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Summary: Supernews is a good newsgroup
provider that has been around for some time,
unfortunately their accounts are expensive & missing
several important features. Based on our evaluations
there are other providers that are a better overall
value.
We downloaded Supernews' newsgroup list at a rate of
1,557 groups per second, which was slower than most
providers (NNTPjunkie 1,971 groups per sec,
Newsgroupdirect 1,848 per sec). Uploading a 3 MB
file through Supernews took an acceptable 76
seconds, while a 3 MB file download took 18 sec on
their servers, which put them on par with NewsGuy,
NNTPjunkie, UsenetServer & Giganews.
Supernews had the lowest multi-part binary retention
at 110 days. This may give you enough time if you
have one of their unlimited download accounts, but
could be a problem with their metered accounts,
which at 25 GB offer a fraction of the download
capacity you'll find with other providers (Newsdemon
- 50 GB, NewsGuy - 50 GB, Newsgroupdirect - 60 GB).
Other providers promote a 99+% completion rate at
their service, but at the time of this review
Supernews did not completion at their website, and
we can only speculate as to why it's not discussed
at their site.
Account options are pricey & limited at Supernews.
Their 25 GB / $12.99 account is restricted to 5
connections, deletes unused download capacity, and
along with Giganews (25 GB / $12.99) is the most
expensive metered account we found. Their unlimited
pricing ($15.99) is more attractive, but this
account option is limited to 8 connections and does
not include SSL encryption. If you'd like to add SSL
& increase connections to 15, the price jumps to
$19.99 month. In our opinion you're better off with
an unlimited provider like NNTPjunkie ($12.50) or
UsenetServer ($13.32)
Supernews does not offer any of the free account
extras that you'll find at other providers. If
you're looking for freebies such as SSL, unused
capacity rollover, NNTP & Web access, newsgroup
search, email, etc. you'll need to find it with
other metered & unlimited providers we've reviewed.
Supernews' support staff can only be reached by
email & their site states that it can take up to
48hr to receive a reply. Our support inquiry was
answered in 2hr. |
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