On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, David Sharp wrote:
> I'm involved in Jliste, a mailing list for journalists here in
> France (<http://lists.lyris.net/jliste/> - sorry, it's all in
> French!), and we're currently looking around at possibilities for
> moving to a new kind of hosting service.
>
> We find ourselves faced with a choice between paid services, most
> of which will involve our costs zooming up towards the $500 a
> month mark in the forseeable future, and an array of free services
> such as Topica and Onelist.
While I like Lyris software for features, quality and price, their
hosting services are rather expensive. Per their web page, they
charge a flat fee of $0.001US per item distributed. There are other
commercial providers who charge much less. I'll post contact info for
list service providers in a moment.
> B: Because we want to be sure that member information remains
> confidential, and
I'm curious about the confidentiality of subscriber info on ALL list
service providers. Subscriber lists are valuable. It would be
tempting to sell this info. I protect the subscriber lists on my
server. I presume most service providers also protect subscriber
info. I would definitely ask the policy of any service provider under
consideration.
> C: Because with a free service there's no guarantee of a reliable service.
I doubt there is a very strong correlation between cost and quality.
If the free services are making money selling their ads, there is no
reason that they could not provide quality service. When you buy
bandwidth in quantity, costs are A LOT LESS than a tenth of a penny
per item distributed. The unknown is, are they making money. Services
who charge for lists may also be unprofitable.
> ... But I don't see anything that would prevent them, if they
> wanted, from putting ads for third-party products or services on
> the bottom of messages.
I subscribe to a couple of lists with third-party ads appended to the
articles. As long as the ads are short and at the end, they don't
bother me much.
> -- On point B, Onelist explain in their terms of service that they
> won't hand out members' email addresses, although they do reserve
> the right to exploit other info. This sounds ominous to me: they
> must be exploiting member information in some way or other.
Exploiting "other" member info does sound ominous.
> -- Regarding point C, I've noticed a few glitches with Onelist
> services, including not only long delays but lost messages.
> However opinions seem to diverge on that question. Needless to
> say, the people advocating a "free" solution are also the ones who
> haven't noticed any problems.
I doubt that you will find many service providers who are perfect.
100% uptime is extremely rare. 100% delivery doesn't happen on the
Internet. Even if the mail is sent to 100% of the subscribers, a
small percentage of the mailboxes can not be reached at a given
moment. Most often, the delivery problems are at the receiving end.
You can not force someone to accept their email.
> To cut a long story short, I find it hard to believe that
> commercial undertakings such as Onelist and Topica are spending
> all that money on server capacity and jazzy hosting features just
> for the greater good of humanity.
"Free" list hosting services are out to make a dollar. Their main
source of income is injected advertising both on the lists and on
their web pages. I don't think this is an evil plot as long as they
tell you up font what they are doing.
> So what's the deal?
> Are we at Jliste crazy to be considering staying with a paid service?
> If we are, how come the paid services are staying in business?
The paid services will remain in business because there is still a
market for ad-free or custom services. Either business model can
work. Time will tell if both types of service will make it for the
long haul.
- murr -
