Just got word from Microsoft that they will no longer be renewing (or registering) domain names for free as a part of their “Office Live” product. The site will still be free but we will now have to pony up for the renewals at $14.95 a pop. We knew the promotion had to stop at some point but didn’t want to admit it. It has been quite a bargain.

Quite a Bargain Indeed
We were able to sign up very soon after it launched and got our name and site in March of 2006. Since that time, we have had a continuous site with multiple updates and regular traffic and never paid a penny. In addition to the domain and website, you were also allowed to create and manage 5 email accounts. We never made it into a commerce or ad bearing site and not sure how all that would have looked/been done but over all, we have been very happy for the duration.

Nothing is Perfect
There were some issues that bothered us about having the name with Office Live, but nothing drastic enough to make us want to pay for it. The email had to be set up via MSN, you were not able to manage the DNS to allow for POP or STMP access, therefore relegating it to a secondary contact source. The website was also limited to 5 pages and the tools used to update the site were quirky and buggy and sometimes required you to edit the posts multiple times to show up properly. It was never intended to be “blog” software and that may have had to do with some of the issues.

Where is the Domain Registered?
Up until a few years ago when Microsoft became an ICANN registrar, they let Melbourne IT, out of Australia handle those registrations. Domainers will recognize that this is the same company that handled all the domain registrations ($1.99 Small Business Promo!) for Yahoo! Interesting that these competitors chose the same supplier for .com, .net and other domains but that is the way things are these days. The Office Live registrations are handled differently that a standard one. According to Microsoft, you own the name, but you have to make special arrangements with Melbourne to get the name into a separate account before you can transfer. Big pain but what did you expect for free.

Party’s Over, Now What?
We have a few more months of registration left before I have to act. We will be transferring the name to GoDaddy for less than $7 and starting a new blog with as much content as we can harvest from the previous site as possible. We are looking forward to the added flexibility we will have with genuine blog software and hope to be much more active on it moving forward.

Here is the email we received from Microsoft with the sad news.

End of the Free Road