(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- This week in web hosting saw a handful of sales and promotions, a couple of them tied to birthday celebrations, and including one promotion in the form of a course on website promotion for a hosting company’s customers.

Gandi’s Free Domain Giveaway

This one doesn’t quite fit the roundup – it might be more of a recap – since the offer itself expired on Wednesday of this week, but domain registrar and web hosting provider Gandi (www.gandi.net) reported earlier this week that it had been giving away domain names in celebration of its 10th anniversary over a 10-day period that ended on March 10. The giveaway was intended primarily to reward existing customers, with up to 10 domains going to each customer, depending on how long they had been with the company. In total, Gandi says it gave away 55,000 domains.

Codero’s Price Match Challenge Strikes  a Chord

Codero (www.codero.com) wrote us this week to let us know that feedback from the company’s price match challenge had been “very positive” from SMBs looking for dedicated and managed hosting. The promotion is available for a limited time and follows the pretty well understood retail “price match” formula. Customers submit a copy of a dated price and specification quote that is no more than 30 days old, or a live link to a website advertising specifications, and Codero matches that price for as long as the customer maintains the service with Codero. However, it is only available on newly activated dedicated and managed hosting services.

ResellerClub’s Big Birthday Bash

Reseller hosting provider ResellerClub (www.resellerclub.com) announced this week that it is celebrating its anniversary with a promotion called the “big birthday bash.” The promotion is providing pricing promotions on all the company’s products, including .com domains, which it is offering for $4.99. The promotion runs until March 31 and also includes deals on .mobi, .in, .us.com and .eu.com domains.

AIT Server Closeout Pricing

Web hosting provider AIT (www.ait.com) sent a message this week that was amusingly reminiscent of local used car or furniture advertising, or maybe one of those “we buy your jewelry” ads – complete with image of crazy man holding handfuls of cash. They’re clearing out more than 100 servers, and they’re doing so by heavily discounting those servers. Apparently everything must go.

Pickaweb’s TopWebPromote Video SEO Course

Finally, on Friday, UK-based web hosting provider Pickaweb (www.pickaweb.co.uk) issued a press release this week, saying the company woud begin offering a service it called TopWebPromote, a series of video tutorials, delivered weekly to new customers, designed to educate them on the basics – and some more advanced fundamentals – of marketing their websites to search engines. The series of videos is intended to have the effect of an online course, gradually increasing the customer’s understanding of the subject, and is offered to all the company’s new customers.

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