Easyspace announced the launch of an extensive library of easy to install SaaS applications for its virtual server range.

Installable via the Plesk Power Pack, available as an addon to the Plesk Control panel, customers will have access to a multitude of Software as a Service applications designed to aid the main areas of business from Inventory Management and HR through to Collaboration and Ecommerce.

Amongst the most well known applications included as part of the Power Pack are Joomla, Wordpress, Magento Ecommerce, Php Bulletin Board, Php Money and Drupal.

“Over 150 SaaS applications are now available to customers through this latest addition to our Virtual Server range, with each application being a potential opportunity for business improvement. At just £4.95 per month, this proves fantastic value for money. Users can easily install robust online stores, chat and blogging software, finance management tools, project management tools and more at a fraction of the cost of doing each individually through other channels” comments Errol Vanderhorst, Managing Director at Easyspace.

SaaS applications are growing ever more popular with consumers and businesses alike and the inclusion of such a wide range of apps directly via hosting providers is only going to increase the awareness, usage and popularity of them.

Errol continued, “In an age where buzz words such as SaaS and Cloud Computing are becoming ever more common, it’s important to make sure potential users have access to tools classified as such. We already offer a Cloud Hosting solution via our Virtual Server packages and the addition of SaaS applications only serves to further bolsters their position amongst the most competitive servers currently available on the market.”

Visit the Plesk Power Pack page for more information >

Easyspace is delighted to announce a 40% reduction on .tel domain names, when purchased with one full priced domain this October.

This is the latest in a series of offers from the company, which have been designed to allow new and existing customers to build up a portfolio of domains with different extensions. As well as .tel, the company is also offering a discount of 40% on .eu domains. In addition, a host of other domain extensions such as .net and .info are being offered with 25% off, as part of this autumn promotion.

.Tel is a new top-level domain, having been available to the public since March. Many domainers have been snapping up these domain names, as it is thought that they could play a significant role in the future of the internet.

Those registering domains with Easyspace have access to a user-friendly control panel. Here, they can manage their portfolio with admin features including MX Control, Name Server Control and web redirection. Customers are also offered the privacy of being able to opt out of the Whois register, meaning that their details will not be accessible to the public.

A spokesperson for Easyspace commented on the .tel offer by saying:
“These discounts on the .tel domains offer a great opportunity for individuals and businesses to add value to their domain portfolio. We have already seen a significant landrush from people looking to acquire these addresses, so we would advise interested parties to act quickly, to avoid disappointment.”

To find out more about this and other special offers from Easyspace, visit:http://www.easyspace.com/domain_names/special_offers.

UK web hosting provider Easyspace launches ‘Domain names for a Domain’ campaign to save the Asian elephant

The plight of the Asian elephant is being highlighted by the launch of a ‘Domain Names for a Domain’ campaign today (Monday 12th October 2009) by UK web hosting provider Easyspace.

Under the banner ‘Say No to dot. gone’ Easyspace will donate 5 pence for every domain name it sells over the next six months to elephant family, the only UK charity dedicated to the plight of the endangered Asian elephant.

Easyspace, which is part of Glasgow-based hosting company iomart Group Ltd, is the UK’s third largest domain name registrar, registering thousands of domain names each month. Elephant family is the charity set up by Mark Shand, the conservationist and brother of HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, to protect the Asian elephant.

Errol Vanderhorst, managing director of Easyspace said: “Easyspace has been associated with the Asian elephant ever since we adopted it as our company logo back in 2002. Concern about the destruction of its habitat led us to thinking about what practical steps could we take to raise awareness of its plight.”

“As a domain name provider, we felt that the term ‘dot.gone’ tied us in perfectly with the Asian elephant’s fight for survival. If we do not act now there is a very real possibility that the Asian Elephant will be extinct in the wild within the next forty years.”

Errol added: “It’s the important work that elephant family does in preserving the Asian elephant’s natural domain that has made it such a perfect partner and recipient for the funds raised through our ‘Domain Names for a Domain’ campaign.”

The campaign was launched under the watchful eye of Sir Roger, the famous Asian elephant which is one of Culture & Sport Glasgow’s most popular exhibits at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (see picture). The six month campaign will culminate in Easyspace sponsoring an elephant at next spring’s Elephant Parade in London.

Elephant family is a young but hugely ambitious charity which has raised £3 million so far to support projects across India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Its activities range from securing vital wildlife ‘corridors’ and helping remote farming communities to live safely inside wild elephant territory to rescuing abused street elephants and providing free veterinary care.

Ruth Powys, director of elephant family said:” The Domain Names for a Domain campaign is the perfect public symmetry for what we are trying to do as a charity. The money Easyspace raise will help us to buy up land to connect two forest fragments in Kerala in India to create an elephant corridor. We are so excited to have their support.”

The Asian elephant is classified as an endangered species. Its population has plummeted during the last century from 200,000 to just 30,000, with 60 per cent of those losses happening in the last decade. Its habitat, which once stretched from China to Syria, is now some 169,885 square miles (approximately the same size as Tunisia) due to human encroachment on its domain, loss of habitat and poaching.

A special ‘Say No to dot.gone’ campaign has been created for Twitter and you can show your support for the campaign by following either Easyspace (twitter.com/easyspace) or elephant family (twitter.com/elephantfamily)

Regular updates on the plight of the Asian elephant can be found on the elephant family’s Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/elephantfamily?ref=nf)

Easyspace has announced the launch of a new range of Gift Vouchers.

Already allowing various payment methods, the new Gift Voucher range from Easyspace allows yet another option for people looking to buy one of the many available Easyspace services online.

There are five values of Gift Voucher available, ranging from £10 to £100, with anyone eligible to purchase either as a gift to others or as treat to themselves. Vouchers can then be used to purchase any product on Easyspace.com, whether it be domain names, web hosting or one of the many other available services.

“We already offer a range of services on our website and accept a variety of payment methods, but we realise that as the domain names market becomes larger and as small businesses see the increased need for an online presence of sorts, that offering a Gift Voucher range could actually help a few people in achieving their plans.” comments Errol Vanderhorst, Managing Director at Easyspace.

“Domainers and small businesses might know they’ll need those online services, but right now might not know exactly which domain or package to choose. Our Vouchers essentially allow them to buy credit until they decide, and opens up a market for others to help them out by covering the cost of domains via a voucher”.

With the festive period coming around, followed shortly afterwards by Valentines Day and Easter, not to mention birthdays, fathers days, mothers days and the various other holidays and occasions throughout the year, the new range of Gift Vouchers allow another option of present for your friends, family and colleagues.

Errol continued “Of course, we also have the festive period coming up, and what better way to treat a friend, family member of colleague than to give them the funds to buy their very own domain names!”

Buy your Gift Vouchers now >

Easyspace are delighted to announce a special offer on the popular .me domain name suffix. For a limited period, customers will be offered a 25% discount on all .me domains registered through the site, making them just £12 each!

.me is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Montenegro. It was assigned to the nation following its independence from Serbia in June 2006; however the Government decided to offer it as a generic domain and capitalise on its appeal to businesses across the world. Since July 2008 it has been available internationally and has become one of the most popular and sought after TLDs (top level domains.)

Domainers have been quick to snap up the most catchy and memorable names such as insure.me and sync.me for their marketing potential. To date, more than 250,000 .me domains have been registered, making them more popular than any other top level country code domain.

Those purchasing .me domain names through Easyspace are offered a user-friendly control panel, where they can manage their portfolio with a host of useful admin features, including MX Control, Name Server Control and web redirection.

Glasgow-based Easyspace has been a market leader in domain registration since its launch in 1997. Part of the Iomart group, the company also offers a host of additional services, including dedicated servers, virtual servers, email and shared hosting services.

A spokesperson for Easyspace commented on the .me domain offer by saying:

“.me domains are a fantastic investment for any business. Having a URL which is memorable is priceless and a great way for your company to market itself and stand out from the crowd. In addition, statistics have shown that these domains are quick to be indexed by search engines such as Google, which makes them an attractive proposition for those who are looking to drive high volumes of traffic to their website.”

“These domains are highly sought-after, so we would advise interested parties to register their chosen domains as soon as possible to avoid disappointment and take advantage of this great offer.”

When a domain name is registered, all private contact information, such as full name, email address, address, and telephone number, is publically displayed in the Whois database and is fully available to Internet users at any point in time via services such as http://www.who.is/. The registrant of a domain name has no control over who collects their registration details and how this information used.

There are a number of valid reasons why this whois information is available for each domain, including:

1. Marketing purposes (sending product updates, service updates, promotions etc)
2. Viewing current status of a domain name i.e. whether it is registered, expired, deleted or available for registration
3. Helping to trace any source of spamming or denial of service attacks
4. Identifying individuals or organizations who own the domain name
5. Helping authorities crack down on “immoral” websites

The problem of identity theft is extremely serious and the developed solution for this specific online version of it is known as the WHOIS Privacy service.

The WHOIS Privacy service, also known as Private domain registration, guarantees that private contact information is kept safe and invisible from rest of the world by providing domain registrants with anonymous contact information for their domain names.

In summary, WHOIS Privacy works in a similar way to having someone’s telephone number removed from the telephone directory thus preventing strangers from accessing the private details of the concerned person. Personal details are held confidentially by the Domain WHOIS Privacy service and are not exposed to any spying eyes.

With the internet being such an open book, available to most people, Whois Privacy provides you with some extra confidence and privacy.

If you are owner of a domain name with a com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .cc or .tv domain extension, you can now benefit from WHOIS Privacy.

Protect your personal information with WHOIS Privacy service through Easyspace.com

Easyspace has been making its mark on the world of Twitter, to the delight of many of its customers and new found Twitter followers.

While Easyspace has been blogging for a number of years now and has been using various other social channels such as delicious, Reddit and Facebook, it’s the move to the world of Twitter earlier in the year that has had the biggest reaction.

Over 300 Twitter users now follow the Easyspace Twitter profile ( http://twitter.com/easyspace ), combining a mixture of customers, industry persons and those just interested in anything related to domain names and web hosting.

Now, more than ever, those followers are beginning to feel the benefits of choosing to follow Easyspace. Often the first to hear of product updates, the first to hear of Easyspace related news announcements and the quickest to let Easyspace know of any service issues, they are now being rewarded with a selection of ongoing offers exclusive to Twitter followers.

“We’ve been blogging for a number of years now and have used a number of other social channels to spread the Easyspace brand name, but the move to Twitter has led to some very interesting conversations with our new found following, allowing us to improve services, improve relationships and allowing us a faster channel to market with product announcements and news. It’s not to unlike a dedicated continuous focus group.” comments Errol Vanderhorst, Managing Director at Easyspace.

“We’ve decided to reward this relationship with regular, random offers promoted only to those following us on Twitter. There is no set plan to the offers. We simply pick a time, pick a product and pick an offer and announce it on Twitter. It’s a simple as the Twitter model itself.”

To date the Easyspace Twitter offers have included 40% off .tel Domain Names, 10% off any Web Hosting package, 50% off StarterPlus Web Hosting and a competition to win one of 5 free .com Domain Names.

Make sure you don’t miss out on these offers and start following Easyspace on Twitter today: http://twitter.com/easyspace

Easyspace has upgraded all its shared web hosting packages to now include Unlimited Bandwidth.

The upgrade brings Easyspace web hosting packages back in line with other popular hosting providers in the UK in terms of bandwidth, and allows already innovative offerings, such as its Pic N Mix web hosting solution, to be even more advanced with its features.

While Easyspace states that the previous restrictions on bandwidth were actually very generous in the usage they allowed, they admit that the move to unlimited allows its customers to think more creatively about how they can increase traffic volumes to their own sites, without previous worry of possibly reaching traffic thresholds.

It comes as welcome news to those whose business relies, particularly in the current economic climate, on driving traffic to websites to generate new leads and sales. The upgrade means that shared hosting customers no longer need to worry about consequences should they manage to significantly increase interest in their site.

“In actual fact, that vast majority of customers never came close to reaching the bandwidth restrictions on their chosen shared hosting package, such was the generosity of the restriction, so in that respect the upgrade wasn’t absolutely required. However, we felt it reduced another worry from the customer, the worry that they might someday reach that threshold. In our current climate, customers need to be doing all they can to drive traffic to their sites, and we don’t want them having to worry about possible repercussions if they generate too much traffic.” suggests Errol Vanderhorst, Managing Director at Easyspace.

Easyspace currently offers four shared hosting packages, including its highly innovative Pic N Mix package which allows customers to determine the specification, and therefore the cost, of their hosting. Domain names, email and various other key features are also included with each hosting package.

The upgrade to shared hosting packages follows on from recent changes to approximately twenty of the most popular country specific domain names offered by Easyspace. With changes including cost reductions and reduction of minimum registration term, Easyspace again displayed why it is one of the most popular providers of domain names in the UK.

Visit the relevant sections on Easyspace to find out more about web hosting and domain names.

Easyspace has made significant changes to the registration terms of some of its most popular domain extension.

Country Specific Top Level Domain names (such as uk.com, us.com, eu.com) have long been an accepted alternative to traditional top level domain names, particularly in instances where the preferred top level domain has already been registered. Not only does this Country Specific format of the Top level Domain allow you to include the common .com within the extension, it also allows for localised focus for your business.

In addition, Country Specific TLDs are a popular alternative to exact country extensions. Domains such as .eu require submission of documentation to prove validity of registration (i.e. you need to have business in the .eu to be able to register a .eu), whereas a .eu.com can be registered by anyone. This is a similar scenario to many other country extensions.

Easyspace prides itself in being one of the few providers in the UK of such a variety of Country Specific TLDs and has recently cemented its place as one of the leading providers by making them far more accessible.

In addition to cutting the price on all Country Specific TLD domain names, the minimum registration term has been reduced from two years to one. In all, it means you can now register your preferred Country Specific Top Level Domain for approx 50% less than a few months ago with Easyspace.

“Suitable domain names, particularly TLDs such as .com, .net, .org etc, are becoming harder and harder to find for some companies and we’re finding people are now seriously considering some of the viable alternatives that have been around for some time, including our range of Country Specific TLDs such uk.com, us.com and eu.com.” suggests Errol Vanderhorst, Managing Director at Easyspace.

“We announced the changes to existing customers recently and were surprised at just how positively the news was received. The lower cost matched with a reduced minimum registration term has certainly made the domains more accessible and customers are certainly taking advantage of that.”

Easyspace currently sells approx 20 different Country Specific Top Level Extensions including .uk.com, .eu.com, .de.com, .us.com, .gb.com, .uk.net and more.

Visit the Easyspace domain names pages for more information.

As a business, your aim is to promote your brand name as much as possible. But, when it comes to domain registration, businesses typically register only one domain name, and that’s usually with a .com extension. In fact most businesses usually think that they were very fortunate to find their preferred domain name in the .com version and stop searching for alternative extensions, when, in reality they still need to protect their domain name and their brand identity by registering multiple extensions, variations and misspellings of the primary domain. Not doing this gives enough room for their competitors to register a domain name similar to the original one with a different extension such as .net, .org, .info etc.

Risk arises when competitors use domain names similar to yours to showcase their own products and services or, worse, if they decide to use it in such a way that ultimately attacks the brand and reputation you’ve spent time building. In either case, the business could start losing valuable customers.

There can be several risks associated with registering only one domain name:

1. Competitive vulnerability – When one of your competitors sets-up a website using the same domain as yours with a different extension (e.g. they use .net instead of .com) in order to lure your customers away.
2. Cyber squatting – The act of registering domain name in bad faith. Normally resulting in the domain owner trying to sell you the domain for inflated fees. This is a major problem facing businesses on the Internet today.
3. Traffic funneling –When someone sets-up variations of your domain name or they register misspellings of your domain name to draw the traffic from people accidently mistyping your domain name.
4. Disgruntled websites - Websites set up when an unhappy customer, or disgruntled ex-employee, registers a variation of your domain name with the sole purpose of posting critical and inaccurate information about your business.

So, why should businesses register more than one domain name?

If you’re thinking about registering multiple variations of your domain name then you’re focusing on the sensible approach. Registering and using multiple domains names is great for building your business and can help create a dynamic online identity. Registering multiple domain names can allow you to:

1. Stop competitors from registering domains similar to yours and therefore stopping them from drawing customers from you.
2. Promote a variety of products and services if you offer more than one.
3. Create extra windows to drive traffic to your site.
4. Create specific advertising campaigns to target specific target markets
5. Take charge of common miss-spellings of your domain and benefit from additional traffic e.g. registering yourdomain.com and yoordomain.com
6. Reduce the risk of your brand and online identity being attacked

Registering multiple domain names with .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .mobi, .co.uk, .me, .tel etc extensions is always recommended!

Easyspace offer a wide variety of domain names to suit every need Register your multiple domain names through Easyspace.com today!