sendinblue vs drip

Sendinblue vs Drip: Which is Better?

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By Ewen Finser

Last Updated on December 8, 2023 by Ewen Finser

Today we are going to be looking at two powerful email marketing automation tools for subscribers: Sendinblue vs Drip, to see which of the two would be the best option to help you grow your business.

Bottom Line Up Front Summary: For most users I would recommend starting with the more affordable and flexible automation builder with Sendinblue here (FREE to start). That said, if you have a well established ecommerce store already (physical products), Drip is a more evolved and integrated solution despite being more expensive (check current Drip deals here). 

Main Differences Between Sendinblue vs Drip

The main differences between Sendinblue vs Drip are:

  • Drip has been designed specifically to help e-commerce business owners grow their businesses, whereas Sendinblue is suitable for all types of businesses, including e-commerce.
  • Drip does not have a free plan available (although it does offer a free trial), whereas Sendinblue has a completely free plan available.
  • Sendinblue has a chatbox feature that can be added to your website, whereas Drip doesn’t offer this feature.
  • Sendinblue allows you to create signup forms and landing pages to help grow your business, whereas Drip allows you to create opt-in forms, but not landing pages.
Our Pick
I Personally Prefer Brevo

You might not have heard about Brevo, but you SHOULD. It has the big box API tools of a SendGrid, the sales automation of an ActiveCampaign, but the user-friendliness of a ConvertKit. Plus, it's relatively cheap in comparison to each.

Try Brevo Here
We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

If you’ve been looking at cost-effective ways to market your business, then email marketing is without a doubt the way to go. It’s affordable, easy, and it enables you to reach your ideal clients directly with your content and offers.

There was a rumor floating around a while back that email marketing is dead. Well, I think we all know now that that simply isn’t true- email marketing is thriving, and remains one of the best ways to market your business online, with an average ROI of 4200%, or $42 for every $1 spent!

Incredible, right?

Why is email marketing so popular though?

Well, on average, 99% of consumers check their emails every day, and in general, consumers (and subscribers) prefer to be contacted by email, as they can read them at their leisure, and unsubscribe if they need to as well. Suffice it to say, you sould send emails to your audience! 

In this comparison of Sendinblue and Drip, we will be taking a look at exactly what marketing automation feature functionality they each offer beyond just sending emails, as well as their marketing platform pros and cons, the ease of use, and the pricing, so you can make an informed decision on which one would be the best choice for the type of business you are running.

Let’s take a look.

Sendinblue vs Drip: In-Depth

Sendinblue Service Provider Overview

Sendinblue is much more than just email marketing software – it’s an entire marketing automation toolkit that gives you everything you need to effectively reach your customers by email, SMS, online chat, and more. It also includes a CRM, and lots of other features to help you grow your business such as landing pages and signup forms.

Sendinblue vs Drip: The Key Features of Sendinblue

  • Email marketing
  • SMS marketing
  • Chat
  • CRM
  • Marketing automation
  • Transactional emails
  • Segmentation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign up forms
  • Facebook ads
  • Retargeting
  • Open and click-through reports
  • Email heat maps
  • A/B Testing
  • Real-time statistics
  • Send time optimization
  • API & Plugins

Email Marketing with Sendinblue

Sendinblue has powerful email marketing features that let you effortlessly create beautiful email campaigns to send to your contacts. It uses a drag and drop email editor, so you can build your email to look exactly how you want it to without knowing a single line of code.

As well as being able to build your emails from scratch, there is also a template library, where you can choose from professionally designed email templates, and then add your own content, imagery, and branding to suit your needs.

All of the templates are fully responsive and GDPR compliant, so they will look great on any device, and you can preview how they will look on different devices from within the editor, so you will know exactly what your audience will be seeing.

All of the emails you create can be personalized with your contact details such as their name, date of birth, City, or any other details you wish to collect on your signup forms. As well as including personalization in the body of the email, you can also choose to personalize your subject lines

All Sendinblue subscription plans allow you to have unlimited contacts, and you can group and segment your contacts in any way you wish for a more targeted approach to your email campaigns.

Once your email is finished and ready to send, you can take advantage of Sendinblue’s intelligent sending features which allow you to send your emails at the optimal time through machine learning and AI. Sendinblue also offers A/B testing so you can test different emails and subject lines to see what is working best to further optimize your campaigns.

SMS Marketing

Sendinblue enables you to contact your subscribers by SMS with your most time-sensitive marketing messages. The SMS messaging feature is easy to use, you simply write your message, and select a list of contacts for it to be sent to with the click of a button.

SMS messages can also be personalized with your customer’s name, and any other details you would like to include. Once you have sent your SMS campaigns, you can use the Analytics features to see what’s working well and see where you can improve. The analytics also provide you with real-time deliverability reports and engagement statistics.

Chat

Sendinblue’s Chat feature lets you chat with your customers in real-time while they are browsing your website, so that you can quickly resolve any issues they might be having, or answer any questions right away.

The chat box is easy to set up and install on your website, all you need to do is paste a snippet of code into the header of your site, and you can start using it right away. Your Chatbox can be customized with your own branding, so your customers have a seamless brand experience when they are using it on your website.

To make sure your customers are never kept waiting when they want to chat, you can easily organize your workflow by assigning different chats to different team members, so no one slips through the cracks.

Sendinblue CRM

Sendinblue has an inbuilt CRM where you can keep track of all of your customers and record any interactions you have with them. The CRM itself is very easy to set up, and there’s no need to download any software, you simply upload your contacts and you can get started right away.

The CRM allows you to centralize all of your contacts and their information. You can add notes, upload documents, and update any other information you need from one central place.

You can organize your lists in any way you choose, by segmenting them based on various demographics, or other criteria such as which stage they are at in your conversion funnel.

To make sure that opportunities are missed, you can easily create tasks from within the CRM and assign them to relevant team members, as well as using marketing automation to send follow up emails, saving you and your team hours of time each week.

Marketing Automation

Sendinblue has clever marketing automation features that allow you to automate mundane tasks in your workflow, such as sending welcome emails, so that you can focus on other more important areas of your business.

Automations work by using a set of rules and triggers that automate actions on your behalf. You can automate all kinds of activities such as emails, SMS messages, sorting contacts into different lists and much more.

You can use the lead scoring features to assign points to contacts based on actions they have taken, and set triggers for automations once they have reached a certain score based on your requirements. Once you have created your automations, you can continually work to optimize them by using A/B split testing.

Transactional Emails

If you are an ecommerce store owner, then you can link your Sendinblue account to your website or application to enable you to send your customers beautifully branded transactional emails such as order confirmation emails, password resets, and any other transactional emails that would be useful to your customers.

Transactional emails use the same drag and drop editor as the main email builder (visual builder), so you can choose from a template, or start from scratch to make sure your email looks exactly the way you want it to.

You can send your transactional emails with confidence knowing that they will reach your customer’s inbox. Sendinblue has a team of experts who constantly work on optimizing the email delivery rates, so you can rest assured that your customers won’t miss out on any important emails relating to their purchase.

Signup Forms and Landing Pages

So that you can continually work to build your business by growing your email list, Sendinblue has a signup form builder functionality where you can easily create eye-catching forms to capture your customer’s details while they are browsing your website.

The form builder is easy to use and uses a drag and drop user interface, and you can choose exactly which fields you would like to include in your form, such as name, address, contact number, date of birth, or any other information that you would find useful to know about your customers when they sign up to your list.

Once you have built your form, you can easily place it anywhere on your website by using the embeddable HTML code. You can also share your sign up forms on your social media profiles, or link to it from within your emails.

To keep all of your contacts GDPR compliant, checkboxes are included in each form so customers are made aware of exactly what they are signing up for and can opt-out of certain things if they wish to do so.

As well as signup forms, Sendinblue also has a landing page builder where you can build landing pages for your marketing campaigns. This page builder also uses a drag and drop system, so you can create your pages to look any way you want to, and customize them with your own branding, colours, fonts, and images.

You can build landing pages for all kinds of events such as showing off your latest product, promoting a launch, growing your list, or promoting an event. To encourage purchase you can include targeted CTA’s, and all of the form fields you include will be automatically linked to your Sendinblue and be added to your CRM database.

Facebook Ads and Retargeting

If you use Facebook Ads to promote your business, you can manage both your Facebook ads and display ads from within your Sendinblue account. This means you don’t need to keep switching between different programs to manage your advertising campaigns, and all of your reporting and data can be kept in one place.

You can upload images and creatives for your ads, add your budget, and the number of people you would like to reach, and when they are live you can easily monitor their progress and look for areas to improve on.

Sendinblue vs Drip: The Benefits of Using Sendinblue

  • Sendinblue provides all of the marketing tools you need to run your business in one place.
  • It’s good value, with plans at different price points to suit businesses of all sizes.
  • SMS messaging is included.
  • Sendinblue has an integrated CRM, so you can manage all of your customers from one central place, and keep track of your sales pipeline.
  • Sendinblue has marketing automation features that allow you to automate lots of your team’s daily tasks, such as follow up emails and welcome emails.
  • Sendinblue offers split testing for all of its features so that you can continually work to optimize your campaigns and automation workflows.
  • There is a free plan available, with no credit card required.
Our Pick
I Personally Prefer Brevo

You might not have heard about Brevo, but you SHOULD. It has the big box API tools of a SendGrid, the sales automation of an ActiveCampaign, but the user-friendliness of a ConvertKit. Plus, it's relatively cheap in comparison to each.

Try Brevo Here
We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

Sendinblue vs Drip: The Downsides to Using Sendinblue

Some of Sendinblue’s integrations are limited, so if you are already using some particular software for your business, it’s definitely worth checking that it will integrate with Sendinblue before you sign up to a plan expecting a certain functionality.

Sendinblue vs Drip: Drip Overview

Drip is a dedicated ecommerce CRM with a wide range of marketing automation tools to help you grow your ecommerce business. It works with popular ecommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce, as well as with custom stores through API.

The Key Features of Drip

  • Tags
  • Custom Fields
  • Events and Customer Behaviour
  • Third-Party Integrations
  • Deep List Segmentation
  • Behaviour Based Automations
  • Personalization
  • Email Marketing
  • Facebook and Instagram Ads
  • Automatic Revenue Attribution
  • Clear Analytics Dashboards
  • Workflow Split Testing

Email Marketing and Transactional Emails with Drip

Drip’s email marketing features allow you to engage with your customers by sending them promotional emails, recommendations, discounts and offers, as well as transactional emails when they have made a purchase.

It’s easy to build beautiful emails using Drip’s visual email builder, and you have the option to include both liquid and personalized content blocks, to provide your customers with a unique experience. You can include product recommendations within your emails, and show customers items that are still in their cart to nudge them towards making a purchase.

All of the emails you send with Drip can be personalized with custom fields which allow you to send more personalized emails and build stronger relationships with your customers

Drip CRM Features

Drip has advanced CRM features that allow you to store all of your customer data in one place. You can easily segment your data by taking advantage of the ‘tagging’ feature, which lets you add any number of tags to each contact, enabling you to easily create specific lists of contacts depending on their preferences and needs, so that you can send more targeted campaigns.

You can easily track events and customer behavior using Drip, to give you an in-depth view of how your customers are using your website and interacting with your content. You can see how many times customers are viewing each product to give you a clear idea of their preferences, so that you can send them exactly the right offers and promotional content to encourage them to make a purchase.

When you integrate Drip with your e-commerce platform, Drip will automatically pull data to give you revenue attribution, so that you can see exactly which of your marketing efforts are bringing the most rewards, enabling you to make long term decisions on how best to market your business in the future.

Marketing Automation

Drip allows you to automate your workflows, so that you can drive customers into your sales funnel and through towards a purchase on autopilot, saving you and your sales team hours of time each week.

You can easily create your own workflows, and split tests them to work out which option generates the most sales, revenue, and engagement for your business.

Your automation can be triggered by your customer’s behaviour, so customers will receive the optimum follow up based on their specific actions.

Integrations

The entire customer journey can be centralized in one place, by plugging in all of your ecommerce marketing tools to the CRM so that you can view each stage of their journey to making a purchase.

Drip integrates with all popular ecommerce platforms including Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, ThriveCart, Podia, and more. As well as ecommerce tools, Drip also integrates with ver 90 other tools, and if the tool you are looking to integrate isn’t listed, you can suggest integrations directly to Drip, or use Drip’s API.

Facebook and Instagram Ads

Even after customers have left your website, you can still follow up with them by showing them targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, to optimize your conversions, and you can even change the ads that are shown to a customer, based on actions they take. You can create Facebook custom audiences from directly within Drip, and even automate the ways you add contacts to your custom audiences by using your Drip rules and workflows.

Sendinblue vs Drip: The Benefits of Using Drip

  • Drip has been designed specifically to work with ecommerce businesses, so it has all of the features you need to market and promote your ecommerce products effectively.
  • Drip allows you to send custom transactional emails, as well as marketing emails.
  • Personalization features and custom fields allow you to give your customers a truly personal experience.
  • Drip integrates with all popular ecommerce platforms, as well as many other software you might want to use to market and run your business.
  • Drip has a revenue attribution feature, so you can see exactly which areas of your marketing are having the highest payoff.
  • Drip is easy to use, even for beginners.
  • You can easily create automated workflows, and split test them to see what’s working best.

Sendinblue vs Drip: The Downsides to Using Drip

Drip’s CRM function isn’t as robust as other CRMs such as Hubspot or Salesforce, so may not be ideal for any business who have a sales team actively selling products or services. Although Drip has a visual email builder, it doesn’t have ‘drag and drop’ features.

Pricing: Sendinblue vs Drip

Sendinblue Pricing

Sendinblue has four main pricing plans: Free, Lite, Essential, and Premium.

The Free plan allows you to send up to 300 emails per day, and includes the use of the mobile-friendly email designer, emails and SMS personalization, SMS marketing, A/B testing, unlimited contacts, CRM, advanced list segmentation, customizable sign-up forms, transactional email and SMS sending, API features, advanced templating languages, workflow editor, page tracking, real-time reporting, and marketing automation platform workflows for up to 2000 contacts. It’s not just a simple version! 

The Lite plan costs $25/month and allows you to send up to 40,000 emails each month with no daily sending limit within the software. This plan also includes everything from the free plan.

The Essential plan costs $39/month and allows you to send up to 60,000 emails each month, and includes all the features from the lite plan, as well as removing the Sendinblue logo from your automated emails, and access to advanced statistics.

The Premium plan includes everything from the Essential plan (pro plan), as well as Facebook ads, landing pages, marketing automation, chat, and multi user access. The pricing for this plan varies by for many emails you would like to send each month:

120,000 emails costs $66/month

350,000 emails costs $173/month

If you would like to find out more about Sendinblue and what they have to offer, you can check out the free trial here.

Drip Pricing

All Drip plans include: Deep customer insights, behaviour and event tracking, powerful segmentation, revenue attribution, automations, API, email analytics, unlimited users, chat and email support, opt-in forms, third party integrations, and a learning hub.

The pricing for drip varies by how many contacts you would like to have in your account.

0 – 3,000 contacts per month costs $49/month

3,000 – 5,000 contacts costs $122/month

5,000 – 12,500 contacts costs $184/month

There are plans available for as many contacts as you like, so if you need more than the above you can check the pricing here.

Sendinblue vs Drip Frequently Asked Questions:

Does the GDPR require the use of a double opt-in Sendinblue subscription process?

the use of a double opt-in process is NOT required by the GDPR. While it is a good practice, it is not even mentioned by the GDPR.

Is SendinBlue free?

SendinBlue offers a Free plan which includes 300 emails/day.

What is the Drip attribution feature?

The drip attribution feature allows you to see exactly which areas of your marketing are having the highest payoff.

The Verdict: Which is the better marketing automation tool?

Our Pick
I Personally Prefer Brevo

You might not have heard about Brevo, but you SHOULD. It has the big box API tools of a SendGrid, the sales automation of an ActiveCampaign, but the user-friendliness of a ConvertKit. Plus, it's relatively cheap in comparison to each.

Try Brevo Here
We earn a commission if you click this link and make a purchase at no additional cost to you.

After looking at both Sendinblue and Drip in detail, it’s clear to see that they are both great marketing automation tools, but there has to be a winner, so who is it?

The overall winner here is Sendinblue!

We chose Sendinblue as the winner here because of all the incredible features it offers, at an amazing price. The plans start from $0 per month, and even the most comprehensive plan is very affordable starting at just $66/month. When you consider all of the features you get for this price, it’s a no brainer really.

Sendinblue is suitable for all types of businesses, with a robust CRM to manage your sales and marketing process, as well as manage revenue attribution and conversions, whereas Drip has been designed as an ecommerce CRM, so isn’t really suitable for other business types.

If you are running an ecommerce business then you still might want to consider Drip, however, it’s considerably more expensive so you will want to be sure that you can make the most of all the features it offers. Drip offers a 14-day free trial if you want to see if it will work for your business.

If you would like to give Sendinblue a go, pick up their completely free plan here (perfect way to get familiar without committing).

If you’re still unsure on what you need for your business, check out our comprehensive guide on how to choose the right CRM software for your business.

Further Reading on Email Marketing Service Provider Tools:

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