Microsoft dumping Office Live Small Business users onto Office 365

[Japlabot]

Microsoft Office Live users http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-us/ could sign up to the following:

"Everything you need to take your business online:

Free website hosting

Free templates and easy to use tools

Free email accounts

Free online support

What are you waiting for? It's never been so easy.

Get a FREE website today."

Now they are putting you onto Office 365 later this year, and "As a valued Office Live Small Business customer, you will be offered 3 months free". There is no free option like Google Apps has (Google Apps has a free version up to 50 users) so really they have locked users into this service without giving them the option to stay on a free version if they choose to or moving to Windows Live Admin Center (which is still free so far).

I'm not against business users paying for a service, but they are FORCING a subscription to a service (which is more expensive than Google Apps Premier edition mind you), and so far they have not proven that their product is better, and some users might not even need the better product or want it.

In any case, the user of their service should have the choice to keep the functionality that they were promised for free (and are now locked into, as their domain is tied to the service) instead of being FORCED to use their product offering, lose access to their email on their domain or go through a tricky migration to another service.

I wonder if Neowin Mail https://www.neowin.net/mail/ will be forced to pay. A good example of a non-profit use of the service.

[Denis W. Veteran]

For the record, Neowin's mail services for members uses Windows Live Domains, which manages basic Windows Live services for custom domains. It also includes Live@edu which I believe my university is transitioning to.

But in any case, Neowin's mail won't be affected by the phasing out of Office Live Small Business. They appear to be two different offerings.