Usenet Newsgroup Server FAQ & Price Comparison
| Jump straight to the Best Usenet Providers Price list | Jump straight to the Newsgroup Servers Back-end List |
The pages on this site try to explain usenet and newsgroup services in normal, everyday terms - primarily focused at normal Windows users.
Usenet pre-dates the Internet and was among the first real online discussion forums. Its distributed nature means there is no "owner" or web site that manages it. Unfortunately, it's not quite as straight-forward to use as a normal web site, and requires a bit of investment of time (and money) to get the most out of it.
What will you find in Usenet Newsgroups? Special Interest Group discussions on Pinball Machines, favorite music artists, and of course, porn. Some ISP's include very basic Usenet access with your normal Internet connection, but to really use Usenet Newsgroups, you'll need to subscribe to a Premium Usenet provider.
The "Best Usenet Services" list below are those we highly recommend based on our 6 years of watching the industry. These are the providers we spend our own money on. All have excellent completion and speed, and have at least 100 days of binary retention. Most importantly, they are reliable. We've broken them into groups depending on your priorities. If you are only downloading text messages, some images (.jpg, .gif) and a few attached sounds, go for a Metered account. If you plan to access larger binaries on a regular basis, go for an Unlimited account. Also, If you believe your ISP may be snooping on you or limiting your Usenet bandwidth, choose a Usenet provider with SSL encryption, which prevents them from snooping your internet packets.
There is also a second list at the bottom page showing all the Usenet Newsgroup providers advertising services, which we've tracked back to their sources. It's more for informational purposes, and is too big to keep up to date every month. Stick to the providers in the Best Usenet Service Providers list and you'll get the best bang for your buck.
| Best Usenet Service Providers (last updated August 11, 2009) | ||||
| Category | Provider / Plan | Features | Price | Notes (If viewing from Europe - check out the European Usenet service providers table too!) |
| Easiest Web-Based thumbnail viewer service |
Standard NOTE - The sign-up page is NOT office safe! |
90-ish retention Highest Reliability |
$15 / mo $40 / 3 mo |
If your primary interest is "adult" content and you don't want to mess with a newsreader program on your PC, the easiest access to usenet-style adult pictures and video (OK, porn - there, we said it) is SkinVideo. They collect content from all over and convert it so you can view it directly online with thumbnails and video viewers - or download it in different formats for your PC or iPod. If this is what you're looking for, look no further. No uploading or posting is available through this service. |
| Unlimited NNTP downloads WITH SSL Security (Requires a newsreader program) | ||||
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No Compromises plus secure connection
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Diamond |
400 retention Highest Reliability Largest network |
$30 / mo $15 / mo first 2 months if linked from Anchordudes
14 day free trial |
Giganews has the longest retention rates, hands down. At least 5 months' storage in all binary groups caches (avg 400+ days retention overall > 1 year!) and more than 4 years of text-only groups. They also have the industry's best completion rates. (They are the largest T1 Usenet provider) If you missed a part and it's fallen off your normal service, Giganews probably still has it. Giganews service is uncensored and the SSL connection makes sure your ISP can't snoop on you. Giganews supports uploads but does include X-trace in headers to control spammers. Binary retention is 400+ days and this account supports up to 10 simultaneous connections. You can use either their US or Amsterdam servers, and can choose which backbones to use to connect to maximize your message download speed. Giganews offers an optional usenet header compression tool to speed up downloading headers. It makes things A LOT faster. Click here to give it a try. Giganews also offers a European based server and is adding a server in Hong Kong as well. |
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Always available, with enough retention for most users |
Encrypted Power User |
300 Retention High Reliability Largest network |
$20 / mo $10 / 1st month |
PowerUsenet is closely aligned with Giganews, but accesses their reduced-retention server farm. There has never been any history of reliability problems, but internally, caring for Giganews clients always takes top priority. Recently the retention at Powerusenet has been really growing - it's at about 300 days now. With SSL and 30 connections, they're probably at the sweet spot of secure price-performance curve. You get all the dependability and reputation of Giganews, (and 30 connections) but with a bit less retention (isn't 10 months enough anyway?) |
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Great bang for the SSL buck on 6 month |
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NHXL |
220 Retention Decent Reliability
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$20 / mo
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Newshosting has been a major player in the Usenet industry for 6+ years, and got even bigger when they were bought by a former competitor - Highwinds. The Newshosting server farm became the premier service for the whole company, with the best completion rates, longest retention, and reliable front-end. They have had on and off problems over the past year as they integrate their services, so reliability is not in the same league as Giganews. The NHXL service is their top-of-the-line and includes SSL protection for those who either have trouble with their ISP throttling their connection or snooping on their activities. Binary retention is a healthy 220+ days and you get up to 20 simultaneous connectionswith this newsgroup plan. You can also select different backbones so you can choose the one with the fastest download speed. (NOTE: You must click a checkbox in your control panel to turn on uploading privileges before uploading) |
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| Unlimited NNTP downloads WITHOUT SSL Security (Requires a newsreader program) | ||||
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No Compromises with standard connection |
Platinum |
400 retention Highest Reliability Largest network |
$25/mo
$12.50/mo first 2 months if linked from Anchordudes
14 day free trial |
All the same retention (400+ days), completion, and speed features as Giganews Diamond, but without the SSL feature. Definitely the usenet service to go for if superb up-time is a concern or having the ability to grab parts of old files is a high priority. Giganews supports uploads but does include X-trace in headers to control spammers. |
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Most cost-effective non-SSL service |
Power User |
300 Retention High Reliability Largest network |
$15 / mo $7.50 1st month |
Powerusenet is operated by Giganews. They use a separate set of servers for their Powerusenet (and Usenent.net) customers, which provides 300 days of binary retention. You get up to 15 simultaneous connections with this newsgroup plan. PowerUsenet's service is uncensored . Powerusenet recently added upload support, which makes it our new favorite for this price-point. |
| Metered NNTP Plans (Fixed amount per month) (Requires a newsreader program) | ||||
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Most cost effective metered plan with SSL support |
Newsguy Express |
130 Retention Good reliability SSL Included |
$11 / mo 60 GB |
Newsguy has also been in the industry for a long time. They've had their ups and downs as far as reliability, but things have been pretty smooth for the past few months. Their Express plan is cost effective with 60GB per month. Uploading appears to be supported.
The plan includes SSL, up the 32 simultaneous connections, and up to 130 days of binary message retention. |
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Perfect for dial-up and DSL users who can't get full benefit of unlimited account
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Silver |
300 Retention Days Highest Reliability |
$13 / mo 35 GB |
Full access to Giganews 400+ days of retention, with a 35 GB monthly limit. The ideal plan for fills to complement the service from your ISP, or as an addition to a smaller unlimited plan from another provider. Giganews supports uploads but does include X-trace in headers to control spammers.
This plan does not include SSL, but does support 270+ days of retention and 10 concurrent streams. |
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Great addition to unlimited plans with less retention. |
Pearl |
30 Retention Days Highest Reliability |
$5 / mo 5 GB |
Same as Giganews Reliability, but only 5 GB per month and 30 days retention. It's cheap insurance - you always havea way to pick up the occassional file that you missed and is no longer available on your ISP's service. |
| Check out the European Usenet Service providers table too! | ||||
| With a few exceptions, all the usenet sites on the market are actually selling or reselling the same 6 or 7 sets of backend newsgroup servers under different names. Basically, resellers buy gigabytes of access at quantity discounts, then resell it to end users. These resellers must provide their own billing and access control systems, as well as their own support organizations - if something goes wrong you have to go through the reseller, not the back-end provider. Additionally, since resellers buy from the big guys in large blocks of gigabytes or megabits per second, many have been known to throttle heavy users, especially on unlimited accounts, to keep from going over the quotas they have bought for resale. Few things are worse than having a fat internet pipe, and having your newsgroup service provider cut you off or restrict data flow to you because they don't want to go over budget!
Generally, we don't recommend usenet resellers unless they are wholly owned by the backend company - they have the capital to install top end equipment and, most importantly, take full responsibility for support. Many times a back-end server is working fine, but the reseller's front end has failed. And while not all resellers are underfunded, many are, meaning that they often become the weakest link in the chain. It may be tempting to save a few pennies with a reseller, but in the long run, we hear the fewest complaints from people who buy directly from the primary usenet providers. This big comparison list is REALLY hard to keep up with as companies pop into existence and wink out again, and many resellers change back end newsgroup providers quite often. You may also notice that some usenet resellers appear on the list with multiple back ends - this is often how they sell different plan levels by buying from different newsgroup server back-ends. A word about usenet and uncensored versus censored newsgroups. All the major companies provide uncensored access to the newsgroups they carry. They don't monitor (except to block spam) what is posted to those groups. But the big three backbone providers (Giganews, Highwinds, and Pathlink) and most others, have recently dropped all the groups that may be associated with under-age pornography. We do not feel this is an infringement on anyone's freedom of speech (as restricting an MP3 group would be) because the content itself that would be posted is illegal, unlike general music and video which is not. |
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| Backend Provider | Sold As | Comments |
| Giganews |
Giganews.com |
In our opinion, Giganews is the strongest back end newsgroup provider. They've been around for 7+ years with nearly flawless uptime in spite of big growth in the past years. They also have nearly 1 year binary retention even on the largest binary newsgroups, and multiple high speed backbones for good speed from most corners of the country plus both US and Netherlands servers. Giganews provides both the backend and front-end when purchased through Giganews, Powerusenet.com, Usenet.net, Supernews, and Rhino Newsgroups, although the retention through the Giganews premium service is almost twice as long as on their other services. |
| Highwinds | Newshosting.com easynews.com Usenetserver.com newsdemon.com anonymousnewsfeed.com blocknews.net buzzardnews.com flashnewsgroups.com iunsenet.com maximumusenet.com meganetnews.com news4u2.com newsfeeds.com newsgroupdirect.com ngroups.net teranews.com thenewsgroups.com thundernews.com tigerusenet.com titannews.com uncensorednewsfeed.com usenet.com usenet.se usenetguide.com usenet-news.net usenetrocket.com cox.net (ISP) |
Newshosting has been a long-time favorite with the Anchordudes. Last year they merged with Highwinds, another very large usenet back-end provider, and also bought out Usenetserver.com and Easynews. Buying through Newshosting, usenetserver.com, or easynews.com means you are getting the whole service directly from the provider. One special note: Highwinds has different server farms for different product lines. The Usenetserver.com server farm seems to be continually troubled with downtime and packet losses, so we cannot recommend them until this clears up. Unfortunately, most of the resellers listed to the left also use the Usenetserver server farm, which means they have the same delivery problems. Also, EasyNews has been a favorite of ours for metered usenet service since, um, forever. But something has gotten totally screwed up since mid-December, and it's still not right - lost packets, lost messages, poor response to connects. Looks like it might involve moving their classic servers around, since those are the ones worst hit. We've had to pull them off our recommended list until they stabalize again. Highwinds has servers in the US and Europe for both speed and quality reasons. Not all their resellers have access to the European servers though. Newshosting also sells to resellers, most of whom are listed at the left. A number of these resellers are of questionable reliability and in general we do not recommend them. However, there are a few that we feel comfortable recommending because they have been around a long time and have been reliable. Look for names in bold a the left for our recommendations. |
| Thumbnail Only | Guba.com Skinvideo.com thumbnailednewsgroups.com ucache.com diiva.com newscat.com usenetbinaries.com xusenet.com |
There are a number of companies that sit somewhere between a standard NNTP newsgroup service that requires PC Newsreader software, and a regular HTML website with pictures and movies. Almost all have full uncensored access. Most of these services are pretty good, but we have some favorites: Skinvideo stands out for us - rock solid reliable, unlimited downloads, very usable web interface, and good retention and completion. They're on on Recommend Usenet Service list. Note: Usenetbinaries advertises as free, but you actually have to pay to use their service (they tell you after you create an account.) Seems a bit shady to us. |
| Pathlink | Newsguy.com nntpjunkie.com |
Pathlink is another grandfather in the usenet provider industry. They were one of the first to implement spam filters (Spam Hippo) , but had not been keeping up with the industry in retention, speed, and uptime. In August they did another big upgrade to greatly increase retention, but like the upgrade they did the prior year, they lost a lot of usenet messages and did a poor job of keeping their users informed. But things seem to be looking up for Newsguy, and they haven't had any major server hiccups for a number of months.
We especially like their Express metered usenet account and have added it back into the preferred list at the top of this page. Pathlink provides both the backend and front-end when purchased through the Newsguy site. |
| News-Service
Q - B |
Eurofeeds.com news-service.com usenext.de |
A Netherlands based usenet provider - Binary retention 14 - 25 days depending on group. From the reports we've gotten from users, their completion is quite good, which is no surprise since Amsterdam is pretty much the biggest single hub for usenet peering. Speed is pretty good if you're in Europe, but can be a bit slow from the US. We also recommend Giganews for European users because they have Amsterdam based hub too. |
| Newsfeeds | newsfeeds.com newsgroups.com usenet.com alibis.com usenet-access.com |
Newsfeeds has been in the usenet industry for quite a while, and at one time had many, many resellers. Recently they reduced the number of resellers and seem to concentrate on selling newsgroup access through their 3 primary websites: newsfeeds.com, newsgroups.com and usenet.com. Great domain names, but reports from users are that the service is only so-so with occasional speed and reliability problems. Some users have reported that their retention claims are over-rated as well, although we haven't confirmed that. Apparently, Newsfeeds is no longer taking new accounts - we are not sure what this means to their existing customers. |
| NNTP Server | nntpserver.com ultrafeed.com teranews.com bubbanews.com onlynews.com sonicnews.com ultrafeed.com valuenews.com yottanews.com |
NNTP Server has a large number of resellers, but is not on the same scale as Giganews or Newshosting. They run their own custom news server software and sometimes deviate from standards causing problems with some newsreader software. They are known for good completion rates, which was a differentiator a couple years ago, but now almost everyone have high completion rates. The industry seems to have standardize on $15 a month for unlimited, so you might as well go with someone well established.
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| smsusenet | smsusenet.com download2day.com xsnews.com |
We don't know much about this service - we're researching it... |
| CW | newsreader.com active-news.com athenanews.com newsrazor.com usenetmoster.com |
All 5 of these usenet services point to the same news server farm, with newsreader.com being the primary site. We do know they've been around a long time as a second tier player - at least 5 years. Some people have have had good luck with the newsgroup providers that use CW's servers, while others have reported to us that binary newsgroups like the MP3 group are often very incomplete or have short retention. |
| Astraweb | Astraweb.com | One of the few remaining independents that has been able to keep up with the retention of the big guys. They're moving in on 200 days of retention, and they claim they have disk space to eventually hold 240. So far they've been true to their word. We're still trying to find out more about the company itself and until then we're reserving judgement, but they've really addressed their past reliability problems and look like they may become a major player. |
| Independent / Other |
altopia.com |
With a few exceptions, most of these are relatively small usenet companies. With less capital and monthly income to fall back on, they have less redundancy in their equipment and connections, and have a hard time recovering from crashes and hardware failures. There are a few companies that stand out because they have better funding or have been around for a long time:
Altopia has been around for eons, and while they aren't much for retention of multipart binaries, their pricing is somewhat attractive and they've been pretty reliable over the past 2 or 3 years. |
| Key to abbreviations: Q = Quality / Reliability (A,B,C) C = Completion (Highest = 99%, High = 95%+, Med = 90%) R = Retention (Highest = 200+ days, High = 140+ days, Med = 100+ days) S = Speed (Subjective, based mostly on server loads, not backbone connections) |
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