Need Email Service Suggestion

If you have an AWS account then Email Octopus is created by an indie hacker (no affiliation) and much, much cheaper than Mailchimp.

What are must-have features for you? An API to send emails with supplied body and to keep subscribe state (i.e. a transactional email service) - or do you need an editor for layout, etc?

And what is more important - price vs features vs something else?

It will depend on how you got the emails. Mailchimp and other ESPs don't allow you to send emails to contacts who have not opted in.

So if you're sending 100k a one off email and they've never consented explicitly, it's best to try, 1. not to do that, but if you do 2. use a mail merge and do it via your own email address from your inbox. if you use gmail you can use any number of mail merge solutions.

As for the weekly newsletters, I'm going to assume those are the people who opted in, then go with mailchimp. I used it for 3 years, no complaints. Other options are ConvertKit if you want to pay a tiny bit more for, same features. The one difference I have heard is that automated email drip sequences are visually represented in convertkit and simple to do, while in mailchimp you can do the exact same thing but its not as visual.

If you're looking for the cheapest: Amazon SES, if you don't want to code: Sendy .co

Like I said, I've used mailchimp. But recently I've seen recommendations for ConvertKit and Email Octopus.

Why not stick with Mailchimp?