Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis
thegst wrote:disclaimer: i work for one of these types of service provider.
the no-bs parts of our advertising actually correctly point out, as long as you're staying Microsoft, that hosted TCO is much less.
if you're planning on rolling your own small email server I certainly commend you on your guts...but it has to be done right.
Done wrong, someone compromises you and uses your server as an open relay and your IP gets blacklisted everywhere with email bouncing. A good provider has methods to deal with security and maintaining netblock reputation. If you go MS you are also looking at licensing costs, whereas with OSS you may find that getting all the parts to work together requires a lot of tweaking and attention. Getting Postfix to talk to AmavisD and SpamAssassin/etc isn't always easy.
If it is super crucial to get mail to get where it's going, try hosting with Google Apps. It's our prime competitor, but probably great for the needs of a small office and is very reliable. I especially like the efficacy of the Postini FE.
thegst wrote:I'M TRYING TO TALK HIM OUT OF A SERVER YOU GUYS
AM I A BAD GEEK
AbRASiON wrote:https://www.google.com.au/search?q=HP%20MICROSERVER&hl=en&meta=
Amazing piece of hardware, so cheap and so useful. There's been a buying frenzy on them for 6 months here in Australia. I have 3 of them - many of my friends have one.
Great machine.
And yes, do outsource the mail component - bugger running that in house.
mduncan62 wrote:you should really just look into Microsoft Office 365. We have 400 users on it, and it's been flawless. Not sure what email server you're planning on hosting on your "workstation" server, but IMO if you are going to do it, you should do it right.
Beelzebubba9 wrote:As someone who used to work for a Managed Service Provider and now manages the Exchange infrastructure of a mid-sized company, I highly recommend against bringing your email system in house. Unless your time is close to free, you likely won't save money by building our an email server in house, and if anything goes terribly wrong, you'll be stuck handling a screaming company full of people who can't get their email. Which is not fun.
I know I'm not saying anything that didn't occur to you, but my general rule of thumb was unless a company has some powerful regulatory reason to not use hosted email *or* can afford a full time employee to be on hand to deal with email issues 24/7/365 then hosted email (especially Exchange) is the better option.
mduncan62 wrote:you should really just look into Microsoft Office 365. We have 400 users on it, and it's been flawless. Not sure what email server you're planning on hosting on your "workstation" server, but IMO if you are going to do it, you should do it right.
thegst wrote:mduncan62 wrote:you should really just look into Microsoft Office 365. We have 400 users on it, and it's been flawless. Not sure what email server you're planning on hosting on your "workstation" server, but IMO if you are going to do it, you should do it right.
No, no, no. No one that knows anything about hosting recommends 365. We resell it for people that HAVE to have it and I know it well. It sucks. The management is awful and the recipient policy weird and draconian.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 6ee469e407
To clarify, this is per-user, but I still can't rec Office 365.
chuckula wrote:I'm actually looking at Zimbra (either in-house or managed) because I've heard good things about it and I like that it is more open than Gmail.
mduncan62 wrote:thegst wrote:mduncan62 wrote:you should really just look into Microsoft Office 365. We have 400 users on it, and it's been flawless. Not sure what email server you're planning on hosting on your "workstation" server, but IMO if you are going to do it, you should do it right.
No, no, no. No one that knows anything about hosting recommends 365. We resell it for people that HAVE to have it and I know it well. It sucks. The management is awful and the recipient policy weird and draconian.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... 6ee469e407
To clarify, this is per-user, but I still can't rec Office 365.
Again, we've had 400 users on MS for 2 years with 0 issues. Never had a problem with daily message limits, and this is an insurance company. I would recommend it, I'd recommend not using a knock-off group that's jacking the price up to make a couple bucks. Just get it from the Microsoft and move on. If you plan on spamming thousands of recipients all day long, use a service to do it.
mduncan62 wrote:We have 50 Distro lists, just not that difficult, and counts for one. I like to cut out the middle man and go to the source, gold partner or not. I worked for just such a middle man. They used zenith for monitoring workstations, and sold hosted exchange. In some companies, it was more of a disservice to the client, then a service, but the almighty dollar makes it OK. We have a couple offices that we can't directly support, and have a 3rd party group that we constantly have to watch as they'll work on a Outlook problem for 6 hours, even though they could have just reimaged the computer and been done in 2. The lack of integrity, is what bothers me. Not saying your company is that way.