I am always on the go.
I work mainly from my PC when I'm at my home office, but from a laptop when I'm traveling. And, now I'm exploring the addition of contractors to my team. So, I need to be able to access to my contacts, emails with custom signatures; sent and incoming, calendar, etc. from where ever I might be, and also be able to share portions of that with the other consultants. I've heard great things about MS Exchange servers with respect to those goals (or challenges), in addition to being a great backup storage source. But, I have a couple of looming questions that I'm trying to wrap my head around.

1. Is is cost effective for a home-based business with 1-5 people accessing the service.
2. What are the typical set up fees or on-going hosting fees?
3. Is is it difficult to set up when you have custom email addresses tied to your existing web mail services?
4. Can it even be accomplished if you're using several different custom email addresses?

Can anyone provide any additional insight or direction?

Thanks!

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Tanya Troska
Troska Administrative Services

I looked into Exchange, however with my new Droid I needed Google integration. I am now using Google Business Apps. It is $50/year per user so if you need to add users it is as simple as adding and paying for the change when it is needed.

Set-up was a little intensive but with the help of support I was online and active in no time. I have my Outlook synced to the account so I can choose to use with Outlook or Gmail. I also have all my emails (info@, lee@, support@) included with the account. And better yet, I was able to add client server emails using Pop3 so I can get and respond to those emails as well.

You are best to contact someone who provide Exchange and do a comparison with your needs. I made my choice because of my smart phone and a client who was going through the same thing.

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Lee Drozak
My Office Assistant