It wasn’t that long ago small businesses had pretty limited choices when choosing an email solution: Either host your own Microsoft Exchange server or find a POP email provider. While a POP solution is cheaper it has many limitations and is missing a couple important features critical to most businesses: no shared calendar/contacts and very difficult to keep multiple devices synced. In the past, if these features were important to your business then you needed to purchase and maintain an in house exchange server, which can be a huge financial strain due to the initial investment and maintenance.
With the cost of high bandwidth connections declining in recent years, along with huge strides in the world of cloud computing other options have become more viable for small businesses, specifically hosted exchange. What exactly is this you may ask? Hosted Exchange allows all the benefits of owning your own exchange server without the high cost and hassle of keeping it onsite. By hosting exchange on the cloud you pay someone else to host and maintain your email system, alleviating your company from the hassle and financial burden.
There are several pros to hosted Exchange but also need to consider some cons as well:
Pros
• Get the benefits of an in house exchange server such as shared calendars/contacts and ease of syncing multiple devices (work PC, home PC, webmail, phone, etc)
• No need to purchase hardware/licensing or maintain an in house email server
• Can still access email even if office internet goes out (such as from home or your phone)
• Email is automatically backed up by provider.
• Spam filtering is included.
Cons
• Monthly hosting fee. This varies by provider and what special features you may want. Usually for companies under 20-30 people this monthly fee will cheaper in the long term compared to having your own email server.
• Increased bandwidth usage. Depending on your current ISP speed this may not be a problem but can be typically upgraded if needed.
In summary, if you are a small business with less than 20-30 employees I highly recommend looking into hosted exchange. Ask your IT provider if this is the right solution for you or visit Everonit.com for more information http://www.everonit.com/it_hosting_email_and_apps.html
Thank you,
Curt Kelley
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