Selecting the right email platform should depend on what feature you are looking for, what is your volume, what other tools you would like to integrate with your email platform, what types of emails you would like to build.
For small and medium size businesses, I recommend MailChimp. MailChimp has made a great deal of improvements over the last few years. It has a great user interface and a wiziwig tool. Thus, if you don't have HTML skills, you don't have to have them, and your template will still look great. It also has great integration with wordpress for list building, google analytics, and other tools.
For medium to large enterprise where you are doing 20mm in volume a month, I highly recommend ExactTarget. ExactTarget has invested a great deal into their info-structure. They have one of the best integration between Salesforce and Email platform. Their platform has integration into a great deal of partner tools through their marketplace which lends to a great deal you can do from an automation perspective.