detailed service comparison between aplus.net and ms office live

MS Office Live

Aplus.Net

Conclusion

Step 1:

Design professional website

• “Do-it-yourself” point and click tool

• Professional design with certified web designers.

• “Do-it-yourself” point and click tool

With practically every business online, it is vital to have an eye-catching website.  The MS Office Live tool uses pre-made images and templates, which in turn results in sites looking very similar. Aplus.Net has the “do-it-yourself” option, but also offers professional design, which enables small businesses to differentiate their image from the look of their competition.

Step 2:

Drive traffic to website

• Campaign tracking / website statistics tool

• eTraffic – full service, managed Pay Per Click campaign

• Search Engine Booster – full service, managed SEO program

• Campaign tracking /       website statistics  tools

A small business owner is too focused on his business to track online campaigns.  A typical real estate agent, family restaurant owner, or retail clothing manufacturer does not know how to manage online campaigns.  Business owners want to run their business and have someone else bring traffic to their site.  That is why Aplus.Net offers managed marketing services, such as eTraffic, for our customers.  For as little as $25/mo, small business owners can hand off their marketing efforts and focus on other aspects of running the business.

Step 3:

Close/sell to customers on website

• No tools for selling on website

• Various tools for closing sales (e.g., live chat, push to talk)

• Award-winning eCommerce hosting

• Payment gateway

• SSL Certificates

Once a website has visitors, it is very important to offer channels by which to sell products and services to these visitors.  This maximizes the value of a business website.  While, MS Office Live does not provide any tools that help small bus owners sell to customers, Aplus.Net provides a number of channels, including live chat, push-to-talk, etc.

Step 4:

Keep in contact with customers (upsell)

• No tools for keeping in contact with customers

• Newsletter tools

• Customer survey tools

• Mailing list tools

• Spam free contact forms

• Guestbook

• Forums

• Blogs

• And more!

Once customers are acquired, it is important to keep in contact with them, as this often results in more sales.  Aplus.Net provides small businesses with mass communication tools, which they can use for reaching out to their customer base (e.g., advertising sales and promotions through newsletters), as well as letting customers voice their opinion (e.g., via guestbooks, forums, etc.).

Issue

Description

How Aplus.Net Compares

I. Limited control over your domain name

A. Users have reported that the technical contact for their domain name for the free account is a Microsoft contact. That means that important information about the user’s domain name will go to MS and the actual owner may never get it.

Full control over domain name with customer listed as both technical and administrative contact.

B. Several experts have expressed concern about the ability of users to transfer a free domain name from MS to another provider. In other words, if a user builds a quality site with many visitors, MS may not allow him/her to transfer this domain to another provider, thus forcing him/her to use MS hosting indefinitely. 

Domains are fully transferable.

II. Competitor ads on your website!

A recent PC World article confirms that MS Office Live free sites will be ad-supported.  In an attempt to compete with Google, experts are foreseeing that these ads will be keyword/content-based, otherwise known as “contextual ads.”  This means that MS will place competitor advertisements on MS Office Live users’ websites.  So if a user’s site is on cameras, ads for other camera businesses will appear on your website.  This nearly defeats the purpose of having a website, as you will be giving as much business to your competitors as you are getting yourself. 

Since Aplus.Net charges for hosting, all customer websites are ad-free.

III. Browser incompatibility

Websites may not work with FireFox and other non-Internet Explorer/MS browsers. Currently FireFox owns about 15-20% of the browser market and Macintosh browsers own about 5%. Considering the fact that MS Office Live sign up pages do not work using FireFox, it is very likely that sites on MS Office Live will not work with FireFox and other non-IE browsers.

Aplus.Net websites are compatible with all browsers.

IV. Limited customer support

MS Office Live’s free accounts offer email support only.  If a user has an urgent problem, he/she would generally have to handle it on his/her own.  This may take an hour or more.  It may be worth paying several dollars a month to have a reliable expert available any moment.  (The MS Office Live paid accounts are much more expensive than other hosting companies’ and probably not the best value for the money.)

Aplus.Net has 24/7 live customer support that can help a customer quickly and easily.  Our customer service hold time is now under 38 seconds, which is more than 5 times superior when compared to some of our major competitors.