Is Free USENET too Good to Be True

XS USENET recently changed the terms of its free accounts, making it worth asking if free USENET services are really too good to be true. The former deal that was given by XS USENET to its free users included a 400-day retention period, a 1 Mbps download speed with no limits on how much you could download and SSL encryption. The plan has been changed in several significant ways. The speed remains the same but you can only download 25 GB of content on the free program. You also only get 10 days of retention on the service and, notably, there is no SSL encryption on your connection.

Free Services

At one point, it was the norm to get free USENET service with your ISPs other services. This has gone out of fashion over the years, with most ISPs dropping their free services and those who retain them giving very limited levels of service to their clients. This has led to the advent of paid USENET services, which do have quite a few advantages over the free ones.

By and large, most of the large ISPs canceled their USENET access packages by 2009. In cases where they do remain, there are usually severe restrictions, such as an absence of binaries or very low retention times. For most ISPs, the cost-benefit analysis of offering free USENET service comes up solidly against their interests and, because of that, you’re not likely to get any USENET access from your ISP anymore.

Free Usenet Trials

While the best USENET services out there charge for access, many of them offer free trials so that you can see if USENET service is for you. If you want to take a look at completely free USENET access, you can take a look at our list of value providers at http://usenetreviewz.com/free-usenet/.

If you want to take a look at paid USENET services that offer free trials, you’ll find a list of them at http://usenetreviewz.com/free-usenet/usenet-trials/. Some of these free trial services are rather generous and include the biggest names in USENET, including Giganews, UsenetServer and Usenet.net.

There are quite a few reasons that your ISP and other services are unable to offer USENET access for free anymore. Primary among them is the amount of bandwidth that USENET users tend to use. While there may be free USENET services that come and go, paid USENET has become the norm and comes with a lot of privacy enhancing and experience improving features for the price.