Microsoft today announced a partnership with GoDaddy that aims to bring Office 365 to more small businesses.
Moving to a subscription model for Office was a major step for Microsoft, and so far it looks like it has paid off. By last November, the service had already signed up over 2 million paying users. GoDaddy says it currently has about 12 million small business customers, so this partnership could potentially increase Microsoft’s reach for Office 365 by quite a bit.
The new Office 365 plans start at $3.99 per month/user for 5GB of email storage and 2GB of space on SkyDrive. A mid-tier Business Essentials plan with 50GB of email storage and 25GB on SkyDrive costs $8.99 and includes support for Microsoft Lync and access to the online versions of the Office apps.
The best deal here, however, is the Productivity Plus plan for $12.49, which includes full access to Office 365, including the desktop apps (on up to 5 PCs and Macs), as well as access to the mobile apps on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.
All of these plans include live customer service.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has announced a similar partnership. It offers Office 365 plans through Sprint and Verizon, which have essentially the same plans as GoDaddy (though for a slightly higher price).
What makes the GoDaddy partnership interesting, though, is that it reaches potential new customers at a time when they are already thinking about hosting. Adding a cheap Office 365 email plan to their accounts then becomes almost a no-brainer, especially given that the integration between the two companies means they can easily use their custom domains from GoDaddy with Office 365.