UK CalDAV Hosting?

arty

arty

arty

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Hi, the small IT development / consultancy company I work for is looking for a calendar and email hosting provider, but for a mix of Mac OS, Windows and Linux machines, as well as iPhones, Android phones, Blackberries, tablets etc. - basically quite a wide range of technology :) We're looking for hosting up to around 25-30 accounts initially.

We're looking to have this hosted for us and accessible over the internet. Our main office does not have a great connection (business ADSL, about 4mbit) so whacking a server up there is not really practical.

Unfortunately the only options that seem to be widely available and feasible are:

1. Google Apps - seems expensive and not a particularly great UI for what you pay?
2. MS Exchange - which we'd rather steer clear of due to not really being a Windows shop.

Running and maintaining our own server (albeit hosted externally) is not necessarily a problem but ideally we'd like a fully hosted service that is just 'there' which we don't have to worry about. The obvious solution appears to be some kind of CalDAV server, but I've not really seen any UK hosts who deal with these?

Any recommendations or ideas as to approaches would be very gratefully received :) Thanks!
 
I use Google Apps Free which I think is limited to 10 users now? Was 50 when I signed up.
Personally if I was a paying customer I would choose Office 365/Hosted Exchange over Google Apps any day of the week. Exchange is #1 for a reason.

I've used this to host an Outlook calendar before...

http://www.icalx.com/

The developer is still active, I email an issue to him and he responded and made site changes to resolve the issue for me.
I wanted to use icalshare.com but their site is bugged. You can't sign up as it just errors telling you you can't use a blank password. I mailed them about it but never got a response. Its still broken now.

Anyway, if I was in your shoes, Office 365 would be my investment.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. We need more than the current free limit of Google Apps, and as I said Exchange is not really our first choice as we are not a Windows / Microsoft shop.

I'll look into iCal Exchange, thanks :)
 
I work for a Hosted Exchange provider (Not Office 365), and yes you're right it's more MS driven.

Office 365 seem more interested in price gouging, it's quite funny seeing Microsoft trying to support it's partners on the one hand, and on the other it's slashing it's own prices whilst raising licensing costs for it's own resellers.

However, saying that, from the devices you specified:

Mac OS, Windows and Linux machines, as well as iPhones, Android phones, Blackberries, tablets etc

Mac's will be able to use Outlook 2011 which connects via EWS. It's not quite as good as Outlook on Windows but it's getting there.
Windows, as long as you are running at least XP with Outlook 2007 will be just fine.
Linux - I am no Linux user but as long as you can support a web browser like FireFox then you can get the full OWA experience with Exchange 2010 so webmail would be sorted. You should also be able to use a standard POP3/SMTP/IMAP client.
iPhones, Tablets, Android devices would work as long as they support ActiveSync.
Blackberry devices can use BIS/BES to connect to a mailbox, both are supported.

So the only real problem with the above is with Linux, and to a lesser degree Mac which would come with less feature support.

Worth thinking about anyway to be honest.
 
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Thanks for your thoughts, Eulogy. I think that Mac support for Exchange is getting there now, as you said, but the Linux guys may be a bit out of look. I might see if we can get a few trial accounts in order to test this properly.
 
One of the problems you may face, and this is just how I view things, that you will get probably little to no support from the operating system perspective when using Linux. Linux is a fairly specialised subject especially when you're talking to companies that provide Microsoft products almost exclusively. Pretty much all of our servers are running Windows!

However saying that, you may never need support on the O/S with Linux in which case it doesn't matter that much. I would say go with the trial accounts, find out what works best for you before commiting to anything, that's what I would do myself as well.
 
I'm not sure where you got Google Apps being expensive from, unless you're seeing some absurdly low quotes for Hosted Exchange. You get a month to try it out, give it a go and see how you get on. I moved a 10-person company away from Exchange 2007 (SBS) onto Google Apps and couldn't be happier with the product.
 
Have a look at Zimbra. It's basically an Exchange equivalent that works well with Windows, Linux, and Macs. Hosted option is available from various places.
 
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