Adding a countdown timer to Brevo emails takes less than two minutes and can significantly boost click-through rates on time-sensitive campaigns. This guide shows you exactly how to embed a live countdown into Brevo campaigns and automations, plus how to avoid the caching quirk that breaks timers inside automated workflows.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) has grown into one of the most popular all-in-one marketing platforms, offering email, SMS, WhatsApp, and CRM in a single dashboard. With over 600,000 customers and one of the most generous free plans in the industry, it's a favourite among startups, SMBs, and growing ecommerce brands.
A free Tickvio account (no credit card required) and a Brevo account with access to the email editor. Both have free plans, making this one of the most budget-friendly urgency stacks available.
Log in to Tickvio and click Create Timer. Select the timer type for your campaign:
Fixed date — counts down to a specific deadline. Ideal for flash sales, seasonal promotions, and event registrations.
Evergreen — starts a personal countdown for each subscriber when they open the email. Perfect for welcome offers, trial expirations, and drip sequences.
Recurring — auto-resets on a schedule. Great for weekly deals or monthly promotions you run regularly.
Customise the design to match your brand — colours, fonts, size, background. Tickvio offers 28+ styles. Set up your expiry state so late openers see a relevant message instead of a frozen 00:00:00. Copy the HTML embed code from your timer dashboard.
In Brevo, go to Campaigns → Email and either create a new campaign or edit an existing one. Open the email in Brevo's drag-and-drop editor.
In the content panel, find the HTML block (sometimes labelled "Code" or "Custom HTML" depending on your Brevo editor version). Drag it into your email where you want the timer to appear — typically below the headline, above your main call-to-action.
Click the HTML block and paste the Tickvio embed code into the code editor. Click OK or Apply to save. You should see the timer preview render in your email layout.
This step is important and often missed. In Brevo, go to Campaigns → Settings → Default Settings. Confirm that the Hide Image URL option is set to No.
Why does this matter? Countdown timers rely on dynamic images that the email client re-fetches each time the email is opened. If "Hide Image URL" is enabled, Brevo proxies or strips image URLs in a way that can break the timer. Setting it to "No" ensures the timer always fetches the latest frame from Tickvio's CDN.
Use Brevo's preview feature to check the timer across desktop and mobile views. Send a test email to yourself to verify the countdown is accurate and the timer renders correctly in your inbox. Refer to our inbox support guide for compatibility details across Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, and more.
There's a known Brevo quirk with automations: emails sent through automated workflows can get cached on Brevo's servers, which means the countdown timer image gets frozen in time rather than updating with each open.
The fix: Use Tickvio's evergreen timer type for all Brevo automations. Evergreen timers use a unique URL per recipient (containing a hashed email identifier), which bypasses Brevo's cache entirely. Each recipient's timer starts fresh when they open, regardless of when the automation fired.
Fixed-date timers work reliably in Brevo campaigns (one-time sends) but can be cached in automations. If you need a shared deadline in an automation, use a dynamic timer with the campaign end date as a URL parameter — again, each URL is unique enough to avoid caching.
Welcome sequence: Evergreen timer in your welcome email with a first-purchase discount that expires 48 hours after signup. Each new subscriber gets their own personal deadline.
Abandoned cart (ecommerce): If you're using Brevo with Shopify or WooCommerce, add an evergreen timer to cart recovery emails. "Your items are reserved for the next 2 hours" with a ticking countdown outperforms a static "come back" message. See our cart abandonment timer guide.
Re-engagement: For dormant subscribers, use an evergreen timer with a limited-time "we miss you" offer to drive reactivation before you clean your list.
Anniversary / birthday: Brevo supports date-based triggers. Send a birthday email with an evergreen timer: "Your birthday gift expires in 7 days."
Pair with SMS reminders: Brevo supports SMS and WhatsApp alongside email. Send an SMS follow-up as your timer nears expiry: "Your 20% discount expires in 1 hour — don't miss it." This multi-channel urgency approach can dramatically lift conversions.
Use Brevo's CRM segmentation: Brevo includes a built-in CRM. Segment your timer campaigns by deal stage, engagement level, or purchase history to ensure urgency goes to the right audience. Sending countdown timers to highly engaged contacts yields the best results — see our deliverability guide for why segmentation matters.
Transactional emails: Brevo is popular for transactional email via its API. Consider adding countdown timers to transactional emails where urgency is genuine — shipping deadlines, payment due dates, or booking confirmations with check-in countdowns.
Language support: Brevo is a French-founded platform with strong European usage. Tickvio supports 40+ languages including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Polish — match the timer label language to your email language for a polished look.
GDPR-friendly: Tickvio timers load via standard HTTPS image requests with no cookies and no tracking pixels beyond view count. Safe for European subscribers under GDPR.
Use Brevo's click map: Brevo's reporting includes click maps showing where users click in your email. Check whether the timer itself is getting clicks — if your timer links to a landing page, it should be a top-3 clicked element.
Brevo's free plan allows 300 emails/day with unlimited contacts. Tickvio's free plan includes 20,000 views/month with all timer types and no branding. Together, this is one of the most cost-effective urgency setups available — professional countdown timers in a full marketing platform, both at zero cost to start.
One-time campaigns: Fixed-date timers work reliably.
Automation workflows: Evergreen or dynamic timers only — fixed-date timers can be cached by Brevo's servers.
Recurring promotions: Recurring timers. Auto-reset weekly, monthly, or on any custom schedule.
Does Brevo have a built-in countdown timer?
Brevo does not include a native countdown timer element. You need the HTML block to embed a third-party timer like Tickvio. This is actually an advantage — you get far more timer types and design options than most native timer tools offer.
Why doesn't my Brevo countdown timer update in automations?
Brevo's server can cache fixed-date timer images in automation emails, freezing the displayed time. Switch to Tickvio's evergreen timer type — it uses a unique URL per recipient, which bypasses the cache. This is the single most common Brevo + countdown timer mistake.
Should "Hide Image URL" be on or off?
Off (set to "No"). With it on, Brevo can proxy or strip image URLs in ways that break dynamic countdown timers. Keep it off for any campaign using a countdown timer.
Does Sendinblue still work — I have an old account?
Yes. Sendinblue rebranded to Brevo in 2023, but old accounts, API integrations, and documentation all still work. The editor interface is the same; only the name changed.
Can I send the timer via Brevo SMTP for transactional email?
Yes. Tickvio timers work in any HTML email regardless of how it's sent. Drop the embed code into your transactional template and the timer renders the same way. This is common for shipping deadline reminders and appointment confirmations.
Create your free Tickvio timer — 20,000 views/month, all timer types, 28+ styles, no branding, no credit card. Paste it into Brevo in under two minutes.
For the complete countdown timer playbook, see our complete guide to email countdown timers. For more ESP-specific walkthroughs, visit our Brevo integration page.
