Hosted Exchange or Microsoft 365: Which is right for your business?

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In 2017, the number of emails sent per day is estimated to reach 269 billion, making email the most used communication tool for businesses worldwide. With this in mind, your business can gain a competitive advantage by choosing the right enterprise email solution.

Most companies are torn between Hosted Exchange and Office 365. While they share similar features, there are nuances that must be taken into consideration. In order for business owners to make the right decision, it’s important that they understand the pros and cons of each solution.

Why Hosted Exchange?

Hosted Exchange is an email and calendaring solution for businesses powered by Microsoft Exchange. It allows businesses to “rent” and remotely access vital email functions from a third-party web hosting provider, which reduces the cost associated with installing, updating, and supporting the server. Hosted Exchange is ideal for businesses with 50 or more employees and that have no on-site server capacity.

Besides lowering overall costs, Hosted Exchange offers other advantages such as:

  • Centralization – It provides collaborative features like automated email and calendar syncing across multiple platforms, and is compatible with Microsoft Office products and other communication tools such as Skype for Business.
  • Increased productivity – Hosted email services greatly increase uptime for all applications, ensuring your business doesn’t suffer costly downtime.
  • Fortified security – Hosted Exchange stores and backs up emails at an offsite data center and lets you enjoy additional protective features like anti-spam, antivirus, and anti-encryption.
  • More uptime – This service also includes access to IT experts who handle the entire email data migration process, preventing potential data loss.
  • Failover solutions – Finally, it lets you enjoy hardware and software redundancy and the ability to add servers to comply with changing business needs.

When a problem occurs, you can contact your provider directly in order to initiate remediation. Moreover, you will have complete control over your data with all server updates, backups and shutdowns controlled and managed by a team of specialists. This makes Hosted Exchange ideal for businesses operating in industries requiring stringent data security measures.

Why Microsoft Office 365?

If you’re looking for a stable email solution that offers numerous features for your business, look no further than Office 365. It’s a subscription-based platform that can be purchased directly from Microsoft Corporation, allowing clients to access their applications, services, and productivity software over the cloud.

Office 365 also provides communication, collaboration, and productivity tools and document management, web conferencing, and free ongoing updates and support. Some common Office 365 services include:

  • Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Skype for Business, Access)
  • Exchange Online (email, calendar, tasks)
  • SharePoint Online (web portal for collaboration)
  • OneDrive for Business (cloud file storage)
  • Planner (project management)
  • Power BI (business intelligence)
  • Sway (a tool for creating reports, presentations and newsletters)

With Office 365, you’ll have better control over your IT expenditure with the two billing options available: a monthly payment that can be canceled anytime, and an annual payment that cannot be canceled until the end of the term but can be purchased at a discounted price.

Office 365 packages are flexible and customizable. If needed, users can upgrade to a different plan or combine certain plans to better suit changing business needs.

Choosing an enterprise email hosting solution is a daunting task and shouldn’t be handled alone. As your IT partner, Complete Technology will help you navigate through technological complexities and determine whether Hosted Exchange or Office 365 is right for your business. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We are more than happy to help.