Member Avatar for iamthwee

Sup guys.

So I have an email question. Basically, we've got around 4 employees in our office we've been managing to get away with gmail accounts and luckily registered when they were giving it away free.

Anyhow we've joined with a new company, he currently has his mailboxes on plesk. I was wondering what to do, do I continue to use plesk, I'm running plesk at the minute, do I register his domain with gmail accounts (we would need at most 7 accounts at £3.30 per user per month.

Do I set up a mail server from our office and point the mx records here?

I don't particularly like plesk mail server, ok you can create unlimited email accounts, but then you gotta worry about spam control, whether your sever gets overloaded, if you server gets hacked at sends out spam thus blacklisting your domain.

I'd like to go for a gmail account, plus it is accessible from anywhere, you don't need a mail client, only trouble is 7 users at £3.30 a month soon racks up.

What's everyone elses ideas and thoughts/experiences.

Ta

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Member Avatar for mattster

Managing your own email server is understandably a nightmare, but have you ever looked at MS Exchange Server? It's about £2.50/user/month+ VAT, so it's much cheaper. They also boast the following:

Work smarter, anywhere, with hosted email for business.
* Get business email, calendar, and contacts on your PC, phone, and web browser.
* Run email on Microsoft globally redundant servers.
* Stay protected by anti-malware and anti-spam filters and supported by 24/7, IT-level phone support.

Honestly it comes with a sheadload of features and full support, and even their pro version (with unlimited storage, voice mail and data loss protection) is £5/month/user.

Not a bad shout I dont think...

Personally I'd go with a web based system if you're on a budget or if it's short term. However, if you have 30 employees in a growing IT company - it might be worth the cost - far more sustainable and cheaper in the long run. Other than MS/Google, notable providers are Zoho (particularly good) & Rackspace.

It really comes down to, is it worth pushing the boat out to meet your needs long term (and go for plesk/own email server/Full MS Exchange Server) or stick to a much cheaper web based client (i.e. Exchange/Gmail/Zoho/Rackspace).

Hope this helps :)

Edited by mattster
Member Avatar for JorgeM

I'd also go with outsourcing messaging, based on your description. If you perform a cost comparison, you'll find that in many instances the break even point is around several throusand users when you consider costs associated with hardware, software licensing, maintenance of the system, personnel costs, etc... It adds up quickly.

In addition, to reach 99.9% system uptime/reliability is not easy and while you may have a great experience hosting on site for most of the time, how will your organization be impacted when the mail server is under maintenance or down due to some failure during that .1-.01% of the time, assuming you can even reach three 9's?

Member Avatar for iamthwee

Thanks guys that's given me a lot to think about. I briefly read up creating your own mail server, but seems very complicated.

Issues with controlling spam, if you isp will even allow this.

I think a gmail business account seems best. Bit reluctant to use exchange in the cloud. All the guys in our office use ubuntu or macs. I made 'em :)

I guess you could probably set it to work via thunderbird or via a web interface. The other thing is the users are already familiar with gmail and its apps.

If we get many many more people joining then I guess I will have to revisit this.

But for the time being gmail it is.

Edited by iamthwee
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