What to choose for a small and infrequent email campaign?

Question

Email

Newsletter several times a month to 2-5 thousand addresses. The scaling of the base will be an order of magnitude, but it will definitely not be fast (that is, it is desirable to take into account when choosing, but not critical).
Actually, what and why is it better to choose: a service, a program or a script? Specific, reasoned product recommendations are also welcome, but the main issue is the fundamental differences and benefits.

Answer 1

services have higher deliverability, so at 5000 - no alternative

Answer 2

Own mail server and local or server mailing program.

Answer 3

Your mail service, if you can’t set it up yourself, will definitely be more expensive, longer, less manageable, worse deliverability and lack of any analytics. Services will have statistics, and most likely a built-in email editor, and higher deliverability. All this should significantly reduce the time for development and distribution. Plus the time to launch, the service will start working for you tomorrow.
I completely disagree with Dmitry Prosto , not all services have an average deliverability, and they certainly understand deliverability more than a newly minted in-house team.
Considering that most smart services still have free volumes for mailings, you can safely test this (MailChimp for 2000 people is free, eSputnik is also free for such volumes). The second will have a Russian-speaking support, you can ask questions of interest.
It may not be the most relevant for you at the moment, but it will definitely arise when scaling, the issue of automating the layout of letters. One way or another, it’s better to use third-party solutions here, and they are either built into ESP (like the same mailchimp and companion), or I have a convenient export to them (like stripo and beefree). And if the mailchimp editor is not very functional, then beefree and stripo will significantly reduce the time for developing letters (the first due to convenient collaboration, the second due to smart elements and a library of your own blocks).