AT&T ditches small-business Web hosting customers

Web hosting service provider Interland Inc. Friday announced that it’s buying AT&T Corp.’s small-business customer contracts in a deal valued at $4 million to $12 million.

A press release from Atlanta-based Interland includes a statement that says AT&T’s sale of its small-business Web hosting customers “in no way diminishes the company’s strong commitment to serving its small-business customers in other market segments.”

While that may be true, it appears that small-business users won’t be able to buy Web hosting services from AT&T any longer.

Under the terms of the agreement, Interland isn’t permitted to disclose the number of customers it’s acquiring. But Interland is buying all of AT&T’s shared and dedicated Web hosting customers that were using its Small Business Hosting Service (SBH) and Business Ready Dedicated Hosting Service (BRDH).

AT&T has been pretty cagey when talking about customer numbers, but it looks as if it had about 7,000 to 8,000 customers using the two offerings, said Melanie Posey, program manager at consulting firm IDC in Framingham, Mass.

AT&T said the two services represent a very small part of the company’s overall hosting revenue. SBH and BRDH were priced from $25 and $795 per month, respectively.

Interland said it’s integrating AT&T customers onto its own Web hosting platform immediately.