One key change enables shared hosting customers to leverage previously unavailable Interland self-service marketing services through their hosting account. One of those tools is Interland's E-Mail Marketer, which enables e-commerce merchants to create, distribute, manage and track e-mail newsletters and promotional mailings. In the new release, the tool is tied into customers' shared hosting account interface.

Also offered through the update are search engine optimization services, to create Meta tags, submit sites to search engines and continuously prime site submissions.

Prior to the change, the marketing tools had been offered only through a separate product brand, Website Creation and Marketing, which had emerged from Interland's purchase of Trellix. Since last year's acquisition, Interland has been moving to integrate Trellix's technology into its own offerings, and to make those offerings available to its core hosting customers.

"We hear all the time about customers who have a Web site up and they're not getting any hits to it, or it's not doing as well as it should or as it's expected to," said John Lally, area vice president of marketing for Interland. "We have a number of great solutions for that ... and have started to bring some of those features to the shared hosting customers."

"In the past, if you wanted to have e-mail marketing as a feature ... you could not get e-mail marketing operating with shared hosting, it was operating in a separate plan," he said. "What we're trying to do is bring more of our application capabilities closer to the ... shared hosting customer."

Lally said that Interland expects to deploy additional Trellix products for shared hosting users throughout the year.

A second major enhancement is a price drop. Interland's basic offering will be available for $7.95 a month -- with a 24-month commitment -- putting the price closer on par with rival solutions.

Lally also said that Interland has streamlined the account creation process with a simplified interface.

"That's one of the big things that our customers have as a pain point, and we've begun really solving that problem," he said.

Additionally, the company relaunched its main Web site with a content section devoted to strategies and case studies.

"It's not really a sales tool -- it's really a place where small businesses can go to learn more about ways in which they can be successful on the Internet," he said.

Lally added said that Interland is now offering "tested, tried and true" versions of Windows Server 2003 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux "and running them in a very stable and reliable way."

"Our customers demand the most up-to-date technology," he said. "That's something that most hosting companies have trouble with. Not only are we keeping up with [hardware and software updates], we're doing things to make sure when those releases come out, they're stable and reliable.

Many of the improvements had been based on customer feedback, Lally said.

"We're really focused ... on helping small businesses to succeed online, not just to set up a Web site or a hosting account," he said. "Today's news is really a good step for us. It's getting a lot of the best-of-breed in our infrastructure closer to the customer. We've really done a lot of research, and spent a lot of time with our customer base."

The changes come amid increasing efforts by hosting providers to offer additional tools and value-added services to customers, in a bid to stay competitive. Ensim, for example, recently began offering e-mail marketing, search engine optimization, merchant services and SSL certificates.

"We are seeing a tremendous shift in today's shared-hosting environment toward solutions combining the best in technology, applications and services," said Glenn Hofmann, Interland's vice president of shared hosting, in a statement. "That new model in shared hosting is here, and it is far more than just storage space for a Web site. It gives a business the ability to package together the right mixture of technology, applications and services in a way that provides real business value such as driving leads and increasing sales."

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of eCommerce-guide.com.

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