Exchange Server alternatives

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InorganicMatter

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We at my job are investigating alternatives to Exchange Server. It's a matter of cost - we priced out Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2007 plus CALs, and simply cannot afford it right now.

I am by no means a Linux fanbot, but I am familiar with them, and it seems they are much lower in cost. We are looking at SuSE Linux Enterprise Server, which seems to fit the OS bill nicely, and need some sort of Exchange equivalent (a groupware suite).

Of course, this being open source software, there are a million alternatives out there, some free, some costly. Just browsing around for a few seconds, I saw Novell's GroupWise, which looked like a nice piece of software, but doesn't seem any cheaper than Exchange. I also saw some free stuff like Open-Xchange and Kolab.

Suggestions? We aren't opposed to spending money, but the cost of Microsoft software was going to be close to $20k, and that's just too expensive. We currently have about 100 employees, if that makes a difference.
 
MS does have a subscription model ,and offers the ability to pay over a period of time. Honestly, there is no real alternative to Outlook and Exchange. Are you already running a AD environment? That quote for 100 users seem a bit high, unless you're quoted the enterprise edition with enterprise cals and counting hardware too.

My suggestion would be to get an xserve and use OSX. It comes with a standard IMAP server, has ical, and support is easier to get.

The one big problem with not running Exchange is that users will expect things to work that just won't work. Also, the longer you wait in implementing Exchange the more expensive it will be. Unless you're specifically not a Microsoft shop.
 
What about something like Zimbra?

I've never personally messed with it, but I've read good things about it. Just a thought to help you in your search.

http://www.zimbra.com/
 
I'm gonna get hounded for this but, Lotus Domino 8.5 has made some VAST improvements to the app, its actually pretty nice now
 
The thing with hosted exchange...depending on who they choose, within 2 years they'll still have paid OVER 20k. Intermedia.net (a big hosted Exchange provider) is like 10 or 11 bucks per mailbox per month. x 100 users. x 12 months.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
The thing with hosted exchange...depending on who they choose, within 2 years they'll still have paid OVER 20k. Intermedia.net (a big hosted Exchange provider) is like 10 or 11 bucks per mailbox per month. x 100 users. x 12 months.
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True- some companies just prefer to spend less initially and more over time than the big hit up front.

OP - I agree with others who said your quote sounds high, I would get a quote for server 2008, exchange 2010 Standard Edition and the associated CALS. Does your quote include the hardware as well or just the software?
 
I've been evaluating Zimbra for the past couple months in a very small environment, and really liking it. It's slick, has a good featureset and seems very stable. The one major beef I really have is that it totally takes over the box you install it on, it's really almost an 'appliance' and there's no way around it. Very much a commercial-style *nix application, but I suppose that's to be expected considering it integrates a whole bunch of different standard apps that would be difficult/impossible to do in any other distro-agnostic way.

I have not had a chance to try the Outlook connector for calendar and contacts integration as my client is mainly interested in the E-mail capabilities, but assuming the connector works as advertised I think it would be a good alternative. The web interface is also very nice, I definitely prefer it to OWA.

I'd say it's definitely worth a look, at least. It's good some major corporate backing and some large, clustered installs and good support for same, so it should be able to carry you a long way without the same kind of cost as Exchange.
 
Yeah, we use Google at work; it's a small company and does exactly what we need.
 
Plug for my employer, Cisco's hosted Exchange alternative:
http://www.ciscowebexmail.com/

I'm not in sales but the publicly quoted per-user costs are:
Cisco's new WebEx Mail service includes "mailboxes with Outlook (MAPI) and Active Sync support for $5 per user per month," according to Gartner's report. Users can also opt for e-mail through the browser only "for $3.50 per user per month."
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Hmmm, looking at Cisco WebEx Email and Scalix . . . starting to see some similarities . . . did Cisco go buy someone again??
 
Another vote for Zimbra. We use it at work for our department and it works great. The outlook connector is very nice if you still want that exchange type of functionality.
 
all of our real estate clients are on Zimbra, and some use it with Outlook Connector... it sucks.

most use it with web based email but I dont know. have they got it to sync with phones yet? I know with the Blackberry it was kind of a hack to get it working.

the only time i have used it is with the Outlook Connector or web based. Do they have a Zimbra Application like Outlook to run?
 
Keiichi said:
Honestly, there is no real alternative to Outlook and Exchange.
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QFT.

Either you can spend more money NOW or you can spend a crap ton more time in the IT arena trying to find software (or failing to find software- like the above post says, there's no real alternatives) that'll work.

Exchange 2007 is so simple and easy... Factor in OWA, ActiveSync, etc... It's simply great.

I understand the cost, but perhaps management or whomever is making the decisions needs to know "Do we want just simple email" or do you want more flexibility and ease of use?
If they want just simple email, you might look at using Google Apps. It'd be free for just simple email (though with the Standard edition, I don't remember if there's a cap on the number of users or anything). I know the Pro version is $50/user/year, so you'd be looking at 5K a year... You can see how quickly Exchange actually pays for itself :D

Another alternative might be going with a Hosted Exchange solution, but again- with 100 users, you'd recoup costs in a few years just buying your own server.
 
all of our real estate clients are on Zimbra, and some use it with Outlook Connector... it sucks.

most use it with web based email but I dont know. have they got it to sync with phones yet? I know with the Blackberry it was kind of a hack to get it working.

the only time i have used it is with the Outlook Connector or web based. Do they have a Zimbra Application like Outlook to run?
Click to expand...

I have had no problems with the zimbra outlook connector. Once installed, it does mail, contacts, calendar, and tasks just like you would expect.

And yes it works for phones as well, if you have an iphone you can select exchange as the server type and it will work correctly. My boss has a blackberry and it works fine with his phone as well.

There is a program called zimbra desktop, but i have not tried it.
 
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