Are you outgrowing your free email account or is it time to stop pouring money into an old Exchange server? As I’m sure you will guess, yes we recommend that you choose to use a hosted Exchange provider but there’s a lot more to discuss once that decision is made. You first need to figure out what your needs are and then you’ll need to research which company is right for you.
Before making any decisions consider the following topics:
Business model – How large of a role does email play in your business? What will it financially cost you each day that you do not have access to your email? How many of your employees use email on mobile devices?
Uptime – No service provider can tell you that they are up 100% of the time but how many outages have they had in the last year? How long do the outages last on average? Be careful of over-inflated promises. SLA (Service Level Agreement) – What does their SLA promise? Be sure the response time guaranteed and the resolution path is acceptable to you.
Afterhours support – Are you like most businesses that work nights and weekends? Do you have employees in different time zones? Will the provider have representatives available to help if you’re having issues? Will it cost you more?
Customer service – What do current customers have to say? If you’re able to speak to a current client ask how issues in the past have been resolved. Was it in an appropriate time frame? How responsive is the customer service?
Pricing – How much will it cost to migrate over from your current solution? What will the pricing structure look like as you grow?
Bottom line is many companies can provide you the same email functionality but some come with more added value including: migration assistance, support, reliability, data privacy and plan flexibility. You can easily guess the top email providers without me naming names and let’s just say you get what you pay for. Frankly sometimes that is ok but, if you’d like personalized support from a company that understands your business you will have to look for a higher level of service from a company that will take the time to get to know you and your business.
