Microsoft is selling its hosting products through a partnership with a new host provider, Blue Web Hosting, that is targeting a growing segment of the web hosting market.
Blue Web hosting, which is backed by Microsoft, has developed its own software that it sells under the BlueHost brand.
Its software can host any website on a server that is running Microsoft’s Windows Server or Azure virtual machines.
Its own hosting tools can be used to manage sites on Microsoft’s cloud service.
The partnership is meant to expand the Microsoft-owned hosting solutions market, but it also gives Blue Web the opportunity to offer services at a much lower price.
“The pricing is very competitive, so it is an attractive option for a lot of sites and it is a great opportunity for consumers,” said Mike Gaudet, vice president of global cloud, software and services at Blue Web.
“It’s not a cheap solution but it’s affordable and we have a really good partnership with Microsoft.”
Blue Web has been selling its services through its own website and app, and through third-party vendors like BlueHost, but now it is offering its own cloud services.
The company’s software is available on the Windows 10 and Azure platforms, and it offers hosting and storage services as well.
“We are able to offer these services for a much more reasonable price,” said Gaudett.
“They’re not quite as expensive as some of the other services but they’re still a lot less expensive than hosting on our own.”
BlueHost has been a popular choice for the web because it provides a high level of security and stability, according to the company.
Its pricing is also competitive, and customers can choose to pay $99 per year or $59 per year for a dedicated server, which BlueHost says is a much better value than buying a single server for $1,500.
BlueHost’s cloud hosting solutions have been popular with large companies that want to have a high-performance and reliable platform.
Microsoft has been aggressively expanding its presence in the cloud hosting market, and now the company is looking to expand that footprint even further.
The software is a powerful tool for managing large websites, and BlueHost offers a range of products that it says can be customized to meet the needs of any website.
“If you’re looking for a way to manage multiple sites in a single cloud instance, BlueHost is a fantastic solution,” said Michael McElroy, senior VP of cloud at Microsoft.
“Its availability and security are unparalleled and its price point makes it one of the cheapest cloud hosting services out there.”
Microsoft’s strategy of offering its products through third parties has become increasingly important in the past year.
“Microsoft’s strategy has been to be more aggressive in terms of how it manages its cloud services and now it’s starting to take a different approach,” said McElroys boss of cloud and enterprise software, Brian Krzanich.
“BlueHost is helping Microsoft in this respect because it’s a partner in our strategy and we know that it’s going to help our customers.”
BlueWeb is the only hosting provider that Microsoft has partnered with to sell its products, but the company says it has no plans to expand its own offerings to Microsoft-branded services.
“There is no plans at this time to sell our own solutions,” said a spokesperson for BlueWeb.
“Our services are fully hosted and managed by Microsoft.
We are a partner of the Microsoft Azure platform and are committed to making the cloud the best it can be for Microsoft customers.”
While BlueWeb offers a suite of services that are free, its pricing has also been competitive, meaning customers can still afford to pay the premium price.
BlueWeb customers can purchase Azure subscriptions for a fixed price of $99 a year or a one-time fee of $59 a year, which can be reduced to $79 a year for up to two years.
Bluehost, which has been around since 2002, has been building up its own infrastructure that it has built up to support a large number of sites.
For instance, it has a cloud-hosted version of the popular web hosting company Hostgator, which was recently acquired by Google for $100 million.
Blueweb’s hosting solutions also have been successful in serving the web.
It was able to get around the restrictions of Microsoft’s Cloud Services policies by building its own private cloud services with the help of Azure, but this is something BlueWeb hasn’t been able to do with its own platform.
Blue hosts about 20,000 sites, and has been able make use of Azure’s private cloud to host a large proportion of these sites.
Blue Host is not the only cloud hosting company that is now selling its products.
In April, Amazon became the first online retailer to buy BlueHost.
Blue hosting is also growing in popularity among the cloud storage industry, which will be important for Microsoft as it looks to expand this market.