~~~wee snip~~~
> What's the catch with these free email hosting services?
~~~'nother snip~~~
> 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.
Wow! We paid $100. set up and it's $25. a month Canadian for our list - unlimited mail and members and a digest option.
We tried Coollist and OneList and one other free list service (can't remember the name) before one of our members (who always wins at poker <g>) offered to pay the bills for a paid service because of the constant hassles of dealing with the freebie list services.
> We have for the moment ruled out a sponsorship arrangement as we would
> like to remain independent of advertisers.
>
> We've instead been asking our members to help finance the list by joining
> a non-profit organisation, which will also organise initiatives centred on
> journalism and the Internet.
>
> In view of the costs of a paid service - list traffic more than doubled
> last month, so the Lyris bill did as well - some of those members are
> telling us: "Why don't you just put the list onto a free service?"
>
> Our reply to date has been:
>
> A: Because we have made a principled decision not to rely on advertising
> B: Because we want to be sure that member information remains
> confidential, and C: Because with a free service there's no guarantee of a
> reliable service.
All three of your points are the reasons we went for a paid for service. The need for confidentiality is extremely important for the type of list we have.
> -- Concerning point A, I note that on Onelist, the only direct advertising
> placed on the bottom of messages, for the moment at least, is for the
> services of Onelist itself. (I haven't yet had direct experience of a
> Topica list). 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.
They can and do put third-party ad's onto messages as footers. Happened while we were there. Don't know anything about Topica either.
> -- 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.
In the approx. two months or so we had our list there, the spam mail that our members received really shot up. Much of it from spammers selling products related to the central topic of our list. Coincidence? Same with Coollist if I remember rightly.
> -- 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.
We had nothing but grief when we were there (that'd be about a little more than a year ago - they may have improved their technical facilities since then). Constant break-downs and lost messages. I think we ran more often using a distribution list than we did using OneList whilst we were there.
> 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.
My own personal impression was that OneList was struggling to keep afloat with inadequate equipment and not enough advertisers - at least whilst we were there. However, I recently joined a mail list there for a few months and there wasn't a single break-down whilst I belonged to the list. A lot more lists too than there had been. The archives would worry me though. AFAIK, lists are archived whether you want them to be or not. While it's probably possible to lock them to non-members, many aren't (prime hunting ground for spammers I'd think) - but I don't think it would be all that difficult for someone who knew what they were doing to access those archives. At least IMO.
> 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?
As far as our list is concerned, we're much happier with a paid service. We get good technical help, no archiving, no break-downs to speak of, privacy (at least as far as it's possible to be private on the Net) and friendly folks we can actually *talk* to if we need advice. :)
Mally :)
> --
> David Sharp, journaliste, France <http://www.vavi.com/>
> Tel (home) 331 42 64 35 94 - (office) 331 40 41 47 92
> E-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ICQ: 16881741
>
>
