Exchange Server vs Office 365 vs Gmail for Business

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Ice2Cool

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Hey guys

So I have about 30 users in my business who use email. We currently have our own exchange server (Dell Poweredge) which also provides our share drive.

Im about to install a 10 meg fibre line in the business to replace our 4 meg adsl line and am starting to wonder - is it better to continue with the exchange server or move away to a cloud based solution like Office 365 or Gmail Business or something similar?

I also subscribe to mailmarshal through mweb which is an additional cost (although its really not much). Obviously these cloud based solutions already have their own implementation of spam filtering etc - so considering that, whats the best way to go?

A second area of concern is my backup process. Currently i backup my share drive to an external once a day (i rotate 2 different drives). It works fine - but I feel that if I am going to have fibre, I should be doing some sort of cloud based backup. Our share drive is about 250GB in size - and thats mostly accumulation of data from over the past 5-10 years and from users document folders being backed up. I dont imagine that the incremental changes from day to day would be difficult for backups to occur over fibre (if done at night). Whats your opinion on this?

My biggest worry is if my server crashes and my recent backup hard drive fails and then ive lost a maximum of 2 days of data.
 
I'm using my own domain + Mailgun + Gmail and it rocks.

Mailgun I use because I don't want to pay for Google Mail Business. Even if I had Google Mail for Business I think mailgun is still better for managing incoming email (it has a rules engine which I found really easy to use)

The win with Gmail is you get a lot of things for free.
Portable, virus protection, spam filtering, etc.

Why small to medium companies bother setting up their own mail servers is somewhat of a mystery to me.

Haven't used Office 365, so can't comment on that.

Outlook however is just a sad, sad application IMO.
 
Gnome said:
Outlook however is just a sad, sad application IMO.
Click to expand...

:( What's wrong with Outlook? It's my most used app after Firefox. The last 2 versions have been a substantial improvement over previous ones. Nice design, very snappy etc.
 
Bryn said:
:( What's wrong with Outlook? It's my most used app after Firefox. The last 2 versions have been a substantial improvement over previous ones. Nice design, very snappy etc.
Click to expand...

Well generally my gripes are:
Search functionality is horrible and slow
The more mails you have the slower it gets (and it is exponentially slower)
It is a fat client instead of a Web interface (the world has moved on imo :p )

I won't include things like Virus checking, Spam, etc. because you can still use Outlook with Gmail.
However if you don't use Gmail then you can add that to the list also.
 
Gnome said:
Well generally my gripes are:
Search functionality is horrible and slow
The more mails you have the slower it gets (and it is exponentially slower)
It is a fat client instead of a Web interface (the world has moved on imo :p )

I won't include things like Virus checking, Spam, etc. because you can still use Outlook with Gmail.
However if you don't use Gmail then you can add that to the list also.
Click to expand...

Spam filtering is an issue with private domains, but Spamdrain is a cheap solution for a single address and SpamExperts can filter an entire domain for R40pm if you really need it.

I have 6 important email accounts configured in Outlook, one of them being my Gmail address. What app or website would be better suited to managing them all?
 
Combination of Office 365 and Google Apps for Work is a solid solution. It gives you plenty of cloud based storage, with great ease of use and cross platform functionality.
 
Gnome said:
Well generally my gripes are:
Search functionality is horrible and slow
The more mails you have the slower it gets (and it is exponentially slower)
It is a fat client instead of a Web interface (the world has moved on imo :p )

I won't include things like Virus checking, Spam, etc. because you can still use Outlook with Gmail.
However if you don't use Gmail then you can add that to the list also.
Click to expand...

the searching is windows indexing related and the pc hardware, as is the more mails you have.

you cannot beat outlook in an office/corporate environment, the other mail apps strive to be like outlook. best for recovery, best for functionality, best for end user functionality, NOT best on system resources it needs a real computer, not a linux jobby i think i can manoeuvre.



raid drive configuration for immediate fail safe

external drive duplication of mail store and daily granular incremental backups to an offsite location can both be done with the correct offsite backup software.


the exchange server route is expensive these days, the other 2 are less.

lately windows server software has office 365 integration too, makes administration a bit easier...
 
Bryn said:
Spam filtering is an issue with private domains, but Spamdrain is a cheap solution for a single address and SpamExperts can filter an entire domain for R40pm if you really need it.

I have 6 important email accounts configured in Outlook, one of them being my Gmail address. What app or website would be better suited to managing them all?
Click to expand...

Spam filtering and virus scanning is not something any business should take lightly.
Else you end up like those posts a few weeks ago on this sub-forum where every second person complained about crypto ransom ware.

And for that sort of thing Google Mail is the best.
But hey, to each his own. Some people like to play dangerously.

access said:
the searching is windows indexing related and the pc hardware, as is the more mails you have.

you cannot beat outlook in an office/corporate environment, the other mail apps strive to be like outlook. best for recovery, best for functionality, best for end user functionality, NOT best on system resources it needs a real computer, not a linux jobby i think i can manoeuvre.



raid drive configuration for immediate fail safe

external drive duplication of mail store and daily granular incremental backups to an offsite location can both be done with the correct offsite backup software.


the exchange server route is expensive these days, the other 2 are less.

lately windows server software has office 365 integration too, makes administration a bit easier...
Click to expand...
Your post reads like something from the 90s :p

My company uses Outlook and it sucks compared to Gmail.
Don't know what else to say.

It isn't even just me.
I sit in an office filled with very intelligent people, the general consensus is: Outlook blows.

Why do we use it?
Google is one of the chief competitors, so obviously we can't use their product
(So is Microsoft but at least we aren't using their servers)

I simply can't think of any way in which Outlook is better than Gmail for me.
 
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Having worked with all 3 options, I'd highly recommend Google Apps. $5/Month per user sounds expensive, but it is worth it. You can use Google App sync to sync emails to Outlook. Even comes with 30GB of storage.
 
If you *need* microsuck office then office 365 includes hosted exchange + add mimecast for 10 year archive and spam/virus control and you are good to go.

If you don't need ms office then look at the earlier suggestions :-)
 
A negative for going off premise:

If your internet link is offline for whatever reason, no one can mail anyone else, even within the organisation on the same LAN.

Not a biggie, just saying so you are aware.
 
Gnome said:
Your post reads like something from the 90s :p
Click to expand...

...ignorant

real world situation mentioned below.

supersunbird said:
If your internet link is offline for whatever reason, no one can mail anyone else, even within the organisation on the same LAN.
Click to expand...

some companies can afford to have their 30 staff without emails for a while or days, others cant, some use their cellphones to get online and get reimbursed others do not. some business tell their employees to go home if they lose email functionality others can carry on with other work.

i have setup many exchange servers and outlook mail clients with all the bells and whistles, the ones that complain are with problematic computers, or PEBKAC or ID10T errors.

anyway, there things like zentyal and clearos that can be mail servers too, but you lose a lot of the functionality that you get from exchange or gmail as mentioned.

it all depends on what is critical to the specific business.


edit: outsourcing email solutions are sometimes useful for IT departments/contractors that dont know what they are doing, among other reasons.
 
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We are much smaller, only 5 people, but have been using Gmail business for a few years now and it works for us. As for cloud backup, look at something like Crashplan, it is very affordable and you would be able to set it up to backup every night after everyone left work for example. The initial backup of all your data will take a while on a 10 MB line, but after that it will only backup the changed or added data for that day.
 
OCP said:
If you *need* microsuck office then office 365 includes hosted exchange + add mimecast for 10 year archive and spam/virus control and you are good to go.

If you don't need ms office then look at the earlier suggestions :-)
Click to expand...

I hate that Mimecast ****
 
My opinion, stay onpremis to keep functionality and use Mimecast for archiving, security, continuity and compliance. We're using targeted threat prevention in Mimecast as well with user awareness, works quite well.
 
Whats the difference between Mail Marshal and Mimecast i.t.o mail security / spam prevention etc?
 
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