Fastusenet.org Usenet News Service Review – Best Newsgroup Service Provider for 2012

For a long time we have held Giganews in high regard.  That hasn’t changed much, they are still a really good service.  The problem with Giganews is they have kind of lost sight of what it is they are actually doing (in our opinion) and become this bloat service provider that has been sticking quasi-useful/useless services into their offering to justify the fact that they are 3x more expensive than some of their competition.

Ok so that sounded like a slam.  Well it is in a way.  Keep in mind I think their usenet service is great, I just think things like VyperVPN, DumpTruck, Giganews Accelerator and Mimo are not very useful.  DumpTruck is their latest offering and frankly its nothing I don’t already have through drop box for free (or on the cheap).  Why would I want to switch?  I already have a ton of apps that integrate with dropbox on my phone, tablets, computer, and virtually everything else I use and none of those apps will work with “DumpTruck”.  Even if they did, I’m already setup with Dropbox and it would be a major pain in the butt to go switching it all over now.  VyperVPN is almost useless. I can setup my own VPN and I don’t need to come from the UK or Washington DC or change my IP address every ten minutes so unless I was a message board troll that got banned a lot… or a criminal using stolen credit cards to order stuff I really wouldn’t need to come from a different IP that looked like I was coming from a different country or state.

No… what I really want is a usenet news service that does just that.  I don’t want to pay for a ton of other services. I want unlimited downloads, fast speed, reliability and good retention.  So after Giganews decided to end our service agreement I went on the hunt for something that fit the bill.

I found exactly what I was looking for at http://www.fastusenet.org and I didn’t have to pay 35 bucks a month.  No I didn’t get sucked into one of those “Pay 9.99 for the first month” deals.  It’s just a straight shooting $9.99 a month for the following:

• Unlimited Download
• 50 Secure Connections
• Web/Mobile Gateways
• Custom Newsreader w/Search (Really nice value add, as I pay for Newsleecher now and it’s a monthly or yearly fee)
• 1200 Days of Retention (Giganews has over 1300 but you know what… so what, 1200 is fine and they are all adding days as they go.  You can’t have 1300 days of retention if you started 1200 days ago you get me?)

To get this level of service (about) on Giganews you would have to pay $35 a month (Diamond is the only package that has 50 connections w/unlimited downloads) (you would get it for 24.95 for the first 3 months, then it would bounce up).  Sure you get the “extra” services VyperVPN, Mimo, and the rest I mentioned above “free” with the deal, but you know what… I don’t care.  I want a news group service I don’t want all that other crap.

I looked for a few hours for the best deal I could find on the Internet.  I found it. Fastusenet.org is the real deal and I’m getting the fastest speed my Internet connection can handle sustained.  For $9.99 I highly recommend it.

In the interest of full disclosure I want to throw this in here:  We have been using Giganews for MANY years (at least 5).  We have never paid for their service.  We did a trade out where we put them in the advertising rotation and they gave us their service.  They decided to drop us because we would not become an affiliate.  We can’t be an affiliate because it’s not proper.  We review services we have to be impartial. This article might sound like sour grapes, but it’s not.  Giganews is a great service.  In fact I would go as far as saying they are the Cadillac of Newsgroup services.  What I am saying is this little Hyundai Elantra is 1/3 the price and gets twice the gas milage. I’m good with the Hyundai the economy sucks right now.  I’m paying Fastusenet.org full price for their service via credit card.  I’ve never talked with any of their staff.

The reason I wrote this article is because I actually had a need for a news service.  I went out and did the research and now I’m writing about it.  I would not have been able to do this if Giganews hadn’t cut us off so a big thanks to them for giving me another project.