There are things like
Commbull (is this still being developed?) and
GAZ for very robust newsletter handling...
What this does is literally for those of us who just need to send HTML via the adminCP.
But, I do agree that with the size of some vB communities and the knowledge that most sites send out a newsletter of some description that there hasn't been some sort of addon to facilitate this from vB. Seems like missed market share as anyone who desperately needs a newsletter solution has to spend several hundred dollars to use Sendstudio or Oempro.
Oh well, in the mean time, I'm here!