Microsoft’s Office Live Small Business (OLSB) site advertises itself as offering free Website, domain-name and web-hosting services for small businesses. But at least one of these services — domain-name renewals — is on its way to becoming paid, starting October 1.
A reader sent me a note from the Office Live Small Business team that a member of his family received this note recently (minus the “xxx’s, which I’m using to protect the recipient’s identity) :
“We wanted to inform you of a policy change to your domain service. As of October 1, 2009, we will no longer offer free domain name renewals. When your custom domain, XXXX.com, comes up for renewal, you will need to pay the annual renewal fee of *$14.95* by your expiration date of xxxx…..
“There is nothing for you to do at this time, but note that you will need to pay the annual renewal fee when you receive your domain renewal notice approximately 45 days before your domain expiration date. If you choose not to pay the renewal fee, your domain name will automatically expire and all associated e-mail addresses will be discontinued. Your Web site will remain active, but will be available at a Web address such as http://yourname.web.officelive.com.”
I asked Microsoft whether this new paid policy for domain name registration was something all of its OLSB customers were facing. The short answer: Yes.
The longer version, via a corporate spokesperson:
“With regards to your inquiry, this is a change for Office Live Small Business customers that have a custom domain. From the launch of this service in 2006 until mid-February 2008, during the signup process we offered a free custom domain names for web sites and e-mail hosted with Office Live Small Business service. Due to changing marketplace conditions the team has made the difficult decision to have customers start paying a minimal annual domain name registration fee which previously has never been charged. Customers always have the option of keeping their web site active with OLSB on a free web address provided by OLSB such as http://yourbusiness.web.officelive.com.
More details are available on a Frequently Asked Questions page regarding the new pricing policy.
The aforementioned reader and I were both curious whether the move from free to paid should be expected for other OLSB services. Microsoft didn’t really answer that one. The spokesperson provided the following response:
“As to other services, we are continuing to focus on enhancing the core feature set entrepreneurs turn to us for most -Web site design, Web hosting, e-mail, document storage and sharing features. The Web site development tools are free and only charge is for the custom domain name registration.”
Yahoo Small Business raised its domain-renewal prices to nearly $35 last year. Other domain-name registrants/hosters offer lower prices, some closer to the $7 mark (when discount codes are applied).
But yours is good reasoning as well. 
