On the First Day of NewListservProviderMas ...

... as occasioned by Mailchimp's shitting of the customer care bed, I'll be trying out Gaggle Mail as the publishing vehicle for the daily email edition of Rational Review News Digest.

I'm already impressed. When I uploaded the RRND subscriber list, I got a "sending to this list is paused until we can verify that you're not up to something suspicious" message.

And their method of verification was having an actual human (or a very good AI) send me an actual email asking a couple of actual questions (e.g. what is the purpose of this list and where did those subscribers come from?). Then an actual human (or a very good AI) apparently reading the answers and letting me know I'm good to go.

So I'm already positively impressed. Additional positive impression: At a quick glance, the interface isn't full of a bunch of weird culs-de-sac with a big learning curve just to send out a damn email a day.

For some reason, the last couple of years (since Intuit bought them out), Mailchimp seems to want to add a new "feature" every couple of months that involves zero added value or functionality, but rather simply adds a step for no discernible reason. The most recent one was this:

• Previously, you chose the list you were sending mail to, gave the mail a subject, formatted the message, then hit "send" or "schedule for later."
• Now you choose the list you're sending mail to, give the mail a subject, tell it whether you want to send now or schedule for later, format the email ... and then still have to hit "send" or "schedule for later" again.

So I can't say I wasn't expecting to eventually have problems with Mailchimp. I just didn't expect the problems to involve unexplained claims of terms of use violations with immediate "go elsewhere, we don't want your business" effect.