Easynews Review
- 14 Days Free Trial
- 5330 Days Retention
- Free VPN Included
- Founded 1998
Easynews Overview
Stars:
Free Trial:
14 Days / 50 GB
Features:
5330 Days Retention
150 GB/month
Free VPN Access
Unlimited NNTP Access
Payment:
Credit Card, PayPal
Stars:
Free Trial:
- 14 Days / 50 GB
Pros (+):
- 5330 Days Retention
- 150 GB/month
- Unlimited NNTP Access
- Free VPN Access
Cost:
$9.99/mo
- Best Overall Usenet Interface
- Downloading not required to open files
- User-friendly
- 150GB/mo Limit
Best Overall Usenet Interface
Downloading not required to open files
User-friendly
150GB/mo Limit
Disclaimer – Prices may change frequently and despite our best efforts it is possible that some may be out of date. Please visit the provider’s official website for exact pricing.
Easynews Overview
For those unfamiliar with Easynews, we want to be clear up front — Easynews is different from the general class of Usenet service providers. Easynews provides a unique web-based Usenet interface that allows you to access Usenet from any web browser. You can even access files from Usenet on your mobile device. While you can also use Easynews with any of your favorite newsreaders, you do not need to download any software at all. The Easynews interface has everything you need to search for and retrieve articles from Usenet. It even allows you to play and preview files directly inside your browser instead of having to download them.
In contrast, other Usenet providers require you to find, download, and configure a 3rd party newsreader to use with their Usenet service. In nearly every case, you will be restricted to accessing Usenet on desktop only. Additionally, you are restricted to downloading articles which, if you are a heavy user, will eventually (and sometimes quickly) create issues with hard drive space.
For a more traditional Usenet experience, Easynews customers can still use their favorite newsreaders. Just plug in the server and port info, and use Easynews as a traditional NNTP provider.
But what makes Easynews unique is the fact that you can get started without downloading any additional software. The web interface has everything you need to search and download from Usenet.
Retention
Retention is a strong suit for Easynews, which provides some of the best retention rates in the industry. Easynews currently provides 5330 days of binary retention. Their retention is rolling, meaning it keeps growing every day and no articles posted to its servers expire or get deleted.
In comparison, many other providers who manage their own Usenet servers provide limited retention and save files for only a few months. Once a file has been stored for the maximum number of retention days, the provider discards it from its servers completely. This severely limits the amount of articles you have access to and is a big reason why we’d recommend going with Easynews over other providers that offer less retention.
Since Easynews automatically pre-converts many of the files you want to download, we were not surprised to get a 100% completion rate during our tests. Easynews officially claims a 99%+ completion rate. All-in-all, the outstanding retention and completion rates make Easynews stand out in a crowded field of Usenet providers.
Speed
One of Easynews’ best features is a technology called NNTP header compression. This compresses article headers so that they download much faster—up to 100 times faster than Usenet providers that do not provide header compression. Using a Google Fiber connection, we put Easynews to the test using their 50 GB free trial. Our high speed connection meant that any bottlenecks or slowdowns we might have experienced when testing almost certainly reflect the download speed of Easynews. Having said that, we did not hit any bottlenecks during our download tests. Our average download speed through the Easynews https-secured web interface was very fast, on par with other Tier-1 Usenet providers. We experienced plenty of speed to access very large files with no interruptions.
Another unique feature of Easynews is that you don’t always need to download files onto your hard drive in order to access them. Instead of downloading the file to your computer, you can interact with all kinds of media files right in your browser. That includes thumbnail file previews and actually being able to play content directly from inside your web browser. If you do want to download Usenet files from Easynews and store them locally, you can certainly do that as well. We experienced high download speeds both through the web interface and through NNTP downloads using a 3rd-party newsreader.
Privacy and Security
Getting Started
Getting started with Usenet can be a daunting task. Most users who take the time to get the hang of using a modern newsreader will eventually find it is no more complicated than a typical email client. Easynews, however, has no learning curve and is perfect for those new to Usenet because the only thing you need is a web browser like Chrome or Firefox.
If you decide to sign up for Easynews (keep in mind all plans come with a 14 day/50 GB free trial), you will be redirected to a ‘Basic Search’ interface, which is the most simplistic version of the Easynews interface and perfect for Usenet beginners. Here, you will see a search bar — Just type in your search term then click the Search button. From there, Easynews will very quickly return everything it can find on Usenet related to your query.
To make it even easier, you can choose to have it return only video, audio, or image files. Thumbnail previews are also included with video and image files to help you scan through the results and find the specific files you want. Finally, once you have what you’re looking for, you can access it immediately in your browser or download it to your hard drive hard drive. Simple, right?
The reason it’s so easy-to-use is because the service does all of the heavy lifting for you. Easynews allows you to search across all newsgroups on all Usenet servers with the click of one button rather than having to download thousands of groups and searching them manually to find binary or text articles. Similarly, you can skip the steps of downloading and converting the RAR and PAR files of the files you are looking for because Easynews proactively converts those files into their final format for you, saving you yet another step.
We’ve covered the basics of getting started here, but for those who have used Usenet for a long time and are looking to see what else out there that is new and exciting, you should know that Easynews has one of the most powerful Usenet search engines available with many useful filters (listed below) to give you a fully customizable Usenet experience. For example, you can personalize numerous aspects of the interface such as: setting your own search parameters, changing the way your search results are displayed, configuring the way indexes for browsing are displayed, and instructing Easynews how to handle multiple files to queue for download.
Price
Bottom Line
To put it simply, Easynews is easy to use. The extremely user-friendly interface makes browsing and downloading from Usenet a pleasure on all of your devices. And you won’t need to download any software to get started.
Download files from Usenet to your hard drive, or access them immediately on any desktop or mobile device. Even if you’re a long-time Usenet user, you should give Easynews a try – its Usenet interface is the most powerful and customizable available anywhere on the market.
Start a free trial today and test the service for yourself with 50 GB of free access. Easynews provides a truly unique Usenet experience that we recommend to all Usenet customers.
