The site allowed users to create their own mailing lists and sign up for membership.

The website provided archives of the messages as well as list management functionality.

When Martin Roscheisen joined as CEO in March 1998, FindMail was incorporated (in June 1998) and shifted its focus towards hosting email groups.

In October 1998, with 1.2 million users (growing at 12,000 users per day), Excite offered to acquire the company for $40m but the company decided instead to take $5.1 million more investment money from Sequoia Capital.

In September 1999, eGroups started work on an initial public offering but instead merged with ONElist, with 13 million users exchanging more than 1.3 billion email messages each month.