Review of UsenetBucket, a Dutch Usenet provider
I have been a happy Giganews customer for a very long time and recommend the service still. It is a premium Usenet service on the other hand that is on the expensive end subscription-wise.
New to Usenet? Check out our Usenet Starter Guide here.
You do get great stuff on top of Usenet access though, a VPN account for example with any of the unlimited plans but not everyone needs that.
I began to look into alternatives and the one that I found to be suitable for my needs is UsenetBucket (affiliate link). The service operates from the Netherlands, does not restrict access to specific countries, and offers only unlimited traffic plans.
The three plans it offers share all the same features except for bandwidth and the maximum number of connections:
- Basic Bucket for €2.95 per month (about 3.70) is capped at 10 Mbit per second and 25 connections.
- Comfort Bucket for €4.95 per month (about 6.20) is capped at 40 Mbit per second and 25 connections
- Ultimate Bucket for €12.95 per month (about 16.20) is capped at 400 Mbit per second and 50 connections.
You can get unlimited Usenet access for €2.95 per month if you don't mind being capped to 10 Mbit per second.
There is also a free trial option available which gets you seven days of free access or 5 Gigabyte of traffic whichever you hit faster.
All plans support the same features that you come to expect from a Usenet provider. All support SSL encryption and when asked about logging, USenetBucket told me that they don't log what users do. What they log is the download total which they display in the user's dashboard on the official website.
As far as retention goes, it is currently 1100 days which means more than three years of posts to the Usenet.
The company is an XsNews reseller which offers better rates. The smallest package you can subscribe to costs €3.70 for instance over at XsNews and that is capped to 5 Mbit and 4 connections.
Once you subscribe to an account you receive login information for the dashboard in an email. It arrived minutes after signing up. You need to visit the dashboard at least once as it lists the Usenet server and user account information that you use in the client program on your device.
I have used UsenetBucket with my favorite Usenet client Newsbin for some time now and have not noticed any issues, slow downs or accessibility issues so far.
As far as speed is concerned, downloads are constantly capped at 11,1 Mbit instead of the advertised 10 Mbit the smallest plan ships with.
I did not notice any issues with broken or pulled files either, all downloads were complete regardless of age or type.
While it is quite the change coming from a truly unlimited plan that had no data transfer cap, I don't really mind having to wait longer before files get downloaded.
I have contacted support twice so far and received replies quickly both times and satisfactory answers.
Conclusion
If I compare what I pay now to what I paid Giganews, I can only come to the conclusion that UsenetBucket offers a fantastic deal for the money they charge, especially for the two smaller accounts. I pay a fifth of what I paid before and while I'm capped to 10 Mbit instead of unlimited traffic and get only 1100 days of retention instead of double that, it is not something that I miss as I made barely use of that in the past.
If you are looking for a cheap but reliable Usenet provider, this is the one that I recommend currently.
Now you: Use a different provider? Share the who and why in the comments below.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.