Alternatives to Mailerlite for bulk messaging

[Sue]

I've been using MailerLite for some time  to send out Goose  newsletters. I hate it, and find it hard to use, but it is (was) free.

I've just had an email informing me that in  3 weeks'  time the limit of subscribers for free posting is reducing from 1000 to 500.

I had already cleaned up our mailing list to bring it under 1000, so that isn't an option.

I know it's a service I should be happy to pay for, and I wouldn't mind so much if I felt it was easy to use and produced a professional looking end result, but it isn't and it doesn't.

Can anyone suggest a better (and preferably free) alternative? Has anybody tried Substack?

[Sue]

ChatGPT recommends Sender or EmailOctopus, and gives pros and cons of each.

Wondering if anybody on here has experience of either?

It says SubStack wouldn't suit my needs, which seems correct.

Edited Wednesday at 15:29 by Sue