[dba-Tech] Now that google apps is not free what do we do for cloud email

John Bartow john at winhaven.net
Thu Jan 17 22:42:23 CST 2013


Thanks, I'm going to check out this option.

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Hans-Christian
Andersen
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 9:58 PM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Now that google apps is not free what do we do for
cloud email


If you want something free or low cost, perhaps Zimbra might be of interest
to you. It's a collaboration server and they have a free open source
version. You get email, chat, calendar, contacts, shared document storage,
etc. You have to host it on a server, but it's really quite easy to install
and maintain and has a web admin interface for managing your accounts and
email services. The cost would be as much as it costs for you to host a
server (in your office or some VPS out there).

We've been using it at my company for 5+ years. It's quite stable and
reliable to use for businesses. It has a web-based interface for checking
your mail and contact management and calendar, etc etc so you can access
your emails where ever you like or on the go. But, you can, of course, also
just connect Outlook, your phone or whatever other email client application
via IMAP.

http://www.zimbra.com/products/zimbra-open-source.html

It's great. The only downside I can think of is that it's not very good for
sending high volumes of email, like if you do mass volume mail marketing
(but then you would probably be better off having a dedicated server with a
highly tuned postfix daemon for that) . But for normal, every day use, it
works like a charm and I haven't see any other open source alternatives that
quite has the same level of polish, range of productivity features and easy
of installation/maintenance.

Also, if it's important, for a fee, you can also get a MS Exchange adaptor
that lets Outlook connect to it as if it was an Exchange server and do all
that extra integration stuff that you can do with an Exchange server. But it
costs money, because it is proprietary Microsoft technology and you have to
pay them a license fee for that.


- Hans



On 2013-01-17, at 9:20 AM, Mark Breen <marklbreen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello All,
> 
> Since Sept 2006 I have been using Google Apps for company based email 
> for my clients.
> 
> As you may know, as of Dec 6th 2012, google no longer offer this 
> service for free.  It must now be paid for at a rate of US$50 Per user per
year.
> For a small company 5 - 10 employees, this is not expensive, but over 
> 5 years, it still amounts to 1250 - 2500.
> 
> In my opinion, it is still good value for what you get, but I wonder 
> what you use if you want to have company based *cloud *email for free.
> 
> Any recommendations ?
> 
> Mark
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