Brevo, Mailjet, Aruba: 2026 Comparison of Italian Email Providers
Brevo (ex-Sendinblue), Mailjet and Aruba are the three providers most familiar to Italian businesses. Their strengths and weaknesses are very different. Here is the 2026 breakdown.
For businesses in Italy, three email providers come up almost reflexively: Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), Mailjet, and Aruba. Each has been the obvious default for a different reason — Brevo for marketing automation, Mailjet for transactional, Aruba for "we already use them for everything else". In 2026, all three have evolved enough that the old defaults deserve a fresh look.
This article compares the three on the dimensions Italian businesses care about: PEC integration, SdI invoicing, Italian-language support, deliverability for @libero.it and @tim.it, GDPR posture and pricing.
The Three at a Glance
| Brevo | Mailjet | Aruba | |
|---|---|---|---|
| HQ | Paris (FR) | Paris (FR) | Italy |
| Focus | Marketing + transactional | Transactional + marketing | Hosting + email (legacy) |
| EU residency | Yes | Yes | Yes (IT) |
| Italian support | Yes | Limited | Native |
| PEC offering | No | No | Yes |
| SdI invoice | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Brevo (ex-Sendinblue)
The most marketing-oriented of the three. Built-in audience segmentation, drag-drop campaign editor, CRM, workflow automation, SMS, WhatsApp integrations. Transactional is a secondary product (Brevo Transactional, formerly Sendinblue Transactional API).
Strengths
- Best-in-class marketing automation in the comparison.
- Italian UI fully localised.
- Native CRM and lead-management.
- Generous free tier (300 emails/day).
Weaknesses
- Transactional deliverability is decent but not best-in-class.
- API less developer-friendly than dedicated transactional providers.
- No PEC.
Best fit
Italian SME that needs marketing + transactional in one tool and is non-developer led.
Mailjet
Owned by Sinch, more developer-oriented than Brevo, strong transactional. Marketing features exist but are not the focus.
Strengths
- Strong API, mature SDKs.
- EU data residency.
- Reliable transactional deliverability.
- Decent free tier.
Weaknesses
- Italian-language support is limited (English/French preferred).
- UI feels dated compared to Brevo and modern competitors.
- No PEC.
- Italian-specific compliance features absent.
Best fit
Italian developer team that wants an EU provider and is comfortable with English-language docs.
Aruba
Italian institution. Email service alongside hosting, PEC, certificates, domain registration. Most Italian businesses already have an Aruba relationship.
Strengths
- PEC (legally valid certified email) integrated.
- SdI invoicing native.
- Italian support, Italian helpdesk hours.
- Familiar to accounting/CFO teams.
- EU/Italy data residency.
Weaknesses
- SMTP service is "good enough" but lacks modern features (no idempotency keys, no webhook reliability guarantees, limited observability).
- API older-style (SOAP/legacy REST mix).
- No send-time policy enforcement.
- No native marketing automation.
- Per-user-mailbox pricing rather than per-message.
Best fit
Italian business already on Aruba's hosting stack, sending low-medium volume, where the convenience of one supplier outweighs missing features.
The PEC Question
PEC (Posta Elettronica Certificata) is the Italian certified email standard with legal evidentiary value. Aruba is the only provider in this comparison that offers PEC. Brevo and Mailjet do not.
If you need to send PEC, Aruba (or one of the other PEC providers — Legalmail, Namirial, Poste Italiane) is required. Transactional SMTP and PEC are different products with different protocols and different legal weight. See our separate article on PEC vs signed email for the full picture.
The SdI Question
All three providers issue Italian electronic invoices via SdI (Sistema di Interscambio). For B2B Italian customers, this is essential — without it you cannot process the supplier invoice in your accounting system.
Some non-Italian providers (e.g. SendGrid, Mailgun) cannot issue SdI-compliant invoices. They issue PDF invoices with VAT, but the SdI XML is missing. Italian companies often need to manually re-enter these supplier invoices, which accounting teams hate.
Deliverability to Italian Receivers
For @libero.it, @tim.it, @virgilio.it, @alice.it, deliverability is mostly a function of authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and IP reputation. All three providers do fine, though Italian incumbents have historically been quicker to throttle bulk senders. Mailjet's EU pool seems slightly more permissive; Brevo and Aruba are comparable.
For @pec.it addresses: PEC and standard SMTP are different worlds. A standard SMTP message to a PEC address may be delivered (depending on the PEC provider's gateway policy) but will not have PEC evidentiary value.
Pricing at Common Tiers
| Monthly volume | Brevo | Mailjet | Aruba |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50,000 | €19 (Starter) | €15 | ~€10 (Smart Start) |
| 200,000 | €59 (Business) | €30 | ~€40 (Smart Business) |
| 500,000 | €99 (Business) | €90 | ~€80 (custom) |
Prices vary frequently; verify on each provider's site.
The 2026 Reality
Brevo has invested heavily in marketing automation and now competes with HubSpot/ActiveCampaign in that space. Mailjet has slowed innovation since the Sinch acquisition. Aruba remains stable, conservative, and very Italian.
Two trends matter: stricter DMARC enforcement from Gmail/Yahoo (effective Feb 2024) made authentication-light providers look weaker. EU AI Act and DSA touched marketing automation transparency requirements; Brevo has documented compliance, Mailjet partially, Aruba implicitly.
Where Target SMTP Fits
Target SMTP positions in the gap that none of the three fully fills: Italian-native support like Aruba, transactional reliability like Mailjet, modern developer experience like Brevo, and unique policy-as-code (Send-Time Firewall) that none of the three offers. EU data residency by default, Italian SdI invoicing, Italian-language docs and support.
If you need PEC, Target does not replace your PEC provider — PEC and transactional SMTP are different products. If you need marketing automation, Brevo is the more complete tool. For everything else in modern transactional email Italian businesses send, Target is closer to what 2026 needs than the 2010-era choices.
The Decision Tree
- Do you need PEC? → Aruba or a dedicated PEC provider.
- Do you need full marketing automation? → Brevo.
- Are you a developer team shipping transactional? → Mailjet or Target.
- Do you need Italian support, EU residency and modern features? → Target.
- Are you already deep in Aruba hosting? → Aruba, with the caveats above.
Closing
The three "old defaults" still have their place. Brevo is the right marketing tool. Aruba is the right convenience tool for Aruba-native shops. Mailjet is fine for EU transactional. None of them implement send-time policies, idempotency keys or modern observability the way developer-oriented providers do. Target SMTP fills that specific gap for Italian businesses. The Send-Time Firewall is the feature that catches misconfigured sends before they leave — something Italian companies have asked for years and that none of the three legacy providers offer.