Do you have a web site? These days a web site is as essential as a business card. And yet, many small businesses, especially very small businesses, don’t have one. Some small-business owners think that their operations are too small to justify a web site. Some others argue that they don’t need one because they don’t sell anything.  Still others don’t want the headache of creating one themselves or the expense of having someone create one for them.

For most small businesses that don’t sell online, a web site is an overhead rather than an asset. Just the domain registration and basic web hosting can cost in the neighborhood of $100 a year. If all they have to show for it is a couple of pages of information that their clients are never likely to see, and directions that nobody needs, the expense is hardly justifiable. The e-mail accounts that come with basic web hosting are just horrible – most people would gladly have a MSN or a Yahoo e-mail address instead. Besides, few people have content to update on their web site. So, many say “Thanks, but no thanks” to getting web sites. Now Microsoft has introduced a new service called Office Live Basics that will permit you to brush aside most such objections.

The marketing folks at Microsoft have an uncanny knack to come up with product names that confuse even the brightest of people. Office Live is no exception. So let me clarify at the very beginning that Office Live has nothing to do with Microsoft Office – of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint fame. (Perhaps Microsoft thinks Microsoft Office is at least moribund, if not dead?) Office Live is neither an online word processor nor an online spreadsheet. It is a web site building tool complete with domain name registration, hosting for one web site, a simple content management system, and five custom-domain e-mail accounts. And it is free. You read that right. FREE.  No strings attached.

Whenever you get any online service free of charge, the first question that comes to mind is “Who is paying for it?” The usual suspect is advertising revenue. And Office Live is indeed supported by revenue from advertisements. The advertisements, however, do NOT appear on your web site. Only the web site’s management interface and the e-mail pages – the pages no one else but you can see – will carry advertisements. Your site itself will be ad-free. Office Live also comes in two other paid incarnations called Office Live Essentials and Office Live Collaboration, which throw in more disk space, more e-mail accounts, and a few business applications. Each version costs $29.95 a month. Obviously, Microsoft hopes that you will be sufficiently hooked by Office Live Basics and will, one day, upgrade to one of the paid versions.

But I like free stuff, and for now, I will stick to Office Live Basics. The registration is quite simple. If you have a domain name, the registration process will offer to transfer it to Microsoft’s registrar. If you don’t have a domain name, Office Live will register a new one for you at no extra charge. If you decide not to stay with Office Live in the future, you can transfer your domain to a registrar of your choice, or just leave it with Microsoft’s registrar and pay the annual registration fees; the domain name belongs to you, not to Microsoft. You can register as many domains as you want, but each registration will need a different credit card. Why do you need a credit card to get a free service? Microsoft says it is a way to verify your identity. The never charge it.

You get five e-mail accounts with your custom domain name, such as you@yourdomain.com. Each mailbox comes with 2GB of disk space, antivirus, and spam filters, and is basically a remodeled and enhanced Hotmail mailbox. You also get 10GB of bandwidth per month and 30GB of storage for your web site.

You build your Office Live web site with the included website building tools. The tools are geared towards novice users and are very easy to use. The primary container of content on Office Live pages is called a web part. Web parts can contain text, images, and links. You build a page by placing several web parts on it. The process is like making a collage from scraps of paper. When you build a page, Office Live gives you an option to place it on the navigation menu and allows you to customize the page’s properties such as the title and meta tags, which search engines use to index your site. The service throws in the standard bells and whistles as well. You can upload custom HTML pages and other documents to a documents folder, for example, and you can optimize individual pages for search engines and you can get visit statistics.

If you don’t know HTML or don’t want to be bothered with learning it, Office Live Basics is for you. But the ease of use comes at the cost of flexibility. If you know HTML and want to code your own site, or want to build it with a tool such as Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe GoLive, you are out of luck. You are stuck with the built-in themes, styles, and web parts. This also means that if you have an existing web site and you want to switch it to Office Live Basics, you are out of luck. You will have to scrap the existing site and copy its content piece by piece to Office Live Basic’s web parts. If you have a fifty page site, it is not an exercise I recommend. (Note that although Office Live Basics does not allow you to work with HTML, there are a few small workarounds at http://www.acxede.net that will let you overcome some of the limitations.)

If you visit Office Live forums, you will see several people complaining about Office Live’s lack of high-end features. Some want blogs and forums. Some others want shopping carts, payment gateways, and PayPal buttons. What they don’t seem to understand is that Office Live Basics is aimed at people who want calling-card web sites – simple sites with a few pages and custom e-mail addresses. Don’t let their opinions sway you. For its target consumers, Office Live Basics is a rare opportunity to get something for nothing. 

Office Live is still a beta product, but like most public betas now-a-days, it is quite stable. If you don’t have a web site, you are making do with a Hotmail address, or if you are unhappy with your current site, take a look at Office Live Basics. It might pleasantly surprise you.