I tried every top email marketing tool

It's interesting to note none of the email tools I'm most familiar with are mentioned by the author. It's clear the author is a different demographic from me given they said they want to stay under $200/mo. Some of the tools I hear companies use the most are:

  - Customer.io
  - Iterable
  - Braze
  - Marketo
  - Salesforce Marketing Cloud

My understanding is Customer.io is what most startups use these days with larger companies using one of the other four.

$100/month for less than most mail providers offer free, and $1000/month for standard features is only for startups trying to burn money before they get off the runway.

That is mostly right, with the caveat that customer.io is trying to go upmarket too now.

https://playbooks.hypergrowthpartners.com/p/picking-your-lif...

I wrote this up about a year ago for a more comprehensive perspective for companies series A+