I'm sure I've talked before about VistaPrint and their great offers on printed materials for your business, such as business cards, magnets, labels, letterhead and more. However I did not know that they now offer design and hosting for business websites.
There are three pricing levels available, a "starter" package, "standard" and "professional". The packages are priced at $6.99, $14.98 and $21.97 per month, respectively. No matter which option you choose, you will get a one month free trial.
Here are some details on the hosting features. With the starter package, your site will reside on a subdomain of your choice, i.e. yourcompany.vpweb.com. With either the standard or the professional package, you'll get your own .com, .org or .net domain name. If you already own a domain name, you can point it to your VistaPrint site with either the standard or the professional package - standard users can have one pointer domain, and professional users get unlimited pointer domains. The starter package allows your site to have three pages, the standard comes with five, and with the professional package you can have as many pages as you need. Each package also offers a proportional amount of disk space and monthly bandwidth. Phone support is available for all three packages, with priority level support given to users of the professional package. Site activity logging is available only to standard and professional level sites.
Starter sites come with e-mail forwarding, contact forms, the ability to add any of your VistaPrint document projects to your site, and an image gallery where you can upload unlimited photos or product images. This could be a good option for a small local business who just wants to get a sort of electronic business card online, but will still do all of its business in person or over the phone. With a standard package, you can add one e-mail account, MapQuest maps, documents and files for visitors to download, a music player to play background music on the site (sorry, I don't recommend this), and YouTube videos. Finally, if you need more mailboxes (up to three) or the ability to sell products online through a PayPal shopping cart, you'll need a professional account.
Even though I am perfectly capable of designing my own web sites, if I were starting a small business and wanted to get things running quickly, at these prices and feature levels I would probably give this a shot.
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