As far as business-class email goes, Intermedia’s offering seems to be the best bet. We use their hosted exchange service for our twenty-five employees and the service they offer has always been reliable. I would be careful of the cheaper exchange hosts- because you get what you pay for.

I have found the MailStreet has updated all of their servers now and they are now offering 200MB of disk space for the same price as their 100MB offer. They have grown so much in the past couple years and they keep hiring new support tech’s….I think they are the best in the industry as far as speed, stability, support and reliability….MailStreet Rules…!!!

I would try intermedia.net (http://www.intermedia.net/it-professionals/hosted-exchange/hosted-exchange.asp). They have been running SP2 for quite a while and also offer free ActiveSync – 4smartphone is OK i think, but not really business quality.

you should check 4smartphone. looks like what you guys are all looking for. cheaper than mailstreet too.

http://www.4smartphone.net/ServicePlans.aspx

FWIW- I upgraded my XV6700 last night and direct push -IS- working with Mailstreet…

I’ve been a customer for about 2.5 years now. I just did the VX6700 update and asked mailstreet what was going on with Direct Push. Here is their response:

“We are in the process of migrating our servers based on the firmware update provided by all the carriers. Yes, we will soon be able to run the pushpull technology.”

A little vague. I’m going to give them a bit and then ping again.

Hmm, I’m on MSE4, and still no SP2. I wonder if ’starting next week, we will initiate the deployment of SP2′ means ’starting next week, the two-month process of installing SP2 will begin’. Anyone seeing it yet?

Yay! I emailed MailStreet sales and support with a link to this page, saying that they are going to lose customers over this issue. I just got a response: “Starting next week, we will initiate the deployment of SP2, one forest at a time.”

I almost “pulled the trigger” an signed up for MailStreet. I need support for my BlackBerry device inaddition to the other hosted benefits. Until I read James’s concerns about SP2, I did not know this should be a consideration. I am a “one man band” so cost is a consideration. I look forward with interest to the further discussions and advice.

I have been researching this new SP2 for exchange2003 and seen that allot of people are having issues with it in regards to the active-sync push technology. As is the case with Microsoft products some times it does not work in the first release as promised.

I to use a hosted exchange provider and do not see SP2 implemented nor have I seen mention of it on any of the other hosted providers that I have looked into, I do know from previously hosting my exchange in house that there is allot of things to consider when rolling our service patches and a considerable amount of testing involved when you want to assure your servers stay running. I can only imagine how much more difficult it is for a host provider that must maintain a SLA and have such an abnormal configuration for exchange to accommodate all remote users and in such a segregated environment.

I too am a MailStreet customer, and I have a Treo 700w recently updated to support Direct Push. I really don’t understand what the delay is in deploying SP2; it’s been available for almost a year.

Has anyone found an alternative provider?

Tech support seems pretty inept about this one. When I called them last week to ask if they had SP2 installed, they claimed that no device existed that would be able to take advantage of it. I emailed them a list of 13 devices that have the AKU2 update available, and they seemed surprised.

Apparently servers MSE8 and MSE9 now have SP2 installed. Why older customers are being penalized, I can’t begin to imagine. I emailed them asking if I could be switched to one of these newer servers, and I haven’t heard back.

Whatever you do, don’t go to FastHosts!

A couple of months ago I noticed on their website that they now offered 1 GB space with their livemail accounts instead of the 100 MB I have. Since then I have called/e-mailed them several times, but they still have not upgraded me while new users do receive 1 GB!

Besides this lack of respect for their current customers, they also do not offer SP2 exchange hosting…

James,

I’m in the same situation as you. I’ve been very happy w/their service but their timeframe for upgrading to SP2 is unacceptable. What makes it worse is that I’ve pinged them about it in the past, asking if their servers were upgraded and ready to handle push e-mail and there response was always to say everything was waiting on the wireless carriers. It is very annoying to find out that now that the wireless carrier/device manufacturer has released the update that Mailstreet still isn’t ready. With the length of time SP2 has been available for mailstreet to be quoting minimum two months is wholly unacceptable IMO.

FWIW, I am in the same boat with MailStreet. I have been a customer for a long time and have always been pleased with their service. Until now… My server has certainly not been upgraded to SP2 and the response (or lack thereof) I have gotten from their support team has been terrible. Do you have any other provider in mind?

James,
I am an Exchange administrator and I agree this delay is ridiculous. I am sure my Exchange environments are nearly as complex as MailStreets, but SP2 isn’t that big of a change to Exchange. I updated our enviroment during production hours without any downtime. I just can’t believe that a compnay such as MailStreet doesn’t have a clustered enviroment.

The sad part is that I have sp2 but my Treo 650 doesn’t support push email.