Quest For The Perfect (Paid) Email Hosting Service

[randian]

I think it was in this very thread that O365 was severely criticized by somebody who tried to move their business email to them. Has there been a change recently to alter that judgement?

[cptlo306]

Originally Posted by randian

I think it was in this very thread that O365 was severely criticized by somebody who tried to move their business email to them. Has there been a change recently to alter that judgement?

I use it with 2 companies with a total of about 60 users and don't have any problems. It works great.

[digp]

I think it has improved a lot since then; try the earlier link for a free month's trial.

I used it first when it came out and abandoned it pretty quickly.

[digp]

I should add Rackspace support is atrocious.

[EvilPeppard]

Originally Posted by digp

A quick search did not yield anything.

Try a free trial: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?L...-US&country=US

I will dig deeper and try to find out - e.g.

https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/148/t/226131 suggests 200 can be added

https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/158/t/199002 suggests 500 is the limit

Thanks for your time, and for looking around. I too wasn't clear on how many aliases could be added.

[emebrs]

Originally Posted by digp

I should add Rackspace support is atrocious.

I would like to know what happened. I have never used Rackspace mail or Rackspace mail support. I have only used their Cloud Files and server programs. Support was outstanding! That has led me to consider Rackspace for mail hosting in the future.

[randian]

I just signed up for an O365 trial. It's certainly prettier than OWA was, but it has some annoying misfeatures. You can't import vcard. You can't click one button to select all mail in a folder like most interfaces do, you have to select a range, which means you can only select one screenful at a time. Slower and heavier than outlook.com's interface. The collaboration features look neat. I can't really evaluate the domain management interface. As an email account it isn't expensive if you were otherwise going to buy something like Dropbox Pro, though Dropbox is significantly superior to OneDrive in my opinion (OD idiotically doesn't support case-sensitive filesystems on Mac for example). Anti-spam can't be evaluated either. I'm sure the Activesync support is top notch. I don't see Cal/CardDav support.

[William9]

OneDrive for Business encrypts files at rest. I don't think Dropbox has that security feature.

[digp]

Originally Posted by William9

OneDrive for Business encrypts files at rest. I don't think Dropbox has that security feature.

Dropbox for Business uses strong cipher encryption in transit and at rest, and undergoes regular SSAE 16 SOC audits with SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 reports available.

https://www.dropbox.com/business/free-dropbox-trial

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by randian

I think it was in this very thread that O365 was severely criticized by somebody who tried to move their business email to them. Has there been a change recently to alter that judgement?

I may have been one of the folks that criticized O365 a while back in this thread and/or another long thread. In any case, just like in anything else in the world of fast-moving IT, things do change.

I've signed up again for O365 for business and it has been excellent this round -- much better than before. One of my biggest criticisms was how it handled spam before, and it's handling it very well now. O365 for business is definitely worthy of investigation. I currently use it along side FastMail, Google and Outlook.com.

I have moved off of Luxsci -- they were excellent as always, just consolidating some business activities and was planning on opening up a new Luxsci account. When I wanted to go back and open up another Luxsci account again, I found they had changed their service offerings and pricing structure, so I haven't signed up again. I have honestly always felt Luxsci's pricing structure was confusing. I understand the broad nature of their offerings, but I still feel they could have simplified pricing models. Also disappointed they did away with shared hosting, which I thought was a gem of a service. I believe they now only have a dedicated/VPS (or non-shared) hosting service, which is fine, but not what I wanted. Unless they changed that offering again. I'm sure it's excellent though. I am still considering Luxsci just for email again due to my excellent experience with their top-flight customer service in the past. I still consider them world-class.

I had intended to setup a Runbox account again, but I have been asking for 2FA for so long, I feel they have just been dragging their feet. I've now given up on them. Might look at them again once they implement 2FA.

Best services in my opinion remain FastMail, O365 for business, Google, and Luxsci, all for different reasons.

My two bits.

[randian]

Originally Posted by digp

Fastmail seems to be deteriorating.

How so? Seems pretty solid so far. My biggest complaint is they don't offer Caldav for less than an Enhanced account and they'll never support Activesync.

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by digp

Would please welcome an update to the original post.

....

Fastmail seems to be deteriorating.

Respectfully disagree. I've been with FastMail for a while and have witnessed ups and downs, but mostly ups. FastMail under their new ownership (self-ownership to be precise) has been excellent. They continually improve the service in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, they listen to their customers (count me as one of those), and their service has been as reliable or more reliable than any of the "big" providers in my experience.

The only area I think they need to improve more would be consistency of turnaround time of support tickets, HOWEVER, I believe they have been improving that, and in the cases where I've reached out with suggestions to the developers, they have been extremely professional and responsive, so I really can't fault them in that department. I wish they had phone support for my family members who are IT challenged. I have some family members and friends who have set up accounts with them separately from me and have reported good service, but slow support response time and frustration that FM doesn't have a phone number. Otherwise, they seem pretty satisfied.

I also want them to invest more into their iOS app, and they have indicated they are looking for a developer last time I checked.

But in general, I believe they are worthy of anyone's investigation for sure. I expect to be a customer for many years.

[randian]

Since O365 doesn't appear to support Cal/CardDAV, how do you sync calendars and contacts to a Mac desktop?

Do you keep the @onmicrosoft.com login/address when you add domains or is your login transferred to one in your domain?

How is the alias and domain support? I've become spoiled by Fastmail's domain and alias support. Adding domains is practically one-click if you use their DNS, and the extensive domain delivery options with + and subdomain addressing keep things flexible.

User and mobile device management is another thing that's unclear. Any gotchas in that area?

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by randian

Since O365 doesn't appear to support Cal/CardDAV, how do you sync calendars and contacts to a Mac desktop?

I don't sync O365 contacts with my Mac. It's annoying and I don't have a great solution. My contacts are divided and maintained across several providers. Not good, but don't have time to fix.

Originally Posted by randian

Do you keep the @onmicrosoft.com login/address when you add domains or is your login transferred to one in your domain?

No, you can change the official username when you set up a domain if you want to.

Originally Posted by randian

How is the alias and domain support? I've become spoiled by Fastmail's domain and alias support. Adding domains is practically one-click if you use their DNS, and the extensive domain delivery options with + and subdomain addressing keep things flexible

O365 alias and domain support is vastly inferior to FM. You are right to be spoiled with FM's handling of domains... it's pretty fantastic. With O365 it's best keep things simple, linear in that department. I use it for one business domain, period. Clean and simple. I tried it with many domains, but ended up just simplifying since I can do so much more in FM.

Originally Posted by randian

User and mobile device management is another thing that's unclear. Any gotchas in that area?

I don't tap into the more advanced features of mobile device management with O365, but I do like the iOS Outlook app. Again, with O365, I've learned to keep things simple, and it will work very well. I still don't like the way the back end operates some times (Exchange-related things that you either love or hate), but I accept it for what it is, and don't try to do the crazy awesome flexible things that you can do with FM. That's why I keep FM as well. If there's anything more "clever" I need to do with email, I can likely do it in FastMail.

[digp]

http://www.ibtimes.com/microsofts-cl...growth-2021682