MS exchange server - rent/dedicated/managed?

Diakatarnis · 15 Apr 2011 at 09:37

edscdk said:
if your BB line dies you have no email, if your office burns down you have no email, if windows / exchange go wrong you have no email, if you get a virus you have no email, if the server hardware dies you have no email, if your router dies you have no email, it costs you £300 - £500 a year on electric to keep the server running, the initial cost of the software and setup is going to be £1500+... dont forget the massive support overhead and pain in the ass backups that will keep going wrong

I cannot think of any plus point for exchange over google apps for a small setup

I would only consider local exchange for >20 users

True, were assuming he wants only emails and not file store or anything, and surly if your bb line dies youll have no email either way :S

edscdk · 15 Apr 2011 at 09:37

Diakatarnis said:
I would go with this if you dont want an in house server tbh, I use google for message continuity and its fab.

for anyone thats uses gmail, google apps gives you an application that syncs contacts and calendar with no messing about, also not everyone spots you can sync apple devices with the calendar / contacts as well (easily)..

within seconds of adding a calendar event or contact to my iphone its stored in my google apps account so if I lose my phone

if you dont need the extra bits you can set up a free account with google apps (no super easy outlook sync contacts / calendar and ony 7gb storage)

edscdk · 15 Apr 2011 at 09:40

Diakatarnis said:
True, were assuming he wants only emails and not file store or anything, and surly if your bb line dies youll have no email either way :S

you can use your phone to check email if the offie BB dies - or go home... :-P

rG-tom · 15 Apr 2011 at 09:43

Eulogy said:
Got some answers for you:

1) You pay per user/mailbox rather than email address, so if you wanted a user/mailbox to have multiple email addresses there is no extra cost for this. For example you can have a user with [email protected] and [email protected] for no extra cost.

Per user the cheapest you will get without discount is £3.29 per month and that is without premium support and on a 36 month contract. 12 month contract on the same is a bit more expensive but you're not tied in as long.

Hey,

What about distribution groups? Ie say you had 2 users, bob and jim, but then wanted a sales@ dist group and a support@ dist group, both that have bob and jim in, would that be £6.58 or £13.16?

JGBR · 15 Apr 2011 at 12:42

The cost of SBS or WS with exchange is still within range of more then 25 email addresses.

However, people can of course only relie on SBS on a decent internet connection - IE leased line?

Theirfore, anything in house is out the window!

Which leaves

dedicated server or exchange hosting

JonB · 15 Apr 2011 at 12:48

Or Cloud (virtual machine) hosting somewhere like Amazon or Rackspace?

JGBR · 15 Apr 2011 at 12:57

Well exchange I think you need to keep buying cals correct? and they come in groups of 5, so 25 users is 5 licences

JonB · 15 Apr 2011 at 13:18

Yes but in the long run may be cheaper.

Anyway, have a look here :http://www.microsoft.com/en/gb/medi...oudonlineservices/exchangehostedservices.aspx

JGBR · 15 Apr 2011 at 14:34

Choices choices

My issue being:

No leased line for "in house"

and

I need probably atleast 25 exchange mail boxes

HungryHippos · 15 Apr 2011 at 15:03

rG-tom said:
Hey,

What about distribution groups? Ie say you had 2 users, bob and jim, but then wanted a sales@ dist group and a support@ dist group, both that have bob and jim in, would that be £6.58 or £13.16?

DL's and contacts are free, you only pay per mailbox and you can get as many email addresses on the mailboxes/DL's as you want at no extra cost

Keeps things simple!

HungryHippos · 15 Apr 2011 at 15:05

edscdk said:
google apps all the way, there is not way any crappy outfit is going to be more secure than google

£35 per mail box per year, 25gb storage, imap, full contact and cal sync to outlook and mobile devices, web mail

if you have a hosted exchange box you are relying on a single (though probably virtual) machine to be workign correctly, with gmail as long as the multi billion $ data center is not struck by a nuke your service will be up...

Our hosted exchange mailboxes run on physical boxes that are clustered on storage arrays that are HA using RAID 10 for all the LUN's so I guess it depends who you use eh?

JGBR · 15 Apr 2011 at 15:24

confused on your payment system

is is

pay for each box:

IE, [email protected] [email protected]

or

is it all the same price aslong as domain same?

HungryHippos · 15 Apr 2011 at 15:38

JGBR said:
confused on your payment system

is is

pay for each box:

IE, [email protected] [email protected]

or

is it all the same price aslong as domain same?

you pay per mailbox, so if you have 25 users who need mailboxes you pay price of mailbox * number of users. If you need to assign multiple email addresses to your users there is no extra cost for this. So you could for example assign all your accounts with email address [email protected] and [email protected] for the same overall price.

Does this make sense?

JGBR · 15 Apr 2011 at 15:52

This comes down to cost again

25 mailboxes at 5 or 10 pounds a time is quite abit and within grasps of a full server?

HungryHippos · 15 Apr 2011 at 16:04

JGBR said:
This comes down to cost again

25 mailboxes at 5 or 10 pounds a time is quite abit and within grasps of a full server?

It depends what you go for really, if you check pricing you can get mailboxes for less than £5 a month each http://www.cobweb.com/hosted-services/hosted-exchange.aspx. Certainly nowhere near £10 per mailbox even for the most expensive option!

If you can build an exchange server with HA, exchange backups, Message Labs anti spam and CAL licenses for less than that I would be surprised

JGBR · 15 Apr 2011 at 16:10

I think the argument is that if you pay out for say 30 exchanged hosted licences then you might aswell do it yourself.

Diakatarnis · 15 Apr 2011 at 16:30

Im confused, why would you need a leased line to run exchange? most other companies use a standard business line... is there going to be no one in the office so your planning on running 25 people externally?

edscdk · 15 Apr 2011 at 16:32

Diakatarnis said:
Im confused, why would you need a leased line to run exchange? most other companies use a standard business line... is there going to be no one in the office so your planning on running 25 people externally?

you don't, any broadband line with a static IP will do...

JGBR · 15 Apr 2011 at 16:32

Due to OWA and the workload, our business broadband is unlikely to cope with the load. Also their is the question over the investment of small businesses in obviously all the inhouse costs.

Diakatarnis · 15 Apr 2011 at 18:03

owa workload? if you had a 22mb broadband line that would be more than enough to cope unless your planning on everyone sending 5mb+ files at the same time?

I have a client who has 25 users who all vpn in and use rdesktop over the 1 line at the moment (seeing as their damn rdesktop line is down still ... BT.... *crys*)

None of them complain about the speeds even though i've said its not a good idea to have the terminal services and outlook clients all on the one line.