TinyLetter will fold into MailChimp in the future - but it's not going to happen in 2018

• MailChimp has plans to merge its TinyLetter product with the rest of its newsletter services - though the change won't happen this year.
• TinyLetter, which was acquired by MailChimp in 2011, has a big following with indie writers who like the simplicity of the format and user experience.

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The hearts of indie writers everywhere broke on Tuesday following an Inc. report that MailChimp will phase out the popular newsletter service TinyLetter.

Not so fast, MailChimp told Business Insider. A representative for the company said that while TinyLetter will eventually merge into MailChimp's existing newsletter services, "there are no plans to sunset TinyLetter in 2018."

MailChimp bought TinyLetter in 2011 from Philip Kaplan, a web entrepreneur perhaps best known for creating the Fucked Company website, which documented the downfall of numerous dot-com companies and lampooned their excesses.

Though just a few months old at its time of acquisition, TinyLetter quickly developed a following with independent writers who appreciated the simplicity of both the newsletter and the user interface.

MailChimp, which offers enterprise-grade email marketing services, liked TinyLetter for the same reasons that users did.

"You could think of TinyLetter as a 'MailChimp Lite.' A more directionally accurate analogy would be, 'Gmail on steroids,'" MailChimp CEO Ben Chestnut wrote at the time of the acquisition. "Basically, TinyLetter is for people what MailChimp is for business."

MailChimp is still light on the details of what a it will mean to have TinyLetter merged with its MailChimp newsletter services.

The representative said that "it will still have the same super-simple newsletter building capabilities, with a refreshed, updated user experience."

But for now, at least, TinyLetter lovers can carry on as they have been for the past seven years.