What are the top Hosted E-mail Issues?

If you have experienced one of the following problems you may be considering moving to hosted exchange.

Key Exchange Hosting Problems

• Exchange Failure causing an outage
• DNS problems causing disruptions
• Blacklist problems causing disruptions
• Bandwidth problems
• Backup configuration problems
• Challenges moving to a redundant exchange environment
• Staffing challenges in finding someone qualified to work on your Microsoft Exchange system
• Pending Upgrade from 2003 or 2007 to 2010 or 2013 Microsoft Exchange
• Any number of other issues

Background

Usually a prospect calls us when one of the above things happens.  Sure, you could be proactive and make a key business decision earlier – but pain tends to be the driving force for most of our clients.  The reality is that we have experienced all of these issues too.  It is kind of ironic- but there really isn’t any special sauce in providing basic hosted exchange.  The tools and licensing are available to everyone on the internet.  Microsoft Exchange is the most successful e-mail platform of all time so there is a huge market of services and tools to support it.  In most cases – our clients install Microsoft Exchange and forget about it.  Sure they might patch it from time to time – but in reality an Exchange server will happily run by itself for years – until it doesn’t.  In many ways, it is Microsoft Exchange’s inherent reliability that lures technology departments into a false sense of security.   Install the software, configure some MXRecords and forget about it for 5 years.  However, when it has problems it tends to go horribly wrong and cause lots of pain.  I have even seen IT leaders get fired for multiple e-mail outages.

Top Hosted E-mail Issues

• Other Clients Blacklisting Impacts You – if your provider is huge or has spammers in its environment it can end up impacting you – so be careful who you pick!
• Lousy Anti-Spam Solution – cheaping out on a good commercial Anti-Spam solution (like ours) can lead to lots of Spam getting through and annoying the heck out of your end-users.
• Poor Internet Bandwidth – at customer location – make sure you have enough bandwidth!
• Lousy Support – If your hosted exchange provider routes all of your calls oversees and makes you wait on hold forever – you might want to find a new one.
• Add-on Options – You may not need them – but if you want to use any mobile device, secure messaging, archiving, or other key features – make sure your provider offers them.

Make sure you investigate all of your options and check references.  In reality, most Hosted Exchange providers do a pretty good job and you probably won’t run into many of these.  The ability to setup, run and maintain a Hosted Exchange environment really increases drastically when you are sharing the costs among thousands of users.  Most likely, your hosted E-mail provider will pay a lot more attention and make sure e-mail is always up when compared to what companies will do on their own.

WANT MORE INFO?  Fill out this form: