Hosted Exchange Providers

[MavsX]

Hello everybody in the Corporate world. I help manage two companies IT 'stuff'. Anyway I was given the task last week to find a Microsoft Exchange hosting company.

For nerds:

One of our companies(about 50 people), is on a hosted pop account solution. As we all know that sucks. So I want a provider that is Microsoft Gold Certified, like big name!, no mom and pop shops!. So if your company out sources stuff please tell me who you guys use and if you like them.

For non-nerds.

More than likely your company uses Microsoft Outlook, with an exchange back-end. Unless they have their own Exchange servers in house, they have to outsource it. Do you know what company they use to outsource with? and Do you like it?



Thanks everybody!

I have some names and have already spoken with account reps, but i want to hear from the people!

[MavsX]

nobody? you rat bastards! come on! at least tell me yours is all in house exchange servers!

[u2sarajevo]

In house. I don't need any pansies running my Exchange.

[jthig32]

Not in the IT department, but I do know ours is in house. They just upgraded everything for the new DST changes.

[MavsX]

Originally Posted by u2sarajevo

In house. I don't need any pansies running my Exchange.

yeah we got one in house, (groupwise), and one company on pop running outlook. were gonna switch the pop to hosted exchange, and eventually switch out our in house groupwise to in house exchange.

i hear the migration from groupwise to exchange is pretty bloody.


thanks though fellas....

[dalmations202]

At the company, I run Exchange -- hosted in house.
We are converting since the buy-out to Lotus Notes (I think it is a step backwards - but corporate policy).

For my personal business I use a company name powweb. Powweb offers IMAP and Pop boxes remote hosted and they are inexpensive. It also has Webmail, etc.

I did for years run a linux server with Cyrus, and have experimented with freebsd/Qmail, etc.

Now, if you need Exchange and not just an IMAP solution, I would probably try usa.net.

Personally, why outsource email, unless you only have 10 users or less. There are many mail toasters out there, and http://macallan.club.fr/MMS/index.html has one that I have used for a small business I support for years.

[u2sarajevo]

Originally Posted by MavsX

yeah we got one in house, (groupwise), and one company on pop running outlook. were gonna switch the pop to hosted exchange, and eventually switch out our in house groupwise to in house exchange.

i hear the migration from groupwise to exchange is pretty bloody.


thanks though fellas....

And, sadly, Novell dies just a little bit more.

[MavsX]

Originally Posted by u2sarajevo

And, sadly, Novell dies just a little bit more.

haha yeah man. All the receptionists' here have funny like nicknames for GroupWise. like GroupStupid or something like that. Also everybody in the company has been begging for outlook for at least a year. We are going to try and pull a migration sometime this fall.

[MavsX]

Originally Posted by dalmations202

At the company, I run Exchange -- hosted in house.
We are converting since the buy-out to Lotus Notes (I think it is a step backwards - but corporate policy).

For my personal business I use a company name powweb. Powweb offers IMAP and Pop boxes remote hosted and they are inexpensive. It also has Webmail, etc.

I did for years run a linux server with Cyrus, and have experimented with freebsd/Qmail, etc.

Now, if you need Exchange and not just an IMAP solution, I would probably try usa.net.

Personally, why outsource email, unless you only have 10 users or less. There are many mail toasters out there, and http://macallan.club.fr/MMS/index.html has one that I have used for a small business I support for years.

thanks for your help man. Well it's just that with two companies, we have 15 sites all over northern va, Maryland, and in D.C. So its a bitch for my and my boss to go out to all the sites, so we try and do everything remotely...but sometimes you gotta be there in person.

When i was hired on, they already had a hosted pop solution, a real mom and pop shop. In fact i grabbed an invoice from accounting. They only charge us $45 a month for 50 pop accounts. Pop was useful years ago, and is great if its for one person, but we need to share contacts and calendars and be able to get emails from any computer. So exchange is where it is at.

As far as USA.net, i have contacted them already, they are definately the most expensive. Something like $16.95 per user per month, for 200 megs storage, but i have heard they are one of the best, with the biggest market share. Not only that but i have some friends that work for some other IT companies who outsource and they use usa.net as well.


We just got too much on our plate with 15 sites, 2 companies, both running r2 with dfs namespace and dfs-r. We just moved to a new building and am moving another part of our company here in July. We got other shiiiit going on.....as you guys know..it never ends.....


Thanks for your help my friend.

[MavsX]

sooo...It's been a few years. And we've been using USA.net for one of our companies email solutions. As i mentioned earlier it's expensive! I think we're paying something like $16.95 for 200 megs, and blackberry support is $5.00 extra per user.

I just came across something new. It looks like Microsoft is getting into the hosted exchange provider game. And it's cheap! I'm looking at $5.00 per user, and that gets you something like a 20 gig live mailbox.

http://www.microsoft.com/online/exch...services.mspx#

Also, google has some good looking email solutions as well. But it looks like MS is where it is at.

Thoughts?

[Big Boy Laroux]

Inhouse here as well. We actually are running a full Microsoft Exchange/OCS shop.

[Male30Dan]

For the life of me I can't understand paying another business money to do what I can easily do just fine myself without overtaxing my staff. If you setup Exchange properly with the right policies in place all you really have to do is just monitor logs.

Exchange is one of the easiest things to setup and configure. Sure, CALs can be expensive if you don't have it and have to move everyone to Exchange but you don't have to purchase Outlook. Hell OWA and OMA come with it. Turn on Forms-Based Authentication if you want your pretty little logo on the login page and away you go.

I hate the world of cloud computing, managed networks, outsourced support, etc... Do it yourself, save the company a boat load, and get a nice bonus at the end of the year for your hard work.

[sike]