Monthly service offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth to business customers…
“Now that Yahoo is facing a $45 billion unsolicited takeover offer from Microsoft, we can expect to see a flurry of actions designed to help Yahoo expand its business and possibly fend off Redmond — or at least show shareholders its intent to do so…”
San Francisco — In a first for the web hosting industry, Yahoo Inc. said on Wednesday it is offering unlimited Web site storage and data transfers for small-business Web site owners for a flat rate of $11.95 per month, eliminating key inhibitors to broader usage that gives small businesses unlimited room to grow online.
Yahoo, the largest U.S. provider of Web hosting services for small businesses online, counts more than 1.5 million customers, which one analyst said represents about one-third of U.S. small businesses with Web sites.
“This will really increase usage,” said Sanjeev Aggarwal, vice president of infrastructure and software at AMI Research, a market research firm that specializes in how small businesses use information technology.
“Among an estimated 6 million U.S. small businesses, about 75 percent have some form of Web presence, according to AMI.”
Subscribers to the new service, priced at $11.95 a month, are free to take up as much disk space on Yahoo’s servers as they need to transfer data, store information or secure e-mail without fear of shrinking capacity restrictions, the company said.
The new plan offers small businesses a simple, inexpensive solution for launching a new business or growing an existing one online, while eliminating worries about bandwidth and storage limits. With more than 1.5 million customers, Yahoo! Small Business is one of the world’s leading providers of reliable, secure hosting services for small businesses.
“The service is only available in the U.S. from Yahoo’s Small Business division and costs $11.95 per month.”
For a decade, Yahoo and other providers of Web site hosting services have charged for network usage and data storage, creating a trade-off for many small businesses that stood to pay hefty additional sums the more successful their sites became.
While a lesser-known aspect of Yahoo’s business, small business hosting services support many of the store-fronts that are featured on eBay Inc. and Amazon.com, the Web’s two top e-commerce sites for small businesses.
“To our knowledge, this is a first in the industry,” says Guy Yalif, director of Web hosting products at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! “We think this is important because it frees our small business hosting customers to focus on growing their business with unlimited room to grow online.”
“Previously, Yahoo had charged companies $12 a month for 5GB of disk space and 200GB of bandwidth per month; $20 a month for 10GB disk space and 400GB of bandwidth; and $40 for 20GB disk space and 500GB bandwidth, said Yalif.”
“The company’s 1.5 million small business customers will soon receive instructions on how to migrate to the new model, Yalif said.”
Yalif said the company has enough capacity to handle the increasing requirements, though he declined to provide details. Yalif said the service is not designed to be a “hard drive” in the sky but rather a mechanism to help the small business users quickly get in line with growing online demands. He said Yahoo will monitor the service to prevent any illegal activities.
“It is probably more expensive now to manage this bandwidth usage, data storage and the billing related to that, than it is to offer these services on an unlimited basis,” Aggarwal said.
“Yahoo! understands that small business owners face a number of obstacles to success, and we do not think that the growth of their online presence should be one of them. By going unlimited, Yahoo! is freeing its customers to focus on growing their businesses and driving traffic to their sites, rather than calculating the costs of megabytes,” said Yalif.
Kaitlyn Sharp, CEO of Houston, Tex.-based Custom Plumbing & Hardware has used Yahoo Web Hosting for a year to support her decorative hardware and plumbing showroom business. The new service eliminates any need to postpone new efforts due to limited storage capacity.
“I’m thinking about doing maybe some online sales and putting a lot more detail in the system. But people were saying “you have to have a lot of storage for that, you sure you can keep this on Yahoo?” At least I do not have to worry about that anymore,” said Sharp.
Yahoo!’s unlimited hosting service also includes award-winning, easy-to-use web site design tools that allow business owners with little or no technical knowledge to quickly create professional-looking web sites.
“Yahoo!’s service also includes a free domain name, 1,000 personalized email accounts, live 24-7 toll-free customer support, and a new 30-day satisfaction guarantee.”
“Yahoo! has long been the trusted partner of choice for small businesses looking to launch or expand online. The new unlimited offer shows our ongoing commitment to driving value for small business owners, who are an important part of the ecosystem of partners that we are focused on serving.”
To help small businesses generate leads and get noticed online, Yahoo! automatically submits its customers’ web sites to top search engines. In addition, web site building tools automatically optimize customers’ sites to be found by search engines.
Other features help convert site visitors into customers including automatically generated maps and driving directions, business contact information on every page, compelling content guides, and lead submission forms. Yahoo! Web Hosting also makes it easy to quickly attract web site traffic by providing discounts on marketing services such as sponsored search advertising and email marketing.
“This latest improvement continues our focus on lead generation,” says Yalif. “We find ourselves guided by the things our customers are telling us matter to them. While this is a competitive space, this really was customer-driven.”
These features all help Yahoo! Small Business customers to convert their website visitors into full-fledged customers, helping them effectively build their business.
By contrast, a rival Web hosting provider such as GoDaddy.com charges hosting fees of anywhere from $3.99 to $14.99 but puts limits on disk space and data transfers. The $14.99 plan offers a small business site 200 gigabytes of storage and 2,000 gigabytes of data transfers monthly.
Microsoft Corp, which last week said it planned to make an unsolicited bid worth $45 billion to acquire Yahoo, has been playing catch-up in the small business hosting market.
Its Microsoft Office Live offering also has three tiers of service, including a free, entry-level offer with 500 megabytes of storage and 10 gigabytes of data transfers a month.
A key difference of Microsoft’s offering is that it bundles in a set of Web-based business software programs for fees running up to $39.95 a month.
Yahoo! Small Business decision to offer unlimited hosting service was a strategic move to simplify an otherwise complicated process and, ultimately, help small businesses achieve a strong online presence.
“We saw our customers on the path of becoming aware of hosting services to buying the service,” says Yalif. “This was a stumbling block as they tried to figure cost per megabyte, how many gigabytes they need. We really simply wanted to remove this whole analysis and set of concerns, and help streamline their movement from thinking that this was a need to getting that lead.”
A competitor to both Yahoo and Microsoft is Google, whose Google Apps offers Web hosting, e-mail storage and a number of business applications. Interestingly, Google has pledged to help Yahoo block Microsoft’s bid, according to a number of published reports.