Definitely a premium to pay (although today’s prices are pretty reasonable) given that most people use free email but the benefits are worth it to me.

Regards

I love Exchange! We are using Intermedia to host our Exchange 2007 server and their service has been great. We all have our smartphones or Blackberrys synced with our office email, which makes my day a lot easier.

No Charles, I wasn’t aware of any plan changes or price increases so thanks! I’ve received no notification of any changes from the company and I just renewed my plan about 3 months ago for 12 months. I’m not sure why the price has nearly doubled from what it has been for several years. While I have no issue with a price increase, I think it should be a reasonable amount. Bummer!

Regardless, the gist of the article is to inform folks about Hosted Exchange plans in general, so this is a great example of the need to shop around for services.

You mentioned 4Smartphone.net, and their pricing. You’re apparently no aware of their upcoming price increases as they complete their upgrades to Exchange 2007. The plan you’re currently enrolled in increases in price considerably, along with storage being cut in half. If you want to upgrade to Exchange 2007 now, it’s available, but they will prorate the price increase for the remainder of your plan. If you don’t like this and wish to cancel, fine, but you’ll pay a $15 cancellation fee.

Also, 4Smartphone has annual contracts only — so when something like this happens, you can’t opt out at the end of a month.

I’ve switched to another Host Exchange provider: http://www.myhostedsolution.com/ — they are already on Exchange 2007, have a 9.95 monthly plan that includes unlimited storage. Going on my 2nd month — so far, so good…

To summarize — the new 4Smartphone Hosted Exchange 2007 price with the annual fee for your current Pro plan will come out to 10.95 per month, and you’ll have half a gig of storage.

Having to hard-reset my Windows Mobile device many times, and not being a fan of Outlook (or any desktop PIM for that matter), I love syncing with an Exchange server. But being cheap, I don’t want to pay $10/mo or more for the service. I use mail2web, who has a free service that I forward my Gmail to. The downside is that I can’t send out emails from my real email acct from, it comes from the @mail2web.com address. I’m pretty sure they can actually use your old email if you upgrade to a pay plan. Anyway, it’s a free alternative if you can stand the inconvenience of not sending out emails from your built-in client (I use Gmail java program). I absolutely love not being tied at all to a desktop, but still have a backup/sync with all my information.

Kev,
Thanks for the compliment!

I’d be really interested to hear your findings with Synchronica. Interestingly, if you have a free domain name that you can manage your own CNAME/DNS records, you can set up an account with Google Apps (for free!) and have a personal/family network of apps including their gmail, calendar, docs, and your own portal start page (igoogle). Plus, you can also set up a WWW page, as well. It’s all very slick and fairly simple to set-up. It’s an interesting alternative to having your own exchange server. You can use gSyncIt; which is a $10 application that synchronizes your gCal with Outlook. Or you could opt for the SyncMyCal (for $25) that even supports all of the color and categorization stuff. They even have a mobile version, which works with the Google Apps domain – though I don’t know if this app syncs “off the wire.”

Good luck with your stuff!
-Paul

Great article Paul! I may have to rig something up amongst some of the tools you mention, at least until we have some kind of full Exchange support on the iPhone. I’ve signed up for more information on Synchronica but haven’t heard anything back yet.

Kev,
Great article, and apropos for my recent line of thinking. It’s funny, I – unknowingly – wrote a similar style article that focused on FREE solutions for the mobile user. My intention was to come up with a way to consolidate email, be able to get to docs/spreadsheets, and other tools that would normally be part of my desktop productivity suite. I also found some interesting and colvoluted ways of tying things together including the use of IMified as an interface into many free online email solutions.

Not a push for my blog here, but here’s the link: http://www.paulsblog.net/?p=591

I’m still considering the Hosted Exchange route, but William made a great point about the Small Business Server. Outside of having to deal with my own back-ups, what’s one more box in the data center?!

@SteveKrug,

You dont need to log your machines on before you leave the house. As long as you have connectivity, EVDO to the rescue!, you just fire up Outlook on whatever device and it’ll sync up. If you are going to be “‘net-less” then you’d want to do a sync before you left your house/office so you have the freshest data.

A Windows Mobile device will always be up do date using Exchange as they perform over the air syncing.

Exchange Server is THE way to go to keep multiple devices in sync.

One more thing that might be a consideration when choosing a hosted exchange provider is whether exchange 2007 or 2003 is offered. The webmail interface in exchange 2007 is much nicer and works a bit better with other browsers than IE.

I have tried to move away from hosted exchange a couple of times because I find it really annoying to be having to log on to the exchange server every time you start Outlook and because of some performance issues. But I always came back to it because in the end there is no better integrated e-mail/calendar/contacts solution that is so easy to access in different ways (web, outlook, smartphone etc).

Another strong argument for using hosted exchange is that there is no need to worry about backups, this is done centrally and much more frequently then you could ever do on your own computer.

I really don’t understand how people can call Gmail a serious alternative for exchange. It does not sync your contacts to outlook, and you will always end up with duplicate e-mails because imap is not supported.

Note that most Hosted Exchange providers also support IMAP, which means that you can also use thunderbird or mail app to access your e-mail without ending up with duplicate or missing e-mails.

For people like James with a BlackBerry, you can set it up with hosted Exchange and syncing notes _does_ work wirelessly, which is great! I sync with a Windows Mobile device and a BlackBerry Pearl without any issues. Just like Kevin, I’ve had multiple Windows Mobile devices syncing at the same time, and it’s a great feature.

Great post, as usual. Thanks Kevin.

You’ve probably pushed me over the edge (in a good way), since I’ve been debating for a while whether to go with hosted Exchange service.

Basically, I want to synch Outlook on the three tablets (eventually two: trusty M205 and carry-around-all-the-time P1610) that I use. While there are local folder-synching programs that seem fine for keeping most files up to date, nothing seems to be ideal for Outlook. And it hadn’t even occured to me that I could get push support for my smartphone (Verizon’s 700W, which I hate, because its memory shortage makes it perennially sluggish and flakey), which might be a nice bonus.

Given your experience, is hosted Exchange a good solution for my situation? I’ve never used exchange (always a consultant, working on my own), but I assume that I just log on with whatever tablet I’m taking with me before I leave home, and it brings my locally-stored email up to date?

The other thing I;d need to sort out is whether I could do this and still keep the mindspring email address I’ve been using for years….

Thanks

Steve

Thanks Elo; I’d read the same. There are other options to sync the iPhone with Exchange as well. My provider actually supports IMAP so I could get my mail on an iPhone, but I couldn’t get my contacts, calendar items or tasks with that method. Synchronica sounds like it would support the synching of contacts and calendar items, but I think the ideal solution for me personally is for Apple to license Microsoft’s ActiveSync.

Kevin, syncs between an iPhone and Microsoft Exchange is doable. Synchronica with Mobile Gateway 3.0 does just that. It might be worth to check it out.

Via Mobility Site :http://mobilitysite.com/2007/07/synchronica-syncs-apple-iphone-to-microsoft-exchange/

Great ideas – I’ll have to look into it.
As a business owner I actually rigged my own poor man’s exchange solution not being aware of the ones you mentioned.
Free and it works for me since I am the only one who really needs it.
I use a Moto Q and use Gmail as my primary email account. I was frustrated with not being able to view Gmail as it arrived to Outlook on my notebook, and on my phones Outlook as well. I really don’t care for the Gmail phone/web interface.
I set up a secondary account in Comcast (my ISP) and enabled forwarding in Gmail to that account while keeping the messages in the Gmail Server. I then set up Outlook on the notebook to pull the Gmail messages. I set up the phone to receive the forwarded Gmail from the comcast account. Voila!
I have an Ipaq HX2410 that I use primarily for TomTom. I can view my gmail account through comcast there as well.
About once each month I check the comcast account to make sure that I am under the 250MB storage limit.
As for online syncing appointments and contacts – I can usually wait to sync the notebook and the phone. Only problem is, mail I send from the phone is sent from the Comcast account.
I used this set up with my old Treo 650 and I used Chatter Mail. It was pretty flexible in your mail settings and I could receive in Comcast and send with Gmail.