Verio has introduced new hosted-service plans for Microsoft's Windows Server platform that allow companies to purchase multiple Web sites for the price of what a single site would have cost previously, a company executive said.

The six new hosting plans from Verio, a division of NTT Communications, are designed to provide more options and cost-effective services to small and medium-size businesses, said Bill Thomson, director of product management for shared hosting at Verio.

As part of these changes, the company is offering several multisite plans that let customers purchase multiple sites running on Windows 2003 servers. Customers can hand off the administration, security and content-creation duties of each site to other parties or subaccounts, he said. Previously, the company only had one plan, which allowed customers to host multiple sites on just one account.

To illustrate the cost-effectiveness of the new plans, Thomson said that the former Hosting 4000 plan offered 25 Web sites for US$49.95 a month. Now, the new MultiSite plan includes 10 Web sites and costs US$24.95 a month, and the WebMaster Plan includes 30 Web sites and costs US$59.95 a month.

The other new plans Verio launched Thursday are the Windows eStoreFront Plan, which offers basic e-commerce and shopping cart functionality for two separate sites for US$24.95 a month, and the Windows SQL Plan, which is aimed at companies that want to link a Microsoft SQL Server database to their Web sites. The SQL Plan includes two Web sites and costs US$29.95 a month.

The new plans are especially helpful for Web-site developers that use Verio's hosted services to build sites for customers, Thomson said. They can ultimately control the customer account with Verio, but can pass off administration of various sites to their own customers, he said.

Multisite hosting plans also allow medium-size companies deal with different divisions that need Web sites separate from the company's home page, Thomson added. The hosting plans let these companies delegate administration of the subsites to the divisions themselves. Even though the sites are all owned by one account, they have their own URLs and IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, so they appear to end users as separate sites, Thomson said.