Emails and forums are definitely not the same thing; some people prefer one over the other, and are very vocal about it.

I know that solutions such as discourse are trying to make forums sexy again, but I still find that mailing lists are the way to go for decent discussion, and searching. (I keep thinking there should be a forum which uses NNTP as a back-end, or even a view on a shared IMAP folder.)

For hosting mailing lists I abhor mailman's monthly reminder-day, but there are a few good simple list managers out there. Enemies of Carlotta, etc, personally I use a small plugin to qpsmtpd which gives me decent control and it's otherwise hands-free.