# How to Vibe Code Your Own Brevo (and Stop Paying for It)

> Email & SMS Marketing, CRM & Automation Platform

- Site: https://brevo.com
- Category: Marketing & CRM SaaS
- Platforms: Web app
- Verdict: **Serious undertaking** (45/100 vibecodeable)
- Estimated effort: 4-6 weeks of dedicated coding and queue debugging

## Verdict

Build a scaled-down single-tenant marketing automation and CRM dashboard for personal use, but keep paying for Brevo if you need actual enterprise email deliverability.

Replicating Brevo as a personal tool is an ambitious multi-system engineering challenge. While building a CRUD CRM and a basic visual workflow builder with Next.js is straightforward with AI tools, managing reliable transactional email infrastructure, handling bounce/complaint webhooks, and coordinating asynchronous background queues without losing execution states will consume weeks of frustrating debugging.

### What you can't replicate

- Built-in enterprise sender reputation and warmed-up dedicated IP pools
- Global carrier relationships for instant SMS and WhatsApp routing
- Ecosystem of 150+ native pre-built third-party integrations

## What it does

All-in-one customer relationship management and digital marketing platform providing multi-channel campaign management and automation across email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

### Core features

- Contact management and segmentation database
- Drag-and-drop or visual workflow automation builder
- Transactional email and SMS API relay
- Sales CRM with custom Kanban pipeline views
- Campaign analytics and tracking event ingestion
- Aura AI copy generation and subject line optimizer

## The business

### Pricing

- Free: $0/mo
- Starter: From $9/mo
- Standard: From $18/mo
- Professional: From $499/mo

### Funding

$780M raised.
- Seed (December 2013): $1.37M
- Series A (September 2017): $36M
- Series B (September 2020): $160M
- Series C (December 2025): $583M (€500M)
Investors: General Atlantic, Oakley Capital, BlackRock, Bpifrance, Bridgepoint Group, Partech

Founded 2012.
Team size: 900-1,000.

## The hard parts

- Deliverability reputation management, SPF/DKIM/DMARC handling, and ISP feedback loops to avoid blacklisting
- Distributed event-driven queue orchestration for real-time multi-channel customer journeys
- High-throughput event tracking infrastructure for clickstream and user behaviors
- Complex relational schema constraints across contacts, lists, deals, and automation triggers

## How to vibe code Brevo

### Prerequisites

- Node.js (free): Runtime environment for Next.js and backend execution.
- GitHub (free): Repository hosting and deployment pipeline integration.
- Resend Account (free tier): Provides programmatic transactional email delivery for the clone.

### Recommended AI tools

- Claude Code: Best-in-class multi-file agentic coding tool for scaffolding full-stack features, background queues, and database schemas directly from the terminal.
- Cursor: Ideal for iterative UI work, component styling, and visual debugging of Kanban boards and workflow builders.

### Stack

- Frontend: Next.js with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui components
- Backend: Next.js App Router API Routes with Inngest for durable workflows
- Database: Neon (Serverless Postgres)
- Auth: better-auth
- Payments: none
- Other: Resend API for email delivery, Twilio for SMS simulation, Anthropic API for AI copy generation

### Hosting

- Vercel (Hosting the Next.js frontend and serverless API endpoints): $0/mo (Hobby Tier)
- Neon (Serverless Postgres database storing contacts, campaigns, deals, and automation trees): $0/mo (Free Tier)

### Build guide

1. **Project Scaffolding and Database Schema** — Initialize the Next.js 16 project with Tailwind CSS 4, shadcn/ui, better-auth, and Prisma or Drizzle connected to Neon Postgres.

```
Scrape together a new Next.js project configured with TypeScript, Tailwind CSS 4, and App Router. Set up better-auth for secure single-user email/password login. Configure Drizzle ORM connected to a Neon PostgreSQL database. Define database schemas for tables: Users, Contacts (id, email, attributes JSON, unsubscribed boolean), Lists, ListContacts, Campaigns (id, subject, content, status, type), Deals (id, title, value, stage, contactId), and Automations (id, triggerType, actionsJSON, active boolean). Generate and run initial database migrations, and construct a clean dashboard shell layout using shadcn/ui primitives.
```

2. **Contact Management & Segment Filters** — Build contact list management, custom attributes storage, CSV import, and dynamic segmentation filtering.

```
Build a robust Contact Management module in the Next.js app. Create a data table page supporting server-side pagination, search, and tag/list filtering. Implement a CSV import parser utility using PapaParse that maps uploaded headers to contact attributes stored as a JSON column in Postgres. Build segment filtering rules (e.g., filter contacts where attribute X equals Y or who belong to specific lists) and display matching counts instantly on the UI.
```

3. **Email Campaign & Transactional API Engine** — Implement campaign composition and integrate the Resend API for sending bulk and transactional messages.

```
Build an Email Campaign creation studio with a rich text/HTML editor preview. Integrate the Resend API SDK into a backend service route to execute campaign broadcasts and transactional email requests. Implement tracking mechanics by embedding unique pixel URLs and click redirect tracking routes to record open and click interaction events in an EventLog database table. Add robust error handling for API rate limits and failed deliveries.
```

4. **Sales CRM Kanban Pipeline** — Create a sales pipeline manager featuring custom deal stages, Kanban board views, and contact association.

```
Develop a Sales CRM module featuring a multi-column Kanban board for deals (stages: Lead, Contacted, Proposal, Won, Lost). Use @dnd-kit or native drag-and-drop handlers to allow users to move deal cards between columns, instantly updating stage states via server actions. Allow users to create new deals, link them to existing contacts, assign expected monetary values, and view aggregate pipeline metrics at the top of the dashboard.
```

5. **Visual Marketing Automation Workflow Engine** — Build a visual workflow node editor and integrate Inngest for executing multi-step automated customer journeys.

```
Build a visual marketing automation builder using React Flow. Allow users to link trigger nodes (e.g., 'Contact Added to List') to action nodes (e.g., 'Wait 2 Days', 'Send Email', 'Update Deal Stage'). Serialize the workflow graph into JSON and store it in the database. Integrate Inngest to parse and execute these workflow graphs durably when events fire, managing step delays and asynchronous conditional branching without timing out serverless execution bounds.
```

6. **Aura AI Assistant Integration** — Implement AI-driven email copy generation, subject line optimization, and data summaries using the Anthropic API.

```
Integrate the Anthropic SDK to build an 'Aura AI' assistant panel within the campaign editor and CRM dashboard. Implement backend server endpoints that accept prompts or campaign goals and return AI-generated email copy variations, optimized subject lines, and plain-language analytics summaries of campaign performance metrics. Render these insights smoothly inside shadcn/ui dialogs and card components.
```

### Cost vs paying

**Starting costs (one-time):**

- Custom Domain: $12/yr
- AI Coding Assistant Subscriptions: $20 one-time
- Total: ~$32 one-time

**Ongoing costs (monthly):**

- Resend Email API: $0 (Free tier 3k/mo)
- Vercel & Neon Hosting: $0/mo
- Total: $0/mo

- Paying for the SaaS instead: $49/mo (Standard Tier)
- Build time: 40-60 hours
- AI tool credits: $20 (Claude Pro / Cursor)
- Break-even: Free forever (self-hosted)

## Sources

- [Brevo Pricing Plans Overview](https://www.brevo.com/pricing/)
- [Wikipedia: Brevo Company Profile & History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevo_(software))
- [Tracxn: Brevo Funding Rounds and Investor Details](https://tracxn.com/d/company/brevo)
- [Brevo Engineering Blog: Design System Indigo & API Architectures](https://www.brevo.com/engineering/)