When I was seeking a reliable email marketing service for my digital marketing agency, Mailchimp seemed like the best option.

It had a stellar reputation and most marketers I knew were using it at the time for their email marketing needs.

Furthermore, Mailchimp was one of the few email marketing services that offered a forever free plan, wherein you were allowed to send 12,000 emails per month.

At the time, my agency blog had less than 500 followers, so it was an easy decision to make. I created my free account with Mailchimp and kickstarted my email marketing journey.

A few months later, I started 99signals as a side project to document all the strategies and tactics I was using to grow my agency business. A few posts started performing well in search results and with the help of an in-depth guide on link building, my email list grew from a mere hundred to over 2,000 subscribers. My email list …