Business Emails Briefly O365, GoogleApps, Hosted exchange, exchange on premise
Email is an integral part of most of business these days with many businesses actually conducting most stages of their workflow through email and/or email clients. Business email use is not the same as personal email use, where personal use is trending towards predominate mobile usage. While businesses are including mobile email access in their systems, desktops are still required due to the workflow dependency. The most popular email delivery systems are currently O365 exchange, Google Apps for Business, Hosted email and exchange on premise. The most popular email client on desktops is Outlook, followed by webmail access with Google Inbox or Outlook Webmail.
Office 365 Exchange Microsoft 365 Exchange
With an annual subscription of $67 ex per year per full mailbox, Microsoft 365 O365 email is a crowd favourite.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard O365 Exchange is suitable for micro, small, medium and large (with plans) businesses. Shared email accounts are free (which is not an option with Google mail) and are easily configured.
All of the (on-premise) exchange management options are available, including spam quarantine and release, data loss prevention and retention management policies.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard Office 365 works perfectly in a Microsoft office environment (naturally), although any version older than Microsoft Outlook 2010 will require an upgrade.
Down times (so far) have not been among every client, are infrequent, and mostly in the admin portal which does not effect email output and retrieval at all.
Microsoft Tech agents are very attentive and keen to fix problems quickly.
“It’s my great pleasure to work with you regarding this service request. I enjoyed working with you a lot and hope we will have a chance to cooperate again in the future.”
Microsoft Support Agent
Google Apps Google Workspace
Google Apps has changed it’s name a couple of times over the years, Google Business, Google Apps for Work, and now G G Suite Google Workspace.
Suffice to say, although there are small changes with each name change, the product is the same.
Google email is around AU$8.40 ex per user/month mailbox. There are no shared mailboxes, although an alias can be created (free) yet can only be applied to 1 fee paying mailbox.
Google admin is simplistic not offering the same administrative detail as Microsoft O365 Exchange. There can be issues with calendars and contacts when moving to and from a Microsoft based email system to Google mail (Google Sync issues).
Google downtime is seldom (I can recall possibly 2 or 3 times over the last 7 years) and luckily as their support is good but not great.
Most businesses are attracted to using Google Apps or G Suite or Google Workspace as the online Office Software is included such as docs and sheets, in the endeavor to save money.
While Google apps are very useful, and the collaborative opportunities using docs and sheets are fantastic, if you are a Microsoft Office power user you will be disappointed.
Our clients who use Google Apps only use the email portion and use Microsoft Office for all the productive software requirements. Most clients have moved on to O365 Microsoft 365 Business Standard now after being Google Apps Pioneers.
Hosted Email (the bad one)
Hosted email is when emails are stored on a webserver as part of CPANEL or a web hosting service. This is free in as much as it is included with web hosting. This is accessed via the web using Horde, Squirrelmail, Round Cube or similar.
Also accessed via an email client such as Outlook by POP or IMAP.
For business, this is BAD. There is no mail scanning for viruses at any point. There are no backups. If email is deleted from Outlook or a device (accidentally) it is gone for good.
Hosted email is not recommended for any business.
Hosted Exchange
Hosted exchange is a service offered, much similar to that of O365 and G-Suite (email only). Many ISP’s offer this as a service as well as some IT providers and dedicated companies.