Truly amazing, bug-nuts, "Perhaps I've read the fine print wrong?" extranet deal

There's gotta be a catch. I'm a paranoid so-and-so by nature (except when it comes to babies, puppies, "Little House on the Prairie" reruns and Girl Scout Cookies), and so when I see something that looks too good to be true, I assume it is. But just in case it ain't, I need to pass this on to y'all.

I've been researching and keeping an eye on various extranet, intranet and portal offerings for about three years now. I'm fascinated by the possibilities of virtual office efficiencies, I've done some research work for clients, written a couple articles on the subject, and I simply get a kick out of it. All that being said, I just came across a company offering what is, I believe, the single most insanely low priced, full-featured extranet service I've come across yet. Thruport HotOffice

Caveats:  I've only been messing around with HotOffice for about four  hours. I'm still on their 30-day free trial. I have not pinged their customer service. I have not done any of the things I would normally do in the process of really stress-testing a serious business process service provider before giving it a full-on recommendation to a client who had paid me to research a field of competitors.

But, seeing as how this is free advice (and we all know what that's worth), and seeing as how you can take advantage of the 30-day free trial, too... I figure there's no harm done. And since I've gone through the trouble of wading through about 45 competing providers of portals, extranets, intranets, file-sharing, document transfer, virtual office and other synonymous services, I figure you'd like to hear about this little gem.

Here's the first thing that will strike you about HotOffice: the price. $14.95/month  for 150megs of storage, $49.95/month for 500 megs. Plus the higher priced plan gets you telephone support and POP3 support for email rather than just webmail. Just 5-cents per additional meg of storage (per month) over your allowance.

Any of you who know anything about extranet pricing are wondering why I've left out one very  important element -- how much per user. Sometimes the services refer to this as "per member" or "per seat" pricing. Basically, what it means is that you pay a per-month price for every person who uses the extranet; every separate login/password combination.

Not on HotOffice. At least that's what it says on their pricing page. "Unlimited Users."

To give you an example of a competing product, Intranets.com charges $59.95/month for 5 users, and $20/month more... each... for additional users. They have other bundles with lower per-user rates for larger groups of users... 100 users = $699.95/month +$15/month per extra user.  Also, you only get 100 megs of storage with Intranets.com, regardless of user base. You purchase additional blocks of storage per year at between 8 and 16-cents per meg.

So let's say you've been listening to me and other lextex hotshots who have been saying for a couple years that extranets will increase efficiency and help you hook your clients for life. And you've got, say, 25 lawyers and 75 clients you'd like to trial this crazy extranet thing on. Just to see how it works. You could hire a bunch of IT jocks and build one yourself for a couple hundred thousand dollars... only to find out that it really isn't your cup o' tea. Or you could try a service that you just "dial up" off the Internet like HotOffice or Intranets.com.

Until recently, I would have had to sell the Intranets.com up a pretty steep hill. Why? Because the "we don't get it" factor combines with a fairly "that costs too much to convince me" factor.

Not anymore.

Cost for 100 users (25 lawyers and 75 clients) with 1.1  gigabytes of data:

• Intranets.com = $699.95 (base) + $66 (extra storage) = $765.95/month.
• HotOffice = $59.95 (base) + $30 (extra storage) = $89.95/month

That's why I said it's bug-nuts. It's off by more than an order-of-magnitude. When I went to the pricing page on the HotOffice website the first time, my eyes did the Warner Bros. cartoon thing where they make the "Ahh-OOOH-gaah!" noise and sproing out'n yer head.

Now... to be fair, Intranets.com is more full-featured. It would be a BMW compared to HotOffice's... oh... let's say... Ford Taurus. Yeah, that's right, baby. A Taurus. That ain't a bad ride, is it? Ain't nothing wrong with a Taurus. HotOffice has all the features, in fact, that I'd advise a client to look for in an extranet suite:

• Calendar
• Bulletin Board
• Email management (from multiple sources... that's cute)
• Document viewing (in a web browser window) and management (up/download, version tracking, notes)
• Group contacts management
• Private chat rooms
• Web links
• Access rights by groups, users and projects
• Reminders
• Brand customization to look like it's your front end

And, no... I'm not getting a commission from them. I've just spent so many hundreds of hours digging through so many extranet packages that I was really excited to find something with this many features at this price.

If you're at a small firm and really want a way to distinguish yourself from the crowd, there's nothing better than being more technologically proficient than the big boys. If you can show yourself to be "right up there" with a cutting-edge efficiency tool like a good extranet, that's a huge marketing differentiator, to say nothing about a great operational driver.

Assuming the whole thing doesn't turn out to be a typo, or a front for communist Martians or something equally bizarre... I can't think of a single reason for firms to hang back on at least giving an extranet a try now. Even if you eventually go with another service -- or build something yourself -- you could use Hot Office as an inexpensive proof-of-concept.

And if it turns out to be communist Martians, and you get abducted and reprogrammed... I'll give you a full refund on your blog subscription price.

* * * * *

UPDATE (3/28, 4:30pm): I have pinged their customer service. I had to be sure about the pricing, so I sent an email late Friday afternoon (after 5pm) asking if I had it right about the "unlimited user thing." I got an email back within 45 minutes telling me that the marketing person who could really, really, really confirm for sure what I was asking had left, but that they'd get back to me early on Monday. A response saying, "Yes, the price really is for unlimited users," came in at 10:16 EST this morning.