Hey everyone, I've been lurking for a bit and finally made an account because this pricing change really threw me. I'm currently trialing a few email marketing tools for our small team, and CleverReach was on my list because their old "Forever Free" tier was so generous for starting out.
I got their email about the new model and... wow. Moving to strictly contact-based pricing feels like a massive jump. We have a list of around 2,000 contacts, but we only actively email maybe 400 of them in a given month. Under the old system, that was fine. Now, we'd be paying for all 2,000. That seems unfair compared to competitors who still have some sort of active subscriber or send-based option.
I'm pretty new to evaluating this stuff, so maybe I'm missing the bigger picture. Has anyone done the math compared to, say, Mailchimp's or Sendinblue's/Brevo's models? Are the new features they're bundining (like the CRM-lite stuff) actually worth it for a basic user who mainly needs email campaigns and simple automations?
I'd love to hear from others who are also on a budget. Did you switch away, or did you find a workaround with CleverReach? Concrete examples of what you're paying now vs. what you'd pay under the new plan would be super helpful for my evaluation.