We've come to conclusion a "metered usage fee" is a fair way. Like any
other "utility bill", water, gas, electricity, information.
We plan to let a client create as many lists as they want, we as many/few
members per list, with no limit on msg size, or number of msg's, and then
charge them for list megabytes in/out per month as calculated from the
rdeliver/gdeliver/ldeviver log lines.
ie, they generate smtp traffic however which way they want, and we bill
them. No need to re-invent a new "paradigm", usage is usage. And more
linear (vs chunky) the billing is perceived as more just and less
angusishing ("hey, list member, we're shutting down the list the rest of
the month to keep from spilling into the next gigabyte of billing"). You
could use MRTG to generate a daily graph of their traffic per account, so
they wouldn't have any surprises at the end of the month. or at least a bot
email to show yesterday and month-to-date.
$10 / month for list that could consume several gigabytes of traffic/month
is suicidal.
2000 bytes/msg x 100 members/list x 1 msg/day x 30 days = 6 megabytes/month
per list.
If someone distributes a 1 megabyte .pdf to the list, that's 100 megs
traffic right there.
Len
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