Comments on: AppRiver’s Hosted Exchange Server and Spam Filtering

By: Jane Doe

Jane Doe — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:27:38 +0000

I think one thing we have to point out here is the majority of “bad” reviews come from two “EX” empolyees.

Other then that, we are talking about Microsoft Hosted Exchange. It runs on Windows and at times, servers have to be rebooted for one reason other other. One thing no one pointed out is, there are NO mails lost durning this “Down” time. Yes, the users connection might not be able to connect, but no mail is lost. Once the users connection comes back, guess what, all there mail is there.

Also, we are talking about the Internet. When a use “cant” connect, the first thing they think is “APPRIVER IS DOWN”, well, did you call your ISP? Did you do a trace route? How do you know its appriver.

Just like any other hosted exchange company out there, everyone will have issues. Sometimes it might be the company, but most of the time its not. There are too many variables for packet loss. Over all, Appriver is one of the best Hosted Exchagne providers out there. I will stick with them. They have some of the best support in the business.

By: Macy Miller

Macy Miller — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:39:34 +0000

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.

By: Jim McClellan

Jim McClellan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:11:37 +0000

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.

By: John Walker

John Walker — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:46:22 +0000

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).

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:01:09 +0000

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.

By: John Doe

John Doe — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:23:37 +0000

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/

By: Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:13:19 +0000

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!

By: Joshua Steimle

Joshua Steimle — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:51:13 +0000

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.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 22:38:21 +0000

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.

By: Joel Smith

Joel Smith — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 01:16:00 +0000

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