Hosted Exchange

[smird]

I'm looking to my hosted exchange to a new provided. Anyone have a hosted exchange provider that you're really happy with?

Thanks
Brad

[bigmike82]

What kind of price-range are you looking for? What do you dislike about your old provider? How many users will you be migrating?

Finally, is Exchange a hard and fast requirement, or could you move to something like google apps?

[thedonger]

I use AppRiver

[smird]

What kind of price-range are you looking for? What do you dislike about your old provider? How many users will you be migrating?

Finally, is Exchange a hard and fast requirement, or could you move to something like google apps?

1) price isn't an issue as long as it's in the realm of what others are charging. ($5-15 per user per month)

2) They, installed postini spam app. We're a sales co. they're scanning our outgoing mail and bouncing it back as spam. These are not spam, only sent to one customer, reply to a quote request, but honestly they do look like spam to a computer. I've tried to get our sales staff and owner to change some things. it's helped some. But i've not got a cheesed off boss saying things like "Who are they to tell me what I can send to MY customers"

3) about 20

4)We really like exchange, and use all the features. Another solution would have to do everything exchange does. Google uses the same postini spam program we might be in the same boat with them.

Thanks

I use AppRiver

Thanks

[Invicta]

Microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/online/exchange-hosted-services.aspx

The company I am with is a Microsoft Certified Gold partner and we are located in socal if you need any help.

[nick]

I haven't seen a hosted Exchange provider I liked, and I went through quite a few a year ago or so. I ended up running Exchange locally.

Speed was the issue with all of them. While the initial startup costs are small and you don't have to have expertise in-house, the downsides are that the speed depends on the resources of the ESP (which they aren't usually willing to commit until the speed becomes really bad), and Exchange is a resource hog, and your Internet connection speed. So, speed is usually an issue, and then you have the small issue of having to deal with the lack of Exchange expertise at the ESP, and there isn't a thing you can do about it.

What you can do if you can't host it in-house (pretty easy and cheaper after a year or so with Windows <whatever> SBS, not to mention this being much more scalable. Of course, if you have a residential Internet link, you'll run into email deliverability issues, so it might not be a good solution for you) is, you can get a dedicated virtual server either from a hosting provider like Rackspace or even Godaddy, or from a cloud provider (Azure or Amazon come to mind), and run your Exchange there. That way you'll have a server that's outside of your network, with a business network's IP, don't have to worry about hardware upgrades, and can go wild with the number of accounts, distro groups, etc.

You'll likely need someone to set it up for you at first, of course. In the long run, things will be cheaper though, and basic administration, such as creating/disabling user accounts, creating forwarders, mail contacts, distro groups, etc. is easy enough that anyone who isn't afraid of computers to the point that his mind goes blank when he sees one would be able to do this after 2-3hr of training.

[bigmike82]

Actually, SBS might be a good way to go, depending on your internal setup. Add something like a Barracuda spam filter, and you should be set.

I'd be happy to provide you a quote for this. /shameless plug

At 20 users, you're looking at about $1200 a year for the Microsoft Exchange Online service...which isn't bad. Everything's managed for you, email wise, and they include their frontbridge service for free. Mailbox size is lik 25GB, so you shouldn't run out of space any time soon.

[smird]

Thanks guys, I think in the in the long run I'll do the in house or Co-Lo. But since we were dead in the water since Monday, I went with another hosted co. At about 3AM So far so good.

At least this way if there's a problem I can have time to setup a server. Invicta, Big Mike feel free to PM me your company's info what you do and charge, I could always use another consulting company and it minds well be a calgunner.

Don't tell my Boss but I usually just hire people for things I don't like doing like running cabling. I'm pretty computer savy. Got a MCSE around here someplace but it's so old I think it's carved on a stone tablet.


Thanks again
Brad