Advice for email provider?

[stockhausen]

I have been asked to suggest a solution for someone who is having a nightmare with Outlook and emails. Personally I am happy with the likes of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo but this family want something "better", serving five users.

I have suggested using somebody like 1and1 to register a domain name and provide email with reliable storage.

Can anyone else offer any alternative suggestions - as to a suitable solution and if appropriate, a host provider?

Incidentally, off-site, automated backup for photos, etc. on a cloud would be an added plus point.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[mid_gen]

I use my own domain and a paid Google account.

Given the requirements (off-site, photo backup etc) it's difficult to recommend anything else.

I used an Exchange Online account previously but it was just too much of a faff. Gmail for business just works.

 

[Glanza]

Online cloud exchange service, we've been using one for years and moved over 50% of our customers onto it.

Saves hassle and doesn't require a onsite exchange server.

 

[tom_e]

I use 1and1 then have my gmail account set to scrape the emails from it.

 

[BigT]

When you say a nightmare with Outlook, is that just the email client and current email provider combination?

The two stand out choices are already mentioned:

Office 365 has a business essentials plan I think it is called that will give you mail and storage for about £4/person/month

Gmail with a domain name will do much the same on a 'corporate' account and their drive.

Third option might be to use a hosting package with open source mail software and cloud storage. I use this package:

http://www.clook.net/packages/shared-hosting/

£100/year + domain name fees gets email for light usage probably for dozens of people (any IMAP client will work or they have three web based clients) but the downside only 4Gb of storage that you can use with the open source OwnCloud software they provide with their control panel. It's a lot less space than the other providers though.

 

[edscdk]

better than gmail?

they need to identify their issue with outlook or they are likely to just end up with the same problem, its not like outlook is some tin pot hardly used email client

1) Are they using multiple devices to sync and are using pop
2) DO they have a slow internet connection, are using imap and have massive email volume / attachments
3) do they have 40GB of email
4) are they using outlook 97
5) are they really using Hotmail and got confused because it rebranded outlook.com and they are using webmail (outlook.com)

 

[Orcvader]

but this family want something "better", serving five users.

Wait, is this not even for a business? Just a family? I don't see any reason why they should go for something a little more complex .

I suppose either exchange or gmail for business will work.

As for backing up photos, I've set up Google Photos for my family and it does the job very well. Did try OneDrive initially but found that to sync slower and more "randomly".

 

[Cromulent]

I've used Google Apps for Work on numerous domains and highly recommend it. It supports SPF, DKIM and DMARC which I feel is essential for any modern email system. It is cheap. You get lots of storage with your Google Drive (30GB I think on the cheapest plan) and the admin panel is really easy to use.

I've used Microsoft hosted Exchange Online for email when I was doing a Windows based project and thought using Microsoft Outlook would be a good idea and I really didn't like it. For a start it didn't support DKIM which was a massive failing. Secondly the admin panel was painfully complex when Googles admin panel was really easy to use and finally I found it really hard to cancel for some strange reason. When we rang up to cancel they didn't even know you could get Exchange Online without Office 365! To be fair though this was right when the service was first introduced so maybe they hadn't got around to being trained in it at that point.