Internet giant GoDaddy continues to pursue the small business market  The company announced a partnership with Microsoft to offer Office 365 earlier this week, along with today’s launch of a new managed hosting solution for WordPress. And if you need even more proof, the insiders say you’ll be seeing a whole new small business focus this year from the formerly controversial and beer-commercial-esque Superbowl advertiser.

GoDaddy offers subscription to Microsoft 365 services…with a custom domain name

Compared to subscribing to Office 365 directly from Microsoft, the primary benefit that GoDaddy is offering is a custom domain name with your email address (you can get your email sent to [email protected]). This move is consistent with GoDaddy’s recent shift towards becoming a full-service cloud business partner, instead of just a domain registrar and hosting provider.

Plans are currently available in three tiers: Email Essentials, Business Essentials, and Productivity Plus. All are meant for small businesses, and only the highest tier offers the mobile and desktop versions of the Office applications.

Managed WordPress hosting launches today

Earlier today marked the launch of a new managed hosting solution for WordPress through GoDaddy, which promises to handle the tedious tasks of configuring, securing and updating your WordPress installation for you. Even the lowest tier offering, at $6.29/month should be generous for most small business needs.

As we’ve previously recommended, using managed hosting is a great way to free up time that you’d ordinarily spend mucking around with your website.

All that said, managed hosting isn’t worth much if your site suddenly stops working and you can’t get someone on the phone. This is a brand new offering, so it would be a good idea to wait until the reviews come in before jumping in head first.

Speaking of poor purchase decisions…

In other news, managed WordPress hosting provider NodeKi announced that it will be shutting down permanently at the end of this month. The reason? Ridiculously low-cost lifetime hosting plans that were offered when the company launched.

As a general rule, if you see a “lifetime” plan on the internet for less than the cost of most other company’s one-year plans, it’s probably too good to be true. And in this case, it might have been planned from the start — as Sarah Gooding at WPTavern writes:

Last year after NodeKi launched its new plans, it was bought out by InterQuad corporation, a holding company for other brands, leaving some to wonder if this was planned from the outset.

Moral of the story? Stick to established, well-reviewed companies when it comes to web hosting, or it could come back to bite you.