Hosted exchange is fan bloody tastic!!

If anyone has used hosted exchange before then you will know what a godsend it is. But for those who are not away of the medium and how it functions then this blog entry is for you!!

we recently moved over from our old POP3 accounts to Hosted exchange, the company is growing fast and it was a necessity for our IT to grow with it, because of this we have outgrown pop3 and needed to move over to an exchange server.
Unfortunately for me my boos does not believe that IT should take a priority on the company budget and I usually get left with the scraps after the company cars are purchased and new stationary is purchased.

So where do I start? new hardware is out of the question and software is definitely a no go, so I jump on Google to look for an alternative, if one exists...
This is where I found out about Hosted exchange, I always thought this term referred to servers that email providers used but Hosted exchange is actually a service that you and me can use, an exchange server that is accessed via the internet as opposed to a local server.

So is it any better than an in-house alternative? from a cost point of view I would definitely say "yes". It would have cost us over 4k to implement an exchange server and then the hardware and maintenance would be our responsibility. By using Hosted exchange you don't have to buy anything and the hardware is someone else's responsibility (thank god).

The functionality side is no different to before, you still access your email via outlook, web and even your mobile, you wouldn't know you are using the service unless someone pointed it out to you.

So I would recommend giving Hosted exchange a go if you are on a budget and need to do something about your email. I am very glad I did.