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staticz

Limp Gawd
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Feb 19, 2008
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We currently have pop email through a 3rd party, and web hosting through another (which I think matters for my question). We would like to change email providers because we are getting railed price wise (at least in comparison to Google)

Is anyone using Google Apps at their business or for their clients? What has been your experience? We have 18 users with 35 email addresses (past employees, tech support, etc.) so we are fairly small.

The company that is providing our email also hosts an FTP site for us. We would bring the FTP site in-house and then Google Apps seems to be the best best for hosted email. I wouldn't be opposed to bringing the email in house with Exchange but it just isn't in the budget.

I've been doing a bit of research and am confused on a few points. our email addresses use the same domain as our website, it almost seems that this causes problems with Google Apps, true? Also, it looks like a pain to setup if the domain isn't hosted by the right company. Can anyone confirm this?
 
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Google Apps != Exchange

What about swapping hosted providers? Who do you use? I just see GoDaddy has $7/email/month plans for Exchange.

What is the current server setup?
 
My biggest issue with google is. . . . .Where do you think your data is? China, japan, canada, mexico?????

You have no clue where they put your data.

Like above, Google apps/pop isn't in the same league as exchange. Flat out, exchange is not cheap because all it offers.
 
If you just need email and do not have devices that are syncing with exchange (particularly mobile devices that don't work as well via IMAP/POP3), google apps is great. I love it and use it everyday on my domains.

Setup is easy, it is determined by the DNS Zone file. Your webhost should be able to modify it for you. You can point your mail to a different server than where your website itself is hosted no problem. That is what Google Apps is designed for.
 
k1pp3r said:
My biggest issue with google is. . . . .Where do you think your data is? China, japan, canada, mexico?????

You have no clue where they put your data.

Like above, Google apps/pop isn't in the same league as exchange. Flat out, exchange is not cheap because all it offers.
Click to expand...

On the other hand it is a plus in some circumstances. It is a cloud type setup and allows for very good uptime and redundancy.
 
With Google Apps standard you can host upto 50 accounts for free. I've set it up for a client of mine and I also use it with a couple of my own domains.
 
Grentz said:
On the other hand it is a plus in some circumstances. It is a cloud type setup and allows for very good uptime and redundancy.
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...until the Chinese hack it again and it goes down with the added effect of them getting all your email and personal/corporate data.

I'll pass personally. "Cloud computing" is a ghastly security nightmare. Plenty of articles floating around out there on it.
 
Grentz said:
On the other hand it is a plus in some circumstances. It is a cloud type setup and allows for very good uptime and redundancy.
Click to expand...

At my place we run a hybrid system. The students are on Google Apps and the staff/faculty are on Exchange 2007. Google Apps has had way, way more down time than my exchange servers. I've had NO unplanned down time in the past 4 years. Google Apps had 3 significant outages (4 hours or longer) just this past summer. Oh, then there was the doc error this summer that caused some of my users to have their documents shared with everyone at school. I was so pissed when I got that email from Google...

Google Apps is great as long as you don't mind someone else in control of all of your data. Google is just too much of a target these days and have gone downhill in both reliability and security.
 
I have two clients using it and they have not had any problems besides the downtime. Google apps also has a program to use with outlook that will sync your stuff and also one that allows you to mange your users via active directory.
 
I may still present the idea of exchange but I just don't see it happening. We are talking $1200 for the software plus the hardware. This is for a small (less than 35) aerospace company. $5,000 for an email setup isn't going to fly. We are running SBS2003, if I could get the funds to upgrade to SBS2008 then I might have a chance at setting up exchange that way. The consultant before me left me with nothing, we don't even have the sbs2003 media!

And pop mail isn't always cheap....that is what I finally realized we are getting railed on. After seeing how much they wanted for another 250gb of space I asked for the total we pay monthly and almost threw up!

I guess I will take a harder look at SBS2008 or an Exchange server. Google's security issues would be a big deal and you are right we would have no clue where the data was at. I'm still not going to rule it out and am willing to listen to other opinions.
 
brom42 said:
Google Apps has had way, way more down time than my exchange servers.
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Im quoting this because it's completely true. Google Apps' 99.9% uptime claim is a crock of shit.

However good luck getting refunds when it goes down. The only way to submit a ticket is through the google apps portal. So if it's down, you can't complain about it being down. Plus, they only refund you for the actual amount of time in hours that it was down/unavailable. So your refund ends up being something stupid like $0.30 cents.

But how much did they just cost you with the downtime?
Also, they do have a support number but I tell you it takes 20 minutes digging through all the google pages to actually find it. Even then you have to punch in like account numbers and all this before they will even show you what the number is.

THEN when you actually do call it you get India. Or at least what sounds like India to me. I use it only because it's pretty cheap and we only have 1 or 2 accounts. For anything more than that you are wasting your money.
 
staticz said:
I may still present the idea of exchange but I just don't see it happening. We are talking $1200 for the software plus the hardware. This is for a small (less than 35) aerospace company. $5,000 for an email setup isn't going to fly. We are running SBS2003, if I could get the funds to upgrade to SBS2008 then I might have a chance at setting up exchange that way. The consultant before me left me with nothing, we don't even have the sbs2003 media!.
Click to expand...

1.Be proactive not reactive. You can get your hands on the .iso's of SBS2003. Do you have the key? If not call the other guy and get it. Your company bought it.
2. Hopefully your company's business philosophy is not paralleling your business's IT philosophy. Aerospace is a tough world.
3. If someone told you that for 5k I could sleep much better.
 
k1pp3r said:
Pop mail is cheap for a reason. . . . there are no features

MS sells hosted exchange for aroun $5 bucks a mailbox right now.
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Features like what?

If the OP needed BES I would say go for Exchange.

Nothing wrong with POP/IMAP -- plus Rackspace's webmail is great.

Exchange is a good product, but it requires $$$ and maintenance.

I find that the cheaper or even free solutions bring about much less headaches.
 
wait you have SBS 2003, why aren't you doing exchange?

upgrade to static ip, get some postini action for spam and spooling and be done...

few hours of labor.

We use Rackspace as well.
 
LoStMaTt said:
Features like what?

If the OP needed BES I would say go for Exchange.

Nothing wrong with POP/IMAP -- plus Rackspace's webmail is great.

Exchange is a good product, but it requires $$$ and maintenance.

I find that the cheaper or even free solutions bring about much less headaches.
Click to expand...

I shouldn't even post this cause it should be common knowledge for anyone that has ever used exchange

• Inbox is always up to date
• Shared Calendars
• Global address book for contacts
• Mobile active-sync
• Blackberry enterprise support
• Outlook web access
• Public folders for sharing

Thats just for starters
 
more questions to ask, what is the original server? make and specs?

if its a dell server, i can ISO up the CD for you for SBS 2003. If its install I would fix it.
 
thee_rook said:
1.Be proactive not reactive. You can get your hands on the .iso's of SBS2003. Do you have the key? If not call the other guy and get it. Your company bought it.
2. Hopefully your company's business philosophy is not paralleling your business's IT philosophy. Aerospace is a tough world.
3. If someone told you that for 5k I could sleep much better.
Click to expand...

1. I'm hunting this guy down
2. We have been in business for over 35 years, but thanks for telling us how "tough" it is.
3. No idea what your trying to say.

@marley Server is custom built, about 5 years old, and has about 80gb's of free space. 1Gb of RAM and 3.0 Xeon proc.
 
bah that needs an upgrade, maybe try to see if the department will upgrade, a Dell T310 with SAS will only be about 3500 or so. You can try to do an upgrade to keep the domain in tact.
 
marley1 said:
bah that needs an upgrade, maybe try to see if the department will upgrade, a Dell T310 with SAS will only be about 3500 or so. You can try to do an upgrade to keep the domain in tact.
Click to expand...

Yes it does! That's part of the reason I was avoiding the idea of Exchange even on SBS...I'm working them pretty hard for an upgrade we will see what happens. I think Exchange would run on what we have but am upgrade would be nice.

If I could get it to work I'd love to implement exchange and cut our costs (besides me) to $0, that would be perfect. The entire idea was to get our costs lower, which is why Google Apps was suggested in the first place.

Even so, there is no real reason to outsource email especially with an "IT guy" (ugh my boss) on hand.
 
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