Alternative to Exchange?

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My current Exchange provider doesn’t support the latest version of 365 Outlook and has no plans to do so anytime in the immediate future and since I’m upgrading all my pc’s to Office 365 then that presents a problem. I’ve been shopping around for another provider and was actually looking at upgrading my home 365 Office service to one of the pro versions which includes Exchange hosting in the bundle. The issue with that is the fee for the migration from one of their “certified” partners. I run a one man office with a desktop, a server, and a couple of notebooks and simply need to keep my email, contacts, calendar, notes, and tasks synced between devices. Do I really need Exchange to do this or is there another cloud based alternative that can do the job? Free is good but I don’t mind paying some bucks for a dependable service. And I’m not necessarily obligated to use Outlook. Thanks for any suggestions.

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If you are committed to using the Office suite check out Office 365 Small Business Premium. It is relatively inexpensive and one license covers 5 phones, 5 tablets, and 5 PCs or Macs per user. Get it through Microsoft and pay for the annual plan as it is the cheapest. You can search for deals and still get it through Microsoft instead of a partner.

--Joe

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If you are committed to using the Office suite check out Office 365 Small Business Premium. It is relatively inexpensive and one license covers 5 phones, 5 tablets, and 5 PCs or Macs per user. Get it through Microsoft and pay for the annual plan as it is the cheapest. You can search for deals and still get it through Microsoft instead of a partner.

How does this help me keep everything in sync across all my devices?

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If you have an account on Exchange via Office 365, install the Office suite on all your devices, configure Outlook to access the Office 365 account. All your mail, contacts, tasks, notes, & calendar are kept on Exchange. You get a copy on each machine. Each Outlook installation will access the same data for the same account.

--Joe

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If you have an account on Exchange via Office 365, install the Office suite on all your devices, configure Outlook to access the Office 365 account. All your mail, contacts, tasks, notes, & calendar are kept on Exchange. You get a copy on each machine. Each Outlook installation will access the same data for the same account.

I understand how Exchange works and the cost of the Office 365 package but if you look at my original post my issue is with the high cost of migrating my existing Exchange service over to the hosting at MS. I honestly don’t know how technical the process is but having conversation with one of MS’s “certified partners”, they are quoting around $1,000 to do this. That’s quite a hit for a SOHO business like mine. Do you know if this is something I can DIY and leave the outside contractor out of it? That’s why I was originally asking if I can ditch Exchange all together and go with some other cloud based service of some sorts.

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No solution is cost free, or even cheap.
Option 1: do nothing. Cheap, reliable, simple.
Option 2: Migrate. Set up mail at the new host. Move your domain / DNS (don’t lose any mail in the process). Move your old mail. Re-configure your software to use the new host.

cheers, Paul

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If all you have currently is Outlook data migration should not be that big a deal. See these articles – Ways to migrate multiple email accounts to Office 365 and Microsoft Office 365: Make a Smooth Move to the Cloud.

Do you have more than one email account to move?

--Joe

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If all you have currently is Outlook data migration should not be that big a deal. See these articles – Ways to migrate multiple email accounts to Office 365 and Microsoft Office 365: Make a Smooth Move to the Cloud.

Do you have more than one email account to move?

Thanks for the links Joe. My situation is simple… just one email account is all I have on Exchange.

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You should be able to export your current data using Outlook to a PST file, setup your new Office 365 account with the domain and email, setup Outlook for the new account, open the saved PST file (don’t import it), drag and drop the old data to the new folders.

Test the export first to be sure that you get all your data. Export from the account level in the folder selection part of export. Make sure to include subfolders.

Perhaps someone else will comment if they see a problem with this approach.

--Joe

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There is always a lag switching domains during which it’s possible to lose email. Make sure you can still access your old email after the domain changeover so you can collect any that snuck through. If you won’t be able to access your old email the only real solution is to forward all mail from the old host to a 3rd, independent email account immediately before you activate the domain changeover. Then any mail that does sneak through will be forwarded.

cheers, Paul

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Thanks Joe! You’ve inspired and given me the confidence to take a shot at performing my own migration. I’ll study on it a bit and get my plan / schedule together.

Paul, thanks for the suggestion. That makes perfect sense to me. I’m also going to give my folks a “heads up” on the potential for loss of service during the transition.

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Mail servers sending to you won’t care about a service outage, they keep trying until they can get through. It’s where that email goes during the changeover that is the issue.

cheers, Paul

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