i already kinda like Mailchimp better than VR. the interface feels friendlier and there’s loads of cool functionality that i dig. plus, i like that the chimp agrees that i’m looking sharp today (Yelp often thinks this too).

lists were incredibly easy to uplodad and easily collected from a variety of places with a click of a button (from email accounts, excel, etc).

campaign set up includes the ability to add Google Analytics (cool!) and your choice of tracking options. 

design is super easy.  i was pleased when i uploaded my logo header and voila!  the colors from my header were automatically added to the body of the email.  pretty!  adding text was limited to fonts on hand (not many choices) and preview upload was slow…but…

the preview was worth the wait.  it showed a bar across the top that indicates a good width.  mine was too big to read in standard emails – so i re-did my header.

omg – it’s sooooo sloooooooow.  so far – this is my biggest complaint.

when i was ready to send the email – i noticed you can buy an Inbox Inspection - which tests your email through over 30 email clients, spam stuff and even spelling/coding errors.  this might be a good idea if you are getting a lot of unsubscribes or your open rates are lower than average.

so how much does all of this cost?  if you send less than a 100 emails (6 times a month) – it’s free!  after that you have monthly fees ($10 for up to 500, $30 for up to 2,500….you can see all the fees here) or pay as you go (not that great of a deal).

ok – just sent my newsletter and was pleasantly surprised that i could quickly add to my facebook, twitter and other social media accounts.

Finally, the reports were easy to read – nice graphs & pie charts and info about how your open & click rates compare to industry average (mine made me feel very good).

let me know what your favorite e-news service is  – or if you have any thoughts in Mailchimp.  so far  – this is my fave.