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Starting life as a digital agency, Sendinblue’s email marketing platform was developed in response to one of the biggest challenges faced by small-to-medium businesses: automating email marketing on a budget.
Everything, from its comprehensive feature set (which includes a CRM, marketing automation, transactional emails, SMS, landing pages and Facebook ads), to its extremely competitive pricing, shows that Sendinblue is serious about becoming a major player in the email marketing software market. It even has a very popular email plugin for WordPress.
Its efforts seem to be paying off, with over 175,000 users and 100 million emails sent per day! For a company that’s a relative newcomer (it was launched in 2012), it’s not bad at all.
Sendinblue Review: What to expect
Sendinblue has a nicely-featured free plan, which includes email templates, automation workflows, phone support (for the first 60 days) and up to 300 emails per day. The advanced automations included offer web tracking and lead scoring. Unlike other providers, they charge based on the number of email marketing campaigns you send rather than how many contacts you have. Paid plans start at $25 a month for 20,000 emails.
Now let’s dive into this in-depth Sendinblue review and see whether this email marketing platform lives up to its promise of delivering a user-friendly, all-in-one solution.
Sendinblue screenshots
Sendinblue Pricing
Check out our complete Sendinblue pricing guide.
Pros and Cons
Is Sendinblue the right newsletter service for you?
Recommended if:
You need to send transactional emails and SMS:
Sendinblue does much more than just email marketing campaigns, in fact, it’s one of the best tools for trigger-based and transactional emails. Its automation workflow designer allows you to build campaigns triggered by clicks, opens and even webpage visits. And its dedicated transactional section allows for messages such as password resets, and sign-up and purchase confirmations! There’s even an option to send SMS.
You want a sophisticated tool on a low budget:
Sendinblue works out to be a lot cheaper than other comparable tools if you send few emails to the same people. If you’re after a value-for-money service with automations, advanced segmentation, live chat and dynamic personalization, it’s a noteworthy option.
You’re an ecommerce:
With features like customizable triggers based on purchase data, the ability to import customer orders, and customizable KPIs, Sendinblue is well-equipped to serve ecommerce. Integrations with popular platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento are available.
Not recommended if:
You need multiple logins and different user access levels:
Unfortunately, Sendinblue only allows you to set up logins for multiple users on their Premium and Enterprise plans.
Rating details
| CRITERION | RATING | COMMENTS |
|---|---|---|
Ease of Use |
| The user experience is pretty good and the menus are easy to navigate. Having undergone some updates, the drag and drop email builder is very user-friendly. There’s also a nice campaign-production flow that is easy to follow. |
Newsletter Creation | ||
Editor |
| As with most tools, Sendinblue offers a drag-and-drop email editor that is both fast and smooth. There are a handful of pre-set elements to choose from, which should be enough. |
Personalization |
| Simply add one of the ‘attribute conditions’ by clicking on the personalization button – the same goes for subject lines and preview text of your campaigns and templates. They also offer conditional content, which allows you to display certain elements of the email to specific contacts (e.g. discount offers to VIP customers), and dynamic lists, which lets you include dynamically-updated content (e.g. items purchased in a customer’s order). |
Email types |
| Newsletters, autoresponders, A/B testing, transactional email and SMS |
Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs |
| Sendinblue offer 42 email templates, which are all responsive, and the designs aren’t bad at all. However, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always upload your own from builders like Stripo. |
Email Marketing Automation |
| Some really impressive automation options here. Sendinblue’s workflow editor lets you set up some clever triggered campaigns, based on contact data, email engagement, web behaviour, and ecommerce activity. It scores bonus points for lead scoring, and for the ability to test workflows prior to launching them. Sendinblue is also unique in its transactional email offering, letting you send messages such as purchase confirmations and receipts via SMTP. Side note – there’s also a handy ‘Best time’ feature that automatically sends your emails at the optimal time, based on previous campaign performance. |
List Management |
| You can create ‘filters’ that serve as segments, based on contact field criteria and behavior (email opens, clicks, etc.). You can also set up automated workflows to create a new mailing list based on demographics, behavior and lead scores. Import your contacts via an .xlsx, .csv or .txt file. No option to migrate contacts directly from another provider. |
Registration Forms/ Opt-in & Opt-out- Process |
| The forms are surprisingly advanced, with some really cool personalization features. You can let subscribers select which list(s) they want to be opted into (for example, based on interest or industry). You can also enable Captcha verification. And if the users are coming to a form via email, you can pre-populate the form fields with their data – impressive! There’s also the option to choose between single and double opt-in. |
Deliverability |
| Sendinblue’s deliverability fluctuates in our deliverability tests. |
Reports and Analysis |
| Sendinblue has most of the reports you might need, such as a click-map, geo-tracking and Google Analytics integration. You can also access conversion data. |
Languages |
| The website and help center are available in 6 languages (EN, ES, PT, DE, IT, FR) |
Further Features | ||
Spam- and Design-Testing |
| There’s a nice in-built previewer for seeing how emails will display in different email clients. No spam testing available, though. |
Bounce Management |
| Hard bounces are automatically blacklisted. Sendinblue provides a list of both hard and soft bounces. |
Blocklist |
| It’s possible to export your blocklist from the tool. |
Storage available for data and images | Unlimited | There doesn’t appear to be a limit on the total amount of images, or on individual image sizes. |
Pro Features | ||
Authentication |
| SPF, DKIM and DMARC. |
Own Domain |
| Available if you purchase a dedicated IP with Sendinblue (note – this isn’t cheap), or if you have a higher-level plan with this included. Landing pages can be hosted on your domain without the dedicated IP. |
Different levels of account access |
| Only available on Premium and Enterprise plans. |
Integrations |
| A number of integrations are available, however, more are yet to be added. That said, Sendinblue is also part of Zapier’s library. |
Landing Page Builder |
| A very sleek and modern landing page builder is available for those on the Premium and Enterprise plans. Truth be told, we actually like it better than the email editor! There are some nice templates to choose from, or the option to build one from scratch. |
Customer Support |
4/5
| Customer service is one of Sendinblue’s strengths. A universal help button is available, allowing you to access Sendinblue’s knowledge base, leave a message, or access their agents via live chat. At times, the Help button shows you different support options, which can be confusing (and frustrating!). Live chat was responsive though, and the knowledge base is thorough, so we can’t complain. Also, there is the Sendinblue Academy targeted at email marketing beginners. |
Overall rating |
4.2/5
| From a value-for-money perspective, it’s actually a great email marketing software, considering that the features it offers are pretty advanced. A/B testing, advanced marketing automation and CRM features could well meet your email marketing needs. Try it for free. |
Conclusion
After conducting this Sendinblue review and taking a look at their full feature set, it’s clear that Sendinblue ‘get’ email marketing. They’ve built in some very clever options to help marketers optimize their email campaigns, including advanced email automation, segmentation, personalization, and landing pages and forms that are geared towards increasing conversions.
While its automation features may not be enough to topple the email marketing software giants like ActiveCampaign, it’s not a long way off. See how it compares to Mailchimp in this comparison.
Sendinblue have also been working on their CRM features, incorporating a deal pipeline and inbox where you’re able to send emails to customers directly by integrating with your email client.
Aside from offering a generous free plan, with its paid plans starting from $25 for up to 20,000 emails, Sendinblue are one of the cheapest email marketing providers on the market.
In terms of features, there’s no denying that Sendinblue is impressive. Our best advice? If, after reading this Sendinblue review, you’re really interested in what they could offer you, try it out on the free version to see if you like it. Who knows, you might find yourself enjoying sophisticated marketing automation on a budget?
