Need a better email solution

C

c0rpt3ch

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 28, 2010
Messages
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We currently run our emails through our web hosting company, in the past this has worked fine but as we've grown we're starting to run into problems. One of our bigger issues is our emails getting flagged as SPAM due to being off a shared email server and someone else getting it blacklisted.

I don't foresee management allowing us to get a Exchange Server in house due to cost. We have looked at "hosted Exchange Servers" but I couldn't tell you a good one from a bad one. Of course everyone says theirs works perfect and we'll have magically unicorns deliver our email to us. We between 60-70 employees who use company email across multiple platforms, Windows, Macs, iPhones, Android phones, iPads & and personal computers.

Can anyone recommend a reliable, no BS solution to this? We'd like to be able to monitor emails to some extent too if that's a possibility.
 
If getting your own Exchange server is out of the question due to cost, then a hosted solution is really your only other option. People tend to either use Exchange hosted or Google Mail hosted, at least the majority that I have come across, so check into a Google Mail hosted solution.
 
70 People and you can't justify taking control of that yourself? Time to get real in my opinion. The only one I can think of is local to us. Not sure where your located at, so it might be of no use.
 
I would skip Google Mail if you want any of the following:

Proper Domain authentication
Ease of management
Mail stream control
IMAP setup with Macs

Just my experience
 
calvinj said:
70 People and you can't justify taking control of that yourself? Time to get real in my opinion. The only one I can think of is local to us. Not sure where your located at, so it might be of no use.
Click to expand...

Yea I agree. For hosted exchange try the ms one. Past that sherweb seemed to be good in the past for smaller setups for us and appriver generally is good(or at least use to be, haven't used them in a while).
 
timberdoodle said:
I would skip Google Mail if you want any of the following:

Proper Domain authentication
Ease of management
Mail stream control
IMAP setup with Macs

Just my experience
Click to expand...

Add to that:
Sync calendar and contacts with Outlook 2011 on a Mac.
I am not a fan. It requires additional programs and apps to sync contacts and calendars. Exchange activesync does this on it's own.

swatbat said:
Yea I agree. For hosted exchange try the ms one. Past that sherweb seemed to be good in the past for smaller setups for us and appriver generally is good(or at least use to be, haven't used them in a while).
Click to expand...

Sherweb is good, but for the users we had on them, it was slow. They said they liked the company, good support, timely response, but they were having slowness issues that couldn't be resolved. (I think it may have to do with them being in Canada)..

I have about 10 companies of varying sizes on the Microsoft hosted exchange. It does the job. 25gb of storage, $5 per user per month.
You don't have to go through a reseller anymore either, just go to their website, fill in a form, and you can start setting up accounts in 10 minutes.

I have also used, rackspace, peer1, and network solutions, and they work fine.

The only one I don't like, which you would never find anyways, is IceMail. They seem to have abandoned their hosted exchange service, and offer no support for it.
 
I appreciate all the feedback. We were looking at the Office365 Exchange and it would seem to do everything we need. I will check into sherweb or appriver and see how they compare.
 
I agree...Office 365, we usually push the E3 plan to clients.

Yeah, 20 bucks a mailbox...but think about other things.
*Unlimited storage
*Direct full support
*FULL version of Office 2010 Pro (and future versions because of software assurance) for each user. That 20 bucks a mailbox per year pays for itself in the first year just because of that! And each time a new version comes out.

If considering AppRiver...they're also good..I can vouche for them..have several clients using them that we setup prior to Microsoft releasing O365.
 
Even going with MS cheap plan at 5 a month didn't he mention 60 users? 3600/year? Wouldn't you be better off with local exchange?

I use Intermedia for hosted exchange
 
60-70 users is well outside a SBS license, 60-70 user CAL's for exchange you're probably looking over 5G's and that's only one server, depending on how vital email is to their company (most consider it VERY), and if downtime in the middle of a work day due to server failure is out of the question you'd need 2 of those, not counting the server hardware and OS licensing costs.

3600/yr for a host running your email on a VM that will automatically switch over to another server should the one it's running on fails probably isn't too bad,
 
scottatwittenberg said:
...
Sherweb is good, but for the users we had on them, it was slow. They said they liked the company, good support, timely response, but they were having slowness issues that couldn't be resolved. (I think it may have to do with them being in Canada)..
...
Click to expand...

I don't think Sherweb being in Canada and you being outside of Canada is an issue. In technology, there is no border and server location can't be a reason. The slowness issues were tracked by them and resolved from what I can experiment.

Regarding a deal with microsoft office 365, how about the support? I am curious and a bit scared about what they can provide me if I have a question, an issue... Anyone has details on this fact?
 
I have used USA.net in the past. It has been reliable and well suited for smaller companies. Their support is also top notch. I only had to call them twice, and both times I was talking with a live human that spoke English in under a minute.
 
Personally I'd just get a leased server at a datacenter and setup postfix. Will cost maybe $150/month. Though if you guys already have a decent bandwidth business connection that allows servers it would make more sense to spend a few grand up front and buy a server and host it locally. Save in the long run and can upgrade at will without spending more per month. Exchange is really expensive, and there are plenty of other solutions out there so you can still do this well without spending that much cash.
 
Honestly, you'll be hard pressed to find another solution besides Exchange that can provide the level of features to as broad of a client base as your describe. That said, a dedicated server somewhere with Postfix or Sendmail on your OWN IP as Red Squirell suggested will work fine, but will never advance you past basic POP/IMAP Email. Backups can be tricky at that point as well. I'd suggest that you look at this as an opportunity to increase the functionality at the same time as relieving a pain point. Does your company do any sort of group calendaring and or shared contacts now? Would that be beneficial? It's things of this nature that give the IT department the chance to shine be seen as an asset rather than an expense. Take a few second to account for needs/and desires before jumping into the cheapest solution.
 
marley1 said:
Even going with MS cheap plan at 5 a month didn't he mention 60 users? 3600/year? Wouldn't you be better off with local exchange?

I use Intermedia for hosted exchange
Click to expand...

At least 6 grand for a decent server to run Exchange of that size
extend warranty for 4th and 5th year

Exchange license at 700 bucks
CALs at 67 bucks a head, over 4 grand in CALs.

Antivirus at ..oh..lets keep it cheap, 10 bucks per mailbox...annually..there's recurring cost of at least 600 bucks.

Anti-spam too...usually additional outside service.

Backup...at least a thousand bucks.

I'm already near 12 grand, with some recurring annual costs.

Battery backup of at least APC SU1500 size...another grand.
Increased electrical costs
Increased cooling needs
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
At least 6 grand for a decent server to run Exchange of that size
extend warranty for 4th and 5th year

Exchange license at 700 bucks
CALs at 67 bucks a head, over 4 grand in CALs.

Antivirus at ..oh..lets keep it cheap, 10 bucks per mailbox...annually..there's recurring cost of at least 600 bucks.....
Click to expand...

This is what we were getting to when we started adding up the costs associated with our own Exchange server. At that price point there is no way management will sign off on it.

With cost being the major mitigating factor I think my best bet is to sell them on a hosted setup at this time. I think we need to sit down and come up with a definitive list of what we need and what we'd like to work with in the future and go from there.

As always I appreciate the insight from everyone, it's definitely helped.
 
Dunno even with the costs, I would be doing this local. I do hosted exchange under 10 users, everything else will get an SBS server.

Most hosted exchange is like $10/month per mailbox. So MS is cheaper but still thats alot of monthly.
 
We seem to be right at the spot where a monthly service charge would start to add up over the course of the year, which would start to put it close to what it would cost to do it locally. This is something that I've inherited and as far as I can see there's no clear solution. It's either going to cost a good chunk at once or over time.

Anyone have a suggestion for a vendor for a Exchange Server that's an easy out of the box solution?
 
Where are you located? Find a local source. Other than that, an MS SBS server would be the easiest solution for you.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
At least 6 grand for a decent server to run Exchange of that size
extend warranty for 4th and 5th year

Exchange license at 700 bucks
CALs at 67 bucks a head, over 4 grand in CALs.

Antivirus at ..oh..lets keep it cheap, 10 bucks per mailbox...annually..there's recurring cost of at least 600 bucks.

Anti-spam too...usually additional outside service.

Backup...at least a thousand bucks.

I'm already near 12 grand, with some recurring annual costs.

Battery backup of at least APC SU1500 size...another grand.
Increased electrical costs
Increased cooling needs
Click to expand...

This is why I've never been a fan of the MS route. They try to gouge you in every direction and their product does not even have the basic functionality of being able to be backed up without 3rd party software, then that company will also try to gouge you on top of it. It's enough that you have to pay a couple grand for the server OS and the exchange program and now they also want you to pay per user.

When I worked at the hospital it used to blow me away how much money was spent just on licensing. You could buy a couple cat scan machines for some of the money that went towards software. It's crazy.
 
No one has mentioned it, but I suggest you take a look at Zimbra Collaboration Server 7 if you haven't already! There is a free version as well as a commercial one with paid support. You can either host yourself or find a hosting provider.

http://zimbra.com

Btw what does your infrastructure look like today? If you've got virtualised servers running on say VMware vSphere and you have the resources you can virtualise a Zimbra server. I run one and it's the best thing I did migrating from an ISP email provider.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Oh yes I forgot to mention Zimbra. It's a fairly good solution from what I've heard.
Click to expand...

It has calender, contacts, tasks, notes, file sharing and collaboration, great web interface, IMAP, POP, antivirus, antispam etc.

I've been running my install for a small financial firm with about 10 users for over a year and it has been super reliable.
 
Red Squirrel said:
This is why I've never been a fan of the MS route. They try to gouge you in every direction and their product does not even have the basic functionality of being able to be backed up without 3rd party software, then that company will also try to gouge you on top of it. It's enough that you have to pay a couple grand for the server OS and the exchange program and now they also want you to pay per user.

When I worked at the hospital it used to blow me away how much money was spent just on licensing. You could buy a couple cat scan machines for some of the money that went towards software. It's crazy.
Click to expand...

Windows server backup = done..... so yes it does include it and most of those items you need for any mail solutions, while sure you could use postfix and all that and spamassasin or something, but you end up likely spending more to support it,and the backups, power and all that would be the same for any solution.

To me comparing postfix or those to Exchange is like comparing Gimp to Photoshop, or open office to MS office, when you really get into using the suite, it can run circles around the competition.

i dont think you need a $6k server, i run exchange 2010 on a old Dell PowerEdge 2850 running older 604 Xeon's, 2 x 3Gz with HT and 8G of ram on 6x 146G U320 Drives in 3 raid 1's, Exchange 2010 backend is very efficient and i have .. 132 mailboxes with about 68 active users...
 
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I'm interested in the suggestion someone had about running Exchange on a VM. Has anyone done this and has it been effective?
 
Exchange 2003 wasn't supported on VMs but 2007 and especially 2010 pretty much assume you're going to run them in a VM, so yes many people are running exchange in a VM and yes it's very effective.
 
Google apps and be done with it. Loose Outlook and run everything in the cloud.
 
Electrofreak said:
I'm interested in the suggestion someone had about running Exchange on a VM. Has anyone done this and has it been effective?
Click to expand...

Yes...I have a few Exchange installs in a VM. The hardware infrastructure was well planned and already in place between 2x physical boxes and an HP fiber disk array (MSA1000) to run 8x servers. Wasn't mentioned here so figured wasn't an option. I wouldn't want to add Exchange to an existing ESXi setup that wasn't put in place ahead of time to include an Exchange box.
 
Electrofreak said:
I'm interested in the suggestion someone had about running Exchange on a VM. Has anyone done this and has it been effective?
Click to expand...

At work our exchange servers are virtual. We have 2 exchange 2010 servers with 2 datastores on each, configured as a DAG. 500 mailboxes, and around 400 active users total. Both datastores are set active on primary exchange server.
4 v-cpus, 8GB of RAM, and local storage on the Hyper-V server passed through for storage.
Works great for us and we really haven't had any performance problems.
 
feffrey said:
At work our exchange servers are virtual. We have 2 exchange 2010 servers with 2 datastores on each, configured as a DAG. 500 mailboxes, and around 400 active users total. Both datastores are set active on primary exchange server.
4 v-cpus, 8GB of RAM, and local storage on the Hyper-V server passed through for storage.
Works great for us and we really haven't had any performance problems.
Click to expand...

^ What he said and the last few posts above, with the variety of virtualization technologies available and the ease of integration, there's no real reason NOT to virtualize and reap the benefits. Even a small instance can benefit.
 
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Red Squirrel said:
This is why I've never been a fan of the MS route. They try to gouge you in every direction and their product does not even have the basic functionality of being able to be backed up without 3rd party software, then that company will also try to gouge you on top of it. It's enough that you have to pay a couple grand for the server OS and the exchange program and now they also want you to pay per user.

When I worked at the hospital it used to blow me away how much money was spent just on licensing. You could buy a couple cat scan machines for some of the money that went towards software. It's crazy.
Click to expand...

What? That's not just Microsoft's pricing strategy, that's a standard enterprise software pricing structure. Almost any higher end software package will have a charge for the Product and then a Per User cost as well. Beyond the Exchange software cost, the rest is just proper integration/protection. For the most part you'll want either integrated or inline with any *nix email server as well.
 
A other alternative to Exchange or Zimbra is Kerio.

Used it for years, now i am more a Exchange 2010 guy since i have a lot bigger budget and changed company.
Kerio can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, VMware.
http://www.kerio.com/connect

Pricing is nice, support community is also great.
You can have anti-virus (3$/user first year, then 1$/user next years) included for cheap and anti-spam back in the days was working great once setup correctly.

I was running about 120 mailbox (all with ActiveSync, 50% had a smartphone also linked to their account) on this configuration:
2 x Xeon E5462
8Gb RAM
8 x 1Tb SATA HD RAID10

For a low budget i would recommend Kerio any time.
 
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marley1 said:
Dunno even with the costs, I would be doing this local. I do hosted exchange under 10 users, everything else will get an SBS server.

Most hosted exchange is like $10/month per mailbox. So MS is cheaper but still thats alot of monthly.
Click to expand...

Don't forget...Microsoft has different plans. Depending on the clients needs.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx#fbid=vROi4bjXFn0

You can start at 4 dollars per mailbox. Not bad.

We push the E3 package to our clients....because of several primary reasons
*It includes full MS Office with upgrade assurance...for each user. That right there can save a client tons if they are in need of MS office licenses....have outdated old versions...or perhaps (as I'm sure you know many small businesses do)...the whole office of 20x computers has been sharing (overinstalling....basically pirating) a single license of Office.

*Full 24x7 live support

*Unlimited storage

*Hey...as resellers, I want to make more money from my commish from MS....so yeah I'll pimp the higher package.

But in the OP's case here..the 4 buck/month package may be just fine.
 
We've got ~400 users on Google Apps w/Postini Encryption & Archiving - loving it. Ditch Outlook and go web based. If you want to sync AD to Google, you can easily do that too. Password syncing is possible but is not what it should be (you have to make some changes to have the hashed password accessible in LDAP - something we're not willing to do).
 
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