December 30, 2003

Dial up competition eats into AOL

My spin:Listen, NO business should use AOL as their business account. Having bobsbakery@aol.com just does not look professional. Every business should have a first class business account. Having said that - if you just have to have a generic email address and only need or want plain dial up, why pay $20+ a month for bloated AOL when you can get simple dial-up for less from others. A recent Washington Post article reads:

...Goldston runs United Online Inc., a purveyor of no-frills, low-cost dial-up Internet access that has secured a cozy little niche operating in the shadows of established giants such as America Online Inc., EarthLink Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.

Through heavy national television marketing of its NetZero and Juno brands, United Online, based in Westlake Village, Calif., has more than doubled its subscriber base from 1.2 million to 2.7 million over the past two years. It has done so profitably and efficiently: Company officials cited the ability to generate tens of millions of dollars in sales growth over the past year while keeping the payroll for about 460 employees essentially flat.(full story)

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