I run listserv because it is easy to use out of the box and I can educate the end users fairly easily with the product. I don't do anything fancy with the product. Just lots of lists one way and discussion. I can set a list up in about 120 seconds and get the end user list owner trained and ready to go with two emails. It's a very stable product, reasonably inexpensive, and easy to administer.
Facebook has a lot of hourglassing going on.
Twitter goes down every few days.
Sharepoint is a administration intense. If you want to do it right that is all you should do, but the cost gets up there with the licensing.
And for us we need to be able to manage the identity of our organization via all forms of electronic communication. Yahoo and Gmail while easy to use present some lack of brand control issues to us. With the list software we can manage that in a consistent manner.
From: LISTSERV list owners' forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eric Thomas
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 2:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Listserv customers
> I run two fairly busy but very small mailing lists from a LISTSERV Lite Free Edition server on a virtual Linux.
> This costs me less for the virtual Linux instance per month than hosting one list at EASE-HOME sadly.
I'm surprised that you can get a virtual open-ported Linux instance for so little, but that is absolutely fine with me. EASE Home is a service I introduced in 1995 to help people whose hobby lists had gotten stranded. It makes a little money every year, very little nowadays because we have never increased prices since 1995 whereas all other "real life" costs have increased. I am sorry that I cannot decrease prices. This has never been meant as a revenue generator. For very large lists we can make deals that were not envisioned in the static price list, but this remains a side service that gets piped into an ordering system meant for $500+ orders.
> I did ask sales for a quote for a real licence of LISTSERV Lite and it was so high I couldn't use. You'd need to be a fairly large business to afford
And the sad thing is that every time a sales rep hits the "book order" button on a 10-list Lite sale for $500, we lose money (statistically - in your case we probably wouldn't). The average anno 2012 Lite 10 buyer doesn't know what an IP address might be and will tag our support people for far more than the profit we could ever derive from Lite 10. This license is actually being withdrawn 05/31. This is the price I have to pay for not going "offshore" I guess... Most of my support people have worked for L-Soft 10+ years because I don't want to run a "hire and fire" operation, and I just can't provide 10h+ of senior setup help and not lose money on a $500 sale. The problem is not capacity pricing in itself, but rather the fact that the price point typically attracts people who should be hosting because they have no IT department and in fact no IT person. I also have no interest in taking a loss to help semi-technical people (no offense meant) perform the heroic feat of installing a system on their PC when they could be hosting at a lower cost to all parties and increased service levels. I am not a SaaS fan but at the lowest end, it is definitely the right model unless you happen to be an IT professional.
If anyone who already knows how to install run LISTSERV wants to buy a Lite 10 license after 05/31... Contact me and I'll make it happen at the $500 rate.
> luckily for us we are only domestic / social use so the Free Edition works well for us.
No problem at all. As long as people don't spam or do something illegal or promote one skin color over another, I don't mind what the Free Edition is used for, now that we have to withdraw the commercial version.
> From the corporate angle - I work for a Fortune 500 and the big push is to cut down on email that is pushed to you.
They've been saying that for over 5 years though :) No, wait, they said this in 1997 when "push" was invented by Pointcast. Then Pointcast bought LISTSERV to solve the problem that they could not effectively use their push technology to reach their customers :) But Pointcast went bankrupt anyway, so I guess it is partially my fault? Then it went silent for around 10 years, and then e-mail was dead again ;-)
> We've moved to web based "pull" collaboration - IBM's Connections product is like an internal Facebook with a lot more capability.
The problem is that nobody has time to log in to these things. They were saying this in 1997 already, and back then I was saying, "What's the last time you checked pointsoflight.com?" and the journalist would go, "Well..." And after the interview, "What is pointsoflight.com by the way?" - "I have no idea. I overheard that name around the water cooler, I really have no idea. It was a test to see if you would say, 'Points of Light? What's that? I'm pretty sure I'm not on that web forum!' And of course you didn't know because we're on so many of these things nowadays, how can we even remember which ones we have an account on, let alone check them daily???" :)
> Other companies are using MS Sharepoint
Do you happen to know how I can make MS "partner" sales people stop calling me to offer Sharepoint customization services? :) Oh, and Sharepoint recruitment services, too :)
Eric
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