Buzzard News is now closed for business but we wanted to break down exactly what they offered and maybe we could get to the bottom of why they closed down for good. When we pulled them up, we discovered that they offered all types of price plans. This is a feature that we do not see with every Usenet provider and it is a good one to have. As well, they had a 99% completion rate and up to 8 simultaneous connections available. They did only have one server located in the United States and only 82, 000 newsgroups available, but this is not the worst that we have seen. We broke it down further for you to see what they really offered when they were still in business and maybe get some reasoning behind their departure.
Retention: They offered a 120 day binary retention and a 360 day text retention. Some of the competitors we have listed on the home page offer a lot more than Buzzard News did when they were still in business.
Anonymity: As far as we could see, they did not offer SSL. This could be one of the reasons that they went out of business. With today’s importance of a secure server, due to hackers and such, not offering one can turn customers away.
Pricing: The great thing about Buzzard news was that they offered four different plan types: metered, monthly, block and auto reloading accounts. The one thing that I did not like about their price plans though was the fact that you had to pay for speed. The more money you put into your plan, the more speed you received. A good feature that they did offer when they were still in business was a two month free subscription for new users. Some of the plans we found were:
– unlimited – $14.95/month
– 1.5GB/day – $6.95/month
– 75 GB/mo. – $17.95/month
As you can see, they offered some very affordable plans and many to choose from. I dislike being limited and I enjoy many options. Buzzard had many options available and this is a great feature to provide.
Speed: Speed came with what kind of plan you bought. The more the plan cost, the more connections you received. They only had one server farm which was located in the United States and it did not offer SSL. If your service provider limits Usenet users during peak hours, not providing SSL can actually slow down your connection speed. They had 30 different connections but only 8 simultaneous connection available.
Features: Some of the other features that we came across for Buzzard News was their 99% completion rate, 48, 000 available newsgroups, and e-mail support.
Recommendation:
I can not recommend Buzzard news to anyone because it is not open any longer. If they were still open, I would probably not recommend them to anyone as they do not offer live support, a sufficient amount of newsgroups or a very high retention. I guess that is why Buzzard News went out of business to begin with.
