Hosted Exchange or Exchange Server

Wondered if you guys could help me out with this.

I'm looking at changing our company's email system to exchange. It's currently on a webmail/POP system provided by our host.

Would you use a hosted exchange service (one where the server, software, av, spam etc.) is provided for you and you pay a monthly fee (Up to about $12pm or £10pm) or would you bit the bullet and get your own Small Business Server?

We have about 20-25 users at the moment but am hoping that will increase as the company grows.

Obviously the server cost would be much more but then you can add as many accounts as you need and utilise the server for other services (document sharing etc.) How much you guys look to spend on a server? I've looked at Dell and a reasonably specced one is about £1,500 (decent single processor, 2gb ram, RAID 5, hard drives etc.), but then AV, firewall, anti-spam,backup etc. ontop of that, so the initial outlay could be quite alot. I'm guessing financing this could work out about the same cost as having all our users on a hosted exchange though and 20 users at £10pm is going to cost £2,400 in a year anyway, so the server is looking the preferred route in terms of cost.

However, I'm also concerned about server security as I'm not that clued up on it. Would I need to open up any ports on our router? Would you recommend any additional security over av, firewall and anti-spam on the server? I'd also need to enhance our backup procedures, so wondering what you guys would recommend for this?

On one of the hosted exchange providers sites, I've read about RPC over HTTPS. Is this easy to setup? Would this be setup on the server, on the client machine or both? I want to utilise the functionality of exchange to store all emails on the server etc. and have them accessable anywhere on different devices.

I'm just after opinions at the moment. Which would you choose and why?

Thanks guys.

Hey Rich have you checked out Fasthosts - There quite good and pricing is really reasonable. Give them a call and see if you could save some money and time.

Hi Paul

Yeah. I looked at them as part of my info gathering. Seems like to get the full exchange benefits though each user would need a seperate account to get an Exchange mailbox as the other types (Standard & Advanced) don't offer the same connection to Outlook.

Each account would cost £9.99 pm, about the same as the others.

As far as I can see, anyway.

Cheers

I'd spend a fair amount of effort and money not to host a mail server. They can be a big headache.

Yeah....That was kind of my thinking as well, hence why I was looking at the hosted option.

Just thinking about the ongoing cost of committing to a minimum of £2,400 per annum initially when you could buy a server outright for that.

Thing is I need to get another pc for the office for file sharing etc. anyway and was thinking I may as well go the whole hog and get a server to take on our emails as well.

But, on the other hand, I'm not really knowledgeable enough about exchange and servers to risk taking on the task, although I have done some work on a server that was setup by an IT company and it seemed quite straightforward to administer. I guess the setting it up is the hard part though!

Doug, any exchange hosting providers you would suggest?

Maintaining a server may be a headache (though really, for such a small number of users it's not that bad), but it will save you a TON of money over the long run. Think about it over a 5 year period. That's $12,000. How much would it cost you to 1)buy a server, 2) Hire a consultant to help you get it set up, and 3) Attend a series of training classes so you can do the maintenance yourself? MUCH less than that. You could add a step 4) Become MS Certified in Exchange, and still come out better off financially.

The big question is whether or not you can afford the initial spend to get your own server.