How do you name a product?

Try for something more descriptive.
Standard, workhorse, rawpower.
Or if it was a car
saloon, 4×4, truck
Try for something that indicates the difference in a real world environment.

Why not Moon, Sun and Stars?
After all, doesn’t every hosting company promise all three?

Depending on your customers “boring” can be the way to go. Think usability – people generally understand something that they see all over the place better than something new.
/Frank

Michele,
On our weddingsireland.com ratecard we have several packages including: Gold, Silver, Diamond and Platinum. These are (sort of anyway!) related to weddings – well wedding rings at least.
Maybe if you try something that describes the merits of each package – lower range plans that do the job for a decent plans could be called ‘Business Economy’ or similar, and higher end plans with heaps of space and bandwith could be called ‘Business Enterprise’ or something like that.
1&1 have some pretty good names for their products. For instance they have a ‘Beginner’ and ‘Home’ packages for beginners and presumably family websites!
H

@Francis – tempting !!
@Irene – LOL. It wouldn’t leave much options for spin

what about cumputer consoles…
Commodore 64, Super Nintendo, Playstation 2, XBOX 360!

I like:
* Shot Glass
** Six Pack
*** KEG
For those that left and you’re trying to get back: “*Special Re-Hab Plan*”

Maybe it’s just me, but I find ‘cute’ product names extremely irritating.
I have to admit to giggling at A Small Orange’s plan names, though…

Here at Silver Haired Internet Technology [S.H.I.T.] we sell
Hmmmm, Wow, and Holy God!

Music: Acoustic, Electric, 11!
More Music: Club, Festival, Stadium

It’s the Spinal Tap joke – the amplifier that goes up to 11.
Err, obviously not as funny as I thought!

I’d go for:
Sword, Axe, Fauchard (Lance)
bye, Ian

Ian – a bit violent
Rahood – I like the idea of maximus etc., The names as gaeilge are an excellent idea, but we’re trying to target a larger market, so I’d be afraid the names would cause confusion. Now if we were to do a version of our site as gaeilge that might work
Michele

Anthony – That might work if everyone was a sports fan

Why don’t you use nouns of drinks or famous wines. The concept of a modern wine shop or an old pub can even be used to get ideas for your online advertising.
Something like:
- Cider
- Stout
- Whisky
It’s just a draft proposal but I think you get the idea…
CIAO

It would be nice to see the site as Gaeilge but I would be the first to admit that there would is little demand and you would end up with Abi/babelfish translated emails from the odd smartars3.
But with that said the whole exercise is a simple one and would/should/could warrant its own award category(or honorable mention) and at the very least I would view it as an excuse to email the TG4 weather girls with a press release

I always liked these names as they were themed.
http://www.fatcow.com/fatcow/hosting.bml
I think you should go with the Knight thing.

R2D2
Robocop
Terminator

@Robin – Nice. I don’t think I’d seen those before but it’s a nice idea
@Mike – Interesting idea.
@Alastair – I’m not sure how we’d spin Robocop…
@David – Wouldn’t that be confusing for people?
Thanks for all the feedback so far. We’ve got plenty of things to mull over
Michele

if the names can be random why not…
Shatranj,
Xiang Qi,
Shogi
or
Lewis,
Jaques,
Staunton
All from the company name and logo
the first 3 are versions of chess (Indian, Chinese and Japanese) and the latter three are types of chess piece sets.
The advantage of this is that you can easily add a new plan if needed since no one clearly thrumps another
You also could work with chess gambits and openings or with ELO chess ranking

Lar
Thanks for the link. I’ll go play with that.
We were hoping to avoid terms like “enterprise” as they’re quite meaningless
Michele