I need to rave about Yahoo! Small Business Web products.  The story actually starts back in 2001 when we registered our own domain, bagheraonline.net.  We hosted the web site on our own computer thanks to a static IP address through our DSL provider.  We switched to a cable modem when we moved in 2003 to our house and switched to Valueweb hosting services.  Valueweb has a deal with Network Solutions, who provided our domain registration.  Valueweb charged $25 per month for email, 500 MB of space and metered bandwidth.  I didn't check how good of a deal we were getting.  Well, I can say that Valueweb stinks.  Melissa frequently had trouble downloading her email, their Web mail interface is abysmal, and their offering was very poor for the cost.

So, I started looking for other options.  We mostly wanted a place of the bagheraonline.net email since we have stopped updating our web site.  I found several good hosting services but never moved the site.  Finally, after another day of Melissa not being able to log into her mail, I checked what Yahoo offered.  I was shocked how much they offered for the price.  For $9.95 per month we could have Yahoo handle our email with our existing domain name.  For $11.95 we could get unlimited web pages with several nice web programming features.  So, for $13 LESS per month we get unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth, 1,000 email address (each with unlimited storage), Yahoo's web mail interface, a much nicer management interface, and more.  Since the switch Melissa has reported that her email downloads MUCH faster.  Also, our bagheraonline.net email is easily accessible from our existing Yahoo email using the Yahoo Web client.

I'm now considering how to use all of the features available to us.  Yahoo provides blogging tools and lots of other web content features.  One thing we could do is use the site just to dump backups of all of our pictures.