On Fri, 6 Oct 1995 09:06:15 -0600, Elliott Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I've been desperately looking for an automated mailing system to handle > sending out my e-zine and the sub/unsub requests. Anyway, I'm interested > in setting up a listserv, but the information I found at www.lsoft.com > makes the whole thing look a little too costly for my needs. Does anyone > have any recommendations about a less expensive method? LSOFT's "EASE basic" service is available for less than $1.50 per day, which is probably the best bang-for-the-buck among mailing-list providers. Have you considered some alternative methods, i.e., "publishing" your E-zine on a WWW-page, and letting the subscribers use a full Internet Service Provider to access it? Have you considered writing software to emulate the functionality of LISTSERV? Recently, when somebody requested a "free lunch", the following reply was posted to LSTOWN-L (note: GIT == Georgia Institute of Technology): | Date: Thu, 7 Sep 1995 00:04:46 +0200 | From: Eric Thomas <[log in to unmask]> | | Several providers have recently stopped their mailing list services and | there are a lot of orphaned lists looking for a new home. We've seen with | the GIT lists that there's a lot less free lunches than people who want | one, and I'm afraid I don't see this changing. More and more universities | seem to be asking people to please find a new home for their list, if not | right now then within the next 3-6 months. And, with a few exceptions, | the corporate sites will only sponsor lists if it somehow fits their | corporate profile. I can see car manufacturers sponsoring the Chevy | lovers list, but not a list about guinea pigs. There's actually a lot of | opportunities in that direction, but most corporations are still Internet | shy, and people don't really know where to turn. Besides, since it isn't | commonplace yet, you have to be prepared to spend a lot of energy selling | your idea to the company's PR department. | | 18 months ago I thought that the advent of the workstation versions of | LISTSERV would change that situation, but apparently the universities | were equally concerned about manpower as they were with mainframe cycles | (and I can't really blame them). Above all, there has been a tremendous | change in the accessibility of Internet services in the past couple | years. Two years ago, if you were leading a small charitable group and | needed a mailing list, or even (in some areas) a simple e-mail account, | the local university was pretty much your only option. Nowadays you can | buy Internet access for $20/month from dozens of service providers, so | the universities probably don't feel the same level of pressure to | provide lists for free, or at very low rates. And I can assure you that | university lawyers spend a great deal of time being concerned about | whether the university might not be construed as abusing its tax | privileges and/or subsidies competing with local businesses (apparently | you can get sued for that and lose a lot of money). So, I think the free | lunches from the universities are coming to an end. There will be plenty | of free lunches to be had from the corporate world, but you'll have to go | and get them, and argue your case fiercely, whereas the universities | would usually set up the list with minimal hassle. There will always be | lists run by people on their workstations with "look the other way" | approval from their employers, but the beneficiaries tend to be very | quiet and not invite others in on the deal :-) I think people are just | going to have to get used to the fact that the lists aren't free to run, | and that someone has got to pay for them one way or the other. This has | worked for e-mail accounts, I don't see any reason it wouldn't work for | mailing lists as long as the charges are in line with what your average | non-technical user is willing to pay for the service. L-Soft will open | its own "hobby list" service very soon, and hopefully rescue all the | lists that Netcom, Webcom and others won't run any longer. Yes, the | prices will be lower than for our business service :-) There's a lot more | orphaned lists now than when GIT dropped out, we have better technology | at our disposal, and we've invested in a big delivery server for unrelated | reasons, all in all we're operating on a larger scale with lower costs.