Yahoo remains a reseller, buying its domains from Australian wholesaler Melbourne IT, which manages the domains. Yahoo isn't saying whether it obtained a better rate from Melbourne IT or has decided to accept less profit per domain to offer a more attractive price, but describes the new rate as a "marketing promotion" rather than a permanent change. For the moment, the price cut makes Yahoo's web hosting services slightly more affordable for its target small business customer. The web portal is already one of the top players in the small business hosting market with more than 587k hostnames.
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In other news, the four dollar domain barrier has been broken. While it's not quite the four-minute mile, the $3.99 per year price from Los Angeles hosting company Globat shaves a penny off the previous low of $4 for a "free-standing" domain (not bundled with a hosting package) from MyValueHost. Both are relatively small providers, as Globat hosts about 24k hostnames, compared to about 20k for MyValueHost.com
In a bid for reseller customers, FastHosts is now offering to host an unlimited number of domains for 50 pounds a month (about $90), or 500 pounds ($900) per year. 1&1 Internet AG remains the price leader among large hosting companies at $5.99 for a one-year .com signup, but is offering .us domains as low as $2.99.