To clear up any confusion you cannot send emails from front end. I mistakenly thought this was the case from this as part of feature list:

Frontend users able to send emails to your mailing lists (admin selectable)

Couldn't actually get the component to send emails at all so for me was a waste of time... like many of these extensions unfortunately it is just easier and cheaper to move on to the next one rather than spend hours trying to configure or wait for support... I paid for pro version.

Couldn't recommend it.

Finally an excellent newsletter add-on for Joomla. Handles multiple lists, HTM, integrates with Joomle users and has a very intuitive and simple front-end.

Excellent support, all my issues are permanently fixed after prompt response from author.

I have had this product installed based on its claims. I believe once the problems are ironed out and the mailing lists are made easier to move around, this will be a first class product. I downloaded the free version and it worked beautifully. Purchased the commercial version nad ran into problems. The manual is a little ambiguous. I hope I can have the problems sorted as this is exactly what I need. Keep trying!

I needed a little help with cosmetic modification and was replied to the next day on the forum.. This kind of support is necessary for a reliable extension, thank you admin! :D

I downloaded the Ultimate Mailer 2.6 (Commercial version) just last night and installed it that evening. I tried to get it to work but I had problems with IonCube being installed on my host server. The following morning 2.7 was released that REMOVED the Ioncube dependency, what a relief. I installed it with no problems but I could not get the mailer to e-mail out. I contacted the support department and they helped me solve my problem within a couple of hours without the use of installing Ioncube. The Mailer is doing exactly what I wanted in a Mailing component. No problems so far.
I have never been so surprised how fast and helpful the support department was. Two thumbs up for the AXXIS support department. Keep up the great support a novice like me needs it.

Ok Community Builder doesn't seem to have a newsletter module (cb_mailer didn't do it for me!). ACAjoom was excellent, but I got fed up with trying to configure it, especially customizing html without their sponsor or unsubscribe from this list links, it’s pretty heavy weight if all you want to do is send your membership an email! Doesn’t synchronize with community builder data that well, you can have one user listed in CB for example, but might they might have unsubscribed in your mailer list, difficult to manage I reckon. Useful if you need separate lists, but all I want to do is send my members a letter. Basically ACAjoom felt bloated for my needs.

So I tired Ultimate Mailer. I can send emails to my membership, or to my administrators, or to one person at a time, or to a whole group with a couple of names excluded if I need to and I don’t need to run separate membership/newsletter databases... You just sync up your lists before you send. Lovely.

This module works for me, free one is perfect if you don't need .html, pro one is cheap enough if you need to send a pretty newsletter.

Thanks guys, I can go to bed now. : ]

The paid FULL version: not automatically downloadable after payment until I send a letter to the author.
Acajoom can: after creating multiple 'lists', select each individual individually and say which list that individual is on, obviously it is a pain if you have several lists with a lot of users
Ultimate Mailing lists: you can either add everyone and then delete the person(s) you dont want, which, by the way is ordered alphabetically by 'email', not the name, and there is no selection to align via name, or you can add people via a csv like email list.

Apart from that, the execution on mailing versatile but not dummy friendly. I guess the paid version has some advantages over acajoom, but it needs ion cube which could be another pain for some people.