Hosted Exchange Providers

swinnie · 29 Apr 2013 at 23:22

I thought this would be the best place for this.

I have been a huge fan of Google Apps, particularly the free version which is ideal for the small business/start up. Unfortunately the free version is no longer accepting new signups. I am looking for a reasonably priced Hosted Exchange Provider as a lot of my clients liked to have Push email on their mobile devices. So, I was wondering who you guys have used and could recommend?

Many thanks in advance.

James

jameshurrell · 30 Apr 2013 at 06:47

I've been using SimplyMailSolutions (UK based) for a number of years for hosted Exchange for clients without on premise servers. Support is good - very responsive and downtime has been minimal.

And I agree - the loss of the free Google Apps is a PITA!

paradigm · 30 Apr 2013 at 07:38

If you want to pay for the service: Office 365.

If you just want basic (free) push email and calendars, set up the domain on Outlook.com (by visiting domains.live.com).

tribz · 30 Apr 2013 at 08:24

swinnie said:
I thought this would be the best place for this.

I have been a huge fan of Google Apps, particularly the free version which is ideal for the small business/start up. Unfortunately the free version is no longer accepting new signups. I am looking for a reasonably priced Hosted Exchange Provider as a lot of my clients liked to have Push email on their mobile devices. So, I was wondering who you guys have used and could recommend?

Many thanks in advance.

James

If your a big fan of Apps, why not just go down the paid route there? Its not that expensive. I tried hosted exchange on a single mailbox but the plan I was on didn't give me any control over the junk email settings and things were going missing. Went back to Google apps and no problems.

jameshurrell · 30 Apr 2013 at 09:21

tribz said:
If your a big fan of Apps, why not just go down the paid route there? Its not that expensive. I tried hosted exchange on a single mailbox but the plan I was on didn't give me any control over the junk email settings and things were going missing. Went back to Google apps and no problems.

I agree it's not that much money - but before it was free for the same thing

I tended to use it for clients with a couple of users wanting simple IMAP mailboxes - and it has proved great for that. Clients love free things.

The hosted Exchange provider I use has a Postini junk and archiving add-on, so you have great control over spam/junk/virus etc.

visibleman · 30 Apr 2013 at 11:12

Office 365, not going to get it much cheaper than £2.60 per mailbox for hosted Exchange.

SnAzBaZ · 8 May 2013 at 13:05

swinnie said:
So, I was wondering who you guys have used and could recommend?

I have experience of using Intermedia. They have a good control panel and offer BlackBerry support as well as ActiveSync.

http://www.intermedia.co.uk/

Andrew

ruffneck · 8 May 2013 at 15:39

Cobweb

http://www.cobweb.com/

Yaayuh! · 16 May 2013 at 12:32

Office 365 gets my vote too. Also great if you want to expand on it.

DJMK4 · 16 May 2013 at 13:26

Office365 is good.

Burnsy2023 · 16 May 2013 at 13:31

I've just migrated my private domain from google apps to office 365. I'm pretty happy with the experience overall.

Danny UK · 5 Jul 2013 at 20:24

Burnsy - I thinking of doing the same as you. When you moved over, did you copy all your existing mail. If so, do you mind saying how you did it please?

Burnsy2023 · 5 Jul 2013 at 21:49

Danny UK said:
Burnsy - I thinking of doing the same as you. When you moved over, did you copy all your existing mail. If so, do you mind saying how you did it please?

I did the old school way: I saved it into a .PST which I reimported. I didn't have calendar items to migrate though.

Danny UK · 5 Jul 2013 at 22:17

Ok, thanks.

Danthus · 6 Jul 2013 at 15:35

How does Office 365 differ from a traditional boxed version of Office?

Burnsy2023 · 6 Jul 2013 at 18:02

OldCoals said:
How does Office 365 differ from a traditional boxed version of Office?

Give it a Google, it's more than just Office, it's a cloud hosting solution.

Danthus · 6 Jul 2013 at 23:16

It seems a bit too good to be true.

So you get cloud storage, Skype minutes, full copies of office applications and you can use it on 5 PCs.

Mikey · 18 Aug 2013 at 09:44

I'm about to move to Office 365 as it's cheaper than Cobweb and Cobweb have had a spate of outages since migrating to Exchange 2013

Knubje · 19 Aug 2013 at 20:20

Mikey said:
I'm about to move to Office 365 as it's cheaper than Cobweb and Cobweb have had a spate of outages since migrating to Exchange 2013

As I understand it from sources around that particular hosting market, the product that has been enforced (Hosted Exchange 2013) is extremely buggy.

Can't comment on either reliability of either service though.

#Chri5# · 19 Aug 2013 at 20:46

Exchange 2013 hasn't had the best start to life in general...

No co-existence with 2010 until CU1 arrived (something like 6 months after the "launch" of 2013). Poor or no (!) testing of security patches (TechNet)

Q: How was this issue not detected in your on-premises deployments?

A: Unfortunately, this security update did not get deployed into our dogfood environment prior to release.

Good luck to anyone running a business which depends on Exchange!

PS. I don't know if MS have providers patch hosted Exchange in the same way as on-premise, but either way, MS have pushed some total garbage out as patches of late.