Yahoo delivers mail for small businesses

With the unveiling Monday of Yahoo Mail - Business Edition, a service aimed at small businesses and basement entrepreneurs, Yahoo is expanding its premium service options and diversifying its revenue stream.

The premium e-mail service offers small businesses a branded address, such as employee@yourbusiness.com, for a starting price of $9.95 a month, plus a $25 start-up fee. Under the $9.95 plan, businesses receive five e-mail accounts with 25M bytes of storage and centralized e-mail account administration. The service can be expanded to 200 e-mail accounts.

Yahoo's business edition features Spamguard anti-virus protection through Symantec's CarrierScan Server technology, as well as Yahoo Address Book and Yahoo Calendar. The service also eliminates banners and taglines from e-mails.

Yahoo Mail - Business Edition is currently only available in the U.S.

In addition to broadening the company's small business offerings, which already include online marketing and promotional services and e-commerce opportunities, the new mail service provides another potential revenue stream for the strapped Internet company.

Although Yahoo's third-quarter earnings met analysts' expectations, sending its stock price surging after the results were released Oct. 10, the company still widened its losses for the period.

The ad market slump has taken a financial toll on most online media companies, making it all the more crucial for them to shore up profits with for-pay services. In addition to touting its small business services, Yahoo has also said that it would seek to broaden its revenue base with expanded Yahoo Finance offerings.

Yahoo, in Santa Clara, is at http://www.yahoo.com/

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.