From Newsgroup: news.software.readers
<
news@individual.de> wrote:
NetNews-Team Individual.DE
Tue, Sep 30 at 12:57 AM
[German version snipped]
Dear Users of the news server News.Individual.DE /
News.Individual.NET,
We hereby announce the discontinuation of the service as of 30
September 2027 (that is two years from now).
Use of the service will no longer be possible after this date.
Effective immediately, we will no longer accept new registrations for
the service News.Individual.DE / News.Individual.NET.
Existing users may continue to use the service until its termination, regardless of their current subscription period. Please do not make
any further payments from now on.
We wish to express our sincere gratitude for your rCo often many years
of rCo use of this classic internet service via our server.
Sincerely
The News Team of Freie Universit|nt Berlin
(Bettina Fink, Vera Heinau, Heiko Schlichting)
Yep, got that e-mail today. It is unclear if I must pay, or not, when
my current yearly subscription expires. My last renewal was March 2025,
and would normally be good for 1 year (March 2026), but the e-mail
suggests I do not need to pay to keep using them until September 2027,
so I'd get another 1-1/2 years for free after which I'd have to change
to a different Usenet provider.
I've used Albasani before its owner died, and then Eternal-September
(evolved from Motzarella), but wanted a more reliable Usenet provider.
In the 7+ years of using Individual, never had a problem with using
them. No downed or unresponsive server, no weird SpamAssassin issues,
no migration issues, etc. Just always there, and usable.
Giganews is way too expensive at $100/year, and EasyNews even more so.
I don't need binary newsgroups, just text-only newsgroups and why ES
(for free) and Individual (paid, but cheap) were reasonable choices. I definitely do NOT need nor want a web-based interface at a Usenet
provider, don't want to use NNTP-to-HTTP gateways to web-based forums,
and don't want e-mail gateways to Usenet. Just plain ol' NNTP, and just
text newsgroups.
There are also Solani and paganini for free. I haven't use Solani
enough to know how it fares against ES. I eventually filtered out all
paganini posts, because they are an unregistered (no account, no login) provider which attracts trolls, peuriles, malcontents, and uber boobs as
did AIOE back when it existed. paganini.bofh became the new Google
Groups. paganini doesn't have a web site. Okay, yes, they have one now (
http://paganini.bofh.team/) as a just placeholder due to my complaints
of nowhere to find settings other than from existing users, but it still doesn't list server settings, so still worthless. ES and Solani are
registered providers (account & login required), have usable web sites,
and abusers have something to lose with them.
I went with Individual which was paid, but very cheap, and has been
highly reliable, and responsive. I'd continue paying them 10 euro/year,
but they're leaving Usenet in a couple years. I have 2 years to decide
on a replacement Usenet provider, but figure to start looking around for
equal alternatives. By comparison to Individual, all the paid Usenet
services are far more expensive, even Usenet.farm.
I'm not keen on block accounts, like:
https://billing.blocknews.net/signup.php
Maybe I'd look into them *if* they proved highly reliable as has been Individual. By visiting text-only newsgroups, the quota would last a
very long time. Often these providers don't state at which tier they
operate (2nd, 3rd, 4th, or worse tier), or through whose servers they
submit. Back in 2024, Blocknews/Frugal lost their contract with
Omicron, so there was a prolonged outage. I didn't yet bother to
research what other outages they've had since it'll be 2 years until I
lose Individual.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2