Thanks, Isis, for this detailed response, which confirms that I haven't missed any useful list resources in my own research.
Sorry for the delay in responding, by the way, but I'm on Long Island NY, and after Isaias passed directly over us last week we lost our internet connection, and it's still not back almost a week later. I finally dug out a wifi dongle for my main machine here, and am burning through data on my cellular hotspot at an alarming rate!
Bill
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On 03-Aug-20 11:00 PM, isis feral via groups.io wrote:
Bill, I wish I had a good list of providers, or more precisely, a list of good providers, but pretty much every one I've come across has one limitation or another. So I have to decide which limitations are least likely to be a problem for the people in my groups.
For the groups with a lot of people with disabilities that make technology difficult for them, I've had to hold my nose and go to Google Groups, because it's one of the only options that allows manual adding of members. Dealing with invites may seem easy for many, but it's not for everyone, and I've not been able to get a couple of people into my Gio groups because they just can't get through that process.
Otherwise I tend to still prefer Groups.io. I stay away from Yahoo Groups altogether now, because the lack of digest option and archives is a deal breaker. I've also worked with some Mailman lists that were provided by people who had accounts with various providers, but because of the cost have seen some of them go by the wayside when people ran out of money, and then all the archives and work we shared were nuked (reminiscent of Yahoo). I helped with one Mailman groups that was provided as a favor by a friend to a friend, and there we've ended up being a bit at the mercy of someone else's whims. There are various political groups that provide list services, but I would only go there if everyone in the group is aligned with the specific politics of the provider, which doesn't happen all that often.
I know there were other options some years back when I was looking for alternatives, and for the most part it seemed that they would not likely survive, so I didn't even try. Most of them I was never able to find again. Other email list providers have been trying to match social media platforms, which I have zero interest in, but there seem to be more and more of those around.
Sorry, no comprehensive list here, but those have been my thoughts about the various alternatives I've researched over the years for the communities that I work with, who tend to have specific needs that I have to accommodate.
Isis
