Astraweb is based out of Singapore and is a Tier 1 provider meaning that they run their own servers. In most cases, it’s best that you choose to go with a Tier 1 provider unless you get Usenet for free from your ISP.

In our testing, there service has been fast and excellent. They have a free trial and while its limited to just 24 hours and your have to put down a deposit, it should nonetheless be enough time to be able to test what you need.

Astraweb has 675 days of binary retention and has been keeping close behind market leader Giganews. They offer 20 concurrent connections available with their unlimited account and 50 connections when you use a block account.

Newservers are located in both the USA and Europe so if you are located in either continent your connections speeds should be fast, in our test we were able to max out the 12 Mb connection giving about an average throughput of 1.5 MB/s. At no time in our testing did we find Astraweb to be slow.

Astraweb’s customer service appears to be good, we subscribed for the free trial and then unsubscribed 12 hours later with no issues and the response was prompt. No live chat but nonetheless the response was quick and professional.

In addition to unlimted plans, Astraweb offers block accounts which means you pay for a set quantity of bandwidth. This maybe a good option if you only occasionally use Usenet, however if you are power user then you will probably want the inexpensive $11/month unlimited plan. Block plans mean no time limits so no worries about your account / bandwidth disappearing.

We had no issues with completion as our tests indicated that binary files were not missing part so 99%+ appears to be accurate.

In summary, we highly recommend Astraweb for their variety of plans, excellent service and high retention. Definitely take advantage of their $11 a month / special if you are considering their service and remember you do have a 24 hour free trial just in case you aren’t happy.

Astraweb is at the top of our Best Usenet Providers list

Servers

The address of standard server is news.usenetserver.com. This server supports ports 119, 23, 25, 119, 3128, 8000 and 9000. There is also secure server available on the secure.usenetserver.com; it uses secure 256-bit SSL encryption and it is available through the ports 443, 563 or 8080. While talking about number of maximum available connections, 10 are available for High Speed account and maximum of 20 connections for High Speed Plus accounts are provided. Free SSL is available for all the clients, except in 3-day accounts.

Retention and completion

The binary retention is 600 days and the text retention is over two years. The completion rate is 99%.

Pricing

First, let’s mention that they offer very decent free trial option. This free account provides 14 days of service or 10GB of download volume, whichever is used first. The other pricing options are as follows:

• 3 days High-Speed: $3.00
• 3 days High-Speed Plus: $5.00
• 1 month High-Speed Plus Affiliate Special: $10.00
• 1 month High-Speed: $14.95
• 1 month High-Speed Plus: $17.95
• 3 months High-Speed: $39.95
• 3 months High Speed Plus: $47.95

Let’s remind about the fact that High-Speed packages provide 10 and that High-Speed Plus packages provide 20 connections.

Newsgroups

Their server carries 68000 newsgroups; they carry all the official groups that the Internet Software Consortium has created.

Speed

Their servers are connected to the Internet with over 30 gigabits per second of connection capacity. This ensures that they can handle all the posts that come to their servers from usenet.

Support

They have 24/7 customer support line available over the telephone, but additionally, a live chat is also available.

Privacy

Their goal is to keep the personal information of their subscribers as private as possible. That’s why, their servers remove X-trace header and NNTP-posting-host header. With this information removed, it is not possible to identify where the post is posted from.

Recommendation

They appear to be a good choice, and considering the price, they offer very nice deal. For first-time subscribers, we highly recommend the affiliate special package which has excellent price.

Click here for Binverse Special Offers

Binverse Binary Retention

Binverse currently offers around of binary retention and is planning retention increases soon. Check here for current retention levels.

Binverse Pricing

Binverse offers a variety of plans  staring at $8.33 a month for unlimited downloads capped at 1 Mebabit download speed. Prices go to $20/month for unlimited speed download and unlimited quantity.  Check their homepage for details as prices/plans change often. If you sign up for a year, you get a 40% discount or save about 30% by signing up for half the year.

Binverse Free Trial

Binverse has a 14 day unlimited download (at 1 Mbps) Free Trial. Highly Recommended – Click here In addition to the 14 unlimited downloads you can check out their Quantum Leap downloads which are very high speed downloads. You get 5 Gigabytes of Quantum leaps. Also its easy to unsubscribe at the end of your free trial.

Even better, if you don’t want to enter your credit card a 1 gig – no strings attached free trial. Click here for details.

Binverse Coupons

While not strictly a coupon you realize significant savings by signing up for a 6 month or 1 year plan. As Binverse is new to Usenet I believe this will be a Limited Time Offer.

Binverse Speed

Download rates are normally limited to 1 Mbps except when you are in burst mode. Burst mode is limited to 30 GBs a month. Burst mode testing showed that I was able max out my 10 Megabit Verizon FIOS connection. VERY FAST burst mode.

Binverse Security/Anonymity

SSL Connections are built into their Usenet client so your ISP has no idea what you are downloading. All downloads are 100% Anonymous. No server logs maintained.

Binverse Software Details

The Binverse software contains a very nice built in search engine which is a big plus. Also the Binverse software has a chat functionality built in which is interesting. Binverse is also constantly updating their easy to use client program. Check here for the latest client and free trial.

Conclusion

Binverse is an very good service and has our recommendation for users who are new to Usenet. As you get more experienced in Usenet you might want to check out other unlimited download speed provider but then again maybe not as Binverse and their Usenet client makes Usenet easy.

Recommendation

Sign up for their Free Trial and decide yourself. You have nothing to lose as its easy to cancel before you get billed if you are not happy. Remember, Binverse’s big selling point is that they make Usenet easy to use.  Visit Binverse.

Severs

They have 2 server farms, one located in the USA and the other in Europe. Unfortunately, they do not provide the information about server addresses. On the other hand, the listing of available ports is provided. Usually, the user should use ports 119, 23, 25 and 80. On the other hand, if the user is experiencing problems, ports 7000, 8000 and 9000 are available. There are 8-20 simultaneous connections available and they offer free 256-bit SSL encryption. The connections are uncapped, meaning, the user will get the speed that is provided by his or her Internet service provider. They also have the traceroute tool available where the user can detect issues that could affect the connection and download speeds when accessing newsgroups.

Retention and completion

We have already mentioned the great retention times so we’ll not mention that again. The completion is more than 99%.

Support

They have 24/7 customer support available online. Once you enter the support section on their website, you will find forms with multiple options where some of the most common user queries are listed.

Pricing

It appears that recently, they have removed the base plans. They used to have 2 options available: the first being so-called base plans and the second being maximum-plus plans. Once you check the pricing of a first option, you only get the message that no plans are available in this category. The base plans, while existed, offered 8 high-speed connections and one server. The maximum-plus plans offer 20 high-speed connections, 2 serves and SSL encryption. In this plan, the pricing is as follows:

• 25 GB/mo: $10.57
• 50 GB/mo: $12.57
• unlimited: $18.57

Other options

They offer the autorecycling option, which, once it is enabled, offers the renewal of the user’s account once he or she reaches monthly download limit. This will enable the user to continue using the service, but, this also means that the future billing date will be moved. Naturally, this option can be disabled if the user is not interested to use it anymore.

Recommendation

Solid pricing and good retention times makes them worth considering.

Regardless of this fact, you will easily recognize all the needed information about their service. We must also say that great deal of information is provided. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t mind complete translation into the English, although, as we have said, it is not to hard to manage. Let’s check then what do they have the offer.

Servers

Currently, 4 servers (located both in Europe and USA) are available with the following addresses and ports:

• news.ixinews.com (port 119, 443 or 8080)
• europe.ixinews.com (port 119, 443 or 8080)
• ssl.ixinews.com (port 563, 80 or 81)
• ssl-europe.ixinews.com (port 563, 80 or 81)

As you can notice from the above, the ports 563, 80 or 81 are used for servers with SSL (the 256 SSL encryption is available). The maximum of 10 simultaneous connections are available.

Retention and completion

The retention for binary groups is more than 500 days (and growing) and for the text groups is more than 1000 days (growing as well). The completion is over 99%.

Support

They have 0-24 support, seven days a week, but only on French.

Pricing

There are few options available, depending on whether you will use the service for one year or for one month. There is also a test account. If you choose the monthly subscription, the prices are as follows:

• unlimited – $24.99/mo.
• 75 GB/mo. – $19.99/mo.
• 50 GB/mo. – $14.99/mo.
• 25 GB/mo. – $9.99/mo.
• 10 GB/mo. – $5.99/mo.

Further, if you choose the annual subscription, the prices are:

• unlimited – $24.99/mo.
• 200 GB/mo. – $79.99/mo.
• 100 GB/mo. – $49.99/mo.
• 50 GB/mo. – $29.99/mo.
• 25 GB/mo. – $19.99/mo.
• 10 GB/mo. – $8.99/mo.
• 5 GB/mo. – $4.99/mo.

Finally, the test packages have the following prices:

• 5 days – $1.49
• 10 days – $2.99

Let’s also mention that the renewal for the annual subscriptions is manual and for the monthly subscriptions, it is automatic.

Recommendation

They offer very good price retention times as well so they have our recommendation.

As of the date mentioned previously, all non-converted accounts have stopped working. Let’s also mention one fact. On their servers, only 25,000 groups are available with the explanation that „servers that reach 60,000 to 80,000 newsgroups are normally not very well maintained“, which is something we can hardly agree with. Instead, it looks like as an excuse for the low number of groups provided. These groups are grouped into the more than 220 hierarchies. The list of program configuration (most popular included) is available as well.

Servers

Although they have rather big FAQ section, it is hard to believe that there is no information about the servers available, but according the initial description, it is likely they have one server farm located in the Berlin. SSL is optional, but it is available though. It covers not only the authentication, but the entire connection as well.

Retention and completion

If you’re looking for information about retention and completion, you’re in the wrong place. As you have probably assumed, there is no information about either of these.

Pricing

There is only one option that costs 10 EUR per year, including the applicable VAT. There are several payment options as follows:

• ClickandBuy (formerly Firstgate)
• PayPal
• payment by bank transfer to a German bank account of Freie Universität Berlin (for holders of non-German bank accounts, IBAN and BIC are available)

Terms of use

There are some rules to be followed; if not, the subscription will be canceled without prior notice. Some of the main terms are:

• no spam or binaries
• size limit is 100KB
• no third party cancels
• posting of message control is not allowed
• no redistribution of account information

Recommendation

Although not expensive, there are some cheaper providers offering text-only usenet services and the number of groups might turn some potential users as well.

Price

There is only one option which is rather cheap. If you give $10, you’ll get one year of subscription to the text newsgroup access.

Groups

Both filtered and unfiltered access is available. There is no information about the number of newsgroups available, but probably, they offer the access to the majority of the text newsgroups available on usenet.

Server information

There is no information about server address or available ports, but we suppose that there is at least one server farm located in the USA. The SSL encryption is unavailable. There is no information about simultaneous connections as well.

Retention and completion

As with all the other crucial information, there is no information about retention times and completion. We can only be assured that there are no retention times for the binary groups since this is only text newsgroups usenet provider.

Recommendation

If you are only interested in reading the newsgroups and posting the content, we can hardly find better offer than this one so we can definitely recommend them for the text-only usenet access.

Retention and completion

The retention equals 90 days for binary groups and 180 days for text groups. The completion time is more than 99%.

Servers

News server for personal account holders is news.flashnewsgroups.com, located at a data center at 56 Marietta in Atlanta, Georgia. Up to eight simultaneous connections are available. If the user is experiencing slow connection or if there is no connection at all, the user should check the announcement / status of the server. If the server is up, then the traceback should be run.

Pricing

The following pricing options are available:

• unlimited: $14.95/mo.
• 30 GB/mo.: 9.95/mo. or $99.95/yr.
• text only: $4.95/mo. or $44.95/yr.
• 100 GB block – $39.95
• 50 GB block – $21.95

They don’t offer a trial account, but there is money back guarantee where the user can cancel the subscription during the first 30 days. The refund will be credited into the user’s credit card but they will keep $1.00 in order to cover the credit card processing costs.

Misc

If the user is receiving 502 authorization error, it can mean either that the account has expired or the the account itself has been disabled due to excessive downloads. Any account can be upgraded just by logging into the user area.

Security

The SSL is available for free and there is listing provided of the news readers that support SSL. They also give advice to install the SSL enabler that allows to connect any program that does not support SSL to a server that requires encryption.

Recommendation

Certainly, it appears that they offer a decent level of service, but the retention times are rather low, especially for the binary groups.

Retention and completion

The retention equals 160 days for binary groups and 720 days for text groups. The completion time is more than 98%.

Servers

As we have already mentioned, they have one server farm located in the Europe. There are 8-10 simultaneous connections available and the SSL encryption is available; they fully support NNTPS (NNTP over SSL) which is supported on all products and is offered at no additional charge. NNTPS is available at port 563 and at port 600. The server addresses are:

• news.eurofeeds.com
• binaries.eurofeeds.com

Both servers are using port 119.

Pricing

There are two main options available (unlimited traffic and monthly limit), but besides that, there are many sub-options available within these two main options. These are listed in the following lines:

• 200 GB/mo. – 39.00 € a month
• 100 GB/mo. – 23.00 € a month
• 70 GB/mo. – 17.00 € a month
• 50 GB/mo. – 14.00 € a month
• 30 GB/mo. – 10.00 € a month
• 20 GB/mo. – 7.50 € a month
• unlimited (20 Mbps) – 20.95 € a month
• unlimited (12 Mbps) – 16.95 € a month
• unlimited (8 Mbps) – 13.50 € a month
• unlimited (4 Mbps) – 11.95 € a month
• unlimited (1 Mbps) – 8.95 € a month

Free test accounts are not available, but they offer 1GB trial account for €1.50.

Access

Besides the newsreader, the web front end is available through the WebNNTP which is their own standalone download program.

Misc

Their service is anonymous, although they log IP addresses in order to fight spam and abuse of the service. They allow posting, but only after the user has been with them at least one month. This is simply because of the excessive spam / abuse posting privileges.

Recommendation

Although they offer a decent level of service, the lower retention times leads us to consider comparison with some other providers.

Servers

There are 3 servers available, with addresses and available ports as listed:

• news.eternal-september.org (port 119 NNTP, 563 NNTPS)
• reader80.eternal-september.org (port 80)
• reader443.eternal-september.org (port 443 NNTPS)

The number of concurrent connections to the server is limited to 4. Also, there is a server status available online, as well is the graph for current bandwidth utilization.

Retention

Retention is currently

• 2 years for de.
• 160 days for the Big 8
• 130 days for alt.
• 90 days for other hierarchies.

Terms of use

Since they have somehow unique service and as they encourage the user to read the terms of use prior to the registration, let’s say a few words about these terms. If the user does not follow the rules as stated in the terms of use, his or her account will be terminated immediately without prior notice. Let’s list some of the most important rules:

• sender address: the e-mail addresses given in “From:”, “Reply-To:”, and “Sender:” should be from the user and should be valid as well
• spam: no spam is allowed, meaning, it is not allowed to send many identical or nearly identical messages to a large number of groups
• other prohibited actions: it is not allowed to post links to the child pornography, posting against the charter, forging approval headers or cancels and to perform other similar actions
• binaries: it is not allowed to post binary files (for example images, sound files, videos) to any group that is not classified as the binary
• article length: it is not allowed to post messages larger than 1000 KB
• redistribution of account Information: every user is obligated to keep the account information secret and it is not allowed to give that information to the third side.

Recommendation

Certainly, this is very interesting solution for many users only seeking the read/write access and although the retention times are not spectacular, for this price, you can hardly expect more.