How to switch to EmailOctopus from Brevo

Moving from Brevo to EmailOctopus is simpler than you might expect. Whether you're switching because the pricing has grown beyond what you need, the platform has become more than you signed up for, or you'd just prefer something more focused on email, this guide walks you through every step – from exporting your data to sending your first campaign. You’ll be ready to send your first campaign in under an hour.

Before you start: what's different between Brevo and EmailOctopus

Brevo and EmailOctopus share a lot of the same core features – campaigns, automations, forms, landing pages, and segmentation. But there are some meaningful differences worth knowing about before you move, so nothing catches you off guard.

EmailOctopus is an email marketing platform – we mainly focus on emails, sign up sources and list management. In practice, it means that we don’t offer some core non-email Brevo features. These include:

• SMS or WhatsApp campaigns
• transactional emails via API or SMTP relay
• a built-in CRM with deal tracking
• setting up your own live chat and helpdesk features
• Facebook ad management
• an AI writing assistant

If you rely on any of those features in Brevo, you'll want to find alternatives for them before making the switch – our integrations page can come in handy here.

That said, if you mainly use Brevo for email campaigns, list growth, and automations, you'll find everything you need in EmailOctopus.

Additionally, Brevo’s ‘Workflows’ are called ‘Automations’ on EmailOctopus, and what they call ‘Contact attributes’, we call ‘Fields’. Other features share similar names.

Differences in pricing models

While we offer a free Starter plan and Pro plan tiers that scale up with your list, Brevo has only five tiers to choose from, all offering different features and limitations. Brevo charges based on the number of emails you send each month, not the size of your contact list – EmailOctopus charges based on the number of your subscribed contacts instead. It’s also worth noting that we don’t support Enterprise plans.

Depending on how often you email your list, this can work out significantly cheaper. It's worth running the numbers on our pricing page before you commit. You can also compare features between Starter and Pro plans here, or give our article on how our pricing works a quick read.

Step 1: Set up your EmailOctopus account

Sign up for a free EmailOctopus account if you haven't already – it only takes a couple of minutes. Once you fill in your details, we'll automatically pull your branding from the website you provide, so you can get straight into designing your templates.

Domain verification

You can skip this step if you don't own a domain. Read why it's worth verifying it in this article.

Before importing any contacts, verify your sending domain. Domain verification tells inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook that the emails you send are legitimate and safe – it's one of the most effective things you can do for deliverability from day one.

You may have already verified a domain in Brevo – the process is similar in EmailOctopus, but you'll need to add the DNS records again for the new platform. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to verify your domain in EmailOctopus.

Two-factor authentication (2FA)

While you're in settings, enable two-factor authentication to keep your account secure. Follow this guide to get that set up in just a couple of clicks.

Step 2: Clean your list before migrating

This is optional, but it can make a real difference to how your emails perform after the switch.

If your Brevo contact list includes people who haven't opened an email or haven’t made a purchase in six months or more, it's worth deciding what to do with them before you move. Inbox providers use engagement as a signal of trust — a list with a large proportion of inactive contacts can affect your deliverability regardless of which platform you're sending from.

You can identify inactive contacts directly in Brevo.

1. Head to the CRM > Contacts tab and use the filter options to find contacts who haven't opened or clicked any emails in the last 90 days or more. You can also go for 180 or 365 days instead – it’s up to you. The filters allow you to create segments for unengaged CRM contacts who haven’t made a purchase, and many more.

2. You can also target contacts by their email engagement with a pre-made segment in the Unengaged contacts section in your account settings, and then use it in a list filter.

3. Once you've filtered the contacts you want to suppress, select them all and blocklist them via the Actions menu – you will export them later. You can also save them as a segment, run a re-engagement campaign and then export.

If you decide to blocklist those contacts, export them as a separate CSV (filtering by blocklist status), then import them into EmailOctopus as unsubscribed – we’ll cover how to do that later on. This is the cleanest way to carry your suppression list across without risking accidentally emailing people who've long since stopped engaging.

If you'd rather try to win some of those contacts back before writing them off, you can run a re-engagement campaign through Brevo first. Give it a couple of weeks, then blocklist anyone who doesn't respond before exporting.

Step 3: Export your Brevo data

Contacts

Keep in mind that Brevo keeps a separate contact database for its CRM (deals, pipeline) and its marketing contacts. Only the marketing contacts database is relevant for this migration – that's what you'll find under Contacts in the main navigation.

You'll need two exports: one for your active (subscribed) contacts, and one for your unsubscribed (blocklisted) contacts.

To export your contacts from Brevo:

1. Open the CRM tab from the sidebar, and go to Contacts.

2. To export your active contacts, go to each list and apply a filter to target only subscribers: Marketing > Email > Email campaigns subscriptions. To export a specific list, click Load a list or segment and select the one you want.

3. Select all contacts, click More actions, and then the export icon.

4. In the export modal, select the attributes you want to include – FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME, and any custom attributes you've created. Make sure to select the Comma option in the Column separators section, as we use commas at EmailOctopus for files instead of semicolons.

5. Under the Subscriptions section, select the subscription status you want to export – SMS or email marketing.

6. Click Start export. For smaller lists, this takes under a minute; larger databases may take a few minutes.
7. Download the file from the notification bell icon or from your inbox.
8. Repeat the same process for your unsubscribed (blocklisted) contact, as well as “Emails classified as a ‘hard bounce’”, using filters in your list.

Campaign reports

If there are campaign reports you'd like to keep, export them from Brevo before closing your account. This data doesn't transfer automatically, but historical engagement data can be useful to have for reference when planning your first sends in EmailOctopus.

1. To download your campaign report, head to the Marketing tab, go to Campaigns and click on the triple-dot icon on the right of your campaign.

2. Hit the Export report button in the top-right corner, then choose your export format.

Step 4: Import your unsubscribed contacts first

Before importing your main list, bring in your unsubscribed (blocklisted) contacts and mark them as unsubscribed during the import.

Doing this first means EmailOctopus already knows not to email those addresses – even if they appear in a future import. It protects you from accidentally contacting people who've opted out or have been blocklisted by you, which is one of the fastest ways to damage your sender reputation.

If you have contacts in Brevo with a bounced status, export those separately and treat them the same way – import them as unsubscribed. Sending to addresses that have bounced previously will hurt your deliverability.

1. Go to the Contacts tab in EmailOctopus and choose Add contacts from the dropdown.

2. Upload your file of unsubscribed or bounced contacts.

3. Mark them as Unsubscribed and click Next.
4. Finish the import.

This guide on bulk-unsubscribing contacts can come in handy as you go.

Step 5: Import your active contacts

With your suppression list in place, you're ready to bring your main list across. Check out our guide on importing contacts for full step-by-step instructions.

1. Go to the Contacts tab and choose Add contacts from the dropdown.
2. Upload your file of subscribed contacts and choose the Subscribed status.
3. Map the fields from your Brevo export to the corresponding fields in EmailOctopus. This includes first name, last name, any custom attributes, and list membership columns if you included them. You can create new fields directly in the import screen.
4. If you want to recreate your Brevo list structure, you can apply tags to contacts during import. Tags in EmailOctopus are a way to manually categorise or label subscribers – similar to how Brevo's lists work for segmentation.
5. Finalise the import.

Once the import is complete, your contacts will appear in EmailOctopus with all their data intact.

Recreating your Brevo segments in EmailOctopus:

Brevo's segments are rule-based and update dynamically as contact data changes. Our segments work exactly the same way – segments can filter by tags, engagement data, custom fields, date added, and more.

Head to the Contacts page and click Create segment to get started. This article on segmentation covers what's available.

Step 6: Update your sign-up forms and landing pages

If you have Brevo sign-up forms or landing pages embedded on your website, replace them with EmailOctopus equivalents so new subscribers end up in the right place.

Go to the Grow tab in EmailOctopus to create a new landing page or sign-up form, then replace the embed code on your site with the new one. This guide on adding form code to your website is helpful when embedding, and you can see how to create a form or landing page in our Knowledge Base.

If you have a custom form connected to the Brevo API, check our API documentation and form integrations to connect it to EmailOctopus instead.

Step 7: Recreate your automations

If you have automation workflows running in Brevo – welcome sequences, nurture flows, or behaviour-based triggers – rebuild them in EmailOctopus so new subscribers don't miss anything while you're getting set up.

Brevo's automations have a couple of different options to choose from: workflows, sequences, messages and logs. Their workflow editor supports triggers based on email engagement, web behaviour, and e-commerce activity. EmailOctopus's automations focus more on your list and email activity, so some options like abandoned cart flows, web behaviour triggers, or marketing-activity-based flows from Brevo wouldn’t be supported. If your Brevo workflows relied on those, you'll need to rethink the trigger logic or use an integration via Zapier.

Our automations are triggered by subscriber-level events, such as joining a list, having a tag applied, a date field matching a condition, etc. This article on automation triggers and actions is a helpful reference when rebuilding your flows.

You might have been using Brevo’s sequences for cold outreach – remember that EmailOctopus is a permission-based platform, so you won’t be able to send cold emails with us. If you'd like to send cold emails, we recommend setting up an account with one of the cold email platforms out there.

Step 8: Recreate your email templates

Email templates built in Brevo's drag-and-drop editor can't be exported as files, so you'll recreate them in EmailOctopus's editor. There's a library of ready-made Inspirational and Branded templates to help you get started quickly without having to build from scratch.

If you used custom HTML templates in Brevo, you can copy and paste the HTML directly into EmailOctopus's code editor. Just replace any Brevo-specific merge tags (like {{contact.FIRSTNAME }}) with the equivalent EmailOctopus personalisation tags (such as {{FirstName}}, and make sure the required footer merge tags are in place. Our customisation cheatsheet is a useful reference as you set that up.

Step 9: Send your first campaign

With everything in place, you're ready to send!

Start with your most engaged subscribers rather than your full list. When you move to a new email platform, inbox providers may take a little time to become familiar with your new sending setup. Beginning with contacts who regularly open your emails, and expanding to the rest of your list over the first few weeks, gives you the best possible start. Your historical engagement reports from Brevo can be super helpful here.

To create your first campaign, navigate to the Campaigns tab and follow this guide to get started.

Great job, you just switched to EmailOctopus! 🐙

Keeping your sender reputation healthy after the switch

Moving platforms is a good moment to build habits that will serve you well long term. A few things worth focusing on once you're up and running:

1. Send on a consistent schedule. Weekly or monthly – whatever works for your audience – is one of the most effective things you can do for deliverability. Inbox providers respond well to regular, predictable senders.
2. Warm up your domain, even if your list is not large. This gradually builds your sender reputation with inbox providers and improves your chances of landing in the inbox. More on how to do that here.
3. Keep your list clean. EmailOctopus handles hard bounces automatically, but regularly suppressing contacts who haven't engaged in 90 days or more helps protect your sender reputation.
4. Monitor your metrics. Open rates, click rates, bounces, and complaints give you an early warning if something's off. The Reports tab gives you a clear view of how each campaign performs.
5. Only send to people who've opted in. Unlike Brevo, which supports cold outreach, EmailOctopus is a permission-based platform – meaning all of your contacts need to have actively opted in to receive your emails. Emailing contacts who haven't given permission is one of the fastest ways to damage your sender reputation – and what can go wrong in a single send can take much longer to put right.

For more tips on maintaining a healthy sending reputation, this article on best practices is worth a read.

Frequently asked questions

Will my subscribers know I've switched from Brevo?

Your subscribers receive emails from your domain or sender address, not from Brevo or EmailOctopus directly. As long as your domain is verified, your branding stays consistent, and your campaigns look similar, the switch is invisible to them. If you're on our free Starter plan, we require a link back to EmailOctopus in your footer – that's the only visible difference.

Will I lose my contact attribute data?

No, as long as you include your custom attributes in the CSV export from Brevo and map them correctly during import. Any attributes that don't already exist as fields in EmailOctopus can be created during the import process in just a couple of clicks.

What happens to my Brevo lists?

Brevo lists don't have a direct equivalent in EmailOctopus, but you can replicate the structure using tags and using one master list. If you ticked the Include list membership option when exporting your contacts, you'll have a column for each list in your CSV. Use those columns to apply the corresponding tags when importing your contacts – you can also use fields instead. You can then create segments in EmailOctopus that filter by tag or field value, giving you the same ability to target specific groups of your audience.

What about my Brevo segments?

Brevo segments are rule-based and can't be exported as a contact list. You'll need to recreate the filter logic in EmailOctopus. The segmentation options are similar: engagement data, tags, custom fields, subscription date, and more.

Does EmailOctopus support transactional emails?

EmailOctopus is built for email marketing, not transactional messaging. If you were using Brevo's transactional email feature (via API or SMTP) to send order confirmations, password resets, or similar system-generated messages, you'll need a separate tool for that. Options like Postmark, SendGrid, or Mailgun are commonly used alongside EmailOctopus.

Does EmailOctopus have SMS or WhatsApp?

No – EmailOctopus is focused on email only. If SMS or WhatsApp campaigns were part of your Brevo setup, you'll need to find an alternative for those channels.

How long does the migration take?

For most people, the full process takes under an hour. Larger lists may take a little longer to export and import, but the steps are straightforward.

Can I import my Brevo email templates?

Templates built in Brevo's drag-and-drop editor can't be exported as files, so you'll need to recreate them in EmailOctopus. Custom HTML templates can be copied straight across, with a quick check to swap out Brevo's merge tags for EmailOctopus equivalents.

If you need a hand at any point during your migration, our support team is happy to help. You'll find detailed guides for every step in our Knowledge Base, or you can ask our AI chatbot in the dashboard.

Happy emailing!