Hosted Manila
UserLand Software now offers Hosted Manila, a hosted, on-demand, software as a service version of our popular Manila web publishing and weblogging software application. This new product offering is designed to meet the needs of smaller organizations that lack the resources to deploy and maintain their own Manila web server and those organizations that prefer the software as a service model currently being popularized by companies such as Salesforce.com.
Hosted Manila includes all the features and functionality of regular Manila. The only difference is that Hosted Manila is served from our high-performance web servers instead of your own. We are responsible for uptime, maintenance and upgrades. In addition, our customer support department and Professional Services Group are available to help new users get started, to design and setup the initial site and to provide any customization work that may be desired.
Because Manila is used and managed via a web browser interface, anyone with the necessary permissions and an Internet connection can access and edit your Hosted Manila site. Hosted Manila is a pay as you go service that allows UserLand customers to tap into the virtually unlimited potential of Manila services. As your organization grows and your demands increase, Hosted Manila will grow with you adding capacity to meet your needs. Whether your need is one very large website or a community of hundreds of must smaller weblogs, our staff is ready to provide you with a turnkey solution.
Should You Consider Hosted Manila?
One of the great advantages of Manila as a web publishing and weblogging application is its extreme ease of use. Virtually anyone can use Manila to create and edit web pages, weblogs or entire websites. Still, it remains true that setting up and maintaining a dedicated web server requires technical expertise and resources not always available to individuals and organizations.
With Hosted Manila, the ease of use of having a web publishing application that requires no technical support is extended to having a web server infrastructure that also requires no dedicated IT support staff. By removing the burden of installing and running Manila on your own servers, we hope to create an opportunity for individuals and organizations with smaller budgets and fewer in-house technical resources to take control over their web presence by creating and maintaining their web content with Manila.
For many organizations, using Hosted Manila will make very good economic sense. With Hosted Manila, there is no need to purchase or allocate your own server to run the application, you will not need to provide for 24x7 connectivity to the Internet and your IT staff will be relieved of the tasks of installing and maintaining the software. As a hosted customer, you will also receive the benefits of all updates as soon as they are released. Every customer's situation will vary, but Salesforce.com has been very successful in demonstrating the advantages and possible cost savings of licensing software as a service.
Hosted Manila is an option for many groups that want to implement a website or weblog solution quickly. At any time, users of Hosted Manila can transition their service to their own dedicated server running an independently licensed Manila application.
Hosting by UserLand
UserLand Software is the developer and owner of the Manila software application. We are constantly improving the product, expanding the feature set and upgrading Manila's reliability. All of UserLand's own systems run on Manila and Frontier and our staff has more experience than anyone in running high-performance Manila websites. In addition, UserLand maintains a dedicated customer support desk and professional services group to answer questions and provide support to our customers.
Pricing
Pricing for Hosted Manila services depends entirely on the end-user's requirements. Basic system packages for websites or weblogs requiring no setup assistance or professional services include:
- $99 per year for a ManilaSite subdomain site (e.g. www.manilasites.com/yoursitename)
- $299 per year for a smaller, single domain, medium traffic site with virtual hosting on your own domain
- $499 per year for a larger single domain, medium traffic site with virtual hosting on your own domain
Large or high-traffic sites such as those incorporating static rendering or multi-author websites involving multiple domains are priced in consultation with the potential customer. If you would like to discuss your Manila hosting needs, please contact our sales team at sales@userland.com. Please include information on what type of website you are looking to create, the number users, expected traffic volumes, whether you will require multiple domains and what if any professional services work you are likely to require.