The Ideal Blogging Platform

[TygrBright]

I'm gonna cross-post this to the Lounge, since it looks like Bloggers is a very small group with very little discussion, so... here goes:

I'm looking for a blogging platform to build a private blog, shared only by about 3 dozen individuals. Not public.

I'm looking for free/hosted.

I need to be able to set up all the user/author accounts in advance.

I need it to have a built-in email subscription feature that enables, not an RSS feed, but simple HTML emails. I also need to be able to initially subscribe folks to this, AND GIVE THEM AN UNSUBSCRIBE OPTION.

Any other bells or whistles would be lagniappe, but these features are essential.

Weebly does not have a subscribe function, although you can enable an RSS scraper.

WordPress.com does not allow you to set up user accounts and permissions in advance.

Squarespace doesn't have a "free" option.

Blogger is... well... Blogger.

Any other suggestions?

hopefully,
Bright