Microsoft reinvents Office Live for SME’s as ‘free’

Microsoft is now offering its Office Live Small Business product for free to SME’s! 

Office Live Small Business is aimed at companies with ten or fewer employees and to date has pulled in over 600,000 subscribers, which is somewhat modest by Microsoft standards.

New features include Store Manager, a $39.95 per month ecommerce tool for small and medium-sized business to sell their wares online either through their own website or on eBay; and a beta email marketing add-on for newsletter production.

Customers can expect to stump up $14.95 for each subsequent year that they have a domain name registered on the service. Anyone who subscribes to Office Live Small Business will be able to keep their personal information out of the public Whois database, Microsoft says.

Microsoft is also supporting the Firefox 2.0 web browser – which means Office Live will be accessible on non-Windows-based systems.

The service is currently available in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan.

Microsoft’s press release is here.

I’m surprised the Office Rocker hasn’t blogged about it 😉

Author: Jas

Jas Dhaliwal is a highly experienced International Social Media Strategist. Currently working as AVG Technologies, Director of Communities and Online Engagement, he specialises in building and engaging with social communities across the web. Born and bred in London, he is passionate about technology and social anthropology. Prior to AVG, Jas launched the social media program for Microsoft’s MVP Award program. Jas holds a BSc (Hons) in Information Systems and has an MBA from Brunel University in London, England. You can follow Jas as @Jas on Twitter or on Google+