I am looking for an easy but powerful tool to use to create and send a monthly newsletter to my contacts via email and text. Are there any recommended methods. It's meant to be an informative newsletter about general market trends in the Northern NJ area.
How many emails do you plan to send? A few hundred or thousands? And who are you sending to?
If you're sending to agents or investors - I'd go with Convertkit. Because ideally, you could build your list into a money-making premium newsletter. Not sure if that's what you're going for, but if you're taking the time to do research I imagine you want to cover that cost at the very least.
If you're sending to homeowners/prospects - I'd start with Flodesk or SendinBlue. You can get a free plan with SendinBlue that will let you build and send email sequences for free (up to 9k monthly emails). I like Flodesk, too, because it's super simple to learn and implement and they have a one-fee-for-everything model, which is nice.