Why do you need my credit card for a free subscription?

Even though Microsoft© Office Live is a free service during the beta period, we still require a credit card in order to validate that every customer is a legitimate entity. We are concerned for two reasons :
Microsoft wants to help mitigate fraud and strives to ensure that the Web sites we provide for our small business customers are for valid purposes. Requiring a valid credit card is intended to decrease the likelihood that malicious users will sign up.

Web site scams, such as "phishing" or spamming, often use fictitious Web sites to deceive consumers into disclosing credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security numbers, passwords, or other sensitive information. We limit the number of offers to one per credit card number as added protection against malicious users signing up for our service.

We also require a credit card to facilitate payment of services during the beta (e.g., the purchase of additional domain names) as well as at the conclusion of the beta period, when customers will be asked if they would like to continue using our services on a paid, monthly subscription basis. With your explicit permission, we can establish monthly billing using your credit card information. You will be able to continue using our services without interruption and without having to submit additional account information.

So, the question is, is this offer a good offer?

Seems kinda unrealistic..free domain and free hosting? I know Trap17 makes money by way of advertising to pay for their free hosting accounts, but for someone to be able to pay for both a yearly domain name and hosting for each user that would have to be some MAJOR advertising revenue. I dont really recommend giving out your credit card information, who knows where that is going to go. Better to be safe.

source: http://bargainprofessor.wordpress.com/2007...me-and-website/

Ok I do not advertise anything for profit on my blog, so don’t jump to any conclusions. However I had to let my readers know that Microsoft is giving a FREE Top Level domain name and a website builder, along with free hosting. They do offer other packages with more abilities, storage,etc.for a fee, but Basic is FREE.

It is called Microsoft Office Live Basics did I mention it’s FREE

Microsoft pays for the top level .com domain name for as long as you have their free hosting service, how can you not want to get in on this?

I have a site there that I use for one of my businesses and it has been great.

NO I don’t get anything for signing you up, or even sending you there. I am doing this as a courtesy to my readers. I have no idea how long they will continue to do this promotion, so grab it while you can.

There is one drawback….You have to be using Internet Explorer to set this up and edit your site with their website builder, so if you use FireFox or another browser, you will need to use Internet Explorer when you sign up and when you edit your site. Other than that it’s a terriffic free gift from Microsoft.

source: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/01/20/m...nd-comparisons/

Microsoft Office Live is a domain registrar and web hosting service for small business that looking to establish an online presence or set up website. Office Live allows the company to register any available domain name, create a fully functional professional website, track visitors to the site, plus plenty of integrated services such as online Web design, AdManager a Google AdWords alike ad management platform, contact manager for organizing customer information and sales management, workspaces where you can share information such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with your customers, integration with Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007, and tools for eBay, PayPal, and credit monitoring through Equifax. In the package, Office Live hopes to attract new customers, generate repeat business and helps business to stay on top.

Microsoft Office Live is available at three levels of service or edition. First level is advertising-support Office Live Basics which is free and include free domain name along with Web site storage that can hold up to 500MB of data and e-mail management for up to 25 accounts with 2GB of storage each. Office Live Essentials costs $19.95 a month and offers 1 GB hard disk space plus 50 email accounts with other additional tools. While Office Live Premium with price of $39.95 a month gives you 2 GB storage space with all the features and functionalities.

PC World takes a look on Microsoft Office Live hosting service and concludes that “Unfortunately, I found the service’s Web Designer to be somewhat unreliable. Office Live’s services aren’t especially unique too. You can get most of them, such as Web and e-mail hosting, elsewhere. However, Office Live’s suite of services does make an attractive bundle, especially adManager. The free Office Live Basics sounds tempting, but only a stingy business owner would permit Microsoft-supplied advertisements, possibly from competitors, to run on the company’s Web site. As for Live Premium, I’m not persuaded that it delivers sufficient value to justify the extra 20 bucks a month. Overall, despite some flaws, Microsoft Office Live makes it easy for a small business to create a basic Web site and more.”

CRN reviews Microsoft Office Live and concludes that the latest changes in Office Live considerably improve its ease of use and overall functionality for novice users. Office Live can help small businesses transition from static Web sites to interactive Web sites, though without providing transactional capabilities. Microsoft plans to add online shopping transactions in a future release, so customers currently can only advertise services and products and interact with customers. The new Office Live Site Designer tool now has many more templates and stock photography to speed up site development. Office Live allows the import of custom HTML from other third-party design tools as well. Developers can even add simple Ajax functionality to pages. With custom coding, transactions can be linked indirectly to items displayed on a page. Developers can easily associate items with PayPal links, for example.

InformationWeek compares Microsoft Office Live with Google Apps For Your Domain in term of initial setup, home page creation, email, calendar and integration, with conclusion that overall, Google Apps for Your Domain is a clear winner. It offers superior e-mail, better site management, and has a group calendar, an important component to running a small business and something that Office Live lacks. However, if you’re mainly looking for a free service that has excellent Web site creation tools, you’ll want Office Live. The truth is, though, you can’t beat free, so whichever site you choose, you’ll end up being a winner.