Wanted: Email Invite List Management Software

Okay, so now you've decided you want to start a film club. First you need to invite people. Which means you need a bunch of emails. I was fortunate in that I waited 15 years to start such a club. Which meant I knew a lot of indie film fans in my town to invite. You'd think that would solve the problem, right?

Even when you have the email addresses, it is not so easy to just send out the invites. Bulk emails often get stopped by spam filters. I don't even know if my emails get through, other than by the folks who write back or rsvp. Further, for some reason my ISP or email program only allows me to send 50 or less emails per batch. To send to 800 people (which is how many I have on my list) requires 16 emails. That's a lot of cut and pasting. And updating the lists and sorting it, tagging people, etc. is a real pain in the butt. There's got to be a better way.

Since we can't afford to hire an IT person to solve this, I turn to you, the community; surely you know a way to make this all a whole lot simpler. What do you suggest?