* BlueTie offers hosted messaging to small businesses for free
Last week, BlueTie announced it would offer its hosted messaging services to small businesses free of charge. The offering includes the company’s e-mail and calendaring services for businesses with up to 20 users per account.
Last week, BlueTie announced it would offer its hosted messaging services to small businesses free of charge. The offering includes the company’s e-mail and calendaring services for businesses with up to 20 users per account.
The services allow users to employ their own domain names and provides 5GB of storage for e-mail and files. BlueTie’s offering also includes the use of its sophisticated AJAX-based Web client and a WAP-enabled mobile client.
While there are a variety of hosted messaging services that offer multi-gigabyte e-mail and calendaring services at no charge, BlueTie’s offering is unique in that it does not generate revenue from a traditional advertising model. Instead, BlueTie has created relationships with various providers of business-oriented services that allow users to purchase these services within the context of the messaging system itself.
For example, BlueTie has signed an agreement with Orbitz that allows a user to specify a window within their calendar during which they will need to travel. The system will then look for flights that fit within the specified time period and, using previously stored credit card and other information, allows the user to book and confirm the flights without leaving the calendaring application.
BlueTie has established relationships with a number of other service providers.
BlueTie’s offering is unique in that it shifts the focus of advertisers from a pay-per-click model to one focused on pay-per-purchase. Because BlueTie’s messaging offering is focused on small business users, the result of this shift is likely to be a more focused set of product and service offerings that users will be more likely to purchase.
While the jury is out on how successful this model will be, it is an interesting one for small business users to investigate and for BlueTie’s competitors to consider.
