Brevo vs Drip in 2026: General-purpose multichannel platform vs eCommerce revenue automation
Brevo covers email, SMS, WhatsApp, and CRM for almost any kind of business, priced by sends. Drip does one thing, turning Shopify and WooCommerce purchase data into automated revenue, and prices by contact count with every feature unlocked from day one.
Brevo
Drip- Brevo prices by monthly email sends with unlimited contact storage; Drip prices by contact count with unlimited sends and every feature included at every tier.
- Drip has no free tier, only a 14-day trial with no credit card required; Brevo offers a genuinely usable free-forever plan at 300 emails per day.
- Drip includes native revenue attribution showing which campaigns and automations drove actual sales; Brevo has no comparable revenue-attribution reporting layer described in its feature set.
- Marketing automation is locked out of Brevo's Starter tier and only unlocks at Standard ($18/mo); Drip includes its full visual workflow builder, abandoned cart automation, and API access at every tier starting at $39/month.
- Drip has no native SMS channel and requires a third-party integration via Zapier or API; Brevo includes SMS from the Starter plan up and adds WhatsApp at Professional.
- Drip's pricing scales steeply by contact count, reaching $154/month at 10,000 contacts and custom quotes above 20,000; Brevo's send-based model keeps costs flatter for businesses with large but selectively-emailed lists.
- Brevo serves over 600,000 customers across many verticals; Drip is built almost entirely around eCommerce and is a weak fit for SaaS, services, or B2B lead nurture.
Brevo and Drip both run on visual automation builders and both send a lot of email, but they were built for different shoppers. Brevo is general-purpose: a French, GDPR-native platform covering email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, push, and a built-in CRM, priced by how many emails you send rather than how many contacts you store, with a genuinely free tier at 300 sends a day. Drip is narrow by design, built specifically around Shopify and WooCommerce stores, pulling real-time purchase, cart, and browse data to trigger abandoned-cart, win-back, and post-purchase sequences, then tying every campaign back to actual revenue attribution. Drip has no free tier and prices by contact count instead of sends, but it includes every feature at every tier, no automation or A/B testing gate to climb over the way Brevo has. The choice mostly comes down to whether you run an online store specifically, or a broader business that needs one platform across several channels.
The tools at a glance
Brevo
All-in-one email, SMS, WhatsApp, and CRM platform priced by emails sent, not contacts stored.
Brevo's defining trait is that its bill does not grow just because your contact list does. Storage is unlimited on every paid plan, and the cost is tied to the emails you actually send each month, starting from around $9 for 20,000 sends. For a business with a large, imported contact base that only emails a filtered segment regularly, that structure keeps costs predictable in a way contact-priced tools do not.
The platform reaches beyond email into SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, push notifications, and a built-in CRM with deal pipelines, all from one dashboard, and its French, EU-native architecture gives it a genuine GDPR advantage for teams operating in or selling into Europe. An AI content generator handles subject lines and copy, and AI send-time optimization learns each contact's peak engagement window on the Standard plan.
What Brevo does not offer is eCommerce-specific depth. There is no dedicated purchase, cart, or browse-behavior integration comparable to Drip's Shopify and WooCommerce connections, and no revenue-attribution reporting tying a specific campaign to a specific sale. Marketing automation itself is also gated: it does not exist on the Starter plan at all, only becoming available at Standard, $18 a month and up, which matters if automated workflows are the reason you are shopping in the first place.
| Feature | Free $0 | Starter From $9/mo | Standard From $18/mo | Professional From $539/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contact storage | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Marketing automation | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI content generator | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| A/B testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| WhatsApp and push | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi-user access | 1 | 1 | 1 | 10 seats |
Drip
eCommerce email marketing automation with a visual workflow builder, revenue attribution, and deep Shopify and WooCommerce integrations.
Drip was built for one job: turning what a shopper does, browses, abandons, buys, into an automated email that follows. Its Shopify and WooCommerce integrations sync order history, cart events, and product views in real time, so a workflow triggered on "purchased Product A but not Product B" reflects the current state of a store rather than a stale export. The visual builder lets a merchant branch on any of that behavior without writing code or hiring a developer.
Revenue attribution is the feature that separates Drip from a generic automation tool: every campaign and sequence tracks which contacts clicked through and actually completed a purchase within a configurable window, so a merchant can see revenue per campaign and per email rather than relying on open rate as a proxy. That reporting, combined with an all-features-included pricing model with no gating between tiers, means a store gets the complete builder, attribution, and abandoned-cart automation from the $39-a-month entry plan.
The tradeoffs are real. There is no free tier, only a 14-day trial, and pricing climbs by contact count fast: $89 a month at 5,000 contacts, $154 at 10,000, custom above 20,000. SMS is not native and needs a third-party connector like Postscript via Zapier or the API. And outside of eCommerce, Drip has little to offer, it was not built for SaaS onboarding flows or B2B lead nurture, and trying to bend it into that shape will feel like fighting the product.
| Feature | Up to 2,500 $39/mo | Up to 5,000 $89/mo | Up to 10,000 $154/mo | Up to 20,000 Custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email sends | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Visual workflow builder | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Revenue attribution | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shopify and WooCommerce integrations | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Abandoned cart automation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SMS (native) | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Head-to-head feature comparison
| Feature | Brevo | Drip |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | General-purpose multichannel marketing across verticals | eCommerce revenue automation for Shopify and WooCommerce stores |
| Pricing basis | Priced by monthly email sends, unlimited contacts | Priced by contact count, unlimited sends |
| Free tier | Yes, 300 emails/day free forever | No, 14-day trial only |
| Revenue attribution | Not a described feature | Yes, revenue per campaign and per email tracked |
| Shopify / WooCommerce integration | Not a described feature | Yes, real-time order, cart, and browse sync |
| Marketing automation availability | Locked out of Starter, available from Standard ($18/mo) | Included at every tier, no gating |
| Native SMS | Yes, from Starter up with separate credits | No, requires third-party integration via Zapier or API |
| Yes, at Professional tier | Not offered | |
| Feature gating across tiers | Significant gating between Starter, Standard, and Professional | None, all features included on every plan |
| Starting price | $9/month (Starter) | $39/month (up to 2,500 contacts) |
Which should you choose?
DripBrevoBrevoDripBrevoBrevoDrip and Brevo rarely disappoint the same buyer, because they were built for different shapes of business. Drip earns its keep with eCommerce-specific depth, real-time Shopify and WooCommerce data, revenue attribution, no feature gating, that a general platform like Brevo simply does not build for. Brevo earns its keep with breadth: more channels, a real free tier, and a pricing model that does not punish a large contact list the way Drip's per-contact pricing eventually does. Neither company is wrong to skip the other's core strength; they are optimizing for different customers entirely.
Bottom line
Choose Drip if you run a Shopify or WooCommerce store and want purchase behavior driving your automation with revenue attribution built in from day one, accepting that pricing climbs with contact count and there is no free tier. Choose Brevo if your business spans more than email marketing, needs SMS or WhatsApp bundled in, or has a large list you email selectively and want a bill that reflects sends rather than storage. A store with a contact list past 10,000 should run the Drip cost against Brevo's send-based pricing before renewing, since the two models diverge fast at scale.
Frequently asked questions
Is Drip or Brevo better for a Shopify store specifically?
Drip is the stronger fit for a Shopify store specifically, since it syncs orders, cart events, and product views in real time and includes revenue attribution showing exactly which campaign or automation drove a sale. Brevo can technically connect to Shopify through general integrations, but it has no dedicated purchase-behavior automation or revenue-attribution reporting comparable to what Drip builds around by default.
Does Brevo have a free plan the way Drip does not?
Yes, Brevo offers a genuinely usable free-forever plan covering 300 emails per day with unlimited contact storage, while Drip has no free tier at all, only a 14-day trial with no credit card required. For a small store testing whether automated email is worth the investment before committing budget, that difference matters.
How does Drip's pricing scale compared to Brevo as a contact list grows?
Drip prices strictly by contact count on a single plan with every feature included, starting at $39 a month for 2,500 contacts and rising to $154 at 10,000, with custom pricing required above 20,000. Brevo prices by the volume of emails sent rather than contacts stored, so a store with a large but selectively-emailed list can often stay on a lower Brevo tier than the equivalent Drip contact-based tier would require.
Does Drip support SMS marketing natively like Brevo does?
No, Drip has no native SMS channel and requires connecting a third-party tool such as Postscript through Zapier or its API, which adds integration complexity and separate messaging costs. Brevo includes SMS from the Starter plan up, with credits purchased separately, and adds WhatsApp campaigns at the Professional tier, making it the more complete multichannel option out of the box.
Is Brevo a good fit for an eCommerce store, or is it built for other industries?
Brevo can run eCommerce campaigns, but it is a general-purpose platform without Drip's dedicated purchase, cart, and browse-behavior integrations or its revenue-attribution reporting. A store whose core need is behavioral automation tied directly to Shopify or WooCommerce order data will generally get more precise results from Drip, while a store that also needs SMS, WhatsApp, or a broader CRM alongside email may prefer Brevo's wider channel coverage.
Why does Drip include every feature on every plan while Brevo gates automation behind a higher tier?
Drip runs a single-plan-type pricing model where the monthly price scales only with contact count, so the visual workflow builder, revenue attribution, and abandoned-cart automation are identical whether you are on the $39 or $154 tier. Brevo instead gates features by plan level, meaning multi-step marketing automation and A/B testing are unavailable on the entry Starter tier and only unlock once you move to Standard at around $18 a month.