Cost of Exchange

[TAPtech]

What are the upfront and continued costs of Microsoft Exchange on a windows SBS set up?

I have a client that is interested in cloud, but they've already paid for a server with Exchange. They only have 8 email accounts, and are interested in going to a cloud based service. I haven't set up an Exchange before, so I'm not sure what the costs are.

What are the costs for Exchange requirements? Are certificates required, if so, do they need to be renewed?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Antivirus for Exchange...per mailbox price
Mail Bastion Host/SMTP smart host to filter out spam/viruses and provide offsite queuing and outbound mail flow...typically priced in tiers or per mailbox. Examples...postini, mxlogic, myappriver
Backup to cover Exchange
Lock down firewall, lock down exchange consulting time
Schedule regular maintenance...updates, monitoring
Certificates help make things easy but you can self signed certs. Minimal cost though for UCC cert...annually or every two years or three years depending on what package you get

 

[angry_geek]

Office 365 could be had for as little as $6/user/month. Although, I prefer the E3 plan which is $20. The customer gets what they need without having to worry about cost and hassle of in-house exchange, and you get a commission plus your fees to manage it for them.

 

[TAPtech]

Customer has an account with Network Solutions. I would likely just recommend the service to them.

I am interested in getting a cut through Microsoft though. I have registered with them but am not sure how to get in touch with a local reseller or how the whole thing works.


YeOldeStoneCat, in my short time here at technibble you have been extremely helpful. You are on the other side of the state, but our state isn't all that big! Can you recommend a reseller so that I can get you some sort of a referral credit?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

YeOldeStoneCat, in my short time here at technibble you have been extremely helpful. You are on the other side of the state, but our state isn't all that big! Can you recommend a reseller so that I can get you some sort of a referral credit?

Appreciate the intent of tossing some referral coin...but we just do direct from Microsoft now for Office 365.

Intermedia is another great hosted Exchange reseller, RackSpace also does it..many others too.

If you haven't setup Exchange before....probably good to try to do hosted Exchange like O365.

 

[pc-quebec]

8 email accounts, Google apps is free until 10

 

[ElementalWindX]

I really don't see the point in smart hosts for people with static Ip. If you setup the dns and rdns correctly there should be no need for one.

The ssl certs can be had for free on a yearly basis and I'm not talking self signed.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I really don't see the point in smart hosts for people with static Ip. If you setup the dns and rdns correctly there should be no need for one..

Many reason.

*My primary one...I can greatly lock down their server..both in Exchange, but most importantly...on the edge hardware firewall...to only accept inbound SMTP from the IP addresses of the filtering smart host. I MUCH prefer this, rather than having port 25 exposed to the entire world and all the hack scripts grinding against it.

*Must less maintenance and problems in keeping the Exchange server off of spam black lists. These days it's more and more demanding of time to do so.

*If clients Exchange Server is offline...down, the host can queue up inbound e-mails for a good period of time until it's back up

*Offload the spam/virus filtering service offsite.....no clunky software filter installed on Exchange (keeping it nice and clean)..or need for filtering appliance onsite.

 

[ElementalWindX]

Many reason.

*My primary one...I can greatly lock down their server..both in Exchange, but most importantly...on the edge hardware firewall...to only accept inbound SMTP from the IP addresses of the filtering smart host. I MUCH prefer this, rather than having port 25 exposed to the entire world and all the hack scripts grinding against it.

For clients that only send from within the company and using their iphone/android phones why would you still see a need to use smart hosts? Because you do not need to open port 25 (incoming) to be able to do this. Only time I could see this being a problem is if you are in need of sending to the smtp server from outside the network, and even then you can tell it to only accept on that static ip for within the smtp server itself. Setting up the server to relay appropriately is not hard. You can even with a decent firewall tell it to only accept connections on port 25 from that ip too.

*Must less maintenance and problems in keeping the Exchange server off of spam black lists. These days it's more and more demanding of time to do so.

If you properly setup the dns and rdns this should never be an problem unless the client is purposely sending out spam and people are constantly adding it as spam.

*If clients Exchange Server is offline...down, the host can queue up inbound e-mails for a good period of time until it's back up

Most if not all email servers will retry a smtp server if it is down for up to 24 hours and sometimes longer (which is what your smart host should do too)

*Offload the spam/virus filtering service offsite.....no clunky software filter installed on Exchange (keeping it nice and clean)..or need for filtering appliance onsite.

This is the biggest reason I would want to use a smarthost.

but yet again, firewall filtering can take care of this. Things like snort, or if your using mikrotik simply scripting some rules will help this, because yet again we are talking about outbound email.



If you do not maintain the system on a regular basis, smarthost is the best method to use though.

However if you work on the system on a regular basis, and you have to pay for the smarthost, it just seems like a waste of money.

This makes for a good read for anyone wondering: http://www.sbslinks.com/DNS_Smarthost.htm

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Smart hosts/outbound SMTP is already included with just about all the mail filtering services out there. These days people like the features of having spam and viruses filtered before hitting their Exchange server. Also for us SMB consultants setting up our business clients with this service is both beneficial to them..as well as us, it's less maintenance...plus we repeat the montly income of the service.

Now, if your first rebuttal...if this client ONLY uses Exchange internally...meaning they ONLY send to other internal people and ONLY receive from other internet people..and ZERO e-mail comes in from the internet, and no outbound e-mail is allowed..then yes obviously clearly a service like MXLogic or Appriver is not needed. Uhm...that's not a question or point here...so true...it's not needed.

We still do the PRT/RevDNS 'n all that stuff for our clients...yes it mostly helps, but as you start taking care of business clients over time...you'll notice other things that can get them some drops in the servers reputation...so hey, if I can permanently provide a fix for that in a whole 30 seconds...why not? I don't like being bothered with some request for help from a client asking why their e-mail to some regular business contact of theirs keeps ending up bagged in their regular business contacts Barracuda.

We actually whipped up our own filtering/outbound services for our clients. Their MX records point to our main office for MX1, and then 2x offsite locations for MX2 and MX3...in case our office is offline. Mail goes through our multiple virus/spam filtering services...obvious mail dropped at the tar pit, rest of the mail flows through filters and the rest of the spam is put in a quarantine for the user. Quarantine digest sent to each users mailbox at 6am each day..they can access via web link and release and manage their own white list from there. Remaining "clean" mail goes through our forwarders and onto the clients public IP address...so the clients firewalls have port 25 only open/forwarded to our IP ranges. Also we have 3x outbound SMTP locations for their servers to utilize for outbound.

So for, on average, 250 bucks per year for the average SMB sized client, it's a good deal for them. And it makes it easy for us to manage their Exchange servers..it's a "global per domain" system...we don't have to add/manage individual users mailboxes like you do with appriver or postini.

That 250 bucks/year isn't really a waste of money, once you factor in the ease of setup, the ease of maintenance, the added security to the clients exchange server.

Also....we all know from experience...if their server is down..the default concept of mail queuing for them for approx 24 hours without some filtering service doing this for them is not really accurate. You're at the mercy of any/all the senders mail services acting independently.

 

[ElementalWindX]

I think I need to eat my breakfast and wake up some.

I keep thinking about using exchange in combination with pop3. There are just so so SO many ways to do this.

I do a lot of my clients using pop3 servers and a program called popcon. That lets me run exchange without opening port 25.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I used to love that in the early days of SBS....the POP3 connector.
But these days with the need to synch so many things with their e-mail, POP really has its limitations.

 

[ElementalWindX]

I used to love that in the early days of SBS....the POP3 connector.
But these days with the need to synch so many things with their e-mail, POP really has its limitations.

What do you mean? What limitations?

 

[TAPtech]

I find POP to be really annoying if you are accessing with multiple devices. Folder synch and the need to delete from all the devices.

Folders are probably the biggest. If you are using the email for business, you're likely getting a TON of emails, and the folders are essential for organization.

 

[ElementalWindX]

I find POP to be really annoying if you are accessing with multiple devices. Folder synch and the need to delete from all the devices.

Folders are probably the biggest. If you are using the email for business, you're likely getting a TON of emails, and the folders are essential for organization.

What? Still not seeing how pop affects that. Once its downloaded to the exchange server it acts strictly like regular exchange. You only allow one device to access the pop account. And make the others access exchange to get the emails. Only time that sucks is when you have to deal with blackberry and their crap exchange addon.

 

[TAPtech]

What? Still not seeing how pop affects that. Once its downloaded to the exchange server it acts strictly like regular exchange. You only allow one device to access the pop account. And make the others access exchange to get the emails. Only time that sucks is when you have to deal with blackberry and their crap exchange addon.

I didn't know you could do that! I was referring to POP accounts without having an exchange server. In other words, web-hosted email accounts like the kind you'll get packaged with a domain name.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What do you mean? What limitations?

You often have ZERO control of that mailbox..it's at some huge overseas ISP.

Unable to attach aliases or different recipient policies to that users mailbox

The occasional clogging of the POP mailbox by a wonky e-mail that holds up the entire train

Limited outgoing default e-mail/recipient policies

The clunkiness of dealing with an ISP server as authoritative for incoming for a domain, and an outgoing local mail server trying to send for that same domain (non issue years ago but growing in complexity with various antispam measures lately..if you haven't seen yet..you will)

Fetch intervals typically default to 15 minutes..try to change it to closer issues and the POP connector gets pretty demanding of bandwidth and server resources as it pulls down e-mail going down the mailbox list (in other words..not evenly spread out loads and inefficient). This impacts bandwidth as well as server resources. Not a biggie for a small org of 2 or 3 people..but as numbers of staff go up and expected mail loads...it's a sloppy solution.

At the mercy and near loss of control of the POP3 host (unless you have your own well supported wholesale package..in which case...why not do proper mail setup for a business instead of home grade POP3)

...running out of time to keep jotting down many more reasons...

 

[ElementalWindX]

You often have ZERO control of that mailbox..it's at some huge overseas ISP.

Unable to attach aliases or different recipient policies to that users mailbox

The occasional clogging of the POP mailbox by a wonky e-mail that holds up the entire train

Limited outgoing default e-mail/recipient policies

The clunkiness of dealing with an ISP server as authoritative for incoming for a domain, and an outgoing local mail server trying to send for that same domain (non issue years ago but growing in complexity with various antispam measures lately..if you haven't seen yet..you will)

Fetch intervals typically default to 15 minutes..try to change it to closer issues and the POP connector gets pretty demanding of bandwidth and server resources as it pulls down e-mail going down the mailbox list (in other words..not evenly spread out loads and inefficient). This impacts bandwidth as well as server resources. Not a biggie for a small org of 2 or 3 people..but as numbers of staff go up and expected mail loads...it's a sloppy solution.

At the mercy and near loss of control of the POP3 host (unless you have your own well supported wholesale package..in which case...why not do proper mail setup for a business instead of home grade POP3)

...running out of time to keep jotting down many more reasons...

Those are all valid for huge companies.

Yea popcon is a single thread pop3 retrieval software unfortunately, but there are more expensive pieces of software out there that will use multiple threads so that if one box has a huge email to get, it wont hold up everyone else.

Popcon lets you fetch every 1 minute. Sure if I was a pop server admin and someone did that to me, I'd get pretty damn annoyed, but w/e

Not sure what you mean about unable to attach aliases. Unless your referring to the pop server only allowing so many pop accounts, yea that can suck.

I agree pop connectors are only good for small businesses. 15 and under imo, but thats the price you pay when you run a single server and have a small company and you want to make sure that if that server ever goes down, a host will have that email for you (without paying costs like you referred to with a smart host)

Got to love how there are so many ways to do this stuff.