The password reset that never arrived is a deliverability problem, not a bug.
A customer taps forgot password at ten at night. Nothing comes. She tries twice more, gives up, and rings your office in the morning, by which time three reset mails are sitting in her promotions tab.
Brevo is one of the services we use so that does not happen. It sends the mail, tells you whether it was delivered or bounced, and keeps the record when somebody asks what was sent to whom.
Brevo is a service that sends email and SMS on behalf of your software, and reports back on what happened to each one. Your application hands it the message and the address. It handles the sending, the retries and the record of whether it was delivered, opened or rejected.
Where it earns its place.
What we send through it
The messages a person is waiting for, not the ones you would like them to read.
- One-time passwords and login verification
- Password resets and account invitations
- Order confirmations, invoices and receipts
- Appointment and payment reminders
- Enquiry alerts to your own sales team
- Monthly statements as an attachment
Why mail arrives, or does not
This is the part that gets skipped and then blamed on the software. Sending from Gmail through your application is the commonest cause of mail that vanishes.
- Sender domain
- SPF and DKIM
- Warm-up
- Monitor bounces
- Sending from your own domain rather than a free mailbox
- SPF and DKIM records added to your DNS so the mail is verified
- Transactional mail kept apart from marketing sends
- Bounces and complaints watched rather than ignored
- A reply-to address that reaches a person
If your DNS is with a domain reseller nobody has the login for, that is the first problem to solve. It usually takes longer than the integration itself.
How it goes into your application
The sending is the small part. What matters is what happens when it fails.
- Messages queued in a background job, so a slow send never holds a screen
- Templates edited by your team without a developer
- A retry for a temporary failure, and a stop for a permanent one
- Delivery status stored against the order or the customer
- A test account, so staff training does not mail real customers
SMS in India, honestly
Brevo can send SMS, and in India that channel has rules of its own that no integration removes.
- DLT registration of your sender and every template, done by you
- Template wording approved in advance and not editable at send time
- Promotional messages blocked by customer preference
- Cost per message that makes long alerts a poor habit
Where the message is a conversation rather than a code, WhatsApp is usually the better channel for an Indian customer, and we will say so.
When this is the right choice.
- Your application must send a code somebody is waiting for
- Receipts and statements have to go out reliably and be traceable
- You want transactional mail and marketing lists in one account
- Mail sent from your application is landing in spam today
- Somebody in the office needs to edit the wording without a developer
When it is not.
- A contact form that mails one address a few times a week, where your own mailbox is enough
- Customers who only answer WhatsApp, where email is a record rather than a message
- An existing SendGrid, Amazon SES or Zoho setup that works, since switching buys nothing on its own
- Bulk marketing to a list you bought, which damages the domain your invoices are sent from
- Indian SMS before DLT registration, which no integration can work around
Questions we are asked about it.
Why do our emails go to spam?
Usually because the sending domain has not been verified. Without SPF and DKIM records, a receiving mail server has no way to tell your invoice from a forgery, so it treats it accordingly. Fixing the DNS records solves most of these cases.
Can we use Brevo for OTP messages?
Yes, by email straight away, and by SMS once DLT registration is done. For an OTP we queue the send, retry once on a temporary failure, and show the customer a resend option rather than leaving them looking at a blank screen.
Do we need Brevo if we already have Google Workspace?
For application mail, yes. Workspace is built for people writing to people and has daily limits that a system sending statements will hit. Keeping your staff mail and your application mail apart also protects one when the other has a bad day.
Can our marketing team use the same account?
Yes, and that is one of its attractions. We would still keep the transactional sending on a separate subdomain, so a campaign with a heavy unsubscribe rate does not affect whether your invoices arrive.
What happens if Brevo is down?
Queued messages wait and are retried rather than lost, which is the main reason we queue them. For codes that people are waiting on, a second provider can be configured as a fallback, though that is worth the complexity only when a delay costs you something real.
Can you move us from another provider?
Yes. The sending code is usually a small change. The work is in the DNS records, moving the templates, and watching delivery for a while afterwards to confirm nothing is quietly bouncing.
Services that use it.
What it sits with.
Not sure Brevo is the right choice?
Tell us what the software has to do and who opens it. If something else fits better, we will say so, and say why.
- No obligation
- We reply the same working day
- Your details stay private