Verio airs Windows hosting services

Verio last week introduced six hosted-service plans for Microsoft's Windows Server platform that are designed to provide more options and cost-effective services to small and midsize businesses, the company says.

The company offers several plans that let customers purchase multiple sites running on Windows 2003 servers. Customers can hand off the administration, security and content-creation duties of each site to other parties or sub-accounts, says Bill Thomson, director of product management for shared hosting at Verio. Previously, the company had only one plan, which let customers host multiple sites, but on just one account.

To illustrate the new plans' cost-effectiveness, Thomson says the company's former Hosting 4000 plan offered 25 Web sites for $49.95 a month. Now, the MultiSite plan includes 10 Web sites and costs $24.95 a month, and the WebMaster Plan includes 30 Web sites and costs $59.95 a month.

The other plans Verio launched last week are the Windows eStoreFront Plan, which offers basic e-commerce and shopping cart functionality for two separate sites for $24.95 a month, and the Windows SQL Plan, which is aimed at companies that want to link a Microsoft SQL Server database to their Web sites. The Windows SQL Plan includes two Web sites and costs $29.95 a month.

The new plans are especially helpful for Web site developers who use Verio's hosted services to build sites for customers, Thomson says. Ultimately they can control the customer account with Verio, but can pass off the administration of various sites to their customers