CompuServe (
CompuServe Information Service, also known by its acronym
CIS) was the first major commercial
online service in the
United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as
AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates. Since the purchase of CompuServe's Information Services Division by AOL, it has operated as an
online service provider and an
Internet service provider. The original CompuServe Information Service, later rebranded as CompuServe Classic, was shut down July 1, 2009. Compuserve 2000 then followed suit in 2011. The newer version of the service, CompuServe Dialer, continues to operate as an
internet portal.