Hosted Exchange For Small Business: Is It For You?

If you’ve read our other posts on the topic of a business mail server, you may be considering a hosted exchange for small business.

You’ve been weighing your options, and need a little guidance before you make a decision.

There are plenty of reasons to switch over to using Exchange. Hosted Exchange allows you to enjoy those features without the difficulties of managing another server yourself.

Hosted costs mean you can easily nail down a cost for your server. No more surprise bills.

My Company Is Too Small

It’s about the features, not the number of users.

Exchange can support any number of users, large or small.

The great thing about hosted exchange for small business is most hosts offer rates based on numbers of users. For larger organizations, there are plans that allow you to rent a server and fill it to whatever capacity you desire.

Can you give me the straight PROs vs CONs? Absolutely.

PROs Of A Hosted Exchange For Small Business

Shared contacts and calendars: No fiddling with importing and exporting lists of contacts and trying to keep everyone’s calendars up to date.

Easy syncing of multiple devices: It’s easy to get tired of reading the same email messages over and over again. This way, you’ll know what’s already been read.

Don’t need to purchase a license: Working out the licensing with Microsoft is a pain. Using a hosted exchange for small business it’s taken care of for you by people like us.

Don’t need to maintain a server: Server management can be a serious pain. Having other people to do that work for you can be a god-send and save even more money.

Email automatically backed up: When those important emails get deleted or just ‘go missing’ it’s important to have a way to get them back.

Spam filtering built in: Speaks for itself, when you don’t have it.

Outlook Web Access: Easy access to your email from anywhere on the web. A great feature of having hosted exchange for small business is web email.

CONs Of A Hosted Exchange For Small Business

Monthly hosting fee: Yes, it costs money still.

Increased bandwidth usage: If you’re using a limited or metered connection, you’ll be going through more bandwidth than before. This may or may not push you over your limit if you send a lot of inter-system emails.

When Should I Consider Exchange?

When any of the above points appeal to you.

It’s a simple system, and our techs can make the process of switching over to it incredibly easy. A hosted exchange for small business system comes in different packages, and work for nearly any organization that uses email.

The synchronization between clients, even between your smart-phone, tablet devices, and computers is easy to underestimate until you have it. Synchronization of your contacts and calendars makes looking up email addresses and contact information simple from anywhere, as well as ensuring that you’ll never miss a meeting or appointment again… even if you arrive late.

With Web Access, you can get your email from any computer, without giving up the features of Outlook.

With a flat monthly cost for either users or the server itself, you can manage your costs and avoid those surprise bills that happen so often when you have to manage a server yourself.

Has your company made the switch to a hosted exchange for small business? How was the experience? Share with us your pros and cons!

Tags: hosted exchange, hosted exchange for small business, outlook web access, owa, spam filtering

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2012 at 12:17 AM and is filed under managed services, microsoft, virtualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.