Choosing the right newsgroup server is just as important as choosing an ISP. Each may have certain strengths and features, but it all depends on what you’re in need of that narrows the playing field and ultimately your options. Chances are that casual surfers require less features and speed than dedicated users. The same applies for newsgroup providers. Nowadays, there are a slew of providers that offer some great service and features, but may not cater to certain users. Defining what your needs are first will greatly reduce your chances of being overwhelmed and can help you truly find a provider that you can rely on. We’ve provided the Seven Server Solutions as a guide to help you decide for yourself on what’s most important to you while searching out for the perfect Usenet provider.

Doing a search for free Usenet tends to bring up quite a number of results. What they deliver on the other hand, is usually sub-par and generally delivers lower than any expectations that can be had for both service and content. The best advice to understand is that you get what you pay for. Free Usenet often delivers a less than adequate number of groups, extremely slow bandwidth that can take you an enormously long time to even download headers and incomplete messages comparative to a paid service. With a paid service, especially nowadays, gives you special privileges to almost any newsgroup available with many Usenet providers adding groups all the time with high amounts of retention, enabling you to find what you’re looking for fast with more connections.

We would love to recommend worthwhile free Usenet, but in this arena, we have yet to find one that we feel would appeal even to the most general of folk. Couple that with the fact that Usenet has actually dropped in price recently, it makes the option of paid services even more appealing than dealing with the searching – and eventual disappointment of seeking and finding a free alternative.

There is another option that can be researched which involves your ISP. Depending on your ISP, you may or may not already have access to Usenet service that is available to you part of your internet plan. To make sure, contact your ISP to be sure that they do indeed offer Usenet service, as again recently, some ISPs have debatably chosen to drop Usenet access to its customers. However, there are still some that offer this service to its users. With that being said, be sure to understand that with most, there are caps on downloads per month and unanimously, a very little amount of retention (the amount of days that content is held) on the filtered amount of groups that they offer.

It would be our advice that if you do have access to your ISPs Usenet service, that you make it a secondary account to a paid service as it could reduce some costs of having a specialized paid Usenet provider who may charge by caps or usage. By allowing the ISP related Usenet account to handle the functions of new, popular groups, and the paid service handling the older, specialized groups can balance your overall usage and costs involved. The rest of this advice is focused on obtaining a paid service that’s right just for your needs and which factors are the biggest players in choosing something confidently that works for you.

Often times, because of a great deal or plan or through the rush of obtaining a Usenet provider sometimes users fail to discover where the server of their Usenet provider resides. This is an important issue not to oversight as you could possibly be taking more of your valuable time going through Newsgroups if the server is in a distant location from you. Just because that Usenet is decentralized and is also part of a global community the account that you have with a Usenet provider still only grants you access to their servers, wherever they may be.

Nowadays, there are more and more Usenet providers that offer connections to servers that are native to their location. A difference of a different state or a nearby country may have a minimal effect, but if you’re using a server that is across the ocean, you may not be able to reach the total amount of bandwidth (the speed in which you are able to retrieve messages from Usenet) that may be available to you. The longer the distance, the longer it will take messages getting to you. If you are from the US, then choose a provider that offers US based servers. If you are from somewhere in England, choose one throughout Europe. Again, “short distances” of a few hundred miles probably will not make a difference, but a few thousand miles certainly will.

Just because you may be getting a great deal on a Usenet provider does not mean that you are getting good service. We have yet to see a Usenet provider that throughout their years of experience providing newsgroups to its customers not have an issue with connections, accounts and server issues. It’s important that when these problems happen, you can count on being able in getting a response and solution to your problems. When choosing a provider, be sure that they offer some kind of means of contacting them. If they have a phone number or an email, use it to ask them a question on their services or plans.

Even more of a motivator to test support with a Usenet provider is to ask if they have a free trial service available. Usually not advertised, this is a good virtual hand-shaking way of being able to gauge customer support as well as testing the service before making the commitment of purchasing one of their plans. With that being said, we do not think it is fair that you gauge a provider whether or not they offer free trials. Just as much as you would not want them to take advantage of you, it is not wise to try to take advantage of them either. Instead, an example of the many ways you have available as a customer to be sure that the service you join is not one that you’ll run from in a short amount of time. There are a growing number of providers that offer excellent customer support.

Be sure to check out our reviews which details our own rankings on customer support with many of the providers listed.

If you are going to have a paid service for Usenet and you have a high-speed internet connection, you may want to check the bandwidth and amount of connections certain plans and providers offer. The bandwidth will dictate how fast you will be able to obtain headers and messages from newsgroups. This is always gauged by how fast you can download and not on upload speeds to a newsgroup as more times than not your ISP caps you considerably lower on your upload than your download. By choosing a provider that allows a good amount of bandwidth will considerably reduce time in order to view and/or download message from newsgroups.

Another way to increase the most amount of bandwidth, many providers offers plans that allow certain amounts of simultaneous connections. Each connection is set to download at a certain rate. The more connections, the greater the speed in which you will be able to download on Usenet. When searching for a provider, or a particular plan, be sure to note the available bandwidth and/or the amount of simultaneous connections that mach the available bandwidth you have access to by your ISP.

 One of the more frustrating sides of getting a Usenet provider that is not carefully researched is the retention rate that is available to the subscribed newsgroups. Just after you have everything configured, you find out that you are missing either parts or entirety of particular subjects or messages. One of the most important things to look for is the amount of retention that a Usenet provider offers in its plans and service. This is something that is usually highly advertised on many providers website. Nowadays, a respectable amount of retention is about 60-90 days for binary files and 120-240 for text files.

To ensure that you are able to see a good amount of messages within a newsgroup, look for a Usenet provider that ensures your interests are met. Also, if you are serious about Usenet and find yourself able to download a great deal from newsgroups, pay attention to caps they offer on downloading per month/day. The amount of some plans that are not unlimited, are set to expire for the month once a quota is reached for that amount. Consider what fits best for your budget that also meets what falls under your desired amount of content per month. Also, with the amount of retention the provider has may allow you to download the same messages after the quota has expired.

 More and more, Usenet providers are beginning to offer SSL encrypted connections with their services. With an SSL connection, users are able to ensure that the information passed through Usenet is kept with the user’s privacy in mind. For peace of mind, consider the option of SSL encryption available through a provider. Especially if you use Usenet at work, you want to be able to be sure that what you are sending and receiving is not open to prying eyes. A best form of security of privacy is the option SSL has to offer, especially for wireless users as well. Information is becoming easier for the bad guys to intercept and decipher, and with an encrypted connection, SSL is a good option if you are in anyway sharing any type of connection.

Going back to what we started with, you get what you pay for. However, this does not mean that you should be paying a huge amount for access to Usenet. With so many providers available nowadays, prices are competitive for featured services. Be sure of what you are paying for when choosing a provider. Using all of the other six pieces of advice, use these to measure if the services you are to receive are indeed competitive if not cheaper than many other providers that offer something similar or equal. It is our recommendation that you find a provider that is reputable and falls under our top tier of providers we have reviewed and monitor that offer extraordinary services at reasonable prices to match any budget. You have an overwhelming amount of options that charges its users different amounts for different services. Know when looking for a provider, there is no “best”. Some offer more than others and some are more exclusive with features that may or may not work best for your particular needs. It is truly on what you want and how you want it that will determine what is best for you. We hope by following these guidelines, it will take out a lot of the guess work and allow you to be clear on what will be the best provider by your defined needs.

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