Microsoft’s suite of online tools is designed to help small businesses build and maintain a Web presence and manage projects, contacts, and tasks.
Contrary to what its name might suggest, Microsoft Office Live is not an online version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Instead, this hosted suite provides businesses with a staff of 10 or fewer with tools to build and host a Web site, manage contacts, and share projects. For free, the Basic service provides a company with a domain name registration, hosting, and e-mail, along with Web design tools and reports on site traffic.
Why give away the store? Microsoft hopes to snag a large share of the market of small businesses still looking to develop a Web presence and manage operations via the Internet. Plus, its logo (linking to Office Live details, of course) will appear on your Web pages. Plans for keyword ads and online shopping are in the works. Google Apps, by comparison, doesn’t offer a free Web site parking space, but it does let you brand online services with your own URL. Unlike Google Apps, Microsoft Office Live lacks a Web-based word processor and a spreadsheet application.
The Microsoft Office Live comes in three flavors, starting with the free Basic, which offers site hosting and building, as well as e-mail support. The Essentials and Premium editions each provide a bundle of business apps, including AdManager, as well as mobile support. The $19.95/month Essentials edition adds more ways to analyze Web site traffic, along with 1GB of storage space, coordination with Outlook e-mail, and 50 e-mail accounts. For $39.95/month, Premium doubles the storage space.
Beyond handling your Web site, Microsoft Office Live Essentials and Premium attempt to provide a one-stop shop for core business operations. We appreciated the sparse design of the Dashboard screen, which uses a two-pane layout and tabs to present a calendar and drop-down menus for Customers, Projects, Sales, Employees, and Company.
We didn’t run into any glitches while testing this service on Windows XP using Internet Explorer. Then again, we weren’t able to make full use of the shared tasks in our brief tour. While Office Live was speedy overall, we experienced brief delays after clicking some links, a potential drawback for businesses. The business applications seem most helpful as a shared work space for a small firm with employees in multiple locations.
Read the full CNET review