Does Brevo allow cold emails to people who never signed up with you? The short answer is no. Brevo’s anti-spam policy prohibits lists that were scraped, bought or acquired from a third party, and it asks for active, explicit consent that you can prove for every contact. Breaking the rules can cost you the account.
At a glance:
- Brevo’s policy says every message must be legitimate and expected by its recipients.
- Cold emails with Brevo break its rules on bought and scraped lists and on consent.
- Cold outreach belongs in a mailbox of your own, and only the law of the recipient’s country can say whether you may send it.
Brevo’s policy page shows no date of its last update; the quotes are from the version read on 2 October 2026.
Does Brevo allow cold emails?
Brevo’s Acceptable Use Policy opens with an anti-spam section. Its first heading reads “Brevo has a Zero Tolerance Policy Towards Spam”, and it says Brevo believes “any email/SMS or other solicitation must be legitimate and expected by their recipients.”
Section B, “Bought & scraped lists”, answers the cold email question. Lists of contacts “scraped on the internet, acquired or purchased from a third-party” are, in its words, “strictly prohibited on our Software, whether You send transactional or marketing electronic communications”.
Section C, “Consent of the recipients”, sets the bar for every contact you do upload:
- consent must be active, meaning the contact ticks a box that is not pre-ticked,
- consent must be explicit, meaning the contact knows what kind of messages they will get and why,
- you must be able to provide a proof of opt-in for each contact at any time,
- every marketing or bulk email needs an easily available unsubscribe link.
Nobody on a cold list ticked a box, so the list fails the first three points before you send anything.
Contacts from LinkedIn need a check first
Section E lists industries and content that need a vetting process with Brevo’s support team before you start sending. One item on that list is “Communications to contacts acquired from social professional networks like LinkedIn, Viadeo”. A list built from LinkedIn profiles therefore goes past Brevo’s support team before it goes anywhere, and the consent rules in section C apply on top.
What happens if you do it anyway
The policy says that non-compliance “may result in the immediate suspension or restriction of your entire account or of certain Services from your account”. Newsletters and order emails sent through the same account are on the line as well.
Why Brevo draws the line here
Brevo gives the reason itself: parts of its service, such as the IP addresses and domains used for sending, are shared between many users, so it must make sure that nobody’s behaviour hurts the others. It adds that bought and scraped lists “are likely to damage the reputation of Brevo as well as your deliverability.”
On a shared IP, complaints about one sender’s cold list hit the address itself, and every customer sending from it gets worse delivery, your own newsletter included.
What Brevo is a good fit for
Brevo works well for people who chose to hear from you:
- newsletters to subscribers who signed up through a form with an unticked box,
- order, account and other transactional emails to your customers,
- follow-ups to people who registered for a webinar or a trial and agreed to updates.
For each of them you can show when and how the person opted in, and that is the proof section C asks for.
Reaching companies from your own domain
Brevo’s rules are built around a shared IP and a list of people who opted in. Cold outreach, where it is allowed, has neither, so you have to look after its reputation and its volume yourself. Your own mailbox provider has anti-spam terms of its own, and the consent rules of the recipient’s country apply there just as they do here. Cold outreach works best when it reads like one person writing to one company for a real reason:
- Sending from your own domain and mailbox, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC in place, means the reputation you earn is yours alone.
- Narrow the list to companies your offer is relevant for. A clear ideal client profile lowers complaints more than any trick.
- In the first lines, say who you are, why you are writing and where you found the contact.
- Give every message an easy opt-out and act on it straight away. Keep a list of everyone who said no and check it before each send, so they never hear from you again.
- Write few messages and make each one personal.
- Read every reply yourself before you answer.
Scraped contacts and the law
The ban on scraped lists quoted above applies inside Brevo. Outside it, the recipient’s country decides whether you may send at all, and the rules differ a lot. Czechia is at the strict end: its data protection authority (ÚOOÚ) was asked whether contact details freely available online may be used for a promotional email, and its answer is “Nelze”, which means “You can’t”. A commercial message may go only to people who gave consent in advance, or to an existing customer you write to about your own similar products or services, and the law treats a company address the same as a personal one. An email asking for consent is not allowed either, because the authority counts that request as a commercial message. A reply to a specific inquiry someone sent you falls outside the rule, provided you can prove that context. The authority holds the sender and the business the message promotes responsible together, so the obligation follows you to whatever tool you use.
In the United States, the FTC’s guide to the CAN-SPAM Act says the law “makes no exception for business-to-business email”. Every commercial message must explain clearly how to opt out, and an opt-out request must be honoured within 10 business days. Our article on cold email law in B2B compares the rules country by country.
Where HypeLead comes in
With HypeLead, mail leaves from your own mailbox and messages go from your own LinkedIn, so the sender reputation is yours to manage. The app warms the mailbox up and, before sending, checks SPF, DKIM and DMARC and runs a spam-score check. A one-click unsubscribe sits in every email, and the people you contact get a page that explains how their data is handled. When a campaign targets a country where business email needs prior consent, you see a warning and answer the question once for that campaign. AI drafts the replies, and by default each one is sent on your click. The law of each country still applies to you, since you stay the sender and stay responsible for who you write to. More on how the product works and how B2B service firms use it.
Mailchimp and HubSpot take a similar line: see what Mailchimp’s policy says and HubSpot’s anti-spam rules.
Want to write to companies from your own domain, with the sending checks handled by the app? Your next step is at the end of this page.
