Microsoft is the leader in creating business applications; through its small business hosting, it offers great features, and a reliable hosting service to run ASP.NET apps. Web hosting provided by Microsoft is fairly competitive when you see the current hosting market, though it’s preferred only by those who wish to host ASP.NET apps or any Windows-specific web apps.

While web hosting by Microsoft is available for free, users are allowed limited access for making use of design templates. Text can be pasted into template and you can upload images on-the-fly too. Site owners can login via secure control panel, which also includes web design tools, traffic reports, and e-mail management functionality.

Salient Features

Web hosting provided by Microsoft comes with server space of 500MB, which is greater when compared to some of the paid webhosting services provided by other vendors… The add-on feature for e-commerce provides more security for shopping cart with a secure socket layering of 128-bit. Domain registration is provided at $14.95/domain/year. Without the custom domain, users are assigned .live.com address, just as in case of wordpress.com or blogger (.blogspot.com)

Email Accounts

With the help of Microsoft web hosting, you can access almost 100 email accounts, and the accounts also include webmail portal advertising. As a part of premium mail, users can receive e-mails, calendar and they’ve option of contact-synchronization with MS outlook. Since email runs via Microsoft Live, SPAM filtering and virus protection services are included too.

E-Commerce Hosting

The e-commerce hosting flaunts a robust and database-driven architecture. With almost 10,000 catalogue items, business owners can manage sales tax tables, product descriptions, set up, handling and shipping programs, and inventory. E-commerce tools features like eBay integration, permitting business owners to offer more products online.

Document Manager

One of the chief features of MS web hosting is the document manager. It allows storage of manager versions and critical document files available to employees. Doc manager is an internet tool that can also release files online and offer password protection too.

Disadvantages

The most common complaints regarding the Windows web hosting are speed, security, and performance of Windows servers when compared to UNIX servers. Windows servers may also need resources for every day operations. This may result in greater costs, just because of its extensive bandwidth, disk space, and RAM requirements.

The biggest disadvantage is the price factor too, as the cost of Windows licensing also adds up to web server maintenance and other expenses, ultimately boosting up the hosting charges on the whole.

We’d recommend you to consider MS hosting only if you need to host ASP.NET or Windows specific apps, otherwise there are tons of cost-effective options in the market that give a bang for your buck!