Mailchimp is dragging Intuit's growth down while Brevo just raised $583M to eat its lunch.
Intuit's own FY2025 filings show the company grew 18% excluding Mailchimp but only 16% with it included. Meanwhile Brevo closed a $583M round in December 2025, crossed 200M EUR ARR, and is spending 100M EUR+ specifically to take US market share from Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign sits in the middle with the deepest automation chops and the best verified deliverability (94.2% per EmailTooltester), but a November 2025 billing change that now charges for unsubscribed and bounced contacts is drawing real practitioner complaints.
Key takeaways
Winners by dimension
Side-by-side
| Brevo | ActiveCampaign | Mailchimp (Intuit Mailchimp) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Tier | 9,000 emails/month, 100,000 contacts, CRM and live chat included, no credit card required | No free tier. 14-day trial only, no credit card required. | — |
| Starting Paid Price | $9/month (Starter, 5,000 emails/month) | $15/month billed annually (Starter, 1,000 contacts) | — |
| Pricing Model | Volume-based: pay for emails sent per month. Contacts stored free up to 100K on free plan. | Contact-based. Since Nov 2025, charges for ALL contacts including unsubscribed and bounced (per Prospeo, TechnologyChecker). | — |
| Email Deliverability (Independent Test) | 88.3% (EmailTooltester Jan 2024 independent test) | 94.2%, ranked #1 (EmailTooltester Jan 2024 independent test) | — |
| Marketing Automation | Unlimited workflows on Standard ($18/month). WhatsApp automation requires Professional ($499/month). | Unlimited actions on Plus ($49/month). 950+ pre-built recipes. Split automations on Pro ($79/month). | — |
| AI Features | Aura AI: Marketing Agent, Sales Assistant, Data Analyst, Conversations Agent. MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, and Mistral. | Active Intelligence: prompt-to-campaign, AI segments, predictive sending, BotSense. Claude and ChatGPT MCP server launched Nov 2025. | — |
| CRM Included | Yes, native CRM with visual sales pipeline included on all plans at no extra cost. | Basic contact CRM included. Sales pipelines and deal records require a paid add-on. | — |
| WhatsApp Support | Native WhatsApp campaigns on Professional ($499/month). Certified WhatsApp BSP. | Native WhatsApp on all plans as paid add-on. Certified Meta BSP. Acquired Hilos Apr 2025 for workflow depth. | — |
| Integrations | ~39 listed native integrations plus REST API and SMTP universal relay | 1,000+ native and third-party integrations including Salesforce, BigQuery, Clay, and Postmark | — |
| Market Share by Detected Domains | 67,311 detected domains (per TechnologyChecker Q1 2026) | 56,932 detected domains, 3.83% marketing automation market share (per TechnologyChecker Q1 2026) | — |
| Open Roles (Hiring Signal) | 18 open roles, growing. Heavy in Revenue/Sales and Americas expansion including bilingual Sales Engineers in Austin and Boston. | 24 open roles, stable. Focused on AI agent engineering in Krakow and security engineering in the US. | — |
| Funding and Financial Backing | 500M EUR raised Dec 2025. Unicorn status. 200M+ EUR ARR. Double-digit EBITDA margin. 100M EUR earmarked for US expansion. | ~$250M ARR (per Growth Unhinged). $240M Series C in 2021. No recent funding announced. | — |
Who should pick whom
What we found
Who These Three Tools Actually Sell To
They look like competitors. They're not selling to the same buyer. Mailchimp owns the mass market with 283,090 detected domains and 19.07% market share (per TechnologyChecker Q1 2026), mostly first-time email marketers who want brand recognition and a familiar interface. ActiveCampaign targets the automation-hungry SMB owner who has outgrown Mailchimp and wants CRM-linked workflows without paying HubSpot prices. Brevo is the European-first challenger going after budget-conscious businesses sitting on large contact lists who would pay through the nose under contact-based pricing.
The Pricing Model Is the Real Differentiator
Brevo's volume-based pricing is a genuine structural advantage for businesses with large, infrequently emailed lists. A company with 80,000 contacts sending 50,000 emails a month pays roughly $18-$25/month on Brevo's Standard plan. The same list on Mailchimp Standard runs around $540/month. ActiveCampaign made its pricing model worse in November 2025 by charging for all contacts including unsubscribed and bounced (per Prospeo and TechnologyChecker). That change is already drawing practitioner complaints and creating a real opening for Brevo to poach mid-market accounts.
Mailchimp's Parent Company Problem
Intuit's FY2025 annual report is unusually candid. The company grew Global Business Solutions revenue 16% including Mailchimp, but 18% excluding it. Reuters headlined the August 2025 earnings release as 'Mailchimp lags.' Intuit's FY2026 guidance similarly strips Mailchimp out when presenting its best-case growth numbers. That's a public signal that Mailchimp is underperforming within an $18.8B revenue parent. The platform isn't going anywhere, but the investment priority question is real.
ActiveCampaign's AI Bet Is the Most Credible in This Group
Active Intelligence grew 127% MoM in account adoption between October and November 2025 (per ActiveCampaign's own year-in-review). It's the first marketing platform connected as Claude's MCP connector. The 94.2% deliverability rate from EmailTooltester's independent January 2024 test is the highest in the category. These are real differentiators. The risk is pricing complexity and the November 2025 billing change. Charging for dead contacts is the kind of decision that accelerates churn to simpler competitors.
Brevo's 100M EUR US Bet Is the Story to Watch
Brevo generates only 15% of revenue from the US despite the US representing roughly 50% of the global marketing automation TAM (per TechCrunch, December 2025). The 500M EUR raise is explicitly earmarked to fix that. The company hired a new Chief Revenue Officer and CEO of Americas in July 2025, has bilingual Sales Engineers in Austin and Boston, and has completed 11 acquisitions. If Brevo closes the brand recognition gap in North America, its pricing model alone should win a significant slice of mid-market accounts currently on Mailchimp.
Sources & references
Every claim in this report was triangulated against 13 third-party sources (analyst reports, developer surveys, news coverage, and pricing pages). Sources are listed below in citation order.
- New unicorn Brevo raises $583M to challenge CRM giants(headline | key_stat | narrative | winners | side_by_side)
- Intuit Reports Strong Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2025 Results(headline | narrative | side_by_side | takeaways)
- Email Deliverability Test: The Strongest and Worst Performing Newsletter Services(winners | side_by_side | narrative | key_stat)
- ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp 2026: An Unbiased Comparison(narrative | winners | side_by_side)
- Brevo vs Mailchimp in 2026: The Ultimate Comparison(narrative | winners | side_by_side | personas)
- 2025 Year in Review: How ActiveCampaign Made Marketing Autonomous(winners | narrative | key_stat | side_by_side)
- GTM strategies to reach $250M ARR at ActiveCampaign(side_by_side | narrative | key_stat)
- Companies Using ActiveCampaign in 2026(side_by_side | key_stat | winners | narrative)
- 2026 Marketing Automation Report: Market Share and Trends Based on 50M Crawled Domains(side_by_side | narrative | key_stat | winners)
- Brevo Pricing Plans(side_by_side | winners | personas)
- Brevo becomes a unicorn following 500M EUR funding round(side_by_side | narrative | key_stat)
- 11 Best Email CRM Tools in 2026 including ActiveCampaign billing change note(narrative | winners | takeaways)
- Intuit forecasts quarterly revenue growth below estimates as Mailchimp lags(headline | narrative | side_by_side)
Want to share this?
Intuit grew 18% last year without Mailchimp. With Mailchimp included, it only grew 16%. Here's what that means if you're choosing between these three platforms:
Want this kind of report on your competitors?
ClientCues runs deep AI scans + side-by-side comparisons every week.
Try ClientCues Free