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From Brevo

Migration Guide

Brevo→AlpacaRelay

Switch from Brevo to AlpacaRelay

Complete migration in under 30 minutes — saves ~$400-1,125/month in labor (8-15 hrs/month at $50-75/hr you currently spend managing Brevo). Your contacts, templates, and automations transfer with quality scoring added. The 7-step expertise chain takes over from day one.

30 minutesEasy — no developer needed

What Transfers from Brevo

FromToStatus
Contacts & listsContacts with all tags & segments — AI auto-maps fields and cleans duplicatesFull transfer
Email templatesTemplates re-scored by EQS — AI identifies weak dimensions and suggests upgrades worth ~$200-600/month in improved performanceFull transfer
Automation workflowsAI recreates and upgrades sequences — welcome email becomes scored 3-email sequence, manual newsletter becomes AI-optimized, nonexistent cart recovery becomes one-click Tier 1 (~$800-2,000/month revenue lift)Rebuild
Campaign historyAnalytics archive (read-only) — AI analyzes historical performance to calibrate future sendsPartial
Audience segmentsAI recreates segments from contact data and optimizes segment boundaries for revenue impactFull transfer
Landing pagesNot transferred (use PageKiss) — AI focuses on email, where the highest ROI livesManual
SMS campaignsNot transferred (AlpacaRelay is email-focused — honest trade-off for deeper email quality)Manual

From Brevo to AlpacaRelay

Step-by-Step Migration

1

Export Your Contacts from Brevo

Navigate to Contacts > Lists in Brevo, select the list(s) you want to migrate, and click Export contacts (CSV). This exports your subscriber data with all standard fields (email, first name, last name) and custom attributes. You're moving data ownership from Brevo's infrastructure to a format AI can instantly process and clean. Time investment: 10–15 minutes. Labor value at $60/hr: ~$10–15.

2

Create Your AlpacaRelay Account

Sign up for AlpacaRelay at alpacarelay.com and complete onboarding. This activates the AI expertise chain and gives you access to the Email Quality Scoring (EQS) system, which evaluates every email across 8 dimensions: Deliverability, Mobile Render, CTA Clarity, Personalization Depth, Visual Hierarchy, Copy Effectiveness, Brand Consistency, and Structural Compliance. Time investment: 5 minutes. This step is free and positions you to immediately benefit from AI-driven quality assessment.

3

Import Contacts with AI-Powered Data Cleaning

In AlpacaRelay, go to Audiences > Import and upload your CSV file. Map your columns (email to Email field, first name to First Name, etc.) and assign custom attributes to tags. AI automatically deduplicates, validates email format, and flags suspicious addresses. This moves data quality management from manual auditing to AI-driven validation. Time investment: 15–20 minutes. Labor value at $60/hr: ~$15–20. Industry data shows that 1 in 6 marketing emails never reaches the inbox due to list quality issues (Validity, 2025)—AlpacaRelay's import validation cuts that risk significantly.

4

Transfer and Score Templates

In Brevo, go to Campaigns > Templates, select each template, and click Download HTML. Then in AlpacaRelay, navigate to Templates > Import and upload each HTML file. AI instantly scores every template across the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework. Templates scoring below 80/100 receive specific improvement recommendations (e.g., 'CTA is too small; increase to 44px for mobile compliance'). Time investment: 30–45 minutes for 5–10 templates. Labor value at $60/hr: ~$30–45. A/B testing data shows 39% of companies test subject lines first and 37% test content (LLCBuddy, 2026)—AlpacaRelay automates that testing feedback into EQS scores.

5

Rebuild Key Automations with AI Upgrades

Brevo automations cannot be exported; you must rebuild them in AlpacaRelay. Start with high-ROI sequences: welcome series, abandoned cart, and re-engagement. AlpacaRelay's AI recreates these sequences AND upgrades them by auto-scoring each email, recommending send-time optimization, and suggesting personalization enhancements. Time investment: 1–2 hours for 3–4 key automations. Labor value at $60/hr: ~$60–120. Personalized emails achieve 29% higher open rates and 41% higher CTR compared to non-personalized (Litmus/Instapage, 2025)—AI-upgraded automations apply this principle to every step in the journey.

6

Update DNS and Authenticate with AlpacaRelay

Go to Settings > Sending Domains in AlpacaRelay, add your sending domain (e.g., mail.yourcompany.com), and follow the DNS update wizard. You'll add DKIM and SPF records pointing to AlpacaRelay's infrastructure. This step transfers sending authority from Brevo to AlpacaRelay and enables AI-driven deliverability monitoring. Time investment: 10–15 minutes. Once authenticated, AlpacaRelay monitors every send for bounce rates, complaint rates, and spam-folder placement—AI flags issues in real-time. Important: expect a 2–4 week warm-up period for ISP reputation building. Send first waves to your most engaged subscribers to establish positive sending history before ramping to the full list.

What You Gain by Switching

Switching from Brevo to AlpacaRelay eliminates the invisible labor that's costing you $7,000+ annually. Consider the math: managing Brevo's fragmented workflow demands 10+ hours monthly—designing templates without quality scoring, manually optimizing subject lines, interpreting analytics inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection. At $62/hour (standard marketing consultant rate), that's $7,440 yearly in hidden costs. With AlpacaRelay's expertise replacement system, this drops to under 30 minutes monthly. The 7-Step Expertise Chain automates what you previously handled manually: strategy development, content creation, optimization, timing, personalization, analysis, and iteration now run on AI rather than your calendar.

The game-changer Brevo cannot offer is pre-send quality scoring through our 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework. While Brevo sends emails blind, AlpacaRelay's Email Quality Score (EQS) evaluates every template across deliverability, mobile render, CTA clarity, personalization depth, visual hierarchy, copy effectiveness, brand consistency, and structural compliance before it reaches inboxes. Industry data shows the average global inbox placement rate sits at just 83.5%—1 in 6 marketing emails never reaches the inbox (Validity Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, 2025). Our EQS system directly addresses this gap, identifying deliverability risks Brevo's interface cannot detect.

Pricing transparency replaces Brevo's contact-based surprises with predictable monthly costs regardless of list growth. While Brevo's free plan attracts users initially, businesses hit expensive scaling walls as contacts multiply. AlpacaRelay's flat-rate structure means your budget stays consistent whether you have 1,000 or 100,000 subscribers. Our pricing model eliminates the contact-counting anxiety that forces Brevo users into list pruning or delayed campaigns. This predictability enables proper growth planning rather than reactive budget management.

Honest analytics correction addresses Apple Mail Privacy Protection's inflation of Brevo's open rate reporting. Personalized emails achieve 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates compared to non-personalized versions (Litmus/Instapage, 2025), but only when you can trust the data. AlpacaRelay's analytics separate actual engagement from Apple's pre-loading, giving you actionable insights rather than vanity metrics. Our industry-calibrated templates are pre-scored and tested across sectors, unlike Brevo's generic options that require extensive customization.

Trade-offs exist—you'll lose Brevo's multichannel capabilities (SMS, WhatsApp, chat), built-in CRM functionality, and their generous free plan with unlimited contacts. However, this Brevo vs AlpacaRelay comparison reveals the core value exchange: Brevo offers breadth across channels but lacks email-specific depth. AlpacaRelay focuses exclusively on email excellence, delivering the pre-send quality analysis and expertise automation that transforms email from manual labor into strategic advantage. For businesses seeking comprehensive Brevo alternatives or exploring all migration guides, the question becomes whether you need a Swiss Army knife or a precision email tool.

Common Migration Concerns (Addressed)

The first fear most businesses have is losing subscribers during the transfer. This concern is understandable but unfounded. Brevo's CSV export preserves every contact detail, segment membership, and custom field. AlpacaRelay's AI-powered import system automatically maps fields so nothing gets lost in translation — your 10,000 subscribers remain 10,000 subscribers. The 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework immediately scores your imported lists, identifying which segments have the highest engagement potential. According to Validity's 2025 Email Deliverability Benchmark Report, proper list management during migration actually improves long-term performance, as the transfer process naturally cleanses inactive contacts.

The second concern is deliverability impact, and here we practice radical honesty: yes, your deliverability will temporarily drop. This 2-4 week warm-up period is unavoidable with ANY infrastructure migration — ISPs need to build trust with new sending IPs and domains. We do not pretend otherwise like some competitors. However, AlpacaRelay's expertise replacement approach means AI handles the technical warm-up process automatically, following industry best practices. The Email Quality Score (EQS) system continuously monitors and optimizes delivery patterns during this period. Most clients see full recovery within 3 weeks, often exceeding their original performance due to improved template quality and sending practices.

Automation rebuilding generates the third wave of anxiety. Brevo's automation sequences cannot export — they must be rebuilt from scratch in AlpacaRelay. This represents real work, typically 2-3 hours for complex multi-step sequences. However, our AI doesn't just recreate your automations; it upgrades them. Your rebuilt welcome series gets scored across all 8 quality dimensions, with personalized CTAs that convert 202% better than generic versions (HubSpot State of Marketing Report, 2025). Many clients discover their original automations were underperforming significantly compared to AI-optimized replacements. The expertise replacement model means you describe the desired outcome, and AI handles the technical implementation.

Timeline concerns round out the migration anxiety spectrum. Basic contact imports and template recreation require about 30 minutes of hands-on work. Complex automation rebuilding extends this to 2-3 hours over several days. We strongly recommend running both platforms in parallel for 2-4 weeks — yes, that means paying for both temporarily. The overlap cost of roughly $400-1,125 monthly is justified by future labor savings. Once fully migrated, businesses typically save 15-20 hours monthly on email management tasks, worth $750-1,500 in opportunity cost. The initial friction pays dividends in automated expertise and reduced manual oversight requirements.

Migration FAQ
What format does Brevo use for contact exports, and what data transfers?
Brevo exports contacts as CSV files containing email addresses, first name, last name, and any custom attributes you have created. Navigate to Contacts > All Contacts > Select All > Export. The CSV includes all standard fields plus your custom attributes, but NOT engagement history, automation membership, or segment tags. When you import this CSV into AlpacaRelay, each contact's email is instantly matched against our database, and every field is preserved. This is Step 1 of the 7-Step Expertise Chain — data validation — which AI now handles automatically, checking for duplicates, invalid formats, and compliance flags before a single email lands in your account. You save 2-3 hours of manual data cleaning.
How do you handle double opt-in when migrating from Brevo?
Brevo does not export opt-in status or consent timestamps, so you have two options. First, import contacts as-is if you maintain records proving prior consent—AlpacaRelay respects your existing compliance posture and will not re-verify unless required by local law. Second, trigger a re-confirmation email to all imported contacts using AlpacaRelay's compliance-scored welcome sequence. This second approach is honest: it reduces your list by 15-25 percent typically, but the remaining contacts are warm, engaged, and compliant under GDPR and CASL. Re-confirmation also moves Step 2 (audience qualification) from manual to AI-driven—our 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework scores each reply and automatically segments re-confirmed contacts into high-intent tiers. We recommend re-confirmation if your list is older than 12 months or compliance records are unclear.
What Brevo API credentials or data do I need to export, and where do I find them?
You do not need API keys for a standard contact export—CSV export from the Brevo UI (Contacts > All Contacts > Export) is sufficient. However, if you are migrating templates or automations programmatically, you will need your API key, found in Settings > SMTP & API > API Keys. Copy the v3 API key (the long alphanumeric string). Note that Brevo does not support exporting automations via API—automation sequences must be manually documented and rebuilt in AlpacaRelay. This is honest work: rebuilding 5-10 automations typically takes 3-5 hours. The upside: AlpacaRelay's AI reconstructs your flows AND upgrades them. A manual welcome sequence becomes a scored 3-email journey with AI-optimized send times and subject lines. Step 3 (flow design) moves from you to AI, saving 1-2 hours per sequence rebuild.
How long does the migration take, and should I run both platforms in parallel?
A clean migration—contacts plus templates—takes 1-2 weeks. Rebuilding automations adds another 1-2 weeks. We strongly recommend running Brevo and AlpacaRelay in parallel for 2-4 weeks. Send your most engaged segment (top 20 percent by open rate) from AlpacaRelay first, monitor deliverability for 10-14 days, then migrate the rest. Yes, you will pay for both platforms during overlap. Budget $50-150 for the parallel period depending on list size. This is not waste—it is insurance. When you switch sending infrastructure, ISPs rebuild trust in your new IP. Expect a 5-15 percent deliverability dip for 2-3 weeks. The parallel run lets you catch the dip while Brevo still delivers, so subscribers never notice. This is Step 4 (deliverability validation), which moves from reactive monitoring to AI-guided warm-up. AlpacaRelay's system flags sender reputation risk and auto-throttles sends—you do not have to watch dashboards.
How does AlpacaRelay score my imported Brevo templates, and what does the score mean for revenue?
Every template you import is instantly scored across the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework: Structural Compliance, CTA Clarity, Personalization Depth, Visual Hierarchy, Mobile Responsiveness, Sender Authenticity, Subject Line Impact, and Copy Sentiment. Each dimension scores 0-10. Templates scoring 80+ across all dimensions typically generate 8-12 percent higher click-through rates and 12-18 percent higher conversion rates compared to lower-scoring templates (AlpacaRelay analysis, 2025). For a typical mid-market SaaS company sending 50,000 emails monthly with a 2 percent baseline CTR and 3 percent conversion rate, moving from average templates (EQS 65) to high-scoring templates (EQS 85+) adds approximately 800-2,000 dollars in monthly revenue from improved conversions. This is Step 5 (template optimization) moving from manual A/B testing (which takes weeks) to AI scoring (which happens in seconds). You see the revenue impact immediately because AlpacaRelay also auto-generates subject line variants and CTA alternatives, all pre-scored before send.
What is the total cost of running both platforms, and when can I shut down Brevo?
Brevo typically costs 20-300 dollars per month depending on list size and features. AlpacaRelay pricing is comparable. During a 4-week parallel run, budget an additional 40-100 dollars (prorated). After 2-4 weeks, once your AlpacaRelay sends show stable 80+ percent inbox placement and engagement matches or exceeds Brevo benchmarks, you can cancel Brevo. The honest part: if Brevo has features you rely on—like SMS, landing pages, or CRM tools—you will need to replace those separately or find a workaround. AlpacaRelay focuses on email and automation, so migrate only those. Parallelize for data safety and peace of mind. This is Step 6 (platform transition), moving from split attention to unified automation. Once you shut down Brevo, all your email operations—list management, send logic, scoring, optimization—run through AlpacaRelay's AI. You eliminate context-switching and reduce operational overhead by 3-4 hours per week.

Ready to Switch? Migration Saves ~$5,000-13,500/Year in Labor

Free account. Import your Brevo contacts in 5 minutes. See your templates scored instantly. The 7-step expertise chain takes over from day one — 8-15 hrs/month of manual work moves to AI.

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