Solved Email server options
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
In our situation, I'm the only guy here and it would take me some amount of time to learn Zimbra/Mailcow and then deploy it. Then if in 2 years I left, I'm leaving that to someone else to learn. Just doesn't seem smart for us.
Best to hire someone who already knows it. We have customers that come to us for that stuff, and it's cheap. Thousands of companies already know how to maintain it and will do so for next to nothing for you. If you run the numbers, it might not be the best choice for you (it's not most of the time), but it is often way, way closer to being a good idea than you'd guess.
Zimbra support is not expensive, in many cases, we could simply use a "per user" price gauge and guarantee that it costs less than O365, for example. If you have ten users, that doesn't work. But if you have 100, I will guarantee Zimbra support, at a fraction of the cost of Hosted Exchange right now
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
I think here it's in the best interest of the company then to have some form of hosted solution that's easier to have someone else step into and manage in a scenario where your relationship ended.
Yes, that is always true. BUT you'd hope that anyone that would be asked to step in would be qualified to do so, so choosing something like Zimbra would be of no consequence. If it makes sense to do with Bundy there, it would make sense to do without them there. IT support is not a scarce resource when done well. Getting good support (and good support always means affordable compared to alternatives as well) is not hard at all if the company wants it.
So going hosted doesn't actually protect them. That, in no way, means I'm saying that hosted is wrong here. I'm just saying that "being supportable by another IT firm" is of no concern at all. Any skilled MSP or ITSP can do that with their eyes closed, at a reasonable cost. And if the company decides not to hire good (or any) IT to support things after he leaves, there is no accounting for that. That they have to maintain the IT department or resources goes without saying, and included in that is the ability to support anything reasonable or reasonably standard.
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Even being a year or two down the road, that's extra hardware you know you wouldn't otherwise need if hosted therefore a portion of the hardware upgrade costs should be allocated today in my opinion.
I would generally agree with this. Unless, and this is more common than you think, the company will not buy less hardware even if you wouldn't add in the workload. I have lots of companies that have a minimum purchasing threshhold for servers and it is so high, that all of their workloads, plus tons more, always have plenty of resources. So something like email would remain free for them essentially forever, because the resources that it needs diminish rapidly over time.
So I agree, but make sure you evaluate reasonable projected excess resources as part of the equation.
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Ok I didn't know Zoho included spam filtering. I thought you were asking for that earlier but you were actually referring to the Open Source options. My bad.
All business class hosted email does. Even Zimbra and MailCow do. Only things that don't are hobby systems like GoDaddy, and even that probably does.
Definitely all of the open source does, even the open source hobby systems.
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@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Even being a year or two down the road, that's extra hardware you know you wouldn't otherwise need if hosted therefore a portion of the hardware upgrade costs should be allocated today in my opinion.
I would generally agree with this. Unless, and this is more common than you think, the company will not buy less hardware even if you wouldn't add in the workload. I have lots of companies that have a minimum purchasing threshhold for servers and it is so high, that all of their workloads, plus tons more, always have plenty of resources. So something like email would remain free for them essentially forever, because the resources that it needs diminish rapidly over time.
So I agree, but make sure you evaluate reasonable projected excess resources as part of the equation.
So why do they have minimum purchasing thresholds if they're exceedingly greater than what they need? What's driving that?
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Even being a year or two down the road, that's extra hardware you know you wouldn't otherwise need if hosted therefore a portion of the hardware upgrade costs should be allocated today in my opinion.
I would generally agree with this. Unless, and this is more common than you think, the company will not buy less hardware even if you wouldn't add in the workload. I have lots of companies that have a minimum purchasing threshhold for servers and it is so high, that all of their workloads, plus tons more, always have plenty of resources. So something like email would remain free for them essentially forever, because the resources that it needs diminish rapidly over time.
So I agree, but make sure you evaluate reasonable projected excess resources as part of the equation.
So why do they have minimum purchasing thresholds if they're exceedingly greater than what they need? What's driving that?
Budget controls to ensure there is a pool of money to take from should they need it. (for whatever they may need money that is otherwise unbudgeted)
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@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Ok I didn't know Zoho included spam filtering. I thought you were asking for that earlier but you were actually referring to the Open Source options. My bad.
All business class hosted email does. Even Zimbra and MailCow do. Only things that don't are hobby systems like GoDaddy, and even that probably does.
Definitely all of the open source does, even the open source hobby systems.
I'm showing my ignorance here. I was basing that assumption off of what was said previously in the thread which I took to mean it wasn't included. Thanks
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@JaredBusch said in Email server options:
I managed to find the PDF of the original Exchange 2010 order form Jan 3, 2012.
$6,344 for Exchange 2010, 70 CALs, & 2 licenses of Server 2008 R2 (one for something else).Adjusting the 2010 order to 120 users (was purchased over time as they grew) it is definitely more expensive now.
These numbers also happen to be from the same VAR.Item Quantity 2010 Unit Cost 2010 Total 2019 Unit Cost 2019 Total Difference Exchange Server Standard 1 $655.00 $655.00 $732.00 $732.00 $77.00 Exchange User CAL 120 $62.00 $7,440.00 $91.15 $10,938.00 $3,498.00 Windows Server Standard 1 $672.00 $672.00 $913.57 $913.57 $241.57 Windows Server User CAL 120 $35.00 $4,200.00 $39.41 $4,729.20 $529.20 $12,967.00 $17,312.77 $4,345.77 That licensing cost ALONE, not including hardware, management, etc. is more than it would cost to outsource Zimbra management to someone! In fact, you could outsource it, mark it up, and still save them money
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Ok I didn't know Zoho included spam filtering. I thought you were asking for that earlier but you were actually referring to the Open Source options. My bad.
All business class hosted email does. Even Zimbra and MailCow do. Only things that don't are hobby systems like GoDaddy, and even that probably does.
Definitely all of the open source does, even the open source hobby systems.
I'm showing my ignorance here. I was basing that assumption off of what was said previously in the thread which I took to mean it wasn't included. Thanks
My guess is you saw the questions about Zimbra handling it. And the reason for that, I think, is that Zimbra has it off by default out of the box (no idea why.) You have to enable it and it is admittedly stupid how they do it and it is certainly 15-30 minutes of unnecessary work that should never be needed as a default. But the investment in time is small and so far, it has been working well for us. Well enough, for sure. Huge improvement over not having it.
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@DustinB3403 said in Email server options:
@zachary715 said in Email server options:
@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Even being a year or two down the road, that's extra hardware you know you wouldn't otherwise need if hosted therefore a portion of the hardware upgrade costs should be allocated today in my opinion.
I would generally agree with this. Unless, and this is more common than you think, the company will not buy less hardware even if you wouldn't add in the workload. I have lots of companies that have a minimum purchasing threshhold for servers and it is so high, that all of their workloads, plus tons more, always have plenty of resources. So something like email would remain free for them essentially forever, because the resources that it needs diminish rapidly over time.
So I agree, but make sure you evaluate reasonable projected excess resources as part of the equation.
So why do they have minimum purchasing thresholds if they're exceedingly greater than what they need? What's driving that?
Budget controls to ensure there is a pool of money to take from should they need it. (for whatever they may need money that is otherwise unbudgeted)
More, I meant, that they would not be willing to buy a server with less than X cores or Y RAM and their minimums are so big that you need workloads to keep it all busy
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@zachary715 said in Email server options:
Even being a year or two down the road, that's extra hardware you know you wouldn't otherwise need if hosted therefore a portion of the hardware upgrade costs should be allocated today in my opinion.
I would generally agree with this. Unless, and this is more common than you think, the company will not buy less hardware even if you wouldn't add in the workload. I have lots of companies that have a minimum purchasing threshhold for servers and it is so high, that all of their workloads, plus tons more, always have plenty of resources. So something like email would remain free for them essentially forever, because the resources that it needs diminish rapidly over time.
So I agree, but make sure you evaluate reasonable projected excess resources as part of the equation.
So why do they have minimum purchasing thresholds if they're exceedingly greater than what they need? What's driving that?
Hubris, I think. In the SMB especially, but enterprises a little, just having big, fancy servers (or SAN, or phones, etc.) drives a lot of purchasing decisions. Makes the owners or managers feel powerful or fancy or something.
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@zachary715 said in Email server options:
I would like however to deploy it in a lab just to play with and learn.
I feel like Zimbra is waning. If you are going to play, start with MailCow, IMHO. I've not used it yet, but looks nice and some people here have been raving about it. We are going to audition it ourselves one of these days when time allows.
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@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@JaredBusch said in Email server options:
@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
We run in house email on Zimbra
How is spam filtering handled?
In our case, we use Zimbra's built in components. Not the best, but not bad. It's free, so that's a big factor for us. Was like a 15 minute one time setup and now it just works (so far.)
If we wanted, our outbound mail handler (MailGun) will do inbound spam filtering for us for cheap. But we've not gone down that path (yet.)
Not the best is likely not good enough for a 120 user organization consisting of zero technical users.
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@Obsolesce said in Email server options:
Maybe if you factor in labor, cost of Windows and MS management, time etx, perhaps cloud is better?
Those have nothing to do with the apple to apples cost of the Mail Server options themselves.
Those have lots to do with the final total. I know how to do math so that has nothing to do with my question on costing out options.
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@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
Only things that don't are hobby systems like GoDaddy, and even that probably does.
That is Office 365 Exchange Online now.
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@JaredBusch said in Email server options:
@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
@JaredBusch said in Email server options:
@scottalanmiller said in Email server options:
We run in house email on Zimbra
How is spam filtering handled?
In our case, we use Zimbra's built in components. Not the best, but not bad. It's free, so that's a big factor for us. Was like a 15 minute one time setup and now it just works (so far.)
If we wanted, our outbound mail handler (MailGun) will do inbound spam filtering for us for cheap. But we've not gone down that path (yet.)
Not the best is likely not good enough for a 120 user organization consisting of zero technical users.
Well, not the best has been better than some of the big players
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@JaredBusch When you/they make a decision, I'd like to know what the decision was and what ultimate factors led to the decision.
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O365 - we all have better things to do than manage a stupid mail server, come on.
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@MattSpeller said in Email server options:
O365 - we all have better things to do than manage a stupid mail server, come on.
I totally agree on a personal level. but that is not how business works.
