Sharon Tucci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 1. Many web site hosting companies include majordomo lists as > part of their web hosting packages. (Although they generally put > caps on the number of subscribers you can have, many do not > include message count. So this generally works best for discussion lists) My experience (and I've been doing a lot of hunting and comparing in the last year and a half, for various reasons) is that just about anybody who charges for Majordomo lists -- or gives you a limited amount of Majordomo usage as part of a flat-rate hosting combo -- will eventually charge you too much, or limit you too severely. I don't think that's their intention to begin with, but the model they seem to have in mind is SNOOZE-L with a few messages per week sent to a couple of dozen recipients. As soon as you hit them with a REAL list by our standards -- 1,000-10,000 members and a dozen or more messages per day -- they think Whoa, this is EXTREME, better surcharge it. That's why I'm focusing more on virtual or dedicated servers that simply let you install your OWN software - whatever that is - and just charge you for disk space (in the case of virtual) and bandwidth (both). I am not saying this solution is for everybody, but I am saying that when you reach the point that free service hosting begins to chafe, you should consider the alternative. > 2. Maintenance has to be done to the server and you also should > have an excellent knowledge of the OS being used. So, if you have > more time than money, a dedicated server or a coop server may be > an option to consider. Most of the server companies I've seen will give you a Linux or FreeBSD machine (real or virtual) that has the scripts and stuff set up to make it ALMOST self-maintaining. You don't really need to be an OS hound to survive, although in a co-op situation with multiple lists hosted, probably somebody should be a bit of a geek. I'm sure any number of wizards would take on that minimal maintenance in exchange for free hosting of THEIR list, of course, with the other eight or ten list managers paying the freight. > 3. Make sure you remember about backups. When I was using list > hosting services, this was the major problem I ran into time and > again. Something would happen and my subscriber list would get > zeroed. Then I'd find out that the last backup done was 2-5 weeks > previously. Not good if your subscriber base is growing quickly! Agreed! But this can happen anywhere, whether it's your server or someone else's. The only difference is whether you get to feel like an idiot YOURSELF or spend a lot of energy yelling at someone else for being the idiot. :) After a lot of experimentation I have settled on a daily WHO of all my lists, requested from (and mailed back to) a separate offsite machine. The advantage to this is that it works no matter where the lists themselves are hosted (as long as WHO is supported in some fashion) - I never have to hunt for disks or tapes or try to remember which format something is in. I do the same thing with CONFIGs. A special Subject string and Procmail lets me store this in its own IMAP folder for when I need to consult it. > 4. Connectivity is another issue. When I was investigating > somewhere to colocate a server with, this was something at the > top of my list. At the time I put our first server online, over > my assorted lists, I was averaging 30-40 new subscribers an hour. > So every hour of downtime meant that many lost subscribers. Yes, > I know many of the budget colocation companies claim 99% or > higher connectivity. But is that really the case? If any of you > do decide to put your own server online, before going forward, > use one of the monitoring services (there are a number of free > ones) to see what percentage of time their own site and/or one of > their client's sites are online. This is a great idea! But there are a couple of points to be added. * While your own server might experience occasional network outages, so do the "big boys" - the difference is that they generally don't bother to tell you about it. :) And for every minute of pingable TCP/IP uptime they add because of redundant ISPs etc, you can generally subtract at least a minute of sheer server overload as too many people bombard a free service. When a potential subscriber can't visit to join, it scarcely matters whether it was because of a bad router or a swamped host process. The joy of having your own server is knowing that, as long as the packets are flowing, you have the horsepower to do your work. * If new subscribers are being added via email, then you can be down for 10 minutes, or even an hour, and not really lose anybody, because their SMTP server will retry. (Instead of getting 30-40 subscribers per hour you will get zero this hour, then 60-80 the next hour, to catch up...) The only time a net outage really hurts is when you were using a Web based interface for everything (and the Web host in question is down). > 5. Bandwidth charges are another issue... > WOW. Perfect example for this. In the past 2 days, I've given > quotes to 3 people for list hosting that ALL had 100 GB+ per > month requirements. Do the math if they wanted to put their own > server online. Right, but the question is whether these examples ought to drive the economic decision for the average list manager or group of managers. In order to push 100GB/month you need to be sending 3MB per day to 1,000 members, which is characteristic of big binaries; or 300K per day to 10,000 members, which means a runaway discussion zoo like POSTCARD2; or 30K/day to 100,000 members, i.e., a corporate announcement list. All of these SHOULD pay their freight charges, as far as I am concerned. (In the big-binaries case, they should probably not even be a mailing list, except to send out URLs of the FTP or Web archives where the binaries are stored.) A more typical profile for an active discussion list would be 1,000 users at 30K/day/user. That's 1GB per month, or $5/mo per list as you keep adding them. > 5. SPAM & Security issue. For those of you who have never > experienced running your own server who decide to put one online, > it will open up a whole new assortment of things you'll need to > deal with... The biggest spam issue is making sure that none of your _partners_ misbehaves and starts using your mailer for spamming. An external hosting service takes care of this worry for you - that's the good news; the bad news is that an external hosting service constantly HAS to take care of this worry, because spammers are always joining and trying to use them, so that they often hover on the edge of Net blacklisting unless they take pains to stay lovey-dovey with the cabal, and there's nothing you can do about it except watch the carnage. Your own private list co-op, on the other hand, can keep its nose clean and never worry about the wars. You do need to make sure that your mailer is set up securely, but this is done "out of the box" by most hosting services, and there are copious resources online to help you if you decide to do it yourself. > Anyhow, just my two cents. It's two cents of pure gold Sharon. :) I just want to make sure that the distinction between the issues that a truly high volume list hosting service deals with, versus what a small co-op of 5-10 managers would encounter, is made clear. The bigger you get, the more self-reliant, resource-conscious, and Net-savvy you need to be -- but also the more you can _afford_ to be.
