Hosted Exchange

[Tuffgong4]

Anyone know of a lowcost hosted exchange provider in the US? I'm looking for something that won't break the bank, since it's for personal use. I'm almost on the verge of doing a virtualized installation on my home machine if I can't find something reasonable priced.

 

[kcnychief]

I have been using it for a few years now (hosted exchange). It depends on what you want to use for your domain. If you want to use your own, current, personal e-mail address such as a GMAIL address, the only place I was able to find that offers Hosted Exchange with a non domain address was 1and1. I think 1and1 is $6.95 a month or something like that - whereas if you have a domain, I strongly recommend Sherweb. They are $8.95 a month, 3GB of storage and their support is 2nd to none.

I use both atm for different reasons - if Sherweb offered the GMAIL part, I would be with them all the way.

 

[Tuffgong4]

thanks Chief, I have my own domain, just trying to find the most efficient way to do it.

 

[kcnychief]

If you have your own domain than I can recommend Sherweb. You may find something cheaper than $8.95 a month for basic Exchange, but they give you a 3GB mailbox when most other providers give you less. Their support is great - either via e-mail or over the phone. I have been using them for years for myself and others, and have been very pleased. I even get responses via e-mail after hours, which leads me to believe they are starting to staff those hours which rocks.

All I can say is I have used others - you call in with a problem and get told "it's being worked on", no reliable ETA or a ticket number or anything. Sherweb gives you honest info, a ticket number, is polite when you call to check status and even follow up with YOU to make sure YOU are satisfied.

Seriously, no complaints here A++++ all the way around.

There is a reseller program, but it's not available yet. So I get nothing, but trust me you'll be happy. You get a free copy of Outlook 2007 for each Exchange account, but I think all of the providers do that for you.

Something I should note though - Sherweb doesn't let you do POP accounts and Exchange accounts on the same domain. So, if you have osnn.net you can have user@osnn.net for Exchange but you can't do user2@osnn.net for POP. This is relevant because you obviously don't want to have an exchange account for every delivery point for your domain. The way around this is do create an Alias. Such as all messages sent to user2@osnn.net will go to user@osnn.net. While this method works for receiving messages, you can't "reply from" user2@osnn.net like you could if it was a valid POP account.

I have a WM device and that's all free, they offer Blackberry too but there is a setup and monthly fee for that. Check out their Exchange 2007 FAQ to get a taste of what it may be like.

http://support.sherweb.com/showcat.php?idcat=1

 

[Tuffgong4]

thanks chief I'm going to look into it. Have you thought about having your own exchange server set up at your home or something like that?

I was wondering about setting up a virtualized server on my system at home with exchange set up?

Your thoughts?

 

[fitz]

besides the obvious issues of the licensing cost to run exchange as well as the windows server license, unless you have a decent box with lots of memory, exchange doesn't run so well in VMWare server (ESX is a different story).

 

[Tuffgong4]

thanks. I appreciated the help. I'm not too savvy when it comes to exhange besides configuring users and some trouble shooting. was not sure what the performance would be on a virtual machine.

 

[kcnychief]

thanks chief I'm going to look into it. Have you thought about having your own exchange server set up at your home or something like that?

I was wondering about setting up a virtualized server on my system at home with exchange set up?

Your thoughts?

I gave that a great deal of thought too as it is always good to do something yourself vs. paying for a service. In addition to what Fitz already mentioned, here are a few other points to consider:

-I'm hardly ever home, so if there is a problem with my server it could be hours upon hours until I can look at it, let alone fix it. My work places block most e-mail sites so without access to my phone I could be in a dark zone until I can get my problem resolved.
-Don't have to worry about hardware, and not very likely you keep parts in stock just in case. If there is an issue with the vendor they fix it, and fast.
-Unless you are using some type of VM, there is added electrical and hardware cost as well.
-I don't have to worry about maintenance, downtime, patches, etc.
-Your ISP could go down. Residential ISP's can be a bit*h sometimes and who knows how long that will go down for
-Power could go down, ISV's have redundant power and Internet backbones in most cases.

Really if you think about all the advantages you get out of it for $8.95 a month, money well spent IF you are going to take full advantage of it. For example, I would recommend some type of WM device or similar (iPhone if it is your preference). I hardly ever use Outlook or OWA - these devices are so efficient it's great. I don't even know how I would survive without my WM phone.

Some cool things about that, if you receive an e-mail (instantly with direct push of course), the person might have a signature or may have sent you a phone number in the message. Scroll to the number, call it or add it to your contacts. Or, go into Outlook or OWA, add someone to your contacts or a calendar entry and it's on your phone almost instantly.

Productivity-wise, if you will use it enough, best money I spend every month is on my data plan and hosted exchange.