Hosted Exchange

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TCP

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Hey,

I did some searching and saw some old threads but nothing recent.

Anyone have a private label hosted exchange solution to recommend?

I have been looking at Pay Per Cloud

But I havent seen any reviews. I used intermedia for one customer about four years ago, but the interface was clunky. I have a client who uses USA.net, but I havent been very impressed.

Any input is appreciated. Oh and Google Apps / G-Mail is off the table.

Thanks,

TCP
 
I thought Microsoft had a list of some of their bigger partners that did hosted Exchange. I personally would look for someone with Microsoft's blessing. Not sure if this is an option, but you could set up an Exchange or SBS server and do this onsite.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
We've worked with Intermedia and RackspaceCloud......
Since Microsoft released their own O365...we're focusing on that..go direct to the top.
Click to expand...

+1 I didn't even think of that one. If you want someone who can run a hosted service the software maker is your best bet.
 
My concern with going direct with microsoft lies in the support end and the fact that MS has a history of dumping products after only a short period of time.

Has anyone had to contact MS to resolve an issue with hosted exchange? My fear is a company that big won't care when things break.

TCP
 
I trailed BPoS which 365 replaced and their support was quite good. The response time was approx 2~4 hours for a non critical support ticket.

I have no experience with 365 though
 
TCP said:
My concern with going direct with microsoft lies in the support end and the fact that MS has a history of dumping products after only a short period of time.

Has anyone had to contact MS to resolve an issue with hosted exchange? My fear is a company that big won't care when things break.

TCP
Click to expand...

The response time and your experience with support depends on which version of O365 you have. The 24 dollar per user package is the only one we offer to clients...because this package is where direct support begins, as well as unlimited storage, and software assurance Office Pro Plus license included. Lesser packages have the "community based support"...translation...post a problem in a forum and wait for replies from the community...try at your own risk.

I'm not worried about MS dumping Exchange...it's been around a long time. They've actually had hosted Exchange for a while. "Cloud" services are growing and here to stay, they will not drop this..they've been investing too much in it and steadily working on developing components of this.
 
We partnered with Appriver a few years ago. It's really flawless. A bit more pricy than most but their spam solution is top class. You pay your fee to Appriver and bill your customer whatever you want. It's not a money maker but adds value to your services. We get around $500/mo recurring from the clients we have now. We also use their web filtering which is DNS based only but works like a charm and is cheap. Appriver is also an O365 provider. Lots of changes coming down the road with it.

No I don't work for Appriver.
 
pceinc said:
We partnered with Appriver a few years ago. It's really flawless. A bit more pricy than most but their spam solution is top class. You pay your fee to Appriver and bill your customer whatever you want. It's not a money maker but adds value to your services. We get around $500/mo recurring from the clients we have now. We also use their web filtering which is DNS based only but works like a charm and is cheap. Appriver is also an O365 provider. Lots of changes coming down the road with it.
Click to expand...

I'll say one thing about Appriver...their support is "top notch". Great support.

We ended up doing the bastion host approach with our biz clients so much...instead of outsourcing that, we ended up "rolling our own" filtering/queue/outbound SMTP service. Quarantine digests get sent to recipients at 6am each morning. It's a "global" system...all mail for a clients "domain" gets filtered through it. Instead of having to create individual mailboxes "per user" for a clients setup like you have to do with Postini 'n AppRiver and some others.

If we didn't roll our own package, I would setup all my clients to go through Appriver.
 
YeOldeStonecat, are you saying you are doing your own in house hosted exchange? or just inhouse hosted spam filtering?

Thanks
 
PayPerCloud

Hi TCP,
I have been using Pay Per Cloud as my exchange provider for over a year now and I am very happy with the service I get from them.
The staff is very responsive when I have questions. It has always been a very good experience. If you are still looking for a provider you wouldn't go wrong with Pay Per Cloud.

Cheers


TCP said:
Hey,

I did some searching and saw some old threads but nothing recent.

Anyone have a private label hosted exchange solution to recommend?

I have been looking at Pay Per Cloud

But I havent seen any reviews. I used intermedia for one customer about four years ago, but the interface was clunky. I have a client who uses USA.net, but I havent been very impressed.

Any input is appreciated. Oh and Google Apps / G-Mail is off the table.

Thanks,

TCP
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Sherweb is another you might want to look at. I've never waited more than 3 minutes to get ahold of (at least) 1st tier tech support at Sherweb, an actual human being. I've used Appriver also and they do, as other have said, have very good support. Downside to Sherweb is that they do not have 24 hr support. Personally, I'm really, really leery of depending on Microsoft for tech support. 24.95 per mailbox, if that is the actual and not resale cost, is pricey despite the bells and whistles. I don't know how people can make any money if you have to pay out of pocket $25 bucks per mailbox. Non-branded Sherweb is $7.95 per 25GB mailbox. Hard to beat that, easy to resale. I've personally never seen enough benefit to branded exchange to feel the need to pay a substantial amount extra for it. I suppose if you have many small biz clients and a lot of demand for hosted exchange, then a branded solution could easily be worth the extra cost.
 
Last edited:
We have 8 businesses for about 40 total mailboxes on office365 and have had no problems.

We only needed support a couple times with verification problems, everything has been smooth.

Customers are all paying $4/mo

The nice thing about the bigger packages is they come with office...
 
Use intermedia here, works well

Support is pretty good, it appears to be American based, however there is 1 woman with a thick accent I always seem to get.
 
Tucson Techie said:
Personally, I'm really, really leery of depending on Microsoft for tech support. 24.95 per mailbox, if that is the actual and not resale cost, is pricey despite the bells and whistles. I don't know how people can make any money if you have to pay out of pocket $25 bucks per mailbox. .
Click to expand...

They've overhauled their pricing and the E3 package I mentioned above is now $20/mailbox/month.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx

But you have to remember, you're not comparing apples to apples if you're comparing other hosted Exchange packages with Office 365 E3. Office 365 is a a suite of a whole bunch of other services...it's not JUST hosted Exchange. Plus...everyone seems to overlook the fact that each user of an Office 365 E3 package gets a Office Pro Plus license...with software assurance. Meaning each time a new Office version comes out they automatically get it. Break out the calculator and do some quick math there...suddenly that 20 bucks/mo/user becomes very attractive for many small businesses. Plus Sharepoint and team site, plus unlimited storage?

Office 365 has smaller less expensive plans...but I don't want to sell those..clients get much less. ...and so do I...
 
I just saw that this thread is back alive. Here is a quick update. I now have two single user clients using PayPerCloud and I am adding a third on Friday.

So far I have had zero issues with them. I have had to contact their support because they were not properly billing me and they got it resolved fairly quickly. I am unsure as to whether their support is 24/7 or not though.

O365 with Office may very well be tempting to some small business, but if you already have Office licenses the benefits start to drop.

Also, keep in mind if you have ten employees that’s $200+ per month. That’s a tough sell to most small businesses.

Rackspace is offering a mixed POP/Exchange enviroment that looks interesting, but I havent had anyone that was a good fit for it.
 
TCP said:
O365 with Office may very well be tempting to some small business, but if you already have Office licenses the benefits start to drop.

Also, keep in mind if you have ten employees that’s $200+ per month. That’s a tough sell to most small businesses.
Click to expand...

If they already have sufficient Office licenses....agreed, it wouldn't make sense.
Keep in mind though...20/user/mo is for the big E3 plan, you don't HAVE to use that plan....so saying O365 would be 200 bucks a month for a business of 10 employees isn't entirely accurate. The cost depends on which plan you choose. You could do the 4 dollar/month plan which is down in the low range with other hosted Exchange companies. And don't forget...O365 has other components which plain vanilla hosted Exchange companies do not offer.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx
 
I started out with Intermedia over a year ago, and I've been very pleased so far. I bill my own customers, and on a base Exchange hosting plan I make around $3 a month per mailbox. They have had zero downtime; they run fully redundant "East" and "West" datacenters, and you can send and receive from either of them. Each mailbox comes with a free 5GB online backup account. All their products are branded with your logo, including the .exe you can download to automatically configure your users' Exchange mailbox in Outlook. They have a branded customer portal for your customer too. Oh, and fax-to-email is also included.

The real advantage to Intermedia is the huge range of "add-on" products that they offer. They have Blackberry, archiving, message mirror. You can also add Lync, which is Microsoft's corporate-level IM software that handles text, audio, and video chat. The most popular add-onI sell is an encrypted messaging plugin, which can encrypt and send a message to anyone. The recipient has to login to an SSL encrypted web page to receive the message. That I can make $5 per month on per mailbox, and accountants and doctors love it!

Furthermore, their other products really make them a one-stop shop. They have an excellent VOIP product that integrates directly into their Exchange and Lync hosted products. They have also just launched a "Virtual Server" product that you can sell to your customer. Basically a Windows 2008 R2 server in the cloud that they maintain. Just connect your customer's network to it via IPSEC VPN and use it for whatever you want.

And no, I don't work for them :)
 
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