Hosting companies continue to slash prices on domain names in an effort to attract new small business customers. The latest price cut comes from Netfirms, a Toronto hosting provider that has begun selling domain names for $4.95 a year. That price undercuts Yahoo's $4.98 promotional rate, as well as 1&1 Internet's one-year .com price of $5.99, previously the lowest non-promotional pricing.

Netfirms specializes in hosting for the small business market, and currently hosts about 51,000 hostnames. Its domain policy allows up to five domains to be registered from the same billing address at the $4.95 price.

Retail Domain Name Prices, February 2005 Company One-year .com price  Primary Business  Primary Region Netfirms $4.95 Shared Hosting America Yahoo $4.98 Shared Hosting America 1&1 Internet AG $5.99 Mixed Hosting Europe EV1Servers $6.49 Dedicated Hosting America Hostway $6.95 Shared Hosting America Stargate $6.95 Shared Hosting America Interland $7.95 Mixed Hosting America Web.com $7.95 Mixed Hosting America AIT Domains $7.99 Mixed Hosting America Go Daddy Inc $8.95 Domain Registrar America RegisterFly $9.99 Domain Registrar America Netcetera $13.00 Mixed Hosting Europe Dotster $14.95 Domain Registrar America FastHosts/UKReg $16.53 Mixed Hosting Europe Pipex/123Reg $16.73 Mixed Hosting Europe Network Solutions $34.99 Domain Registrar America Register.com $35.00 Domain Registrar America

Yahoo has extended its $4.98 a year pricing for .com domains through March 9, the fourth such extension since it introduced the offer on Dec. 10. The promotion was intially scheduled to end Dec. 31, but the additional extension provides evidence that the offer continues to gain new customers for Yahoo.

Go Daddy is bundling low-priced domain names with non-domain products in an effort to drive business to its recently expanded hosting and SSL certificate offerings. The offer features a $3.99 domain with every non-domain product purchased. Go Daddy's stand-alone price for a one-year .com is $8.95 this month.