Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

 

The Microsoft Office Live platform is a great web start for small businesses. It provides a web site platform and great online business applications for data management and collaboration. Hosting is free and that`s certainly a good start at this time of economic uncertainty.

I would be interested in hearing about user experiences with the platform. We provide services for Office Live users and always enjoy a good discussion about the ins and outs of Office Live.

All the Best! Art

 

My name is Louise and I work on the Office Live Small Business service. I`m sorry to hear that you were not happy with your experience the first time around, but hoping you`ll give us another try. Also, I wanted to clarify some information. Previously, we did in fact require a valid credit card number to sign up, however as of this past February we removed the credit card requirement and our sign up process is now extremely simple. When you sign up for free, you receive web hosting, easy site building tools, a fourth level domain, and a number of useful business applications all at no cost. If you`d like to add a custom domain, you`ll need to enter a credit card number. The custom domain is free for the first year and it automatically comes with private registration and 100 e-mail accounts. After the first year the domain cost is only $14.95, which is still one of the best deals out there when you consider that everything else you get -- web hosting, business e-mail, private registration, site building tools, business applications -- is free. Please understand that we were never collecting credit card numbers to then misleading start charging people. In fact, customers who signed up with us prior to this past February (which, from what you describe is likely when you did) still have their domains for free. Hope this helps and happy to provide any more information.

 

Louise Rasho

Microsoft Office Live Small Business

http://smallbusiness.officelive.com

 

nevadascul,

 

I can second what Louise has indicated. I can also add that the service has had some pretty great updates since you last considered it and more are on the way. This is of course good news at Artotems Co. as greater abilities with OL make our services for OL users even more complete.

 

Give it a try. It`s free! :-)

 

Best, Art

www.artotems.com

 

Office Live Services

The real advantages to Office Live are this: Easy access to a web site for small businesses and a private side site with built in Business Applications. So you get a public site and a private site with free emails associated with your business and online business applications. 

In the case of our services people choose to have us build their initial site in Office Live and then can easily go in and make changes to the site as their business information, products, and services change. No need to wait on changes to made by someone else. 

It`s a great system and it has free hosting for the public/private hosting as well as all the tools.