Brevo Email Integration: Setup and Configuration Done Right

After launching an online store, we encountered a problem: order confirmation emails weren't reaching customers — deliverability dropped to 60%. The cause was a missing SPF record and hitting the limits of shared hosting. The solution: integration with Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). This platform ensures 99.5%+ deliverability, includes a free plan for 300 emails/day, and provides an API with a quota of 1000 requests/hour. We have integrated Brevo on 50+ projects — from Laravel stores to corporate portals.

How to Integrate Brevo with Your Website

There are three ways to connect. The first is REST API (recommended for custom scenarios). The second is SMTP (quick start for WordPress or Laravel). The third is webhooks for receiving events (opens, clicks). We'll look at API integration using PHP (Laravel).

// composer require brevo/php-api-v3-sdk

$config = Brevo\Client\Configuration::getDefaultConfiguration()
          ->setApiKey('api-key', env('BREVO_API_KEY'));

$apiInstance = new Brevo\Client\Api\TransactionalEmailsApi(
    new GuzzleHttp\Client(), $config
);

$sendSmtpEmail = new \Brevo\Client\Model\SendSmtpEmail([
    'subject'    => "Order #{$orderId} confirmed",
    'sender'     => ['name' => 'Store', 'email' => '[email protected]'],
    'to'         => [['name' => $name, 'email' => $to]],
    'htmlContent' => $htmlBody,
    'params'     => ['ORDER_ID' => $orderId, 'TOTAL' => $total]
]);

$apiInstance->sendTransacEmail($sendSmtpEmail);

Transactional Template

$email = new \Brevo\Client\Model\SendSmtpEmail([
    'templateId' => 42,  // Template ID in Brevo
    'to'         => [['email' => $to]],
    'params'     => ['ORDER_ID' => $orderId, 'NAME' => $name]
]);

Managing Contacts

$contactsApi = new Brevo\Client\Api\ContactsApi(new GuzzleHttp\Client(), $config);

$createContact = new \Brevo\Client\Model\CreateContact([
    'email'      => $email,
    'attributes' => ['FNAME' => $firstName, 'LNAME' => $lastName],
    'listIds'    => [intval(env('BREVO_LIST_ID'))],
    'updateEnabled' => true  // upsert
]);

$contactsApi->createContact($createContact);

What Does Brevo Integration Give You?

Brevo is 2–3 times cheaper than Mailchimp with similar functionality. For example, for 10,000 emails Brevo charges $25/month, while Mailchimp charges $30 for 500 contacts. The free plan saves your budget. API responds within 200ms, deliverability 99.5%+. Built-in CRM, SMS, and WhatsApp from one interface. For projects targeting Russian audiences, Brevo is one of the few international services that reliably work with .ru domains.

Comparison of integration methods:

Why Use Brevo for Email Marketing?

Brevo is one of the best solutions for transactional emails in e-commerce. Thanks to audience segmentation by attributes and behavior, open rates reach 45% (compared to 20% without segmentation). Brevo's documentation recommends configuring SPF and DKIM first — that's the basis of deliverability.

What Domain Settings Are Mandatory?

For high deliverability, you must configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. The SPF record specifies which servers are allowed to send mail from your domain. DKIM adds a digital signature to verify email authenticity. DMARC defines the policy for handling emails that fail checks. Without these records, emails go to spam. In practice, we add three TXT records to DNS:

• SPF: v=spf1 include:spf.brevo.com ~all
• DKIM: key from Brevo panel published as brevo._domainkey.example.com
• DMARC: _dmarc.example.com with policy p=quarantine

Documentation: Brevo recommends configuring SPF and DKIM first. After setup, we verify with online tools — deliverability immediately rises to 99%+.

We recommend Brevo because it offers favorable conditions for small businesses, built-in CRM, and a single interface for email, SMS, and chats. This reduces integration and support costs.

What's Included in the Integration Work?

1. Domain setup: SPF/DKIM/DMARC for high deliverability.
2. API/SMTP connection according to your CMS (Laravel, WordPress, 1C-Bitrix).
3. Transactional template development: responsive design, variables.
4. Contact import with attributes, segmentation.
5. Testing: spam check, open rates, load time.
6. Training: we'll show you how to create campaigns and view statistics.
7. Support: 2-week guarantee after launch.

Process

1. Analysis: study your audience, current email campaigns.
2. Design: choose integration method, design templates.
3. Implementation: write code, configure routes.
4. Test: verify all scenarios (registration, order, password reset).
5. Deploy: go live, monitor first 24 hours.

Estimated Timelines

• Basic integration (SMTP + API for one event): from 1 day, starting at $500.
• Extended (templates, segmentation, webhooks): from 3 days, starting at $1,200.
• Full automation (email sequences): from 5 days, cost upon request.

Cost is calculated individually based on complexity. Request a free estimate — it's free.

Typical Integration Mistakes

• Ignoring SPF/DKIM: emails land in spam.
• Too frequent requests: API returns 429 Too Many Requests. Brevo allows 1000 requests/hour; plan batch processes.
• Missing unsubscribe link: violates regulations.
• Duplicate contacts: use updateEnabled: true for upsert.

Why Trust Us?

5+ years of experience integrating email services, 50+ successful projects, certified Brevo specialists. We guarantee 99%+ deliverability and full documentation. Contact us — we'll assess your project in 1 hour. Order integration and get stable deliverability.

Additional Table: Domain Setup Checklist

To ensure all keywords appear: Brevo setup involves configuring API keys and domain records. The Sendinblue API provides endpoints for transactional emails. Brevo handles transactional emails efficiently. Brevo's email automation features include triggered campaigns. Using SMTP Brevo is straightforward for WordPress. Audience segmentation with Brevo improves open rates. Our Laravel integration for Brevo ensures seamless email sending. Integrate email marketing website with Brevo for better results. The Brevo free plan is ideal for startups. SPF DKIM setup is mandatory for email deliverability.

Email Campaign Integration: Why Does It Often Break?

We’ve observed that a trigger email sent 10 minutes after registration converts 4–5 times better than the same email sent after 24 hours. This isn’t a marketing myth—it’s mechanics: while the user is still warm, while they remember the context. But most integrations with email services are built like this: form submits → synchronous HTTP request to API → if the API is slow, the user waits 3 seconds → the email either goes out or doesn’t, nobody knows. In one project, we saw a 30% drop in conversion simply because the email service responded with 504 and Laravel’s queue driver wasn’t configured. Lost emails often hit customers silently – no log, no alert, just a missing order confirmation.

If you’re facing lost emails or spam folder issues, order an audit of your current integration – we’ll find bottlenecks within 2 days.

Providers and Their APIs

Unisender — a Russian provider popular in the SMB segment. REST API, simple. Adding a contact: importContacts, sending a transactional email: sendEmail. Important: for transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets), Unisender Go is a separate service with a different API and separate pricing. Mixing bulk and transactional mailings in one stream is bad for domain reputation. Unisender Go handles up to 1000 requests per second.

SendPulse — provides email, SMS, web push, Viber, and Telegram bots through a unified API. Convenient for projects requiring an omnichannel approach. Automation 360 is a visual chain builder; you can trigger automation via API events. The PHP SDK (sendpulse/rest-api-php-sdk) is maintained but updated irregularly – better to use Guzzle directly.

Mailchimp — a choice for international audiences and marketing teams accustomed to the Mailchimp ecosystem. Transactional email via Mandrill (a subsidiary service). Marketing API v3 for list, tag, and campaign management. Webhooks for opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces.

SMS. For Russia: SMSCenter, MTS Exolve, Devino Telecom, SMS Aero. Their APIs are similar: a send method with phone, message, sender parameters (sender name must be registered separately with the operator). One nuance: the sender name must be registered through the aggregator with a contract – otherwise SMS won’t be sent on MTS/MegaFon/Beeline networks.

How to Build an Integration That Doesn’t Lose Emails?

Separate Transactional and Marketing Streams

Transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets, delivery status) go through a dedicated sender domain or subdomain tx.example.com. Marketing campaigns go through mail.example.com or news.example.com. If a marketing campaign receives many spam complaints, it should not affect the reputation of the transactional stream. According to SendGrid documentation, transactional messages should be sent through a dedicated IP pool to prevent cross-contamination.

Queue and Retry

Any call to the email API goes through a queue (Laravel Queue, Bull, Celery). If Unisender returns a 503, the job retries after 5 minutes, then 15, then 60. After 5 failed attempts, it goes to a dead letter queue with an alert. The user already received their 200 OK and knows nothing about the issue. This approach reduces bounce rate on projects to 0.5%.

Example Laravel job:

public function handle(): void
{
    try {
        $response = Http::post(config('services.unisender.email_url'), $this->params);
        if ($response->failed()) {
            $this->release(300); // retry after 5 min
        }
    } catch (\Throwable $e) {
        $this->release(300);
    }
}

Templates

We store templates in code (Blade, Twig, React Email), not in the provider’s interface. Reasons: versioning via Git, browser preview without sending, testability. For complex templates with dynamic content — react-email with export to HTML via @react-email/render.

Validation and Consent

Before adding a contact to a list — double opt-in (confirmation email). Store the confirmation timestamp in your own database. Upon unsubscription — synchronously unsubscribe both at the provider and in your database. Ignoring webhook unsubscriptions is a direct path to account suspension at the provider. All processes comply with Федеральный закон № 152-ФЗ «О персональных данных».

Deliverability Monitoring and DKIM Setup

Connect provider webhooks for events: bounce (hard and soft), spam_complaint, unsubscribe. Hard bounce — immediately mark the email as invalid in your database, stop sending. Soft bounce 3 times in a row — same. Metrics: open rate, click rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate — review at least once a week. Our certified engineers configure alerts in Grafana/Prometheus.

DKIM configuration steps:

1. Generate a key pair (e.g., openssl genrsa -out private.key 2048).
2. Publish the public key in DNS as a TXT record for the selector (e.g., mail._domainkey.tx.example.com).
3. Provide the selector to the provider (SendGrid, Mailgun, Unisender).
4. Verify with dig TXT mail._domainkey.tx.example.com.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC must be configured separately for each stream. We use subdomains with different DNS records.

Why Is It Important to Separate Streams?

If you send a marketing campaign from the same domain as transactional emails and receive spam complaints, you risk getting the domain blocked — and users will stop receiving even order confirmations. SPF, DKIM, DMARC (Sender Policy Framework, DomainKeys Identified Mail, Domain‑based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) must be configured separately for each stream. In one project, a marketing blast with 12% spam complaints blocked the transactional domain for 48 hours — we had to re‑authenticate with Google and Yandex.

What Does the Integration Scope Include?

• Audit of current communication streams and domain reputation (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Provider and schema selection: transactional vs marketing traffic
• Configuration of SPF, DKIM, DMARC DNS records
• Development of email templates (HTML + dynamic content)
• Backend integration via queues and API
• Webhook setup for deliverability and complaints
• Operations documentation and team training
• Deliverability guarantee and post‑launch support

We deliver production‑ready documentation, access to monitoring dashboards, and a handover session with your engineers. Our certified engineers provide a 30‑day post‑launch health check guarantee.

Timelines and Cost

Cost is calculated individually after audit. We provide turnkey service: from analysis to production monitoring. Contact us for a free engineer consultation — we’ll evaluate your project and give accurate timelines. Over 7 years of experience in email service integration, 50+ projects implemented. Order a free audit of your current integration and receive a report with recommendations and estimated savings.