Microsoft and domain name registrar GoDaddy have teamed up to offer Microsoft's Office 365 services to small businesses. Microsoft's suite of productivity tools will be linked to GoDaddy users' domain names that will enable them to use Office's email services, shared calendars, cloud storage and instant messaging.
"Combining our small-business expertise together with Microsoft's productivity offerings opens new doors for small businesses to easily get the tools they need to get more done in their day," said Steven Aldrich, senior vice president of Business Applications, GoDaddy. "We've created a simple way to attach Office 365 to a domain name, helping small-business owners look professional and work anywhere, making the business of running their business easier."
Initially, GoDaddy will offer users to choose among three Office 365 plans. The basic plan, called Email Essentials costs $3.99 per user each month and will provide 5GB of email storage and 2GB of cloud storage on SkyDrive.
Business Essentials, the mid-level plan, costs $8.99 per month per user that will provide 50GB of email storage and 25GB on SkyDrive. The most economical plan named Productivity Plus, costs $12.49 per user per month which will give full access to Office 365, that includes desktop apps on maximum five PCs (and Macs) and mobile apps on iPhone, Android and Windows. Microsoft's own business plan offers identical features but at $15 per user per month compared to $12.50 by GoDaddy.
All plans include live customer service.
The unique offering of domain-based email and storage by Microsoft has been tailored specifically for the needs of small businesses.
"We're excited that GoDaddy has chosen to exclusively offer Office 365 to its small-business customers, giving them easy and supported access to productivity tools being used by some of the most successful businesses in the world," said John Case, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office.
"GoDaddy's relationship with small businesses combined with Office 365, the fastest-growing Microsoft product in history, will help bring the benefits of Office 365 and modern cloud services to even more companies, whether they're seeking to modernize how they do business or simply starting up," he added.
The partnership comes a year after Blake Irving, a former Microsoft executive who led the Windows Live team, became GoDaddy's CEO.
By November last year, Office 365 was able to gain 2 million paying users and with GoDaddy's 12 million small business user-base the company is looking forward to more extensive reach.
