Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2013. It reports product news about POP.co at launch, including the 15-day trial, $5 a month price and Google Apps integration. Google Apps is now Google Workspace, and the service may have changed completely or no longer exist.
The founders of the company behind the .CO domains have created a new company called POP.co so that any entrepreneur can start an online business as quickly and easily as possible.
What POP.co does is bundle a set of online services so that entrepreneurs don’t have to waste too much time testing their idea, and can instead build their web presence around that idea.
Tom Lackner, the company’s chief technology officer, says this approach is necessary for entrepreneurs, mainly because many of them work on 3 or 4 micro-businesses at the same time. Likewise, if you decide to start a business from home without being very sure whether it will work, this system lets you try it out and find out.
How does POP.co work?
Signing up is simple. You choose a .CO domain name (if it’s available; if not, the system will suggest some alternatives). From there, you can start putting together a simple website without any programming knowledge. Think of it as our first presence on the internet; later on we could do all of this more calmly and professionally. It comes with Google Apps tools, which connect to your site straight away.
There’s a 15-day trial in which you can test the service, and if you want to continue, it’s just a payment of 5 dollars a month, with no minimum commitment.
The good and the bad of POP.co
The good thing about this service is undoubtedly how easy it is to sign up: you don’t have to give your credit card details until the trial period is over and you decide to subscribe. The 5 dollars covers everything, so it really is a good way to avoid wasting time at the start of a business and to be online in a minute.
The only downside would be that it clashes with some of the advice we usually give about starting a business, where we insist that even if your business is in your basement, your website should look completely professional. That said, even the simplest template designs can have their “minimalist” touch.
Via: TechCrunch
Further reading
Featured image: Adam Selwood, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
