Exchange Online Review 2020

Item: Exchange Online
Rating: 9.4
Author: Jonathan Kerns

Presenting a business email is a great way to show you are a professional and is a good sign for customers to trust you. Because of the free personal accounts offered by email providers it is easy to fall in love with free email accounts. However, what a lot of business owners do not know is that email hosting services are very affordable and provide more features than personal email services. One email hosting service is Microsoft's Exchange Online, which provides a way for customers to work smarter, anywhere, with hosted emails for businesses. This review will show just what this email hosting service has to offer to help you decide if it is something that you would want to use.

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Jonathan KernsMarch 15, 2019

Pros

Easy to Use: Exchange Online offers an easy to use interface with features that provides users a rich, familiar email experience for everyone.
Email Capacity: Exchange Online allows excellent email storage capacity as you can get up to 150MB per email that you send and up to 50GB of inbox storage, which are both significantly more than other email hosts.
Third-party Apps: With Exchange Online, switching between apps is pretty easy because it allows plug-in access for third-party web applications.
Price: If cost is one of your main concerns, Exchange Online is a good choice as they offer some of the lowest prices in the market costing only as much as $8 per user a month.
Standalone or Packaged: You can purchase Exchange Online as a standalone service for email hosting or as part of an Office 365 subscription for a complete Microsoft suite.

Cons

Billing: Exchange Online only offers annual billing for their subscription plans so you would not be able to just try out their services for only one month as you would be stuck with a subscription for a whole year.
Unlimited Storage: Exchange Online offers unlimited storage, but only to those that subscribe to the higher-priced Exchange Online Plan 2. While this isn't that big of a deal, there are some alternatives out there that offer unlimited storage across the board.

Mobile App

If you are already using Microsoft Outlook, you will be glad to know that supported versions of it can connect to Exchange Online so you can use its many features. That includes using it with the Outlook mobile app for iOS, Android and soon on Windows 10. Outlook allows users to connect all their email accounts, calendars and files all in one place. It offers a focused inbox that keeps the important messages on top so you never miss them and you can easily switch between your emails and calendar to schedule your meetings, activities or events. You can also attach documents to your emails seamlessly for more efficient work. This app has been downloaded and is being used by millions of customers worldwide so it is definitely something you should take a look at if you want to be productive even when on-the-go.

Pricing and Features

If you are interested in using Exchange Online as a standalone service, then you would have to choose between the two monthly subscriptions that they offer. Both subscriptions come with an annual billing and offer 50GB of mailbox storage, 150MB per email sent, Outlook support for mobile apps and web-client access. It also comes with inbox management tools that applies machine learning to clean up inboxes and set up rules that match the way you work. You can even save documents and other attachments directly to OneDrive for business with just one click and share the link to the file right from the Outlook Web App.

Exchange Online also offers shared calendars and contacts, which lets you view your team’s calendars in order to easily schedule meetings. You also get access to a host of collab0ration features, which includes a global contact list, tasks, delegation features, and more. This makes it great for team environments. Meanwhile, every mailbox using this email hosting service is secured with anti-malware and anti-spam features via their own Exchange Online Protection. This guards you against viruses, spam, and phishing attacks.

All these features come at the very affordable cost of $4 per user per month which is only $48 a year with the Exchange Online Plan 1. For more feature, you can go with The Plan 2 for $8 per user per month which is still under $100 per year. Plan 2 offers additional features such as In-Place Hold which preserves deleted and edited mailbox items, hosted voicemail, data loss prevention and unlimited archive space.

Customer Support

Microsoft offers an online help center where customers have access to helpful articles that answer basic questions about their products and services. There is also a training section where users can easily access guides and training videos from qualified experts. There is also an online community forum where you can seek help from your peers and various ways to contact tech support. You can chat online with a Microsoft Answer Tech, call their hotline or schedule a call from their representative.

What's the Verdict on Exchange Online?

A Must Try

Exchange Online Review – Conclusion

If you are looking for a good email hosting service to use, one of the better choices to go with is Exchange Outlook from Microsoft. They offer a very affordable service that hosts a lot of useful features, such as an easy interface with automatic patching, In-Place archiving and access to emails, calendars and contacts on all major browsers and devices, and more. Those looking for a large storage have to compromise a little as Exchange Online’s inbox is limited to 50 GB but you do get unlimited archives if you opt for the higher-priced plan. Also, they only offer annual billing so you have to be ready for a full year’s commitment before signing up. Nevertheless, Exchange Online is one of the most affordable and reliable email hosting services around. so go ahead and check them out today.