I've had a Mailerlite account for over 5 years, which was steadily collecting subscribers from a widget on our website. They've recently updated their system and sent a couple of emails asking users to migrate. Unfortunately, it wasn't terribly clear how to go about it and, given that the worst-case scenario was that it would be 'disabled' (their word) I gave up and decided to do it later. Wind forward to today and I logged on to find the account still needed migration. I contacted support for help but was told the account (and all our subscribers) had been completely deleted with no way back! This came as a surprise because their own migration page states that accounts will continue on their 'classic' system unless migrated and that free accounts would only be deleted after 90 days with no activity... we were still collecting subscribers only a month ago. I asked if they could restore the account... apparently not.... so I asked if they keep backups. I had to ask three times before I got a straight answer from Aleksandra in support. They do back up their systems, but our data has been deleted. So... I have learnt the hard way (and I do take full responsibility for this) - Mailerlite cannot be relied upon to take good care of your data and if you're going to use them you really MUST log in regularly and download your subscriber lists. Otherwise, miss an email (amongst a sea of their daily notifications) and you may very well find your mailing list is just gone, with no way to recover it.The reason for the one star is not just the deletion (I know it was partly my fault for failing to take action) but rather the fact that there was no way to recover anything - their customer support adviser was entirely unhelpful, and apparently they don't keep backups stretching back even six months. Companies that handle other people's data owe them a duty of care, and I think basic data governance dictates that there should always be backups available.
