Because these clients have access to Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 for internal use, though, it makes sense to me that they should build their extranets on the same platform. Why should they have to learn two different interfaces?

There are probably dozens of SharePoint hosting companies to choose from. A Google search for “hosted sharepoint” yields 42,800 hits. Here are some providers that I’m aware of, along with their advertised features and prices as of September 7, 2007:

Some of these vendors have more expensive plans as well. Microsoft has its own version of hosted SharePoint (not surprising, since they wrote the software to begin with), known as Office Live Premium. It runs $39.95 a month for 50 user accounts and 2 GB of space. I didn’t include above because it includes more than just hosted SharePoint, so it’s hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison.

I don’t see a clear winner in the table above. If you think you’ll have a lot of users but disk space isn’t an issue, then Mail2Web’s offering looks most attractive. If space is more of an issue, though, 1&1 offers the best $/GB ratio (but see update below). The Webhost4life Business plan seems to offer a good compromise between the two (but see this update).

There are a couple of important features that are not shown in this table: ease of use (in terms of building a new site, adding users, and so on) and quality of technical support.

My company’s web site is currently hosted at Mail2Web. However, it is built in SharePoint 2.0, and there does not seem to be an easy way for me to migrate it to SharePoint 3.0. I originally picked Mail2Web because I imagined that I might want to give a user account to every one of my clients’ employees. So the unlimited user account option was particularly attractive. However, that hasn’t happened — not yet, anyway. So if I had it to do all over again, I might go with a different hosting company.

Do you have any other hosted SharePoint providers who should be added to the list? Any particularly good or bad experiences with site administration or tech support? If so, please post a comment.

*Update, 9/20/07: I learned today that 1&1 will not let you host a SharePoint site as a stand-alone subdomain. You must host your entire account there in order to get a SharePoint site. What I wanted to do is create sharepoint.mydomain.com with a SharePoint host while leaving www.mydomain.com untouched at its existing host. This is possible at Mail2Web and WebHost4Life, but not at 1&1.

**Update, 10/20/07: Mail2Web has recently increased their monthly hosting price from $14.95 to $22.95. This is partly a result of the recent decline of the American dollar (which they use to bill their customers) vs. the Canadian dollar (which they use to pay their bills).

Although after reading this, I still have a question: Can people who buy Office Groove 2007 (retail box) or Office Enterprise (volume licensing) share data via the Internet as soon as they install Groove, or do they have to purchase GES? I have Groove 2007 through the MS Action Pack and I’ve been able to use it without purchasing additional relay services (as far as I know). Yet the blog post seems to suggest that peer-to-peer Grooving without a relay is limited to communication within a LAN. I’m confused.

Update, August 1: Ian Watkins has pointed me to the answer, found at the Microsoft Groove “How To Buy” page:

Note: Office Groove 2007, purchased as a standalone program or as part of Office Enterprise 2007, can be deployed without hosted or on-premise server infrastructure. In this configuration, users will manually create their own Office Groove 2007 accounts, which will automatically be provisioned to a Microsoft-hosted version of Groove Server Relay to enable data routing between Office Groove 2007 clients that cannot connect directly. To gain the advantages of centralized management and control of Office Groove 2007 clients, organizations require Groove Enterprise Services or Office Groove Server 2007. Organizations with large Office Groove 2007 deployments requiring directory integration, centralized auditing, network optimization, and data integration should purchase Office Groove Server 2007.