Exchange

[hobbes]

Any recommendation on a MS Exchange host?

Does anyone have their web hosting at FQ but email provided through an external Exchange host? Any issues or special configuration settings required (other than MX record)?

Thx!

[Matt]

At Evie's recommendation, I set a client up with Sherweb's Exchange hosting service. In the past several months there has been one problem where a router was improperly rejecting all e-mail addressed to valid addresses as spam. This affected service for an hour or two and I got a call from client. Other than that, I haven't received any complaints and this is a demanding e-mail client.

-Matt

[hobbes]

Thanks Matt. Is the domain split across hosts, or web & mail at sherweb?

[Evoir]

Yeah, I have one client using Sherweb and they are happy. They have website hosted here at FQ and email at Sherweb. They really wanted it for blackberry service. Sherweb seems to have attentive support personnel.

[hobbes]

Thanks Evie. Just fired an email with questions for them; looking forward to the reply.

[Matt]

Hobbes, client doesn't have a website :yukk:. If you host DNS externally, it shouldn't be a problem. Although FQ does offer support for external MX entries, you lose the benefit of hosting e-mail on a separate network, namely when FQ network goes offline, so does your e-mail. Of course, if you don't have reliable 3rd party DNS, this argument is largely academic. -Matt

[hobbes]

FQ go offline?! :unhappy:

[Evoir]

Hobbes. I called them, and after getting through a menu asking if I spoke french, I got put on dircetly with a service rep who was knowledgeable. And once we were setting up the account, we had questions and I got directly through to another helpful rep.

[happety]

An alternative - Maybe not for your needs, hobbes, but for others that don't require as extensive of a solution is 4smartphone.net (http://www.4smartphone.net). It doesn't have as many features and not as much disk space, but the only advantage is it doesn't require an MX change. It allows one to forward a an e-mail address to their service. Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe an MX record is for the entire domain. If for some reason someone only wanted one e-mail address on exchange, this would be a good alternative.

With that being said, I have heard good things about Sherweb. If one wants to change the MX record, I believe this would be the way to go.

[happety]

It drives me crazy when I post, then discover something new after the fact. Actually, though not very advertised, Sherweb also allows one to forward an existing address to their server, allowing a user to avoid an MX change if necessary, so now that I think about it, the alternative I mentioned above isn't much of an alternative after all. That takes away the one reason to choose them (in my humble little opinion...)

[jmihawkins]

Hobbes,
I too am looking into Hosted Exchange, am wondering where you went with this? I've looked at Sherweb, Intermedia, RackSpace - but it's little like apples v oranges. And of course there's tons of returns if you google it.

[McDuff]

Maybe I am a bit dense here, but can somebody explain me why, if you have a hosting package with FQ, you would want to have your emails with another provider - service? :dunno: Or have a back-up address with gmail or whatever?

I have to take care of about 13 email addresses that come to me personally on two hosting packages with FQ; the idea of having some other email addresses also elsewhere is not good for my blood pressure :blah:

[jmihawkins]

I've several reasons for looking into it:
> I want my business addresses off of AOL
> we're VERY dependent on email
> FQ recommends not using QuestMail as the primary mail-reader
> QuestMail is not exactly feature-rich
> we only utilize 3 mailboxes, but they need to be accessed from half-dozen different boxes by 15 or so users, with their aliases, as IMAP accounts, with extended retention and availability
> it's a tremendous amount of work to setup and maintain Thunderbird & add-ons across all those boxes, even if I utilize a 'mobile profile' structure
> my inbound & outbound email has LOTS of attachments and embedded images - in my initial 'playing-around' testing, email storage alone was quickly triple the rest of my entire website, and I'd only pushed at most 10% of a few days traffic into just 2 mailboxes

[hobbes]

I too am looking into Hosted Exchange, am wondering where you went with this? Client is still mulling it over, so no decision made yet. SherWeb appears to have been the better choice, but the reason escapes me at the moment.

Maybe I am a bit dense here, but can somebody explain me why, if you have a hosting package with FQ, you would want to have your emails with another provider - service? Or have a back-up address with gmail or whatever?Here are a few reasons:
- FQ provides very little disk space, even with its highest shared hosting package. This can make it very difficult for even a small organization hosted at FQ to make use of IMAP and store messages on the server (even for 1-2 weeks)
- FQ does not provide any Blackberry/WinMobile add-ons
- FQ does not provide an easy means to sync a Sent Items folder if more than 1 device/system is used
- FQ does not provide WebDav or shared calendaring services

All of these are readily remedied with a hosted Exchange solution; although note that depending on the number of users, you will likely pay twice the FQ hosting fee (for email only).

I use FQ for email and it suits me fine, but I have at least 2-3 clients considering an Exchange switch (mostly driven by the use of mobile devices).

[jmihawkins]

One of the reasons I'm looking hard at Sherweb is b/c I can forward over my IMAP-type inbounds from FQ, keep my POP here, and not have to muck with my MX recs (havent figured out the 'from' part yet). I need to know so much about customization, I think I'm just going to sign up for my 'most complicated' mailbox, and test it out - how much could I get hurt for $9/month?

And Hobbes, between your reasons and mine (and FQ's, for that matter), I agree with a post I saw here (somewhere) that FQ ought to look into partnering-up with an external email provider for those of us willing to pay the extra $$ - keeps the load off their (our) servers, and puts it where it belongs. Of course, considering FQ's standards, I'd certainly expect that partner to be of the utmost quality, even if they cost a little more.
Or maybe do the set-up right here, but charge the extra??
(By the way, you guys up there in the god-box, that was a small hint/nudge for a new service... :smile:)

[Matt]

can somebody explain me why, if you have a hosting package with FQ, you would want to have your emails with another provider - service?Hobbes addressed many of the reasons. I haven't seen a comparable solution to Exchange and for some businesses a Hosted Exchange solution is really a no-brainer.

As far as FQ partnering, I have been checking out Postini lately. They have a solid reputation for effective e-mail filtering and the price is a very reasonable $3/mailbox/yr for inbound filtering. This would alleviate the strain on servers filtering e-mail and should help to improve reliability. Perhaps e-mail storage could be split from web server file storage, since you're more likely to need to store a 5MB file received as an attachment than to send a 5MB file from your website.

-Matt

[hobbes]

If memory serves, Postini was bought by Google, and some people are waiting to see whether the non-gmail services might be stopped at some point. Also, usual g-privacy issues...

[jmihawkins]

If memory serves, Postini was bought by Google, and some people are waiting to see whether the non-gmail services might be stopped at some point. Also, usual g-privacy issues...

I think you're right - when I looked at Google-Apps, they pushed hard on their new relationship with Postini, but it seemed more like ownership.

And yeah, there's that whole Google-Microsoft similarity thing developing pretty fast...