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Last week a customer called me up to tell me about this “new” service called The Message Center where you can have your Exchange Server hosted and managed externally for just $10/month for each user. He thought for a mere $150 a month he’d have worry free email and never have to pay an “expensive” consultant again for changes or support.
This client’s dislike of hosting Exchange in house was justified - his previous consultant had sold them an overpriced glorified desktop with Windows Small Business Server, no backup system, ineffective antispam, and the server resided under their reception desk.
But before jumping on board hosted Exchange, I suggested we look closer. The concept is sound, but sometimes the details can be downright nasty.
Each mailbox with The Message Center was 500MB…fine for some but most of the non-intern mailboxes in his office are 1-2GB each. 100MB extra storage was $3.95…meaning 1GB of storage is nearly $40 a month. The Message Center’s own comparison to their competition shows their competition’s rates as $5.95-10 per 100GB. So here comes the ugly part…worse case scenario for this customer is 15 users with 2GB storage each…a “mere” $1038 per month.
Other hosted Exchange services I found offered this as low as $330 per month, but I didn’t go into detail to see if they truly offered the same level of service.
If you’re asking “why not archive to stay within 500MB” - archival is of course possible to get it down, but the whole reason he bought an Exchange server to begin with was to get mail data onto a centrally stored backed up system so he wouldn’t lose another mailbox in a crash.
So I decided to look at some other options:
Google Apps for Domains Premier
Google Apps for Domains Premier is a good value but somewhat limited. Its just $50/year for each user, they offer 24/7 phone support, and a 99.9% gmail uptime guarantee - and 10GB mailboxes each.
Google Apps however is largely all web based - email can be popped to Outlook but filing emails won’t sync up online, nor sent email. Third party apps can sync the calendar to Outlook or Apple iCal…but not the address book.
Its a great package for the web based user, but if you want desktop access its limited.
Hosted Zimbra
Zimbra is an open source Exchange competitor, probably the most advanced one. Their partners also offer hosted Zimbra services which are quite compelling - one package I saw offered 15 users with 30GB storage was just $126/month. Unfortunately I can’t speak to the quality of any of the hosts. Yahoo just purchased Zimbra so we’ll see what Yahoo brings to the table in time as well.
NitixBlue
NitixBlue is a small business server, Linux based and using IBM Domino groupware. We prefer NitixBlue to Windows Small Business Server due to its greater reliability, more complete package, and easier manageability - all leading to a significantly lower TCO. We quoted the server with everything to be fair - backup system, 3 years of antivirus service, 3 years of antispam, 3 years of software assurance, 3 year hardware warranty, etc. The total came out $7250 - or $200 per month for the 3 years of service its setup to offer.
Keep in mind 15 users with 500MB mailboxes with The Message Center was $150/month - for $50 more per month NitixBlue offers a lot more: 250GB storage, domain controller, file storage, backup, firewall, VPN, and the NitixApp Express platform for delivering business applications like CRM and HR management.
What I Left Off
In a perfect world I could tell you the quality of each hosting service (I don’t know), future pricing changes, migration costs, etc. These are costs that need to be considered but are difficult at best to work out.
Conclusions
The first and obvious conclusion is don’t jump in head first to a new great deal - even without contracts binding you it can be a lot of work, disruption, and cost to change mail/groupware services. Evaluating the total cost of ownership is important - some small businesses don’t need so much space and might really be better off hosted. As for which option is right…it just depends on the customer.
The Author: Kevin Selkowitz
About: Kevin Selkowitz is the founder and lead consultant for Selkowitz Technology, a Seattle-area small business systems consulting company. We focus on the four major technology needs of small businesses - phone systems, phone and internet service, servers/network infrastructure, and business applications.
This entry was posted by Kevin Selkowitz, on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Phone Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response on the right, or trackback from your own site.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Kevin, thanks for visiting our site and publishing info on our Zimbra hosting pricing. We have a 30 day trial for only $.01, and automated activation, so if you want to test us, please do!
Here’s a table comparison between Zimbra Hosting and Google Apps that adds to your points:
http://faqs.01.com/#33
Here’s a testimonial for your review, too. Best.
http://blog.01.com/?p=329