MailChimp vs WP Plugin

Hi,

I’d like to include a mailing list/ newsletter subscribe to my WP site.

MailChimp seems really popular and there are a ton of plugins that will let me subscribe users to my MailChimp list.

However, isn’t it better practice to keep all my subscribers as members in my WordPress install? I imagine this will make things a lot easier if I ever want to offer an incentive to subscribing or a thank you gift etc. I could also post conditional messages on the site based on whether they were email subscribers etc.

So, my questions:

1. Are there newletter subscribe plug-ins that manage your list and mailing within WordPress as well as MailChimp does externally?

2. Am I missing some obvious and really crucial point? 😉

Many thanks for any advice!

Pat