Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) vs ConvertKit (Kit): Which is Better in 2026?

The short answer

Most Indian teams should start with Brevo. Not because it’s “better,” because ₹750-ish [USD] Starter for 5K sends/month and unlimited contacts matches how we actually buy software here: cheap runway, pile contacts in, worry about design later.

ConvertKit wins when your product is the list — paid newsletter, course funnel, tag spaghetti you love. If that’s you, the $25 [USD] Creator tier stings less than it sounds until your subscriber count climbs.

Where Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) actually wins

Brevo’s pitch is boring in a good way: pay for sends, not headcount on the list. After we moved a SaaS onboarding drip off a “per contact” tool, we stopped deleting cold leads just to stay under a tier (which is a stupid optimisation, and everyone does it).

• You send invoices, OTPs, password resets, and the odd promo — Brevo’s transactional API + SMTP is the main event; marketing email is the side dish.
• WhatsApp + SMS + email in one bill matters when Diwali campaigns spike and you don’t want three vendors for one long weekend.
• You’ve got 2,00,000 emails collected over five years and you mail twice a month — unlimited contacts vs subscriber-priced tools is not theoretical; it’s arithmetic.

The counter-example is ugly: you’re a creator with 15K engaged subscribers, daily broadcasts, and paid tiers mapped to tags. Brevo will do it; it’ll feel like assembling IKEA with one missing hex key.

Where ConvertKit (Kit) actually wins

Kit is tuned for people who say “my stack is Stripe, Gumroad brain, and shame.” The automation builder isn’t “enterprise,” but the logic map matches how creators think about sequences (the kind that break if you move someone between tags wrong).

• Visual automations + tags beat list duplication when you’re selling a ₹4,999 template pack and a ₹39,999 cohort in parallel.
• Native digital products and tip jars mean you’re not duct-taping checkout to email; that’s fewer 2 a.m. “payment received but tag missing” fires.
• Deliverability reputation is a real asset when RBI tokenisation and inbox fatigue mean banks and Gmail get twitchy around bulk sends (not a feature bullet — still matters).
• Sponsor Network / Creator Network stuff is niche until it isn’t; if ad fill is part of your model, Brevo won’t magically build that graph.
• Free up to 10K subscribers sounds huge until you notice automations are paywalled — so the “free” tier is a hallway, not an apartment.

Loses fast when your ops team wants a CRM pipeline, meetings, and transactional scale in one login. Wrong tool, right creator.

Pricing, in INR, no spin

Assume ₹83 to $1 for mental maths (check the card rate the day you pay — we’ve seen slips of ₹2–₹4 per dollar wash out “savings” on a tool bill).

Brevo [USD]: Free tier 300 emails/day (roughly 9,000/month if you hit the cap daily — you won’t, but that’s the ceiling). Starter ~$9/mo → ~₹747/mo for 5K emails/month on paid; Business ~$18/mo → ~₹1,494/mo before tax. Enterprise custom.

ConvertKit [USD]: Free up to 10K subscribers with automations off. Creator from $25/mo → ~₹2,075/mo at 1K subscribers (their scale is subscriber-based, not “we sent 8 blasts this quarter”). Creator Pro ~$50/mo → ~₹4,150/mo at 1K subscribers.

Scenario (shop, not lecture): Suppose you’re doing ₹50L GMV/month with average ticket ₹1,200 — that’s ~4,167 orders. If 60% want transactional mail (confirmations, shipping) and you layer 4 bulk campaigns/month to your full list, you might land around 35K–55K operational + marketing sends depending on duplicates, abandon cart, and how aggressive you are with receipts. On Brevo you’re pricing sends; on ConvertKit you’re pricing subscribers even if half your list is dead weight.

Hidden costs nobody puts in the landing page:

• FX + GST: Both bill [USD]. Indian cards add GST (Brevo mentions India entity GST; ConvertKit often lands in reverse-charge territory for B2B — talk to your CA, don’t trust a comparison post for compliance).
• Integration tax: Zapier/Make for Razorpay-shaped glue is recurring rupees; “native” isn’t native for UPI settlement logic.
• Engineer time: Webhooks, template migration, and DNS (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) are real projects; budget ₹15,000–₹80,000 of founder or dev time unless your team is fast.

What we’d actually use each for

If you’re a 12-person D2C team on Shopify, ₹40L monthly GMV, and half your CRM is WhatsApp + Excel — Brevo. You’ll want transactional reliability, occasional bursts, maybe SMS when a sale hits; you’re not optimising creator funnels.

If you’re a solo course seller in Bangalore, ₹18L/year from 800 real buyers and 14K cold-ish subscribers — ConvertKit, because tags + product sales + sequences are the product.

If you’re B2B SaaS with PLG, five people in marketing, heavy transactional volume — Brevo unless your entire GTM is newsletter-led (then Kit can work, but you’ll miss the all-in-one CRM bits you swear you don’t need until you do).

Indian fit (GST, UPI, IST, support)

No UPI billing on either; no INR invoices in the product sense — you’re in card/USD land for both [USD].

Brevo has India GST handling via an India entity; that’s one fewer argument with finance. Support hours overlap IST better than “Boise o’clock,” which is the kind of sentence that sounds jokey until you’re stuck on a DNS issue Friday night.

ConvertKit support is US-hours biased; weekends thin. Not a moral failure — just plan for async.

Neither tool fixes e-invoicing thresholds or your GSTR reconciliation; they’re email vendors, not ERPs.

Migration: what’ll bite you

Brevo → ConvertKit: You’re moving from send-volume thinking to subscriber counting — your bill may jump even if engagement drops. List hygiene becomes a financial strategy (not great). Tags don’t map 1:1 to Brevo lists/folders; rebuild automations, re-test every trigger. WooCommerce/Shopify plugins differ; webhooks and product-purchase events need re-wiring. CRM data in Brevo (deals, meetings) doesn’t teleport.

ConvertKit → Brevo: Subscriber-centric segments split by tags become lists or attributes you must re-model; “simple” tags hide sinful logic. Paid product flows tied to Kit commerce need a new checkout path or Zapier stitches. Deliverability warm-up: new domain reputation routines, template HTML differences, image hosting shifts. Sponsor Network economics simply vanish — factor that if ads were material.

Export limits and API rate caps vary by plan — assume you’ll need a CSV weekend and one grumpy engineer.

What we’d pick

We’d default Brevo for Indian SMB + SaaS + “we need mail to work and cost to stay low.” We’d pick ConvertKit if the newsletter is the business, not the channel.

Are we wrong if your real bottleneck is design polish and you’d rather overpay for Mailchimp’s UX than admit it out loud?

Things people actually ask

“Is Brevo really cheaper if I do ₹2 cr/yr revenue?”
Depends what you send, not what you sell. Revenue doesn’t price Brevo — sends do. If GMV is high but email volume is modest, Brevo stays cheap; if you blast daily to a huge list, Watch the daily caps on lower tiers.

“ConvertKit free for 10K — can I run my whole funnel?”
No automations on free. So you get broadcasts and forms, not the brain of the product. Fine for testing; painful for real ops.

“Do I need to redo my GST invoice template if I switch vendors?”
Your GST compliance lives in accounting and payment tools — these don’t replace ClearTax drama — but foreign SAAS billing can change how your CA books it. Ask them before you migrate, not after the first invoice.

“WhatsApp campaigns — Brevo vs Kit?”
Brevo lists WhatsApp as a channel; Kit is email/creator-first. If WhatsApp is core GTM, leaning Brevo is the pragmatic bias.

“Will RBI tokenisation break my email receipts?”
Tokenisation hits payment flows and retries — it doesn’t swap your ESP — but failed charges change which “payment failed” emails fire. Test webhooks after any payment gateway change.

“Deliverability: who wins?”
Kit has a strong creator reputation. Brevo is solid; “best-in-class” belongs to whoever measured your domain with your list — run seed tests, don’t trust founders at 11pm.

“Migration weekend or month?”
Weekend if you’re small and brave; month if you have twenty living automations and a Shopify stack with custom pixels. Budget slack for cart recovery misfires — those cost real rupees.

“ INR settlement on payouts affecting tool choice?”
No direct link — but if your finance team is already bitter about cross-border SAAS, the [USD] line item stings either way; pick on workflow fit first.