official plugin, negative reviews & closed N/R topics

Hello everyone,

I am setting up a WP website and will be connecting MailerLite to it. I am assuming that I need to install the official MailerLite signup forms plugin. But despite 70K+ users, I see only a handful of reviews, most 3 stars or lower. Numerous help topics are closed to comments but with no resolution. It also appears that despite being the official plugin, some users cannot add a pop-up to their site, a basic feature that I would expect to work.

Questions:

Is this plugin required in order to use MailerLite on a WP site?

If anyone has used another plugin, which one has worked for them?

Any comments pro/con are appreciated.