Notes on mailing list/online forum hosting

by Gerald Oskoboiny

I'm interested in the business model of sites that offer free mailing list hosting/archiving. The best of these that I have seen (as of Mar 2000) is eGroups, which is also one of the biggest as far as I know.

More details later... in the meantime, here's a list of related links:

Related articles:

• Byte: Web-Based Groupware Offers Alternative to NNTP
• Salon: Bringing mailing lists to the masses

List hosts:

• egroups.com: extremely well done, usable, good marketing, seems to have good tech
• Mailbase: very, very good. (sample: rdf-dev)
• onelist.com
• topica.com
• remarq.com (also: amazon-branded version)
• Sparklist: endorsed by Nielsen
• listbot.com: being shut down by microsoft on aug 6, 2001
• geocrawler.com
• talkway.com
• webcrossing.com
• elistx.com (sample)
• ListQuest
• listhost.net

Not list hosting, but related:

• metaboards/metagroups.com idea
• shmop.net/org stuff
• Gmane: lists to Usenet feeds, etc.
• mail-list.com: interesting project; archive only; URLs sometimes break
• mailgate.org: similar to mail-list.com?
• MARC archives: very nice, source code doesn't seem to be available; management seems very good. (sample: new-httpd)
• supernews.com (NNTP feeds)
• dejanews.com (Usenet/webboards)
• takeitoffline.com: interesting idea, webboards only? See relevant discussion
• Article on large email/marketing companies
• epinions.com
• experts-exchange.com
• list-tips.com
• Jakob Nielsen on list services and related stuff

Last modified: $Date: 2002/11/08 07:17:16 $
Gerald Oskoboiny, <gerald@impressive.net>