Any advice on choosing a managed Exchange provider?
June 9, 2005 3:47 PM 
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How do I choose an MS Exchange hosting company?
Much like web hosts, registrars, and ssl CAs, there are ~ten million companies that do this and on the surface they look more or less the same (similar features, similar prices, etc). However, also like the aforementioned companies, I suspect that most of them are horrible and that a tiny handful are run by competent people who are pleasant to deal with. Any ideas on how to find the good ones without calling every single google result? Recommendations for specific providers are also much appreciated, as is any other advice surrounding Exchange (I've never really used it).
Hosted Exchange is a great email solution for the small company I work for, but there are some drawbacks. One of the main reasons I use it is for the ability to share contacts, and the Global Address List that it uses requires updating by the provider (you send new contacts, they update) and doesn't retain the contact card "feature" of Outlook. There is a work-around (skip the GAL, and store the Contacts folder in your Public Folders), but it isn't perfect. Also (not sure if this is the case with all providers), the Public Folders for each customer are stored on slower servers than the mail server, and the delay in loading (remember, this is where I store our contacts) can be a bit of an irritation.
Best feature: Outlook Web Access. Means I don't have to train users on a separate webmail-- it looks and feels like Outlook-- up to and including right-click functionality. Problems with the server? OWA always seems to still work, meaning no downtime. Still waiting for it to be 100% compatible with Firefox, but not holding my breath (it works, but with slightly limited functionality and a less-impressive GUI).
That said, we almost exclusively use the full Outlook client (which takes some setup and some patience for the initial caching, at least for my users who insist on retaining 1000+ emails in their inbox, ditto for sent items). I have users who regularly move around between two to three different machines, and the cached exchange mode allows them to always get all their emails, past and present, with no question as to which local drive contains what email. Making the whole thing worthwhile, IMO.
Depending on the size of your company and your needs (and administrative abilities), it may be cheaper to get Exchange 2003 in-house (mailboxes are on a per-box monthly charge and in my case I have to pay for additional storage space-- four years of this cost would approximately equal the cost of getting our own server plus Server 2003 and Exchange 2003, but I don't have the time/knowledge to set up and deal with the daily requirements of a server, so this is better for us in the short-term). Other benefit to purchasing the hosted solution is the massive backups and restoration possibilities. I can run the whole thing from a provisioning panel, and I do like having that level of control without the ultimate responsibility of a company server.
Email me if you want more info or my contact with the company I've recommended-- I'd rather operate outside the MS environment if given the choice, but this solution happens to be best for us-- I'm not really interested in shilling for the corporation. Hope this feedback is of some use to you, though.
posted by mireille at 11:05 PM on June 9, 2005