Hosted Exchange via Network Solutions vs Microsoft

Folks:
Does any use Network Solution or Microsoft for Hosted Exchange? I noticed that both: Network Solutions and Microsoft both offer Hosted Exchange; however, what is the real benefit for going with Network Solutions over Microsoft?

For $4.00 mo
Microsoft has 25GB mailboxes
25MB attachments
and active sync

For $6.00
Network solutions offer
Microsoft 1 GB mailbox
and they charge $2.00 for active sync

Is there anything that I am missing on both? I am just trying to understand...

thanks
-JJ

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Comments

Everyone

There's no benefit. MS won't be undersold on it.

ptilsen

Office 365 is the way to go. Competitors will not beat MS because MS has no incremental licensing costs at all. The only way to beat MS's pricing is to find a reseller that passes some of its discount along to the customer.

Consider also that Office 365 comes with way more than just Exchange at the higher price points. There is a reason MS has stopped making SBS; it's no longer necessary. Office 365, combined with Azure if needed, will give you all your licensing and infrastructure.

I wouldn't count on too many SaaS and infrastructure-as-a-service companies sticking around too long, because for MS solutions, they aren't going to beat Office 365 and Azure.

vinbuck

I use Microsoft hosted exchange for my consulting business after converting from some third party POS and I love it. All my stuff is synched and it's pretty cheap to not have to mess with running your own stuff.

veritas_libertas

For only $4 a month? Crazy! Being able to use ActiveSync is very tempting. I had no idea that this was available.

jaz0nj4ckal

Sorry for the late response – I have been swamped with work.

Thank for all the good replies. I forgot about MS Office 365 – I was only looking for hosted Exchange, but that is very enticing. Thanks for bringing it up.

jaz0nj4ckal

ptilsen wrote: »

Office 365 is the way to go. Competitors will not beat MS because MS has no incremental licensing costs at all. The only way to beat MS's pricing is to find a reseller that passes some of its discount along to the customer.

Consider also that Office 365 comes with way more than just Exchange at the higher price points. There is a reason MS has stopped making SBS; it's no longer necessary. Office 365, combined with Azure if needed, will give you all your licensing and infrastructure.

I wouldn't count on too many SaaS and infrastructure-as-a-service companies sticking around too long, because for MS solutions, they aren't going to beat Office 365 and Azure.

You make a great point about: Office 365 + Azure. The two solutions is pretty much a turn key solution for a new or established company.

Do you have any numbers on how this cuts down on in-house IT staff? hahaha...I like my job.

blargoe

Unless Office 365 has made some serious strides, they are not quite ready for the large enterprise, but for everyone else, it could become more mainstream in the next 2-3 years. The last company I was with ended up choosing a shared private cloud messaging infrastructure instead of the Microsoft hosted solution because some of the required integration wasn't... quite... there. At the time, the level of integration with BES, and our SharePoint needs were complex enough that Microsoft's hosted solution (I think it was called BPOS at the time) didn't meet our requirements (though the SharePoint requirements were on the roadmap).

netsysllc

Office 365 is miles ahead of what BPOS was

blargoe

We used to say BPOS stood for Big Piece Of S....

Claymoore

blargoe wrote: »

Unless Office 365 has made some serious strides, they are not quite ready for the large enterprise.

The SharePoint limits seem to be hard caps, but the Exchange limits are flexible. 50,000 objects is the default limit, but the last implementation I did had 600,000 directory objects synchronized between the cloud and on-prem with single sign-on enabled. New features are being implemented in the current feature set, like Lync to PSTN calling. The beta for the next version of O365 built off of Exchange 2013 even includes support for public folders. I never thought I would be happy to see public folders returning, but lack of support has been a deployment blocker for us - especially since mail-enabled lists are not supported in Sharepoint online.