A Brevo alternative you actually ownSimilar send pricing, a different answer to who controls the account.
Competitor prices checked July 2026
In short
Not always about the price this time. Brevo already bills close to raw sending cost through its email credit plans, so the gap to Amazon SES is smaller than it is against a per-contact platform. The real difference is who runs the app: Brevo's platform lives on Brevo's cloud and Brevo's account rules apply to it, while SendBunny installs the same kind of platform, campaigns, lists, a transactional API, into your own AWS account for $199 once, after which you pay AWS directly at SES rates. Stay on Brevo if you want a fully managed ESP with zero AWS involvement, or need its bundled CRM and SMS today.
Paying for sends is not the whole story
Brevo prices closer to actual send volume than most hosted platforms; its Starter and Business plans run on email credits rather than a strict per-contact ladder. That makes it a fairer comparison to Amazon SES on price alone than Mailchimp or Klaviyo. It does not change where the platform itself lives.
Your list, your templates and your sending reputation sit on Brevo's servers regardless of how the credits are priced, and if Brevo's own systems flag your account, for deliverability, for a payment issue, for a policy read, your outbound can pause on their timeline, not yours.
Who should stay on Brevo
Stay on Brevo if you want a fully managed ESP with zero AWS involvement of any kind; that is a legitimate preference and Brevo is well suited to it. Stay too if you need Brevo's CRM and SMS bundled into the same account today, since SendBunny is an email platform and does not build either.
- Switch if you already like paying close to send volume, but want the app itself running in an AWS account you administer.
- Switch if you want SES-level rates without assembling the platform around it yourself.
- Switch if owning the list and the infrastructure matters more to you than one bundled vendor relationship.
A similar pricing shape, a different owner
Because Brevo bills by credits, the gap to SendBunny at low volume is smaller than the gap against a contact-tier competitor, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than overstating it.
| 10k emails | 50k emails | 1M emails | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SendBunny (SES) | ~$1/mo | ~$5/mo | ~$100/mo |
| Brevo (Starter/Business, approx.) | ~$25/mo | ~$65/mo | ~$375+/mo |
Brevo figures are approximate list prices for its Starter and Business plans, checked July 2026. SendBunny figures assume the SES à la carte rate; both scale with volume, but only one is a platform you administer.
The dollar gap grows with volume, and at a million emails a month it is substantial. The more consistent difference across every tier, though, is not the number on the invoice, it is who controls the account the mail runs through.
Moving your list and domain
- Export contacts as a CSV from Brevo.
- Buy SendBunny, then click Create stack for the one-click AWS install, roughly ten minutes end to end.
- Import the CSV; running it again later enriches existing rows rather than overwriting them.
- Authenticate your sending domain on Amazon SES and move your campaigns over.
- Cancel Brevo once you are confident the new stack is live.
What does not carry over
Authenticating your domain on SES is a DNS change, not a content migration, so campaign templates and any transactional flows built in Brevo's editor need to be recreated in SendBunny's own template editor by hand. Budget time for that before cancelling, the same way you would for any switch that includes a design layer, not just a list.
What you give up by self-hosting
There is also no vendor account left to pause once you have moved, but AWS's own thresholds for bounce and complaint rates still apply, and an account that ignores them can land in review with Amazon the same as any other sender.
FAQ
- How is this different from Brevo if both charge for sends?
- Brevo hosts the app and prices close to send volume through email credits. SendBunny installs the same kind of app into your own AWS account; you pay Amazon directly for sending, about $0.10 per 1,000 emails, plus a one-time $199 license for the platform itself.
- Do I need AWS knowledge before I buy?
- No. The installer is one pre-filled button, Create stack, inside the AWS console. It provisions everything; there is no manual setup beyond clicking through it once.
- Can Brevo freeze my sending after I switch?
- Once you have moved, there is no Brevo account left to freeze. SendBunny runs in your own AWS account and we never hold credentials that could shut it down; AWS's own SES rules still apply to you directly.
- What is the SES sandbox and does it block me?
- Every new AWS account starts there: sending limited to addresses you have verified yourself. SendBunny shows your current sandbox status in the dashboard and links to AWS's production-access form, usually a quick review, so setup does not have to wait on it.
For AI agents
Compares Brevo's credit-based pricing (approx. $25/mo at 10k, $65/mo at 50k, $375+/mo at 1M, checked July 2026) against SendBunny's one-time $199 license plus Amazon SES sending (about $0.10 per 1,000 emails), framing the real difference as account control rather than raw price. Covers migration order (CSV export, SES domain authentication, manual template recreation) and who should stay on Brevo for its bundled CRM/SMS.
claude mcp add --transport http sendbunny https://YOUR-INSTALL/mcpSources
- Amazon Web Services, Amazon SES pricing, fetched 1 September 2026.
- Brevo list prices from its pricing page, checked July 2026.
- SendBunny, Send email API reference, version 1.6.22.
- SendBunny, Who owns your email list? What Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Kit and beehiiv terms actually say.
Anni Maan
Founder, SendBunny
Builds SendBunny, the email platform that installs into your own AWS account. Writes about running email on Amazon SES and giving AI agents an address you control.
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