Meta tip for these kinds of queries: If you can find the product category in Google Directory, you get a nice list of products in page-rank order. http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/Internet/Server...

I am a lifetime MailMan advocate. But you mention tasks that are mostly handled by an MTA (confirmation e-mails, alerts, special offers). Mailing lists are just that -- mailing lists. It's not a simple one-to-many delivery service like, say, sending a confirmation e-mail for account creation or sending out alerts to people who subscribe to some kind specific alert.

When companies say "sign up for our mailing list" it just means "add your e-mail to a list so we can contact you," it's not an invitation to a discussion group.

While it's not software, my company uses MailChimp for our newsletter/special offers emails. The statistics and guaranteed delivery is worth it.

For VillageToolbox.com, I needed a database driven mailing list with a highly customizable web interface, both for subscribe and list options, and for the list archives.

I ended up writing my own mailet for Apache JAMES. It seems pretty robust so far, but hasn't seen heavy traffic yet.

I find PHPMailer a great class to use; there's also opensource mailing list code for it (http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmailer) but haven't used that one personally.

We've used ConstantContact for some time. It's nothing special but it gets the job done. I'm not a big fan of the logo on their emails, but I don't really mind.

I do use phpmailer to send off some stuff to me on my server, but nothing for mass mailings.

I have used Topica (defunct) and YahooGroups (aka Onelist) before. Not used Google Groups. YahooGroups is AFAIK most likely to last and archive another 10 years. Google Groups != trust.

Google Groups is not an archival service. Anybody can delete their own messages if they have their email account linked to their Google account. The list admin can delete messages for any reason.

I've heard great news about Aweber (http://www.aweber.com/). I plan to use them for my next few projects.

We have used iContact for more than a year and been very pleased. http://www.icontact.com/

tough to go wrong with dada mail http://dadamailproject.com/

This is my choice too - get the pro version - it comes with a scheduler plugin - its only 60 bucks. I use it for both http://biologynews.net and http://esciencenews.com mail lists, both have around 2000 subscribers, no problem up so far.

Customized version of http://ezmlm.org/

I like campaign monitor. Have used it for a couple years. Great reports.

www.MadMimi.com A free online WYSIWIG editor that is very intuitive and yields some very pretty things.

Highly recommended (much better than ConstantContact).

They also have amazing customer service, even for those who don't pay.

phplist is what we recommend at work, since it's often easily installed through fantastico

qmail