Last week I almost mass-emailed "please don't leave" to a friend's clients while canceling his subscription

Last week I helped a friend cancel an English writing tool. Almost mass-emailed his 300+ customers a "please don't leave" retention letter. The page just asked "Are you sure you want to leave?" — click confirm and you're in trouble. My spine went cold.

Reddit blew up: Grammarly's cancel button triggers "revenge mass-emails"

Grammarly is the English polishing tool of choice for cross-border sellers, foreign-trade folks, and freelancers — same category as DeepL Write, ChatGPT polishing, and Notion AI. A sysadmin on Reddit (the server admin crowd) confirmed with evidence: the second you hit "Cancel subscription," it reads your email contacts and sends every one a "they're leaving Grammarly, please help us retain them" message.

I used it myself for a year on foreign-trade gigs. Every time I clicked that "Cancel" button, my heart raced — later I switched to ChatGPT + two manual edits, never had this issue. But if we're already using Grammarly, check that contacts authorization — it can read email contacts by default.

Wang Lei (pseudonym), a cross-border e-com SaaS indie dev, stepped on this landmine last year: he ran all his customer English emails through Grammarly for rewrites. On cancel, the platform mass-emailed his 800 customers a "please don't leave" letter. Several replied "you okay? want to chat?" He had to explain one by one and almost lost deals.

Worth switching today? Money, time, first step

Money: Grammarly Premium runs around 110 RMB/month. Three free alternatives to dodge this risk: browser translate + manual edits, ChatGPT free tier asking "polish this email for me," DeepL Write free tier (daily limit).

Time: 1-2 hours to switch tools, mostly the "taming" process of adapting to a new tool — moving our correction habits over.

Technical barrier: no coding, just installing a browser extension.

First step (if we're already using it): open Grammarly web → top-right avatar → "Account" → "Contacts" → flip off "Share contacts." That's the floor. Do this step first before anything else.

Advice by stage

Just starting out (no customer list yet): You probably haven't accumulated customer emails, no need to panic. Free version is fine, but flip that "contact sharing" switch off first. Prevention beats cure.

Have 1-2 stable customers: Flip that switch off right now. Then back up your own email drafts to a local folder — don't park all your customer info in a third-party tool.

Scaling up (10+ customers): I'd seriously think about "if this tool shuts down or bans me tomorrow, how do I switch in 24 hours." Spend 10 minutes a month exporting backups. Before picking a tool, search "XXX cancel experience." That habit saves several customers.