28
Dec
10

Appriver Hosted Exchange vs. Google Apps Premiere

By Joshua Steimle 12 Comments Categories: Reviews & How-To

I’ve been using Appriver’s hosted Exchange email services for a few years now. I have virtually no complaints. I don’t recall ever having a major problem with uptime. I think they may have had some minor issues but the only reason I knew about them was because they sent me an email telling me so. The service worked flawlessly no matter what phone I had. It was easy to administer the account for my company. They have great customer support. Best of all, the spam filtering was second to none. For years I checked the spam filter for false positives, but after whitelisting the people I communicated with most, and not finding any false positives for about a year, I just stopped looking anymore. Not having to comb through the spam, looking for a false positive, was a great time saver.

So why did I even look at Google Apps? Two reasons; 1) I got the new Droid X, and the software for connecting to Exchange left something to be desired. I tried the default email client, as well as Touchdown. Both were slow and buggy, and 2) cost. Switching to Google Apps would cut my email costs by 60-70%.

I haven’t committed entirely to Google Apps yet. I set up the account about two weeks ago, and have been testing it out, while leaving my Appriver account up and running in case I want to switch back. Google Apps is no panacea, to be sure, but I do see some advantages that I think will result in me sticking with it, if things continue to go well.

Pros

1. It works well with my phone. I don’t have the slowness issues, and the Gmail interface is much more user-friendly than either Touchdown or the default email app.

2. I don’t have to worry about Outlook anymore. That means one less piece of software to reinstall if I reformat my computer, one less piece of bloated software slowing down my machine, and it means I won’t accidentally delete 9 years of email due to a botched reinstallation. Sure, I could have avoided that by using the web-based Outlook interface Appriver offers, but I never liked that much. Especially since I would have had to buy my own SSL cert to get rid of the annoying security alerts, and it forced me to use IE to get a halfway decent experience. None of this was Appriver’s fault, nor something they could really fix, just the nature of using a hosted Exchange server.

3. It’s 60-70% cheaper, as I already pointed out.

4. Easy access from any Internet-connected computer.

Cons

1. I’m not entirely sure about the Gmail interface. I’ll probably get used to it, and in some ways I’m starting to like it better, but it’s an adjustment.

2. Limited storage. It’s not an issue for me, since Google Apps Premiere comes with 25GB of storage, which I’m sure they’ll increase over time, and I’m still at less than 10GB. Appriver has unlimited storage.

3. Spam. I have to review the spam myself…well, maybe I don’t, but I am reviewing it, just to be sure. Of course I had to do this initially with Appriver as well, the downside is that I have to do it again.

4. It was a bit of a task to get my email imported into Google Apps. Once I got it working it was a snap, although it took several days, but getting it working took hours and hours to figure out. They have an application that’s supposed to make it easy, but either I was doing something wrong or it wasn’t working right for the first day or two.

Related posts:

  1. AppRiver’s Hosted Exchange Server and Spam Filtering
  2. Why Not to Protect Your Email Address from Being Harvested by Spammers
  3. Automatically Querying Google
  • http://www.eransworld.com Eran

    Do you think Google leaves the Exchange software buggy so you want to use Gmail or Google Apps?

  • Joshua Steimle

    You mean Microsoft? I’m sure they’d love to hear that someone thinks that Exchange is a Google plot to drive users to gmail :)

  • http://www.eransworld.com Eran

    No the Android email apps that connect to Exchange.

    I think deep down Microsoft knows it needs to be compatible with as many mobile devices as possible. Over the last few years Exchange has become easier to add mobile devices especially Exchange 2010.

    It seems to me that many software vendors try to be proprietary so that you buy only “their” products. iTunes is an example. Why not make it so that iTunes works on all mobiles, all computers, all mp3 players? Don’t they want to sell music, or videos to me?

  • http://www.eransworld.com Eran

    I hit submit too soon. My point is it seems to me that Google is doing the Apple thing. Android only works with Google. These companies need to stop be so protective and give people real choices so that the best products shine.

    As a Network/System Engineer it frustrates me. It means that I have to tell my users exactly what phones they can use instead of giving them a wider choice. For the most part my company only uses Blackberry but my users want other phones.

  • Joshua Steimle

    Oh, gotcha. Or maybe Microsoft makes Exchange buggy with Android, figuring that when push comes to shove more people will opt for the new Windows Mobile OS rather than sticking with Android.

    Yeah, I really, really wish iTunes synced directly with my phone. I hate this doubleTwist software. A few tweaks and it might be ok, but as it stands it’s kind of a pain to use compared to iTunes. You end up duplicating effort all over the place. But maybe it works, because I’ve pretty much decided to get an iPhone a year or so from now, and at least 20% of that reason is that it will work seamlessly with iTunes. I really like listening to podcasts, music, and watching videos on my phone.

  • Colin

    How did you get both google and appriver to work at the same time? From the instructions it seemed that you’d need access to active directory to get it to work. I only get the cp.appriver.com interface.

  • Joshua Steimle

    I didn’t both “working” at the same time, that is, I wasn’t checking email on both servers. I just left my Appriver account up and running so that I could switch DNS to point back to it at a moment’s notice in case things didn’t work out with Google Apps.

  • http://www.xn--smsln1-lua.se Kevin

    I think Android is best for those people who primarily are not dependent to iTunes, Outlook and other proprietary software. I myself have been using GMail for years. So Android comes naturally as the best Smartphone OS choice for me. I don’t use iTunes, although I did have an old iPod 4G classic. Yep, I’ve never used iTunes to put music into that old iPod. I used another app, to put music in directly, but then that was a long time ago. I haven’t used Outlook. One time I used Thunderbird, but I got tired of downloading mails that I opted for GMail years ago.

  • Rob A.

    I’m looking at a migration from AppRiver to Google also, and I was wondering if you could provide any details about how to get the right AppRiver parameters to get the GAMME to work. It seems like I’ve tried every iteration of values that I can see from Outlook and cp.appriver.com. Thanks!

  • Joshua Steimle

    Getting the Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange (GAMME, for those who might not know exactly what Rob is referring to) to work was a huge pain, although once I figured out the right settings it was a piece of cake. I guess it would have been nice if I would have documented the entire process in detail, but I didn’t, and now it has been a little while, so I’ll relate the tale as best I can remember.

    1. I never got it to work server to server, I ended up having to migrate from Outlook on my desktop to Google Apps, so if you’re trying to figure out how to get it straight off AppRiver’s server, you may want to stop spinning your wheels.

    2. The problem, once I started focusing on exporting from my desktop Outlook client, was that I didn’t realize some of the settings in the GAMME tool were resetting each time I tried the migration. So I thought I was being very scientific and changing one setting at a time, while in reality some of the settings were switching back to their defaults each time I tried. For many hours I thought it just wasn’t working, but I just wasn’t really trying all the different settings.

    3. I believe I used the method where you put in your username/password on the first screen…but man, I tried so many different things I don’t trust my memory of what finally worked. So I’m afraid unless someone else chimes in you’re going to have to do some experimentation on your own. But just knowing #1 and #2 can save you an entire day’s work.

    4. The migration process can take a while if you have a lot of messages. I think it took a full day for me to transfer my wife’s email account, since she never deletes anything.

  • http://smslanguiden.se Smslån

    I never get this to work at the same time. How do you make it work?

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