Senlo vs Brevo
A Brevo alternative for product email, on your own provider.
If you use Brevo for transactional email and a few onboarding flows, Senlo does that part: a visual editor, a transactional API and automations triggered by events from your app. It skips the marketing suite, sends through the Resend, Postmark or SES account you choose, and is open source, so you can run it on your own server.
Product email, not a marketing suite
Brevo is campaigns, SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and transactional email in one account. Senlo is only the email your app sends: receipts, resets, welcome and onboarding flows.
Your provider, your choice
Brevo delivers for you, which is simpler. Senlo hands each message to a provider you pick, so you can switch from Resend to SES without rebuilding a template.
No contact caps on the tier
Brevo's cheapest tiers cap contacts at 500 to 2,500, so a big list of quiet users pushes you up a tier. Senlo counts emails sent and nothing else.
Feature by feature
Where they overlap, and the long list of things Brevo does that Senlo does not try to.
| Feature | Senlo | Brevo |
|---|---|---|
Visual email editor | ||
Transactional API: send a template with variables | ||
Event-triggered automations with waits and branches Brevo Free and Starter run automations for up to 2,000 contacts; Standard lifts the cap. | ||
Merge tags and conditional content | ||
Sends through your own provider (Resend, Postmark, SES, SMTP) Brevo delivers the mail itself, nothing to set up. With Senlo you need a Resend, Postmark, SES or SMTP account. | ||
Price set by emails only, no contact caps on the tier Brevo's 5k, 10k and 15k tiers also cap contacts at 500, 1,500 and 2,500. | ||
Open source, self-hosted on your own database Senlo is AGPL-3.0. | ||
Newsletters and campaigns to segments | ||
SMS, WhatsApp and a CRM | ||
Signup forms, landing pages and A/B tests |
What it costs
Brevo includes delivery; Senlo's columns add the provider's bill so the totals compare. Up to 3,000 emails both run on free tiers; past that, Brevo Starter is cheaper than Senlo Cloud plus Resend until a contact cap moves you up a tier. Rows two and three send the same 10,000 emails; 4,000 contacts push Brevo to the 20k tier.
| Per month | Brevo Starter | Brevo Standard | Senlo Cloud + Resend | Senlo Cloud + SES | Self-hosted Senlo + SES |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3,000 emails, 600 contacts | $17 | $35 | $0 | $0.30 | ≈ $8.30 |
| 10,000 emails, 1,500 contacts | $17 | $35 | $39 | $20 | ≈ $9 |
| 10,000 emails, 4,000 contacts | $32 | $69 | $39 | $20 | ≈ $9 |
| 50,000 emails, 10,000 contacts | $56 | $97 | $39 | $24 | ≈ $13 |
| 200,000 emails, 40,000 contacts | contact sales | contact sales | $219 | $79 | ≈ $28 |
- Brevo: Starter and Standard are priced by emails a month, but the 5k, 10k and 15k tiers also cap contacts at 500, 1,500 and 2,500; a larger list moves you to the 20k tier. Transactional and campaign emails share the volume. Free is 300 emails a day with the Brevo footer. Starter runs automations for up to 2,000 contacts; Standard has no such cap. Annual billing is about 10% less. Checked 2026-11-02, brevo.com/pricing.
- Senlo Cloud: Free up to 3,000 emails, Pro $19 up to 50,000 emails, Team $59 up to 250,000 emails and 100,000 automation runs (pricing); above that, self-host. Above that, self-host for about $8 plus your provider, or write to us.
- Resend transactional plans, checked 2026-11-02 (resend.com/pricing). Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 emails, checked 2026-11-02 (aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing).
- Self-hosted: about $8 for a 4 GB VPS, plus your time on upgrades and backups. Count that time honestly; for a small team it is often the reason to pick the hosted version.
Which one to pick
Pick Senlo if
- Brevo is mostly your transactional sender and a few onboarding flows, not a marketing tool.
- You want email to go through Resend, Postmark or SES, and to switch without rebuilding templates.
- Your contact list is large next to what you send, and the tier caps push the price up.
- You want the code on GitHub and the option to run it on your own server and database.
Stay with Brevo if
- You send newsletters and campaigns as well as product email, from one place.
- You use SMS, WhatsApp, the CRM, forms or landing pages.
- You do not want to set up a sending provider at all.
- You send a few thousand emails a month and the cheapest bill matters most.
Moving product email off Brevo
Keep Brevo for campaigns if you use them, and move one transactional email or flow at a time.
- 1
Connect a provider
Paste a Resend or Postmark key, or SMTP credentials for SES, Mailgun or your own server, and verify your domain there.
- 2
Rebuild the templates
In the visual editor; Brevo's {{ params.x }} variables become merge tags. There is no importer from Brevo yet.
- 3
Swap two API calls
Transactional sends go to POST /api/triggered, contact events to POST /api/events.
- 4
Redraw the workflows
Recreate each automation on the canvas, run it next to the old one for a week, then switch the old one off.
Questions
- Is Senlo a full Brevo replacement?
- No. Senlo covers email your product triggers: transactional messages and lifecycle sequences. It has no newsletters, SMS, WhatsApp, CRM, forms or landing pages. If you use Brevo for marketing, keep it for that and move product email to Senlo, or stay with Brevo for both.
- Do I need my own email provider?
- Yes. Senlo does not send mail itself: it renders, personalizes and decides, then hands the message to your Resend or Postmark account, or over SMTP to SES, Mailgun or your own server. If you want one vendor that also delivers, Brevo is simpler.
- Is Senlo cheaper than Brevo?
- Not always. Up to 3,000 emails a month both are free: Senlo Free with Resend's free tier, or Brevo Free at 300 emails a day with a Brevo footer. Past that, Brevo Starter costs less than Senlo Cloud plus Resend. Senlo comes out ahead with SES or when self-hosted, and when your contact list is large next to what you send, because Senlo has no contact caps. The table above shows both.
- Can I import my templates from Brevo?
- Not yet. Templates are rebuilt in Senlo's editor; a typical transactional email takes well under an hour. Brevo's {{ params.name }} variables become Senlo merge tags. Replace calls to Brevo's POST /v3/smtp/email with POST /api/triggered and its events endpoint with POST /api/events.
- How does Senlo count usage?
- Senlo Cloud counts emails sent and automation runs, never contacts. Free is 3,000 emails a month for one person; Pro is 50,000 emails for $19 a month with up to 5 people, Team 250,000 for $59 with unlimited members.
- Is self-hosting really free?
- The code is free (AGPL-3.0) and runs with one docker compose up. You pay for a small server and your provider's per-email rate, and you spend your own time on upgrades and backups. The hosted version exists for teams that would rather not.
More comparisons
Senlo next to other products, with the same honesty about what it does not do. All comparisons.
Senlo vs Customer.io
For teams that use Customer.io for transactional email and onboarding flows and pay per profile for a marketing suite around it.
Senlo vs Loops
For products on Loops that want flows which call their own API, pay for sends rather than contacts, and keep delivery with their own provider.
Senlo vs Mandrill
For teams on Mailchimp Transactional who pay for a Mailchimp plan only to keep Mandrill, and want templates that are not tied to the sender.
Senlo vs React Email
For teams that write emails as React components and want people who do not write code to edit them without a pull request and a deploy.