Web hosting innovator Smartyhost today announced an aggressive pricing model for the small business sector. Managing Director Anoosh Manzoori has challenged the rest of the web-hosting sector to offer better value, announcing a $15 per month flat rate plan for 150MB of disk space. Where the larger carriers and hosting companies charge extra for what Manzoori calls 'non-services', Smartyhost guarantees no hidden charges and 99.9% uptime.

"This pricing model is perfectly sustainable," says Manzoori, "because web hosting costs are flat. The rest of the industry is charging too much and it's time it stopped. 'Domain Name Management Fees', 'Set-up Fees', or 'Account Management Fees' are non-services that small businesses simply cannot and need not afford."

"If there is an outage, or any unscheduled down time, and the server goes down," says Manzoori, "some companies will charge you a fee to back-up your site and upload it again! That's the sort of thing I'm keen to see the back of. Businesses deserve better service for their dollars in the web hosting industry and I hope I can raise the bar and lead by example."

Tailored to any small businesses looking to place catalogues or marketing material online at a reduced cost, or for medium-scale e-commerce purposes, the 150MB package is a strong solution for any commercial web project.

The pricing structure - which works out at $12 per month on the annual fee model - will help many businesses previously shy of the web to take their business online. For many businesses, unpredictable charges and non-scalable packages are a concern for restricted budgets. The completely visible pricing structure means businesses can plan their web costs across a whole year, with data needs of 20GB a month and disk space of 150MB both likely to be more than adequate for the average small business.

Including 150 email addresses, free SSL e-commerce encryption, free search engine submission, full time online customer support, no set up fee and no service charges, the new pricing model puts the web hosting industry on notice that the days of 'rip off' charges are nearing an end. The package also includes free website measurement using Urchin.com - unique to Smartyhost.

However, fear of the unknown is a daunting prospect for those companies with very little internet experience. Not only is Smartyhost easily manageable through the self-service 'Control Panel' feature, but full-time, online support means there's always help available at no extra cost.

Those businesses already online, but frustrated by hidden fees and costs and restricted by unscaleable packages, will be interested to hear that also unlike other service providers, Smartyhost will transfer your content characteristically free-of-charge and performed in real-time with no downtime.

The Adelaide-based hosting service has been operating since 1999 and already has customers in over 15 countries, not only because of the very cost-effective and easy-to-manage pricing model, but because of Smartyhost's commitment to providing a high level of customer service with advanced technology. The self- service model is designed to be immediately intuitive, built around a 'Control Panel' management structure that allows users to easily manage their own sites. The package includes an industry-leading allowance of 20GB of data transfer per month and is built on a robust, Linux-based back-end.