Microsoft’s Exchange Online Plan 1 is email-only and is 4/month per user. There are probably cheaper IMAP providers, but EO1 is full exchange: mail, global address book, calendars, etc.

You are not the only person who just uses Subscriptions. I do, too.

And I am considering using rss to track channel updates instead of Subscriptions so I can see what’s new without going to YouTube directly. Less likely to get hit by distractions.

I’ve been using NewsBlur (and syncing with Reeder on mobile) ever since Google killed their RSS service. It supports parsing some non-RSS sites and services, as well.

Agreed! I was super-active on a few small bulletin boards until about 2003. I definitely miss the smaller, targeted community and sense of place.