Like everyone, we were taken by surprise when Yahoo announced they will be shutting down Yahoo Groups in just a few short weeks. Groups.io runs a world-class email groups service and has quickly been recognized as the best migration option for Yahoo Groups users. We are flattered by this recognition, and have been overwhelmed with traffic and group transfer requests as a result. We have spent the days since Yahoo's announcement diligently adding new server capacity and starting to work through an unprecedented number of transfer requests.

Fortunately, Groups.io has always been built to scale and already has a user base in excess of 1 million users today. In order to accommodate this major growth phase while maintaining our excellent service levels and industry-leading functionality, we will need to adjust our pricing as follows. As of 9AM Pacific Time, October 22:

1. The annual fee for premium groups is $20/month or $220/year. (Premium groups in existence before that date are grandfathered in at their current fee.)

2. As is already the case, all transferred groups are required to be premium groups for the first year. The $220 transfer fee counts for the premium fee, so once having paid the transfer fee, transferred groups are exempt from paying the premium fee for the first year.

3. All new basic (non-premium) groups are required to be premium groups if they have, or acquire, more than 500 members or more than 3 subgroups. (Basic groups in existence before October 22 at 9AM remain unlimited for now; however, next year we will be looking at readjusting our pricing structure and moving away from a flat rate fee and towards a more equitable per-member cost. We will keep you posted about all of this as we work through the process.)

As you know, Yahoo has given us incredibly short deadlines. New content cannot be uploaded to Yahoo Groups after October 28 and all user generated content will be deleted from Yahoo Groups on December 14. To ensure that we have enough time to export all data off of Yahoo, we have set a deadline of midnight, December 1 Pacific Time for all new transfer requests to be received. Assuming that Yahoo doesn’t have any server issues, we believe that we’ll be able to export all data out of Yahoo before they delete all the data. However, in order to maintain a high level of service to our existing customers, we cannot import groups into our service as fast as we can export them out of Yahoo. There may be some delay before we can import all groups. If you wish to have your transfer prioritized, the group transfer page allows you to pay an additional one-time fee of $200 (this will go live at 9AM Pacific Time, October 22).

We welcome the opportunity to elevate the groups email experience for Yahoo users. We are committed to making the migration process as seamless as possible. Thank you for choosing Groups.io.

Thanks, Mark