Spec me an email solution

[Russinating]

Right, we're having some problems with Vidahost re: emails at the moment and I've been thinking for a while that our system is a little bit last decade compared to everything else that's cloud based; Google Docs for docs, Dropbox for other files and a NAS for large assets.

Our situation is that we're a small company but we run a few businesses; 5 active domains in total, 4 have just one email address (generic@) and the other has 3 named email accounts.

On top of this 3 of us have Gmail accounts and all email that goes to any account gets forwarded to these accounts as an all-in-one-place account as well as what we read (but not reply to) emails from via our mobiles.

The problem with Vidahost has an email limit per hour, and they must have changed this recently to include forwards because we're regularly reaching the max whereas we never have in the previous 3 years.

Domain One to Four
Incoming: generic@, forwarded to 3 Gmails
Outgoing: bcc'd to generic@

Domain Five
Incoming: person1@, forwarded to other 2 person@ and 3 Gmails
Outgoing: bcc'd to the other 2 person@

What would be the best solution for us? Any advice welcome

 

[visibleman]

Implement a proper Exchange solution using Exchange Online (£2.50 user/pm)/Office 365?
I guess it depends on your budget......

 

[Russinating]

We already pay for Office 365 but just one user.

What's the 'per user'? Per email account effectively or?

 

[swinnie]

As you're using Google Docs, it makes sense to me to think about Google Apps for Business.

 

[Russinating]

How does that work with the number of users across the different domains etc? Says there's a limit of 30 per user and "if you have multiple domains associated with your Google for Work account..." so would it be possible to have all domains and email accounts under one Google for Work account?

I see they offer HTML signatures now too, last time I looked I swear they didn't .

 

[Paul11]

have you spoken to vidahost about this ?

 

[Russinating]

Yeah and the ticket is still open but it's been going back and forth with them just saying that's the limit or buy a VDS, but something must have changed as we've never had this error before. Just weighing up options anyway as like I said using Thunderbird/Mail etc just seems a bit outdated now when everything else is Cloud.

 

[Beansprout]

What's the ticket ID?

 

[Russinating]

908690/VIX-248-84971. Thanks!

 

[Soootylad]

Google Apps for Business every day of the week, also means you can use the Mailbox app

 

[Russinating]

I'm sure it's lovely but nobody is answering the user question . If a 'user' is one unique email account as their website suggests then we can't afford to pay $50+ a month for 8+ email addresses.

 

[Confused]

With Office365, you only pay for an individual user's box, you can attach multiple email domains, and create a number of "shared mailboxes" which multiple people can access without requiring additional licences.

So - you'd only be paying for 3 mailboxes.


Unfortunately, the OWA for Android app isn't brilliant, and I haven't found a way yet to access the shared mailbox from the app (although I only started looking yesterday), but there may be a way to do it via the default Email app as a separate IMAP account which I'm looking into instead.

 

[Armageus]

I'm sure it's lovely but nobody is answering the user question . If a 'user' is one unique email account as their website suggests then we can't afford to pay $50+ a month for 8+ email addresses.

With Google a user is just that - a login, you can have multiple aliases for that user across multiple domains but only pay for 1 user.

e.g. you can have
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

all related to my login of [email protected]

email distribution groups don't cost anything either, so you could have e.g. [email protected] forwarding to 3 users.

 

[Russinating]

Are you sure? I've setup a trial account, added a few of the domains and 5 emails and in billing it says "Users: 5".

Edit: Nevermind, think I've got it with aliases.

 

[visibleman]

We already pay for Office 365 but just one user.
What's the 'per user'? Per email account effectively or?

As Confused mentions, you pay per mailbox/license. But you can have shared mailboxes (offer limited features/size but are free) and distribution lists (ie - [email protected] goes to multiple mailboxes) etc.

Do note the plans and the 'families' they're in, as you cannot switch or add licenses between 'families', only within them. So if you currently have an Office 365 Business account (licenses/mailboxes are separate to accounts; users/mailboxes/licenses sit under an account) then you could add licenses from the 'Business' family to the current account but you couldn't, for example, add a (cheaper) Exchange Online Plan 1 or 2 license to your current Office 365 Business account.
And domain names can only be attached to a single account and cannot be shared between accounts.

If you just need mailboxes then use Exchange Online plans, if you need (or might need in the future) the features of Office 365 (MS Office applications etc) then you'll have to go with one of the Office 365 plans/accounts.
And if you do need to swap between accounts then you have to manually backup and re-import your data - it's about the only frustrating part of Microsoft's Exchange/Office 365 service; not having the ability to easily export/import mailboxes.

Unfortunately, the OWA for Android app isn't brilliant...

OWA app isn't great but then most email apps, including the stock Android mail app, support Exchange mailboxes, so i'm not sure why you'd use it.

Google Apps for Business every day of the week, also means you can use the Mailbox app

I wouldn't class Google Apps as business-grade, support is questionable, MS Office (majority of businesses run on MS apps) integration is terrible and it makes less sense for email when you compare to Exchange, more so when hosted Exchange mailboxes are cheaper.
Each to their own i guess.....

 

[Armageus]

I wouldn't class Google Apps as business-grade, support is questionable, MS Office (majority of businesses run on MS apps) integration is terrible and it makes less sense for email when you compare to Exchange, more so when hosted Exchange mailboxes are cheaper.
Each to their own i guess.....

Having run Google Apps for Business for the last 4 years at work with over 100 users, I can say it is as business-grade as you can get from an email point of view. Prior to that we ran Exchange 2007 in house, with all the pitfalls that that entails.

Support is first-class, genuinely knowledgeable support staff (mostly american) that don't just follow scripted help for phone support. True the online documentation leaves a lot to be desired, but have had no issue with either the online support cases or telephone support.
As far downtime, I think we have had maybe 4 hours outage in 4 years of 24/7 operation.

Yes Google Docs isn't Microsoft Office, but for 80% of people it is probably fine. We use a mixture - MS Office for automation and customer focused departments, Google Docs for most things internally - the ability for a team of people to work on the same spreadsheet live was a revelation when it first came out (although does Office 365 has this now?).

 

[visibleman]

Support is first-class...

Perhaps i was just unlucky but i encountered absolutely dismal support when attempting to roll-out Google Apps to a SMB company (domain verification issue), constantly got passed around between operators and after two days of solid telephone calls (and blood, sweat, tears, plenty of swearing) we called it a day.

Yet to have an issue with MS support, although granted i've only used them on a handful of occasions.

I can say it is as business-grade as you can get from an email point of view..

Considering MS Office, specifically Outlook, is so wide spread amongst businesses and it's what the majority of the work-force are taught and are comfortable with, the lack of decent (the Sync app is a bodge) integration would suggest otherwise.
It's even more of an issue with Mac Outlook clients.

....the ability for a team of people to work on the same spreadsheet live was a revelation when it first came out (although does Office 365 has this now?).

It does i believe but it's not something any of my clients have asked for so i haven't played around it.