What I do not like is the missing communication by Agoracom.

If they burried the PM service, they just can tell us. But at the moment I have the impression that they just do not care about it/us. When did they stop PM? 7 month ago...
Bad service - or bad communication. Yes, we do not pay for it, but someone is paying Agoracom.

Stockhouse is one alternative, but I would have no problem to give one of my mail addresses to a selected group here - but no, not to all of them :-). And spam filters are working nicely if needed.