Interland Launches Shared-Hosting Platform

By Matt Villano

Web hosting provider Interland unveiled a shared hosting platform and a host of marketing tools designed to enable customers to set up accounts more quickly.

The platform, which has not yet received a formal name, consists of three customizable hosting plans. All of the plans are available to channel partners now.

According to Glenn Hoffman, vice president of shared hosting, the platform represents Interland's effort to respond to changing market dynamics.

"We are seeing a tremendous shift in today's shared hosting environment toward solutions combining the best in technology, applications and services," he said. "That new model in shared hosting gives businesses the ability to package together the right mixture of technology, applications and services in ways that provide real business value."

Specifically, the Atlanta-based company's shared hosting platform consists of three different plans--value, business and advanced. The value plan includes e-mail, spam and anti-virus software and weekly backups, while the business plan includes database support, marketing and promotion services, and advanced application support for Microsoft SQL and Microsoft .Net.

The advanced plan includes 1 Gbyte of storage, 100-Gbyte data transfer, Telnet and shell access, 50 Mbytes of RealMedia 8 server space, and built-in support for programming languages such as Perl, PHP and Python.

In addition to these standard benefits, Hoffman said that with every shared hosting plan, customers can purchase add-on features that include:

• Search engine optimization tools to create meta tags, submit sites to search engines and continuously prime site submissions.
  

• E-mail marketing applications to create and send professional e-newsletters, manage subscribers and track results from an easy-to-use browser interface.
  

• E-commerce tools that enable users at any level to build catalogs, manage products and process credit card purchases.

Pricing for the new shared hosting platform begins at $7.95 per month when customers agree to a 24-month contract, Hoffman said.