We recently switched our corporate email to a hosted Exchange solution from AppRiver. It happens to be down right now (which is why I have time to blog), but this is still a positive review. Frankly, getting this Exchange server from AppRiver and having their spam filtering is one of the best things we’ve ever done.
For something like $125 per month we get 10 accounts and more GB of storage than we need. Their stuff integrates with Outlook, and they have a web version of Outlook that blows away any web-based email interface I’ve ever seen. Everything is synchronized so I can check email in Outlook from my laptop, jump on a friend’s machine and send an email from the web-based interface, and then check email, delete some emails, and send an email from my Motorola Q and I don’t have to worry about the accounts getting out of whack. Everything is synchronized as though I were doing it all from the same machine. And all my tasks, calendar items, notes, etc. that I use in Outlook get synchronized as well.
But that’s just Exchange, and doesn’t have anything to do with AppRiver, per se. What AppRiver provides is some great spam filtering. Before AppRiver I was filtering all my spam manually to make sure I didn’t miss things, and I would guess I spent 20-30 minutes each day doing that. Now I spend about 2-3 minutes skimming the spam report to make sure there aren’t any false positives. Every once in a while there are, so I add them to the safe sender list and then they don’t get flagged again. As far as actual spam making it through, I would say it’s about 1 in 1,000 that gets through, and the false positives are about 1 in 5,000.
AppRiver makes it a cinch to manage the Exchange server, your accounts, and the spam filter settings. It’s really, really easy, and I only wish I had signed up for something like this several years ago.
Yes, our server does happen to be down at the moment, but I sent in a support request and got a phone call from a live person who knew what they were talking about within 60 seconds, telling me that it was a known issue and they were working on it. I also got emails back. Of course I don’t like it when things go down, but everyrthing does go down and some time, and when it does happen the way the company reacts says a lot about their competency and attitude. I’ve had other hosting companies…well, let’s not go there. It makes me tired just thinking about it. Suffice it to say I’ve been impressed with AppRiver’s support. And apparently I’m not the only one. Rackspace selected AppRiver last year as their chosen provider of spam filtering services.
They have a 30-day trial, so if you’re interested, just try it out. Just beware because you’ll probably get hooked once you use it.
Thank you for the kind review Don! I would like to a minute to apologize about the intermittent outages your account is experiencing today. I just received word that the data center has almost completed the provisioning of the additional servers that will provide ample capacity for our quickly growing customer base. We have already made plans to pre order future equipment as well to stay well ahead of our current growth curve. I am also glad to hear that our support department explained the issue to you quickly and accurately. As you have experienced first hand our support department is the biggest division of our company and we will always strive to treat our customers the way we would like to be treated. Everything should be back to normal now and I would venture to guess you will not experience this issue again.
Thank you again and please let us know if you absolutely anything at all,
Joel Smith
CTO
AppRiver
Don, thanks for your review. It’s too bad Appriver was down at the time, because I find it very hard to find reviews of hosted Exchange providers.
How has the downtime been since April? Are you happy with Appriver? I’ve considered them but we have extremely mission critical customer service e-mail accounts we need to be up all the time and it’s hard to make the plunge. Thing is, we also have an old, non-redundant Exchange server. It hasn’t gone down YET, but when it does I think we’re looking at a day of downtime at least.
I haven’t had a single instance of downtime since April. Nada. The more I use Appriver the more I like it. The spam filtering is amazing and seems to have improved over time. I could not more highly recommend the service.
We depend heavily on e-mail and since September/November, AppRiver’s service has gone way downhill. Most people may not notice - but we are very dependent on timely delivery of e-mail. It takes between 5-30 minutes to deliver messages through AppRiver - even on the same server! I have resorted to using a Yahoo account to deliver messages in a timely fashion - which is very embarassing. When I call to complain, they give me load of B.S.
Oh, and this is interesting - we started getting other people’s e-mail mixed in with ours!
One of the techs up there was very helpful with trying to resolve our problems (John or Josh) - he tried to get these issues resolved - but I think he was just as frustrated as we were.
AppRiver - CrapRiver is more like it!
AppRiver’s service is horrible. They lose e-mails, they lack monitoring and haven’t fixed a single security problem in years. On top of that they have only one developer (all the eggs in one basket - don’t piss off the developer or he’ll quit) which is why they suck. Pleas see the original Ack-River blog:
http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/09/21/appriver-review-ack-river/
As a former employee, I would warn anyone from using their services. They regularly lose e-mails, have and unreliable and easily crashable system. All Employees have (including low-level tech support) have Administrator access (no kidding!). They have no real monitoring and don’t know things are down half the time until the phone rings.
Go read what several other ex-employees have written at that Ack-River blog. In fact, they found me on that blog and I started getting these ridiculous threatening e-mails. It was the most unprofessional work environment I have ever been in, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.
We just switched from AppRiver to InterMedia: http://www.intermedia.net
They seem to be okay so far. AppRiver’s service is slow, they lose e-mails, and their Technical Support department will outright lie to you about outages. They cost our company over $1,000 in lost hours because of their issues (which “they have fixed” since last November).
Also, AppRiver doesn’t really run their servers - RackSpace does (according to an AppRiver representative and ARIN records).
We’ve used AppRiver for four years. In that time, we’ve had nothing but positive experiences with them. Without any “techies” in our office, we rely heavily on the support folks there to help us through any issue. Without fail, they are knowledgeable, courteous and responsive — even when the know the problem is a user error.
I refer everyone I know to AppRiver and have had nothing but positive feedback from them as well.
My company has used Appriver for about four years now and we are very happy with them. We very rarely get spam, and if we do they take care of it right away. We always receive our e-mails on time and they are very easy to manage. I think my favorite part about Appriver is their tech support. A real person answers the phone every time, and they are very helpful and fix the problem almost instantly! I would recommend Appriver to everyone.