First, if you really don't have a few bucks extra a month, then yes, you should go with the cheapest mass-market hosting company you can find. We're not really the same kind of business as they are (more on that below), and we will never be able to compete with them on price, though we come close for some needs. We know that even if something is "worth a bit more", that is irrelevant if you don't have a bit more to spend. We wish you luck.

On the other hand, there are some good reasons to consider EE. Some of them will even save you money that you might have spent in other ways (helpfully marked with $ signs in the list below), possibly offsetting any cost difference with cheap mass-market hosts, while others produce less tangible but still important benefits for you and your world.

1. Not a faceless corporate beast: We're actual human beings, working together in a democratic cooperative. You can reach us, we're friendly, we're flexible, and we're nonprofit people as much as we are techies. We are vigorously anti-corporate, we don't wear suits except for weddings and funerals, and we like anybody that's stickin' it to The Man. That's you!

2. ($) Responsive, helpful tech support: This is a requisite claim for any service provider, but really, it's true -- here's one representative unsolicited comment from an EE client: "You've made what could have been a stressful transition incredibly easy, and your customer service has far exceeded my expectations. Thanks again." Not only do we respond to most questions within a few business hours, and urgent problems often within a few minutes, but the people you're reaching are the people who wrote this website and the people who run the servers and fix the bugs and add new features and handle the billing and set up new accounts. We've also done a lot of tech consulting for small-to-midsized nonprofits, as part of tech underground. So we wear many hats, and we can pull answers out of any of those hats, and there's no canned responses or run-arounds or transfers to another department or trained monkeys reading from a prepared troubleshooting script. This will save you time, and time = money, as you may appreciate if you've called Verio or AT&T for help lately.

3. Just plain solid services: Our services work, all the time, or at least 99.7% of the time, with no lost data or flakiness. All user data is backed up every night and can be restored for several days. Of course there is the occasional problem with a particular service or even a whole server, but we fix things quickly, and we're only getting better at it. We always notify all affected users before any scheduled maintenance, and you can see our complete system history.

4. ($) Email filtered for viruses and spam: Spam-filtering restores the usefulness of email, saving you time and possibly adding years to your life thanks to a decrease in vengeful rages. Other ISPs are increasingly offering it, but few are as accurate as ours. And there aren't many ISPs that also clean viruses from all incoming mail. How many hours of downtime, and how many hundreds of dollars in consultant's fees, is one nasty virus infection worth? (We recommend not relying exclusively on our virus protection, and you can increasingly get viruses and spyware through channels other than infected email, but it's a great first line of defense for orgs where desktop antivirus software "may occasionally get out of date".)

5. Better list service: Especially in the case of email list service, our system is much more full-featured and better suited to certain kinds of organizations (those needing a "branded" look, delegation of responsibility to different administrators, many small lists, good Web-based archiving and information sharing, even integration with their own live membership database) than most of the list services out there. We use a different underlying list management package than most other providers, and we've also done a lot of modifications to make it work better for our clients.

6. ($) Here to stay, and not for sale: We're doing this because we love it, not to make money. We have a great business plan that allows us to support ourselves (on modest nonprofit-type salaries) and to maintain and improve our systems without borrowing money or having to answer to investors. We will never suddenly disappear overnight with all your data (some of our current clients have had this experience), and we will never sell out to some faceless corporate beast (see #1) for a fat paycheck, either of which situations can end up costing you hassle and money. We really don't understand people who operate like that.

7. Sliding scale rates: We charge on a sliding scale, so the richer orgs who are paying a bit more than they might elsewhere are in effect subsidizing the service of poorer orgs and individuals. Some of our users are also charged on a donation basis, so everyone is subsidizing them. We hope thereby to contribute to the general diversity and robustness of the progressive nonprofit/arts/community-focused sector.

8. Donations to related projects: 20% of our annual surplus is donated to various services and groups that serve us or that work towards sustainable resource usage in the tech industry (which historically has not lived up to its reputation as a "clean industry") . See where your money goes in the Fees section. (What's not included here is what we each do with our own personal incomes, to the extent that any remains after paying the bills. Whatever we can spare for political causes goes back to some of the same groups that are our clients, for social justice, the environment, electoral reform, etc.)

9. The people's economy: As you're probably aware if you're reading this, money that goes to small or locally-owned businesses gets pumped back into the same economy that sustains the lower four fifths of our society, whereas money that goes to the big companies mostly just fattens a few corporate executives and investors. We have no executives or investors, and we spend our money whenever possible at locally-owned, non-chain businesses.

10. Collaboration with nonprofit and progressive tech community: We have close ties to and collaborate with a huge number of related groups and individuals. So, by supporting us, you also support the development of excellent open-source software and services for you and your sector, and we can also connect you with related services through our network or provide early access to the benefits of this work. You reap both immediate and long-term benefits.
    
     
    

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