Usenet.Farm came out of beta in the Fall of 2015. Since then they have built up a following of Usenet fans based on some unique features like account sharing. They have their own server farm to pull the first 30 days of retention. That’s where things turn sideways as it’s unclear where the remaining retention is sourced. We looked in their FAQ section but the information is not there. We would expect the company to be transparent in this respect.
The service is located in the Netherlands and offers a number of features to protect users privacy. From payment via Bitcoin to tokenized accounts, their focus on privacy is appreciated in the community. UsenetFarm allows account sharing on some plans. They couple this with a fair-use policy to ensure that no users pass 4-6 TB a month without severe speed limitations. We prefer truly unlimited plans.
On the flip side, there are some areas where Usenet.Farm falls behind the competition. These are mainly binary retention, capped downloads, and extra features like client software, search capabilities, and VPN access. Let’s start with retention. Usenet.Farm is behind the times and only holds around 30 days of binary retention on their own servers. Their retention is low compared to 12+ years from leading providers like Newshosting (US) and Eweka (EU).
Usenet Farm Pricing and Discounts
You have three account options to choose between. The main difference is the download speed, download limits, and ability to share access with a friend. Account sharing is unique for Usenet.Farm as there aren’t many Usenet providers that allow users to share unlimited accounts. You can typically share block plans since they include a set amount of usage, but unlimited plans normally have restrictions that forbid users from sharing access with others.
Usenet.Farm takes a different approach. They allow account sharing with the “To the Max” plan. To make sure users don’t burn up too much bandwidth they have a fair-use policy that caps high speed downloads at 6 TB a month. It won’t actually cut you off but rather it will reduce your download speed to 24 MB/s for the rest of the month. The “To The Max” plan allows up to two IP addresses to connect to the service at the same time. This means you can split the 40 connections and share the account with a friend.
Here’s a quick summary of each of the newsgroup plans:
- Stingy – 12.5 MB/s speed cap, no account sharing – € 4,95
- To the Max – unlimited speed to 6 TB usage, account sharing – € 7,95
- Block – 500 GB Usenet block with 50 connections – € 15,00
These are retail prices. The Usenet.Farm team is not currently offering any discounts. We will keep you up to date on the latest Usenet deals with weekly updates to our list. We anticipate that Usenet Farm will offer a promotion closer to the holidays. In the meantime you can sign up for a 10 GB free Usenet trial by clicking on the “Start your free trial” button on their homepage and entering your email address. It does not require any additional information to get started with the trial.
Regardless of which plan you choose, the payment options include Bitcoin, PayPal, and iDeal. We recommend using Bitcoin for a higher level of anonymity. Doing so will limit the amount of information gathered during the payment process. While Paypal and iDeal require full name and country, Bitcoin payments do not require these details.
Usenet.Farm Servers
As we mentioned earlier, Usenet Farm hosts about 30 days of articles locally. From there it’s less clear as to the source and quality of their retention. We’ve had a number of people ask how this works and the answer is not made clear on their website. We prefer a provider that is transparent in presenting the source of their retention. This alone would leave us questioning the validity of the service. Here is what we do know about their servers.
Usenet Farm NNTP server addresses:
- Default – news.usenet.farm
- IPv4 only – news4.usenet.farm
- EU server – news.usenetfarm.eu
We recommend using the default news.usenet.farm address unless you have issues. Remember that you can set up to 40 connections on Stingy and To the Max plans. Block users can use up to 50 connections. Even if you can use 40-50 connections you will only want to set your newsreader to use the minimum needed to meet your desired download speed. Setting more will tax your computer and slow everything down.
Conclusion
The Usenet Farm team has their own approach. If you are looking for a service with the option to share accounts, then Usenet.Farm is one of the only options on the market. With that said, there are some limits. The first being retention. They also have speed and download restrictions. We think the fair-use limit on the “To the Max” plan is quite fair at 6 TB a month. We have heard that support requests can take awhile at times. This is something that will concern some users more than others. If you’re tech savvy then the service is workable but still expensive at € 7,95 a month with a limit. We recommend comparing our list of top Usenet providers to find the best fit.