Sendinblue Review – Is This Email Marketing Solution The Right Choice?

These days, there are enough email marketing solutions out there to make your head spin. To name a few, you have MailerLite, MailChimp, MailPoet, Constant Contact, Klaviyo, and so many more to choose from.

One name you’ll also often see on top ten lists is Sendinblue. Before you say, “not another email marketing tool,” you might want to hold on for a second.

Sendinblue is more than just an awesome and affordable email marketing solution. In the last year, they’ve also added a suite of additional features, including CRM software, retargeting ads, Facebook ads, and live chat. And since it is partnered with Vonage, you can now use it for SMS campaigns.

Sendinblue has a lot to offer, and with both a free plan and paid options starting from just $25/month, you’d be crazy not to reconsider whatever email marketing service you’re currently using.

What can Sendinblue offer your company? And is it worth the switch? Find out what you need to know right now in this ultimate Sendinblue review.

What Is Sendinblue?

Sendinblue markets itself as a SaaS tool for relationship building. Using email campaigns, SMS messages, and workflow automations, Sendinblue makes it easy for companies to choose the best forms of contact with their clients/customers.

Sendinblue is packed with tons of advanced tools, including advanced email features that let you see whether messages have been read, “send time optimization” that chooses the right time to send to increase open rates, along with flexible templates, segmentation, API codes, and more.

And with Sendinblue newish CRM features, you can track all customer interaction under one convenient dashboard, making the software an excellent one-stop-shop for all things outreach.

They also constantly release new features, so there’s always something new to look forward to.

With an affordable and fixed pricing structure, there’s no wondering whether you’ll face overages for each month.  And that’s just beginning to scratch the surface of the many ways to drive a high ROI from using this great software tool.

Sendinblue Features

• Email marketing
• Segmentation
• CRM
• Integrations
• SMS marketing
• High deliverability
• Dedicated IP
• Send Time Optimization
• Dynamic List
• Spam Check
• Template builder
• Automation
• Team management
• Forms

Getting Started With Sendinblue

With the Sendinblue free plan, you can check out the SaaS tool yourself at any time. To sign up, verify your email address, set an account password, and answer a few simple questions.

Once you do, you’ll be taken to your account dashboard. Here, you have options. You can import your contact list, get started on a campaign, or start playing around with automation and integrations.

What’s really cool is you can upscale and downscale Sendinblue in the Apps section. Want to do more with it? Then add apps like the CRM or SMS campaigns. Want to make it more manageable? Then turn this off and just focus on email. It’s that easy.

If you’re new to email marketing tools, you might want to take a few minutes and check out the tutorials within the dashboard and on the resource page. The blog has tons of great tips not only on how to use Sendinblue, but even on how to conduct successful campaigns, grow your subscriber list, and more.

Sendinblue Pricing

All Sendinblue plans include unlimited contacts. From here, it offers tiered pricing based primarily on the number of emails you send per day along with a few additional features:

The Lite Plan for $25/month gets you 40,000 emails/month going up to Premium plan starting at $66/month for 120,000 emails. Check out the price breakdown below:

The free plan is basically a limited free trial. You don’t have to provide your credit card, and you’ll be able to start creating campaigns and importing contracts. But you won’t be able to do much else besides that other than play around with some of the tools.

In terms of pricing, it’s pretty hard to beat Sendinblue’s 40,000 emails/per month. It’s also super flexible and great for segmentation. Compared to MailChimp, which prices based on the number of contacts, it’s a real bargain. With them, you get 10,000 contacts/month for $75. For the same price, you can get over 100,000 emails on Sendinblue.

Sendinblue Main Features: What You’ll Love

Despite all the other labels Sendinblue likes to use, at its core, it is an email marketing tool. But it also has several other tricks up its sleeves. Here’s what you’ll do with Sendinblue:

1. Create Gorgeous Emails From Templates

Sendinblue is the perfect tool for marketers who may not have the programming or design skills but know what they want to say. They have 200+ responsive templates for you to customize and quickly create campaigns.

They also have a drag-and-drop editor so you can make your own designs from scratch. Overall, it’s not the best designer on the market, but it more than does the job.

2. Contact Management

All Sendinblue plans come with contact management that makes it easy to search, segment, and categorize lists that automatically update.

Targeting contacts for specific campaigns is a breeze and something you don’t even find in many of Sendinblue’s pricier alternatives.

3. Campaign Analytics

All versions of the app include basic real-time reporting and analytics. However, upgrading to higher-tiered plans get you access to advanced features like Heatmaps, geography reports, and advanced open and click reports.

If Sendinblue is your email marketing service of choice, definitely upgrade to one of these plans because these tools give you a better sense of how effective your designs, headlines, and more are.

4. Automation

Another great feature you get at all price points (unlike MailChimp) is email automation. You can do a lot of things with automation, such as set specific actions to events, trigger responses, and create custom automation.

For example, you get to send an email to new subscribers that includes a coupon to encourage a purchase. Meanwhile, you can target repeat buyers with special lists that include loyalty messages. This is another reason why Sendinblue works as a great standalone email marketing solution.

5. CRM

We’ve more than covered Sendinblue’s great email tools, let’s dive into something else they can do—CRM. With the CRM tool, you can manage the entire customer lifecycle all from within your Sendinblue dashboard.

You can follow up on the history of interaction, set reminders to re-engage with contacts, and more. Likewise, you can deploy other tools like landing pages, signup forms, Facebook ads, retargeting to turn users into customers.

6. SMS

SMS marketing is effective. But you knew that already. Rather than separate your email and SMS campaigns and contacts lists into two separate apps, you can take care of everything from within Sendinblue. This is a rarer feature and another reason you should consider Sendinblue as your marketing tool of choice.

Rates are super affordable, starting at $1.12/100 messages in the US. Compared to services like TextMagic, which charges $.04 per text, meaning it isn’t just convenient but a serious discount too.

Who Should Use Sendinblue?

If you asked this question a few years ago, you’d have a much smaller list. Sendinblue has always been a decent and affordable email marketing service. But it honestly wasn’t great. It was a good option for smaller businesses that don’t have the budget or advanced marketing requirements to justify the price tag of something like Klaviyo or MailChimp.

However, a lot has changed since the big update last year. With all the new tools and features added across all stages of not only the customer lifecycle but also team management, it’s definitely with most firms along with agencies checking it out. Likewise, its email marketing is reinvigorated, and its automation tools have come a long way.

For most brands, Sendinblue is going to be more than enough to cover their marketing needs, and, aside from MailChimp, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better deal out there.

If you’re an SME, definitely check this out. For larger brands and enterprises, Sendinblue might not quite offer enough, but you still might find occasions to use it, especially the awesome transactional emails and high deliverability rates.

Is Sendinblue Worth It?

You can’t argue with a free plan that allows you to get a taste of most of the premium features. Do yourself a favor and see if it’s worth it. The truth is most SMEs don’t need a highly advanced email marketing tool. They need something that gets the job done.

The same also goes for CRM and the other services that Sendinblue offers. With Sendinblue, you get a lot under one easy-to-use package that also integrates well with a huge range of other tools.

Rather than spending $50/month on alternative email marketing solutions and another $25-50 on another CRM and maybe even more on SMS tools and more, check out Sendinblue. The time alone you’ll save keeping everything under one dashboard makes it more than worth it with to the majority of marketers out there.

Pros

• Great suite of tools
• Easy-to-use
• High deliverability
• Free plan
• Affordable
• SMS marketing
• Now includes CRM
• Up and downscale software through built-in apps
• Huge integration lists
• Automation tools
• Chat tools available on higher-tier plans
• Tons of autoresponder and other tools
• Constantly evolving

Cons

• Account setup can be a challenge
• Templates are more basic compared to competitors
• Can be buggy at times
• More tutorial videos would be helpful

Sendinblue Alternatives

There are not a lot of products out there that can do everything that Sendinblue does at such an affordable price point. Comparable software like HubSpot starts at $50/month for simple basic plans.

If you’re looking for an email marketing alternative that is just as affordable, then you should definitely check out MailerLite.

What Is MailerLite?

We consistently recommend MailerLite as a perfect email marketing solution for SME. It not only boasts a huge range of features that rival big names like AWeber and MailChimp, but it’s also easy to use, includes form building and lead generation tools, and rivals Sendinblue in terms of price.

MailerLite includes 1,000 subscribers for free and 10,000 subscribers for just $50/month compared to AWeber, which charges $69/month for the same number.

MailerLite similarly has tons of automations, integrations, and ways to drive even more value out of it.

The only downside is that MailerLite doesn’t offer built-in SMS marketing as Sendinblue does. You can set it up via integration, but you don’t quite get the convenience. So, if SMS marketing is a big part of your approach, you may want to stick with Sendinblue instead.

Either way, both Sendinblue, and MailerLite offer free plans, so check them both out and see which one you like better.

Sendinblue: The Verdict

If you’re looking for an affordable email marketing plus CRM integrated solution that packs a solid punch, then check out Sendinblue. With plenty of great features and tons of integrations, most small and medium-sized businesses could benefit from using this effective email marketing and relationship management solution.