Agreed! This should have been a function out-of-the-box. There are many times a webhost would need to send out a mass email (server issues, explanations, etc) and not even addressing promotional use.
Hopefully this will come sooner rather than later.
Having to create a separate email list in mailchimp, have every one of my clients "subscribe," which you know they won't all do, is a very painful process and for those that don't subscribe, they never get important notifications.