CRM Solution – Please help me sort the wheat from the chaff

Hello,
Looking through this sub last night, it’s apparent there are an overwhelming number of competitors in this space, so I’m hoping someone can recommend CRM software that will cover my noted needs, and likely several features that I am not taking into consideration at this point.
Small business starting out, I need to select a program for sending event details to bulk groups, and message people independently for resolution of any issues submitted separately. I will likely be overseeing this department until 6-12 months from now when we anticipate being able to hire someone to manage customer service.
Per user cost needs to be reasonable (I would estimate that eventually less than 10 people will need logins), and limits on messages sent are not going to be feasible. Once the business matures, it’s possible that we will be sending out messages to 12k events per year, with anything from 10 – 200 email recipients per message (though it will take a while to get to these numbers).
I do not need software that caters mainly to sales teams. At a previous employer in a similar space, the team used a combination of Pardot (for the bulk messaging) and Zendesk (for resolution of individual customer issues). Pardot is too expensive, and I’m told Zendesk cannot handle the bulk messaging.
I need a user friendly interface that can be tied to our info@ address, to which we can upload csv/xls lists for bulk messaging, and see open/unopened details, and ideally an automation that can resend messages to any recipients yet to click/open.
Thanks in advance.