I don't see a mention of the nearly $7000 per year that you are charging for
the Listserv software for NT. Shouldn't that have been a part of your
message? Personally I feel that I was burned by beta testing your product
without knowing its cost.
Listserv users might also be interested in a MAIL product from the folks
below that is scheduled to include a listserv-like sub-set for Windows NT.
Their costs for the combined product appear to be very reasonable.
WWW and Mail Services http://www.net-shopper.co.uk
Brian Dorricott mailto:[log in to unmask]
London, UK +44 181 673 7422
Laurence Bates - [log in to unmask]
>Much as I dislike "pre-announcing" things and spoiling the good work our
>marketing folks are putting in press releases and other formal
>announcements, I'd rather do that than leave problems unsolved. With all
>the GIT lists now "in the street" and some PSU lists soon to be looking
>for a new home as well, I'd like to mention two new options for hosting
>the lists that may look attractive to some of you. These are commercial
>options however, so if you have positively no money the best is to post a
>description of the list to LSTSRV-L. There have been many such postings
>in the past couple days and I think it would be best if the list owners
>would try to spread them over several days because when I saw all these
>LSTSRV-L messages I thought "Oh no, not another spam!" and I might have
>deleted everything unread if LISTSERV were only a peripheral duty :-)
>
>Anyway the first option is to pay someone to host your list on a machine
>with LISTSERV. ClarkNet has had such a service for a couple months now
>(write to [log in to unmask] for more info), and L-Soft is about to open a
>list hosting and management service as well. Technically we are ready to
>start hosting lists, we just have a couple of loose ends to tighten on
>the marketing side. The price list for business and academic lists is
>ready, but we're still trying to figure out how to price "personal" lists
>(lists paid by an individual and not used for any commercial or
>profit-making purpose). It seems other list providers have various prices
>depending on whether or not you're buying other services from them and
>which salesman you happen to talk to. Another issue is billing. We're not
>currently able to accept credit cards, and registering for that is
>proving to be about as easy as swimming across the Atlantic. In general,
>incredible though it may seem, in the US it is extremely difficult to do
>business unless you've already been doing business for many years. So
>we're used to having to fly overseas and back just to buy the paper, so
>to speak, and I don't doubt that we'll succeed eventually, but in a world
>where insurance companies cancel your flood and fire insurance because
>they find out you have employees in other states, there's no telling what
>complications may arise and how long it will take to solve that problem.
>Naturally it is quite expensive to mail monthly invoices and then collect
>and deposit the checks. Currently we're billing on a quarterly basis to
>minimize the impact of administrative costs.
>
>Anyway the current prices are between $30-50/month for the kinds of lists
>that have been mentioned recently. The lowest price I've ever seen from
>small club-like or non-profit outfits was $10/month. I imagine that when
>our survey of our competitors' pricing is over there will be a new
>category somewhat in between for smaller personal lists, but I can't
>promise anything. For more information, write to [log in to unmask]
>
>Another option for the more academic lists would be to run the lists on
>the Windows NT version of LISTSERV, which is finished and working, even
>though it hasn't been formally released yet. The advantage of Windows NT
>is that in a typical office setup you're likely to find a number of
>"workgroup servers" which may run either NT, OS/2 or Windows for
>Workgroups. If they run WfW, there will usually be plans to upgrade to
>NT. Unless the server is low on memory, you can install LISTSERV on it
>without having to buy any additional hardware. In most universities there
>are central mail servers where thousands of PC mail users send their mail
>using POP3 or whatever. You can have the LISTSERV PC send the mail to
>these central servers, and you won't have to worry about learning unix or
>fixing /etc/sendmail.cf. While you *should* ask the managers of the
>central mail servers for permission, it seems that they usually have no
>objection as long as you're talking about small lists. These are machines
>that typically handle 10-100k mail deliveries daily. They don't do
>anything else and have no angry users complaining about slow
>compilations. Finally, it's not very difficult to justify upgrades to
>management. They're not all that expensive to start with, and management
>usually thinks more e-mail and less paper mail is good.
>
>So if you have a workgroup server and a campus mail server, you can get
>an entry-level Windows NT license for $500/year (academic) including
>maintenance, support and new versions. This will let you run one huge
>list, 5 small ones, or anything in between ("small" = 150 subscribers or
>less). In fact you may be able to share the license with other
>administrative lists to split the costs, and once the PC people realize
>what LISTSERV can do for them, they should have no problem justifying a
>license upgrade.
>
> Eric
>
>
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