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I hope everyone already using or considering using MailChimp reads this. Denying access to your mailing list even if you violated their terms is insane. Bannin

I hope everyone already using or considering using MailChimp reads this. Denying access to your mailing list even if you violated their terms is insane. Banning accounts with no warning is already bad enough - ideally they'd just disable your ability to send emails until the issue was resolved, but at least I can accept that.. but to steal people's mailing list in the process? What the fuck.

lisper 8y ago
OP here. To be clear, I did not violate their TOS. And deactivating an account for inactivity is not entirely unreasonable, especially a free account. What is unreasonable IMHO, and the reason I want to bring this to people's attention, is deactivating an account without a warning, without even a notification, and with no way to recover. That is a ticking time bomb that I was simply unaware of. I never even imagined that a company as successful and popular as MC could have such an inane policy. Obviously, if I had know, I would have done things differently. All I can do now is sound the alarm so that other people don't step on this land mine. (And maybe public shaming will convince MC to give me my mailing list back, but I'm not counting on it.) P.S. One of the problems here is that "inactivity" is ambiguous in this case. I had not logged in to my account in a long time, but people were signing up for my list. I assumed that would count as "activity".
- RhodesianHunter 8y ago
  Two landmines: 1. The MC one 2. Relying on any free service as an important part of your business. The adage "you get what you pay for" really does tend to hold true.
  - lisper 8y ago
    The irony is that if MC had sent me an email saying that I needed to upgrade to a paid account in order to keep it active, I would have sent them a check without hesitation. That's one of the frustrating things about this. MC has turned this into a lose-lose when it really didn't have to be.
  - dkonofalski 8y ago
    That's the big takeaway here, in my opinion. Regardless of the fault with MailChimp (and I do think they're at fault here), you should never rely on a free service if it's mission critical to your business and there should never be a single point of failure like this. If this really was as critical as OP claims it is, then they should have taken more care to ensure that this wasn't even possible.
megous 8y ago
For data you care about, you have backups. It's better than being angry later, regardless of whether you're angry at some company or at yourself (for not having backups). Backups also make your life longer, because of reduced stress. Otoh, you spend some of that extra time making backups, but it's still a win win, I guess. :D
- jeromegv 8y ago
  Yep! Doing a monthly backup of my mailchimp newsletter, it's too important.

lisper 8y ago

OP here. To be clear, I did not violate their TOS. And deactivating an account for inactivity is not entirely unreasonable, especially a free account. What is unreasonable IMHO, and the reason I want to bring this to people's attention, is deactivating an account without a warning, without even a notification, and with no way to recover. That is a ticking time bomb that I was simply unaware of. I never even imagined that a company as successful and popular as MC could have such an inane policy. Obviously, if I had know, I would have done things differently. All I can do now is sound the alarm so that other people don't step on this land mine. (And maybe public shaming will convince MC to give me my mailing list back, but I'm not counting on it.) P.S. One of the problems here is that "inactivity" is ambiguous in this case. I had not logged in to my account in a long time, but people were signing up for my list. I assumed that would count as "activity".

RhodesianHunter 8y ago
Two landmines: 1. The MC one 2. Relying on any free service as an important part of your business. The adage "you get what you pay for" really does tend to hold true.
- lisper 8y ago
  The irony is that if MC had sent me an email saying that I needed to upgrade to a paid account in order to keep it active, I would have sent them a check without hesitation. That's one of the frustrating things about this. MC has turned this into a lose-lose when it really didn't have to be.
- dkonofalski 8y ago
  That's the big takeaway here, in my opinion. Regardless of the fault with MailChimp (and I do think they're at fault here), you should never rely on a free service if it's mission critical to your business and there should never be a single point of failure like this. If this really was as critical as OP claims it is, then they should have taken more care to ensure that this wasn't even possible.

megous 8y ago

For data you care about, you have backups. It's better than being angry later, regardless of whether you're angry at some company or at yourself (for not having backups). Backups also make your life longer, because of reduced stress. Otoh, you spend some of that extra time making backups, but it's still a win win, I guess. :D

jeromegv 8y ago
Yep! Doing a monthly backup of my mailchimp newsletter, it's too important.