailchimp vs Brevo for Churches: Full Overview

Mailchimp and Brevo represent two genuinely different approaches to email platform pricing — and for churches, the difference matters more than it does for most businesses. Mailchimp charges by how many members you store. Brevo charges by how many emails you send. Churches typically have large congregation lists but a steady, predictable sending pattern (a weekly bulletin, the occasional event invite), which is exactly the situation where the per-email model can pull ahead.

Mailchimp launched in 2001 as an email marketing tool for small businesses and was acquired by Intuit in 2021 for $12 billion. It has since expanded into landing pages, social ads, CRM features, and marketing automation. Its 15% TechSoup nonprofit discount is the most widely recognised in the sector, though it requires an IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter that many automatically-exempt churches do not hold.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue, rebranded in 2023) is a French company based in Paris. It started as a transactional email service for ecommerce and grew into a full email, SMS, and CRM platform. Its pay-per-email pricing and EU data storage are the standout features for churches — particularly congregations with large directories or UK and European members.

Core Email Features Compared

Both platforms include the essential email features churches need: drag-and-drop editors for the weekly bulletin, contact management for the congregation database, signup forms for new visitors, basic analytics, and scheduled sending for Sunday-morning announcements.

Mailchimp gates its most useful features behind higher plans. Email automation — useful for a new-visitor welcome series — requires Standard ($20/month at 500 contacts) or higher. A/B testing and send-time optimisation are also Standard-tier. The free plan includes only basic email sends and limited templates.

Brevo bundles more into every tier. Even the free plan includes limited automation, a basic CRM for the congregation directory, transactional email for giving receipts, and SMS capability for prayer-chain alerts. A/B testing requires its Business plan. The tradeoff is interface complexity: features a church will never use still occupy the dashboard.

For churches sending a weekly bulletin and occasional event invites, both platforms provide more features than most congregations will use. The real question is rarely about feature gaps — it is about what your church will actually pay for the members it stores and the emails it sends.

Where Mailchimp Adds Value for Churches

Mailchimp's strongest case for churches starts with its free plan. For small congregations with fewer than 500 active members sending one weekly bulletin, the free plan (500 contacts, 1,000 emails/month) is fully functional — and Brevo's 300/day send cap can make a single bulletin send awkward for a list approaching that size.

Mailchimp's integration ecosystem is its second advantage. With over 300 native integrations — including Planning Center, Tithe.ly, Eventbrite, WordPress, and Stripe — churches running multiple ministry tools can connect them without third-party middleware. For a church already standardised on Planning Center, Mailchimp's native sync is hard to match.

The TechSoup discount process is also more standardised than Brevo's. A church that already has a TechSoup account (from Microsoft, Adobe, or Google Workspace discounts) can add Mailchimp's 15% to that workflow easily — provided it holds the required 501(c)(3) letter. Brevo's verification runs through its own sales team and is less predictable.

The tradeoff: per-contact pricing that punishes churches with long-established lists, plus a discount that locks out self-declared and automatically-exempt churches.

Where Brevo Adds Value for Churches

Brevo's clearest advantage for churches is the per-email pricing model, especially for congregations with large directories. A church with 6,000 or 10,000 members on file pays for the emails it actually sends each month, not for every stored contact — and years of former members and one-time visitors sit on the list for free, up to 100,000 contacts.

Brevo also bundles features that Mailchimp charges extra for or doesn't include. Transactional email (giving receipts, event confirmations, password resets for your member portal) is built into every Brevo plan — Mailchimp charges separately through add-ons. SMS is pay-as-you-go on Brevo, which suits prayer-chain alerts and last-minute service-change notices far better than Mailchimp's add-on SMS pricing.

The built-in CRM is a meaningful differentiator for churches without dedicated database software. Brevo's CRM can serve as both congregation directory and email platform — one tool instead of two. It is basic compared to dedicated church management systems like Planning Center, but adequate for tracking members and small groups.

EU data storage is standard on Brevo (the company is French). For churches with UK, Irish, or European congregations, this simplifies GDPR compliance compared to Mailchimp's US-based infrastructure.

Free Plan Comparison

Both Mailchimp and Brevo offer permanent free plans, but with very different shapes — and the right choice for a church depends on congregation size and how it sends.

Mailchimp's free plan includes 500 contacts and 1,000 email sends per month, with a daily cap of 500. It includes the drag-and-drop editor, basic templates, and signup forms — enough for a small church sending one weekly bulletin to one congregation. It does not include automation, A/B testing, or extensive scheduling.

Brevo's free plan flips the limits: up to 100,000 contacts stored, but only 300 emails per day. It includes drag-and-drop editing, limited automation, a basic CRM, transactional email, and SMS. The 300/day cap is the catch for churches — a congregation of 1,500 cannot receive a single bulletin in one send without splitting it across days. But for a church that stores a large directory and sends small daily batches (a morning devotional, prayer updates), the free plan goes a long way.

Groupmail's free plan matches Mailchimp's structure (500 contacts, 1,000 emails/month) but is built specifically for community organisations — including churches — rather than for marketing teams.

Migration Considerations for Churches

Switching email platforms is straightforward but requires planning. Both Mailchimp and Brevo allow CSV export of contacts including email addresses, names, ministry tags, and custom fields. Neither exports email campaign history or automation workflows in a format the other can directly import.

If moving from Mailchimp to Brevo, the biggest task is rebuilding your bulletin templates — Mailchimp templates do not transfer. Plan for 2-4 hours for a typical church account, and schedule the move during a quiet liturgical week rather than the run-up to Christmas or Easter.

If moving from Brevo to Mailchimp, the same applies in reverse, plus you'll need to migrate any built-in CRM data into Mailchimp's Audience or a separate directory tool.

If considering Groupmail as an alternative to either platform, the migration is simpler: export your members as a CSV, import into Groupmail, and start sending. There are no automations to recreate because Groupmail focuses on member updates rather than marketing workflows. Groupmail also offers migration assistance on the Continuity plan ($29/month) — useful when your church secretary is doing the move alongside their day job. One note: Mailchimp charges for unsubscribed members, so export only active members to avoid carrying dead contacts into a new platform.

Deliverability Track Records

Email deliverability — the percentage of emails that reach the inbox rather than spam — matters more than features for church communication. A beautifully designed bulletin is worthless if it lands in spam the morning of a service.

Mailchimp maintains a strong deliverability reputation, with industry tests consistently placing it in the 88-95% inbox placement range. Mailchimp enforces strict list hygiene and will suspend accounts with high bounce rates — a real risk for churches with old, unmaintained lists full of former members.

Brevo's deliverability is generally rated slightly lower, around 88% in independent tests. Some Trustpilot reviewers report account suspensions for performance reasons that took days to resolve — a concern for a church that needs a service-change notice to go out reliably on a Saturday night.

Groupmail handles deliverability through managed email delivery — the platform manages the technical infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and sending reputation on behalf of each church. Church staff and volunteers do not need to configure DNS records or monitor deliverability metrics themselves. For a church without a technical volunteer, managed delivery removes a category of problems entirely.

For Churches Specifically

Neither Mailchimp nor Brevo was built for churches. Mailchimp was built for small-business marketing. Brevo started as a transactional email service for ecommerce. Both added nonprofit discounts as customer acquisition strategies — the platforms themselves reflect their original audiences, with dashboards full of conversion metrics and marketing automation most congregations will never touch.

For churches with large but steadily-emailed lists, Brevo's per-email pricing genuinely solves a problem that per-contact platforms create. A 10,000-member congregation that sends a weekly bulletin pays for what it actually sends, and the thousands of former members and one-time visitors who accumulate over decades sit on the list for free rather than inflating a monthly bill.

Volunteer turnover is the pain point neither platform addresses. Church secretaries, communications coordinators, and tech-volunteer roles often turn over every 1-3 years. Neither Mailchimp nor Brevo offers transition support — the outgoing person hands over login credentials and the new volunteer figures it out alone.

Groupmail was built for exactly this scenario: organisations with members (not customers), volunteer-led teams, and tight budgets. Flat pricing ($15/month, unlimited members), no per-email or per-contact accounting, and an annual handover call when your secretary or coordinator changes. Send a bulletin as often as you need, to the whole congregation, for the same predictable price.