Why Pinboard.in Is My Favorite Alternative Bookmarking Service to Delicious

I just switch to Pinboard from delicious. I really like that I'll be able to search and archive the content of my bookmarks. Here's what it took for me to get started:

- Exported bookmarks from delicious

- Signed up and paid $25 for Pinboard (their non-archiving service is cheaper)

- Imported in to Pinboard (took a few hours because they are experiencing a lot of traffic right now)

- Removed my browser plugins for delicious and replaced with Pinboard bookmarklets

Unless I'm mistaken doesn't Diigo.com do all of these with a free account even?

It baffles me that people want to pay for something that is widely available for free.

My friend and I have been working on a new bookmarking service - http://favilous.com - we are free, we are currently working on allowing users to import delicious bookmarks. If you want a free alternative to pinboard then we feel our site is a good match.

I guess it all depends on how valuable the service is to you. For me, the one-time signup fee seems minimal for the value I get from a service that I use nearly every day. I've used many other bookmarking services, some of which have already disappeared like Gnolia. Pinboard is very stable, faster than Delicious, and the developers respond to requests quickly. I have no connection with Pinboard other than as a happy customer, but I regularly recommend the service and think it is worth paying for.

I use Pinboard to help collect data for many of my research projects and the archiving capability ($25/ year) is great retrieving pages that have already disappeared, that I want to go back and reference. Yes, I could use other free services and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine (which is amazing), but the speed, support, and reliability of Pinboard make it easily worth the cost. I prefer that services I rely on have a sustainable business model. Charging a very reasonable fee to provide quality service seems like a good model to me.