Dell offers web hosting for small UK firms

Dell has unveiled a web-hosting service for small to medium-sized companies in the UK.

The DellHost service offers hosting on dedicated or shared servers. Dell is running the service on server centres using combinations of its three-tier architecture of PowerEdge servers, PowerApp appliance servers and PowerVault Storage systems.

The entry-level package costs £19.95 a month including VAT, plus a set-up fee, typically a month's charge added to the first month's bill, for a shared system with 5Gb data transfer. This includes site storage capacity of up to 50Mb and up to 10 email accounts.

Dedicated hosting starts from £325 a month excluding VAT, plus a set-up fee of £385, for 80Gb of data transfer a month and a 9Gb capacity.

Additional services include domain name registration (at £25 for a .co.uk name and £32 for a .com for two years). Also included free of charge are Trellix entry-level web design software and NetObjects Fusion 5.0, a more complex web design package. For additional fees Dell offers customer web design and promotion schemes.

Dell claims to have 10,000 customers for the US DellHost service, launched in February. The service is about 50 per cent cheaper in the US.

Dell is just the latest entrant into an increasingly competitive market. As well as the established UK companies including Cable & Wireless and Colt, Microsoft and EDS recently announced an array of web services for smaller companies.