AOL is reliable and very easy to use. I don't know about the cheap part, but it's a bene a good while since I had anything to do with AOL.
I used to work with a company that provided a service on AOL and as a result, I had an OH account for AOL. In conversation with one of the irritating people that were continually banned from the service, but kept popping back up, I asked the guy how he managed to crack so many accounts.
He acknowledged having several PW phishing proggies at his disposal and then laughingly told me he hardly ever used them any more.
It seems that he didn't have to. Al he had to do was go into a few chat rooms. He had a proggie that listed all the SNs present in each room. The he had a simple one that tested each SN to see if the password was: password. He claimed to get about 10% success rate with that.
My point has nothing to do with all of that, really. That was just for illustration. The reason that AOL is so popular is that almost anyone can use it; even people who shouldn't. I can't count the number of times I've just looked at people at work and guessed their passwords. They should make personal security a mandatory class in grade school or something.