As more and more companies move to the cloud, ostensibly to offset expenditure on Information Technology, i decided to do some research about whether this move to the cloud, particularly with reference to E-mail hosting, is really a cost cutting move and more importantly, a sound financial business decision taking into consideration the inherent risks in today's interconnected world.
For the purposes of comparison, only the most feature-rich, reliable and common E-mail applications were researched and compared.This is because in today's competitive business environment, employees require all the tools they can have to enable them to be more productive, versatile and location-independent.
I set out to establish the most feature-rich hosted services and how much they cost the organization that uses them.
GO DADDY
They currently have three hosted email plans (Personal, Deluxe and Unlimited).My research focused on their unlimited plan, which targets small to medium enterprises.The prices range from Ksh 2880 per annum for the one-year package to Ksh 12,000 for the five-year package. This deal also comes with unlimited storage, ten email addresses and mobile access (IPhone, Blackberry and Android). Email access is via POP3 or IMAP
They even offer desktop notification (handy if you don't wish to keep refreshing your browser to view new messages) and Anti-virus and Anti-Spam protection.
RACKSPACE EMAIL
They offer Email services at Ksh 12800 per annum and this includes 10GB (Gigabytes) of storage per user, 250MB of SharePoint storage, 24x7x365 support, easy migration, ad-free (great), POP or IMAP access, access via handheld devices. Access to archived Email at an additional Ksh 200 per mailbox
NB:It must be noted here that POP access is, by today's standards, archaic.
Google Apps for Business
I like this one. Email, IM, voice and video chat. Each user gets 25GB of email and IM storage. Handheld device access for Android, Iphone and Blackberry.Powerful Spam filter.One thing that gives them the edge is that they have been in the business for quite a while now and as such, have built the capacity to offer such services.I have to say that for anyone who decides to go Google, there's a much wider variety to choose from.They have a full Google suite for small businesses that includes Email, Calendering, Docs, Cloud connect, Sites etc. -More than enough for a small business that's not willing to spend on fully-fledged IT infrastructure.
Exchange Hosting (Intermedia)
Their service includes 24x7 Microsoft Exchange support, 99% uptime SLA (important), Free migration to the service, free antivirus and Anti-spam.
Many of the basic Email features don't differ much from service provider to service provider so its more a question of how much one is willing to spend. Now, i did a comparison of the hosted services (above) to purchasing an in-house Email solution.
Microsoft Exchange:
-Standard Edition: Ksh 56,000
-Enterprise Edition: Ksh 320,000
It does not stop there. There's a complicated licensing model that usually requires some explanation from sales employees but for brevity, i will summarize it as thus:
-US$67 for each license to access the mailbox (regardless of the email application program used to access the mailbox)
-US$35 for each enterprise version of the license
-Microsoft Outlook licensing charges
I prefer not to delve too much into the specifics of the differences between the Standard and Enterprise versions of the product but generally speaking, the enterprise version can support more hardware and user mailboxes. One major benefit of this option is that use of the product is unlimited and can be used until support for the product is no longer available (In Microsoft terminology, this is usually ten years). The use of Microsoft Outlook also brings in various features that are worth noting such as advanced calendering, social network connectors, mailbox size determined by the administrator, offline access and many more.
We have had a ten-thousand-foot view of the financial implications of both in-house email services and hosted email services. To keep this blog short, i decided to list the merits and demerits of both and leave the decision making to you, the reader.
Hosted Services
-Good if you don't want to lose sleep over backups and data recovery
-Good if you don't have a budget (or have a small one) for IT infrastructure and employees
-Access is mainly affected by link outages
-Quite flexible in terms of access but rigid in terms of customization
In-house Services
-Can be cheaper in the long run
-Confidentiality and security is handled by you, which should be a good thing.
-Customizable to suit your needs
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