Leaving Active Campaign in search of something better

I just exported a client contact list out of Active Campaign (5,000+ emails) as they've gotten far too expensive, and the interface is terrible. I'm hoping to find a platform that is more geared toward an author who is also a video creator. Hoping someone will have suggestions.

Here's the thing: it's a list that's over 5 years old, and we haven't been active for at least the past 8 months. Before that, our open rates were fairly low, as we didn't practice good list cleaning hygiene (another issue with Active Campaign, they don't offer great tools to do so)

Is there anything that's not upwards of $2k per year, or would it make sense to go ahead an rebuild the list from scratch? Thank you for your suggestions.