Hello David,
On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, David Sharp wrote <snipped and rearranged a bit>:
> What's the catch with these free email hosting services?
> 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.
>
> 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?
>
>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.
These are very good reasons for going with a paid service, and I'd add
three more:
D. You're stuck with their domain, which locks you in to their service
forever (with your own domain, you can change service providers whenever
you want), and worse,
E. If they go out of business, then you lose touch with your audience
(since your list is now in a non-existant domain). This is not an
unreasonable fear, since most of these free services are running an
operating loss and surviving on their investment capital -- quite a few of
them can be expected to go out of business, or
F. Your free provider may get acquired by someone else (e.g. hotmail is
now owned by Microsoft). At some point, your free provider may start
charging - and since your list is in their domain, you'll be forced to go
along or go through a painful transition period.
That's why we've always paid for our lists, and more recently started
leasing a dedicated server on which we host all our lists and web servers
- which also gives us a lot of flexibility to configure things like
password-protected archives. (actually, these days, my small for-profit
leases the server and donates space to the non-profit activities I conduct
under the Center for Civic Networking).
By the way, $500/month sounds awfully high - most ISPs charge around
$30/month for a list, and the one I used for years charged only $5/month
(Software Tool and Die / The World, www.std.com). If you really WANT to
spend $500/month, let me know and I can host your list on our machine :-)
Miles Fidelman
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