Sendinblue vs MailerLite (2023): Which to Choose?

Which Email Provider Comes Out on Top?

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If you're embarking on the mission that's finding the best marketing platform for your business, you'll know already there are plenty of email marketing software to choose from!

In light of that, we're going to make your life a tad easier by comparing two of the industry's most well-known names: Sendinblue and MailerLite.

There's lots to discuss, so let's jump straight in!

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: Pricing

Sendinblue

Sendinblue pricing plans

Sendinblue offers a freemium package as well as three paid plans to choose from. But, before we delve into the nitty-gritty of what each package offers, with all Sendinblue's programs (including its free one), you can register a limitless number of contacts.

The Free Plan

Without spending a dime, you get access to all of Sendinblueโ€™s basic features.

These include:

  • An intuitive email builder
  • Sendiblue's template library
  • Email and SMS personalization
  • SMS marketing
  • A/B testing tools
  • Advanced segmentation
  • Customizable sign-up forms
  • A sales CRM
  • Marketing automation for up to 2,000 contacts
  • Access to Senediblue's API and integrations
  • Email support

That said, you can only send 300 emails a day.

The Lite Plan

The first of Sendinblue's paid-for packages is the Lite plan. This will set you back $25 a month and provides everything in the free package, and there are no restrictions on the number of marketing and transactional emails you can send.

The Essential Plan

Sendinblue‘s mid-tier plan costs $39 a month. Unsurprisingly, you get everything in the previous two programs, plus the removal of Sendinblue logo's from your emails. You also get access to geography, device, and heat map reporting, as well as advanced email open and click-through stats. On top of that, you also unlock telephone customer support.

The Premium Plan

Last but not least, there's Sendinblue's most expensive plan at $66 a month. With this package, you get everything listed above, plus you can create and launch Facebook ads inside your Sendinblue account and build and publish landing pages. Not to mention, you unlock marketing automation workflows for unlimited contacts each month, you can connect with website visitors in real-time via a live chat widget, and grant multi-user access.

For more info on Sendinblue's pricing plans, check out our full review here.

MailerLite

MailerLite also generously offers a free package, allowing you to send 12,000 emails a month to up to 1,000 contacts.

Before exploring MailerLite's paid-for plans in greater detail, it's worth noting, they all boast the following features:

  • 24/7 live chat support
  • The removal of MailerLite's branding
  • Access to a custom HTML editor
  • Email newsletter templates
  • You can use custom domains
  • Promotional pop-ups
  • An auto resend functionality
  • You can send emails by time zone
  • Access to click maps and opens by location
  • You can create and save your own templates
  • A/B testing functionality
  • A customizable favicon

The only difference between MailerLite‘s premium packages is the number of subscribers you can register:

  • Free: To send up to 12,000 emails a month to between 1-1,000 subscribers
  • $10 a month: To send an unlimited number of emails to between 1-1,000 subscribers
  • $15 a month: To send unlimited emails to between 1,001-2,500 subscribers
  • $30 a month: To send unlimited emails to between 2,501-5,000 subscribers
  • $50 a month: To send unlimited emails to between 5,001- 10,000 subscribers

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: Email Templates and Editing

Sendinblue

Sendinblue makes designing and launching email marketing campaigns a breeze with its professional-looking templates and intuitive drag and drop email builder.

Sendblue's template library comes with over 60 responsive email layouts to choose from. Once you've selected a template, you like the look of, just customize the content and design as you please. Alternatively, you can build your own creation from scratch – the choice is yours!

Sendinblue also makes email customization simple by enabling you to include whatever info youโ€™ve collected from subscribers automatically.

For instance, their:

  • Name
  • Location
  • Birthday

Or, anything else for that matter…

Of course, you can also personalize your email subject lines too.

MailerLite

Like Sendinblue, MailerLite also comes with gorgeous templates and a user-friendly drag and drop email builder (66 email templates with any of its paid-for plans, to be precise). There's also a robust photo editor inside MailerLite's email designer. This nifty tool enables you to adjust your imagery for the following:

  • Light
  • Color
  • Exposure
  • Resize
  • Crop

…Plus, you can add photo effects and images to your artwork too!

You can even embed social media posts into your emails and insert dynamic content boxes into the body of your messages. This empowers you to show different email sections to different segments of your email list, which works wonders for adopting a more personalized, targeted approach to your email campaigns.

Just like Sendinblue, it's easy to personalize your email content, subject line, and preheader text to include whatever subscriber info you have.

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: Autoresponders and Automation

Sendinblue

Sendinblue offers various marketing automation functionalities. Most notably, you can create automated workflows triggered by pre-set actions – like someone signing up to your email list or making a sale.

Triggers like these could then initiate any of the following:

  • An email marketing automation (both one-off messages and full series')
  • An SMS message campaign (again, either a one-off message or an entire sequence)
  • Sorting contacts into various email lists
  • Updating your CRM database

…Needless to say, when you use the power of automation to its fullest, youโ€™ll save yourself (and your) team tons of time! These automated workflows are convenient for sending transaction messages like order confirmations, delivery notifications, and customer feedback requests. Best of all, you can seamlessly integrate Sendinblue with your eCommerce store builder to get these automations up and running in no time.

Sendinblue's lead scoring also enables more sophisticated automation sequences. Plus, you can also take advantage of Sendinblueโ€™s send-time optimization feature (powered by machine learning). This ensures your messages are sent when the recipient is most likely to open and engage with your email content.

MailerLite

MailerLite also boasts marketing automation functionality. Similarly, you can create email sequences that send on autopilot when triggered by a specific action (like a customerโ€™s birthday or when someone signs up to your email list). Like Sendinblue, this is especially useful for eCommerce merchants wanting to automate their abandoned cart campaigns and follow up emails.

MailerLite's auto-send feature is also worthy of note. This kicks in when a recipient doesn't open your email. In this scenario, MailerLite automatically resends your message. And, you can make use of MailerLite's send time optimization feature. This enables you to send emails when recipients are most likely to engage with them.

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: Registration Forms

Sendinblue

Sendinblue makes landing page and opt-in form creation simple. Similar to crafting emails, you get access to an intuitive drag and drop page builder. With a few clicks, you can modify your fonts, colors and add text and images to design landing pages and forms that match your online branding.

Also, when designing opt-in forms, you'll be pleased to hear you can insert as many fields as you like. You can also enable subscribers to opt into different email lists with simple checkboxes. It's also easy to implement a double opt-in process, and you can rest easy knowing that Sendinblue's signup forms are GDPR-compliant.

MailerLite

To grow your email list with MailerLite, you can create and publish pop-ups and embed sign up forms into your web pages. There's a range of templates to choose from (20 for opt-in pop-ups and 13 for promotional ones). All of which lay excellent foundations for your design. Of course, you can customize these templates and populate them with your own images, fonts, and logos.

Below we've listed the kinds of opt-in pop-ups you can build:

  • A floating bar
  • A featured pop-up
  • A sliding box
  • A fullscreen pop-up

It's also worth noting, all of MailerLiteโ€™s pop-ups are mobile-friendly and optimized for speed. You can also add GDPR-compliant check boxes and implement a double opt-in system.

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: CRM

Sendinblue

sendinblue crm - sendinblue vs mailerlite

Sendinblue comes with an inbuilt CRM. From here, you can store, monitor, and manage your contacts from one centralized place. This makes it easy to keep an eye on current (and previous) interactions your brandโ€™s had with customers.

If you already have a contact list, great. It's simple to upload it to Sendinblue and hit the ground running. You can also assign specific members of your team tasks inside Sendinblue's CRM. This helps to ensure your teamโ€™s on the same page and never misses a deadline!

MailerLite

In contrast, MailerLite isn't a CRM and doesn't claim to be. That said, it does integrate with plenty of CRM's (more on that below).

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: Deliverability

Sendinblue

Sendinblue employs a dedicated team of email experts to evaluate and improve the deliverability of their emails. On top of that, they proactively manage your sender reputation using IPs and implement a robust network of SMTP servers, which are explicitly built and maintained to ensure the successful sending of emails.

Here are some stats about Sendinblueโ€™s deliverability conducted by Email Report Deliverability:

  • 62.67 % of Sendinblue's emails appeared in the recipient's primary mailbox.
  • 34.13 % of emails were moved to the spam folder after successful delivery.
  • 3.20 % of emails didn't reach the recipients.

MailerLite

A similar study conducted by the same organization found these results:

  • 65.88 % of emails appeared in the recipient's primary mailbox.
  • 32.04 % of emails were moved to the spam folder after successful delivery.
  • 2.07 % of emails sent didn't reach recipients.

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: Integrations

Sendinblue

Sendinblue's list of integrations isn't huge, but all the heavy hitters are there, most notably:

  • WordPress
  • Shopify
  • Mailchimp
  • Google Analytics
  • WooCommerce

You can see their full list of integrations here.

MailerLite

In contrast, MailerLite offers much more in the way of integrations. However, it lacks things like a CRM and live chat functionality. As such, it needs to provide more integrations to match what more comprehensive marketing platforms (like Sendinblue) have to offer.

Below, we've only listed MailerLite's CRM plugins (because there's a good chance you'll need one as your business expands):

  • Zoho CRM
  • HubSpot
  • Pipedrive
  • Intercom
  • Salesflare
  • ProductDyno
  • Zendesk
  • Hanna CRM
  • DreamApply
  • amoCRM
  • MemberPress
  • Lumeer
  • Drupal
  • Salesforce
  • Groupboss

You can see a full list of MailerLite's integrations here.

Sendinblue vs MailerLite: Customer Support

Sendinblue

Sendinblue's customer support team is reportedly excellent. They're available 24/7, across six languages via email. Then, if you upgrade to one of Sendinblue's more expensive tiers, you'll also unlock live chat and telephone support.

MailerLite

Like Sendinblue, MailerLite also provides 24/7 support via email. I recently contacted their support team and got a helpful response within minutes! Then, once you upgrade to one of their paid-for plans, you'll also get access to live chat support.

On top of that, MailerLite also has an extensive selection of self-help resources. In fact, they have a whole section dedicated to ‘Getting started' and ‘Video tutorials.' On top of that, there's also an online knowledge base with advice covering the following topics:

  • Automation
  • Billing
  • Subscriber management
  • Account settings
  • Advanced
  • Create and send
  • Forms
  • Reports
  • Video tutorials

Our Final Verdict

So, there you have it, our Sendinblue vs MailerLite comparison. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of which is best for your business. However, if you want our opinion, here it is:

Sendinblue offers a more comprehensive suite of marketing tools, including email, SMS messaging, and live chat. It even comes with a nifty in-built CRM to boot. We also love Sendinblue's robust automation features. So, all in all, we think it's the perfect solution for online marketers and established business owners looking to up their marketing, customer service, and automation game.

In contrast, MailerLite‘s a better option if you're just looking for an easy-to-use and affordable email marketing service provider. Itโ€™s ideal for small businesses, startups (online and offline), and bloggers just sending email newsletters and marketing campaigns where only simple automation is required.

If you're on the fence about either platform, why not give their freemium plans a try? This is the easiest way to get a feel for whether their interfaces and core functionality are right for your business.

For more information about Sendinblue, you can check out our full Sendinblue review.

Which will you go for? Or, will you opt for one of their competitors like ActiveCampaign or Constant Contact? Whichever you choose, don't forget to tell us all about it in the comments box below. We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Rosie Greaves

Rosie Greaves is a professional content strategist who specializes in all things digital marketing, B2B, and lifestyle. She has over three years of experience crafting high-quality content. Check out her website Blog with Rosie for more information.

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