KIt dumped all my subscribers and email drip

With only a handful of subscribers, I wasn’t paying much attention to what Kit was doing. At some point, they upgraded me from the free plan to a limited-time creator plan. I couldn’t afford to keep that. So tdoay, when I tried to go back to the free plan, Kit deleted everything: my subscribers, my sequence, my emails, everything. It appears now that I cannot have a sequence unless I sign up for a creator plan, which I can’t afford. Thomas has said that Kit is best, but I need an alternative while trying to grow subscribers. Is it time to switch to Mailerlite? Thanks.