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Summary: Giganews is a popular provider that
operates a good service, but once we looked past
their eye popping binary retention (240 days) we
were disappointed. Giganews accounts are expensive,
yet offer less capacity & features than other
providers. In fact they ranked near the bottom in
our side-by-side comparisons of metered and
unlimited providers.
Giganews was faster than some, but slower than
others, when we compared different speed benchmarks.
We retrieved the Giganews newsgroup list at a rate
of 1,493 newsgroups per second, which was faster
than UsenetServer (1,261 per sec) but slower than
NewsGuy (1,845 per sec). Their connection limit (10)
was not competitive with other providers, but if you
pay an extra $5/month fee the limit can be increased
to 20 connections.
Completion rates were solid at 99+%, and their 240
days of multi-part binary retention is tops among
all providers, but the extra retention may come at a
cost. Giganews accounts cost 2x more & come with
half the download capacity of many providers, so
users will have to decide if the extra retention is
worth those trade offs.
Giganews accounts were consistently more expensive
across the board. As an example NewsGuy offers a 50
GB / 32 connection account with SSL for as little as
$8.33 month, while Giganews offers a 35 GB / 10
connection account for $12.99 month ($17.99 month
with SSL). This applies to their unlimited accounts
where Giganews charges $24.99 month, compared to
cheaper providers like NNTPjunkie ($12.50 month) and
Newshosting ($12.95 month). It's also important to
note that Giganews does not roll over unused
download capacity within their metered accounts as
many providers now do, so if you don't use your GB's
you'll lose them.
Aside from their download accelerator, Giganews did
not offer much in the way of free account extras. As
an example, SSL encryption is only available if you
pay an additional $5/month fee. Their support staff
can only be reached by email, no phone support, but
their replies were quick & helpful with an average
response time of 1hr 10min. One other item of note,
there is a waiting period for account activations
(+1hr), and trial accounts do not receive posting
access, which is inconvenient if you'd like to test
that area of their service before joining. |
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