Hey there,
Hopefully I can clear some things up and change your mind.
First, for AppSumo users it’s not $99/mo to remove the signature. If you are interested in creating your own custom signature (instead of the default Postaga signature), we have a special upgrade offer for AppSumo users, mentioned in one of our pinned comments (https://appsumo.com/postaga/#q414803) that is a huge discount over our regular pricing tiers. Also, regarding the signature, we have many users who have been using Postaga’s free plans for their outreach successfully.
As you mention, good outreach is where the “communication is personal and not obviously apart of a mass outreach campaign.” With Postaga you can easily personalize all of your emails, tailored to each recipient. While we do have tools to insert merge fields to help you automate some of that process, you can also edit any individual email and customize that for the intended recipient. One unique feature we have related to this is Snippets - where Postaga finds mention-wothy text from your contact’s blog post or webpage that you can insert into your personalized email, and show that you’re not sending a generic mass message.
I’d be happy to show you around if you are interested. Hope this helps!