Smaller organizations are used to using a POP email provider for hosting their emails. It made since years ago when email hosting options were limited. POP email was cheap and relatively easy to setup. However, there are inherent draw backs to using POP. There is no ability to synchronize your email data between computers. More concerning, emails are downloaded to individual computers which dramatically increases the possibility of losing all of your emails if the hard drive in your computer dies.
The popularity of the Cloud has given birth to Hosted Exchange. Exchange is the number one email platform for large corporations. Small businesses have been hesitant to implement Exchange because of the large capital expense involved. It requires purchasing servers, firewalls, anti-virus, spam filtering, software and licensing, and having a genius on staff to maintain everything.
Now you can take advantage of Hosted Exchange. Your IT Company provides you with a pre-configured environment hosted in a secure data center and you simply pay for the number of mailboxes you need. You can even have your own dedicated Exchange server for increased privacy at a fraction of the cost.
With Exchange you can have all of your contacts, calendar items and emails synchronized across multiple devices. If you add a contact on your iPad, it’s automatically available on your laptop and smartphone. In addition you can setup a company calendar and task list to track and coordinate company activities. Store your client list in company contacts to share with everyone in your organization. Have multiple email addresses delivered to the same user mailbox. Create drop boxes for alias addresses such as [email protected] which multiple users can access. Outlook Webmail provides you with a web client to access your emails wherever you have internet access. Lastly, your emails are stored on the server and backed up nightly so if the hard drive in your computer dies your emails are waiting for you when your new computer is setup.
Small businesses no longer have to take chances with outdated POP email. Contact your IT provider and ask them how Hosted Exchange will benefit your company.