The best usenet provider 2017
A year ago I wrote about how to get the perfect provider setup. My conclusion was to have multiple providers. While that advice still applies, my setup has changed slightly.
As before I will include some affiliate links, but I will also provide a non affiliate link for those that want it. The providers I have selected are the providers I personally use. Money earned from affiliate links or not has no impact on the providers chosen.
A bit of background
For many years I was a Giganews Diamond user, just over a year ago I decided to investigate if there was a more cost effective solution. My experience over the last year has enabled me to refine my recommendations.
Why do I need more than 1 provider?
The only way to have a robust usenet setup is to use multiple backbones. Looking for a usenet provider can be daunting, with seemingly hundreds of possibilities. The reality is there are hundreds of usenet resellers, but only a handful of backbones.
Utilising multiple backbones is important because content that is missing from one backbone may be found on another backbone. It’s not infallible though. It’s always possible that content is missing from all backbones, it’s just less likely.
That sounds expensive.
To ensure you have access to as many backbones as possible, while also being cost effective, you will need to use block accounts. The key is to use an unlimited account on one backbone and have block accounts to fill in missing articles from other backbones.
For maximum cost effectiveness you will get the best prices if you are paying a year in advance. This is a big investment if you aren’t happy, so you need to be careful. I have used the services I suggest for over a year, so I’m confident in the recommendations.
My Recommendations
My recommendation is for a single unlimited account, and 2 block accounts, in total this will give you access to 5–6 backbones.
- theCubeNet — A highwinds reseller that offers 3337+ days of retention. Currently available for $71.99/year.
Affiliate link | None affiliate link - usenet.farm — This is an interesting addition, it has its own 30 day retention backbone (less likely to be targeted by DMCA requests than the major backbones). In addition to their own backbone they have 1000+ days retention on the XSNews and Highwinds backbones for articles not on their servers.
Affiliate link | None affiliate link - free-usenet.com — This one alone gives you access to 5 backbones, though they don’t disclose which ones. It states 3100+days of retention. It currently has an offer of buy 1 block account get 1 for free, so is especially good value.
Affiliate link| None affiliate link
Obviously it depends how much you download, but my recommendation would be to get 500GB block accounts. From usenet.farm that will cost you €15.00. From free-usenet it will cost you $15, but at the moment they have an offer on where you will get 2 x 500GB blocks for that.
So what will it actually cost me
For reference, at current levels my block accounts look like they will last me another 5–10 years! but lets say you need to get them on a yearly basis.
At current exchange rates it will cost you a total of $104.55/yr (£80.04) which works out to just $8.71/mo (£6.66)
Conclusion
Much the same as last year, the conclusion is the best usenet provider is a combination of multiple providers. This year however I have decreased what I pay even more. At less than a third of what I used to pay for Giganews Diamond, I couldn’t be happier. None of my recommendions store content logs (just the amount of traffic). All of them accept paypal and bitcoin. If any of that is important to you.
One caveat is that Giganews Diamond also includes VPN access. If that is important to you I have been using Private Internet Access for the last year and they have been fantastic. At $39.95/year they are great value for money. Using PIA will change the costs to $144.50/yr (£110.56) or $12.04/mo (£9.21) which is still mind blowing value.
