Amazon WorkMail vs Microsoft Exchange Online comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Email Applications category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4, while Microsoft is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 9.5% mindshare in EA, compared to Microsoft’s 13.4% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon WorkMail

Read 13 Amazon WorkMail reviews

2,954 Views
2,222 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Microsoft Exchange Online

Read 90 Microsoft Exchange Online reviews

4,254 Views
2,850 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon WorkMail

Microsoft Exchange Online

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

Microsoft Exchange Online and Amazon WorkMail compete in the email and collaboration category. Microsoft Exchange Online has the upper hand due to its superior integration with Microsoft products and more comprehensive features.

Features: Microsoft Exchange Online offers vast storage options, robust integration with Office 365, and intuitive wide-ranging capabilities. It ensures stability and security while facilitating seamless deployment. Amazon WorkMail is reliable for integrations and email deliverability, providing user security and compatibility with AWS services.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Exchange Online users report challenges with migrations and integrations, tech support response times, and security measures. Amazon WorkMail could improve through a more intuitive interface, better regional availability, and enhanced setup experiences.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Exchange Online supports various deployment models, often in hybrid and public cloud environments, with generally proactive support. Amazon WorkMail is straightforward in hybrid deployments with decent customer service, although tech response can be slow at times.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Exchange Online is perceived as expensive, but offers substantial value with a significant ROI when bundled with Office 365. Amazon WorkMail is less costly and suitable for startups, but its pricing can be prohibitive in certain regions.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon WorkMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online

June 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon WorkMail

Ranking in Email Applications

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Email (2nd)

Microsoft Exchange Online

Ranking in Email Applications

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Email Applications category, the mindshare of Amazon WorkMail is 9.5%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Exchange Online is 13.4%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Email Applications

Featured Reviews

Michael Olayemi

Senior Software Engineer at Checkit

Provides free messages and helps to keep customers updated

The solution is quite low-level and lacks some advanced features. For example, it doesn't provide tracking capabilities, such as knowing how many users opened an email, which is crucial for email marketing. You would need to integrate these analytics with other tools to get them. I need to know if there has been a bounce and how customers interacted with the email. I would only suggest that Amazon WorkMail relax the rules for using Amazon SES in production. When you create an account, it starts in Sandbox mode, which means you can't use it in production right away. You must go through a process, message Amazon, and request to move it to production. Since Amazon is a big company, I feel customers shouldn't need this permission to use the service in production.

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NancyHartman

Business Process Manager/ Educational Technologist at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees

Effective collaboration achieved with versatile features and good customer service

There are always improvements needed. My personal issue with using OfficeSuite and the Exchange Server is that one has to cobble together a whole bunch of different applications. Therefore, a lot of scripting and programming knowledge is necessary. I am not an IT person; I am an educator, a trainer, a user. I want to get the work done. However, I find that the Exchange Server and possibly the way our company has set up access permissions require extensive programming knowledge. It might take six to eight weeks to get a programmer's time to build something, whereas I can use something like Smartsheet that will do everything I want without needing a programmer. Smartsheet is more end-user friendly compared to a Microsoft product. Microsoft believes an expert IT person should manage everything, however, I want to manage things on my own in a simplified way. That is not easy using the Exchange Server or Microsoft Office. It is not end-user friendly for development, and a programmer is needed. Once set up, using them as an end-user is fine. I find that the automations are not robust, and the FedRAMP systems are not robust. I have a few issues with Exchange and Office, but there's nothing I can do about it.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Amazon SES is very easy to configure."

"The best feature is that Amazon SES provides verified email messages."

"It is very stable. I haven't faced any issues."

"There is no need for me to set up security."

"The most valuable thing is that emails sent through SES have a delivery rate of greater than ninety percent."

"The most valuable feature of the Amazon WorkMail for me is the SMC server. It makes my work much easier, especially since I often work with Spring Boot. There are many built-in APIs in Spring Boot that help with messaging. What I appreciate about it is that it simplifies the process. I don't need to write much code; I define the credentials in my properties or environment variables. The Java Message API, an internal API from Spring Boot, does most of the work. I set up the properties and connected them to the SMC server, and I can send emails."

"We use the tool for transactional emails and marketing."

"Amazon SES can handle a high volume of emails, making it suitable for organizations with large email lists or that need to send a large number of emails on a regular basis."

More Amazon WorkMail pros

"The best part of this solution is the security it offers."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Exchange Online are the frequent updates. They upgrade and optimize the features to make them better and better. They have a very strong ecosystem and they integrate together."

"Exchange Online's performance and stability are very good."

"The overall usage was all good."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"With the Exchange Server, there is a lot of capability for version controlling."

"Intuitive and easy to use."

"This solution makes it very easy to receive and detect problems about the mail flow and offers very good reporting. In general, it's very easy to manage the organization's mailboxes."

More Microsoft Exchange Online pros

Cons

"WorkMail is not available in all the regions."

"The solution is quite low-level and lacks some advanced features. For example, it doesn't provide tracking capabilities, such as knowing how many users opened an email, which is crucial for email marketing. You would need to integrate these analytics with other tools to get them. I need to know if there has been a bounce and how customers interacted with the email."

"There is room for improvement in the scalability."

"There is room for improvement in the support. It's just that customer support, though good, takes time to resolve issues."

"It would be ideal to have detailed data and reporting on email opens, clicks, bounces, and other metrics, as well as integration with other business intelligence tools."

"When we first set up an email on Amazon SES, they had to verify it, which was not fast enough."

"The product should improve technical support."

"Email service is definitely a requirement from an enterprise standpoint. Many organizations have their own on-premise email services, which take a lot of memory, backup, and other resources. If we can have a completely managed backup solution where we have a tiered backup or a tiered archival to be able to retrieve emails, it would be great. I would like to be able to retrieve emails in real-time (hot retrieval), over the 90-days period (warm retrieval), and over the one-year period (cold retrieval). It would be useful to have tiered backup and retrieval. It would help us in managing emails better and have a better backup solution. So, backup is something that we require."

More Amazon WorkMail cons

"I don't really like the response time of the web GUI for administration."

"What I don't like about Microsoft Exchange Online is too much integration because now it has many services connected to it. In the beginning, it was just email, and now it's also Teams and Visio, and many other services which I don't like. Microsoft Exchange Online should focus on one service. The product now lost focus, and this is its area for improvement. I would also like more freedom in choosing to use just one service, for example, just Microsoft Exchange Online, which means I don't need Teams or any other Microsoft product or service there. Right now, all services are either in the Microsoft Office suite, or there are more products or services integrated with Microsoft Exchange Online, and I'd like to just focus on one."

"It will be much better if the tool is integrated with OpenAI."

"For example, recently there were some spam incidents that Microsoft does not currently mitigate because they have another paid solution to do so. It would be nice to integrate the security and the anti-spam (i.e. the fake links, etc.) along with the Exchange Online default."

"The deployment is complex and has room for improvement."

"Microsoft Exchange Online could improve the overall protection of the solution."

"In the next release, I would like to see more features added to the security of the solution."

"The solution is expensive."

More Microsoft Exchange Online cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution should improve its price."

"It's very cheap. The cheapest among all the services available."

"WorkMail does require a license, it is, per user."

"I rate the solution's pricing as one out of ten. It is close to being cheap. Sometimes, the tool offers a generous amount of free messages, up to 40,000, which is great for startups like ours. This means that we don't accumulate any costs for some months because we stay within the free usage tier. When we exceed the free allocation, the costs are reasonable, and no hidden charges exist."

"The licensing cost increased at least 15 to 20 percent recently and it would be helpful for them to be reduced."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive."

"The pricing for Microsoft Exchange Online is quite reasonable, in my opinion. Many licensing options are available so that we can choose based on the customer's needs. For example, if a customer only requires mailbox features, we can recommend Plan One or Plan 2. We can suggest an E3 or E5 license if they need the entire Office suite. There are also premium subscriptions for enterprise customers, offering additional security features. Overall, I don't find the pricing costly because Microsoft provides many features and security capabilities, making it reliable for all customers, depending on their requirements."

"The licensing price is ok, I'd rate it as four out of five."

"The price of Microsoft Exchange Online security could improve. The overall price of the solution is reasonable."

"The price is a bit high. It is especially expensive in the Indian market."

"The subscription fee is monthly."

"The model is one which is pay-per-use go. There is no license. We are talking about per-user subscription-based use."

More Microsoft Exchange Online pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

University

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon WorkMail?

We use the tool for transactional emails and marketing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon WorkMail?

Amazon WorkMail's user interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly. Integration with Gmail using both SMTP and POP3 would be beneficial.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon WorkMail?

Currently, I don't have any advice about using Amazon WorkMail. Since I only use AWS and am unfamiliar with its competitors, I can't recommend it.

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Exchange Online?

The benefits are widespread and effective communication. We use Microsoft Teams for meetings within and outside our organization. Additionally, Teams can be used for chat, allowing us to track comm...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Exchange Online?

The cost of Microsoft Exchange Online varies between $4 and $25 per user per month, depending on the different plans we use for different users.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Exchange Online?

The mobile version of Microsoft Outlook has limited features compared to the desktop version. We find fewer features in the mobile version of Microsoft Exchange Online, so that could be improved if...

See all answers

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Compared 49% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

Zimbra Collaboration vs Microsoft Exchange Online

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail

June 2025

Download Amazon WorkMail product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Exchange Online

June 2025

Download Microsoft Exchange Online product report

Also Known As

Amazon SES

Exchange Online, Exchange Online Plan 1, Exchange Online Plan 2, MS Exchange Online

Overview

Amazon WorkMail is a secure, managed business email and calendar service with support for existing desktop and mobile email client applications. Amazon WorkMail gives users the ability to seamlessly access their email, contacts, and calendars using the client application of their choice, including Microsoft Outlook, native iOS and Android email applications, any client application supporting the IMAP protocol, or directly through a web browser. You can integrate Amazon WorkMail with your existing corporate directory, use email journaling to meet compliance requirements, and control both the keys that encrypt your data and the location in which your data is stored. You can also set up interoperability with Microsoft Exchange Server, and programmatically manage users, groups, and resources using the Amazon WorkMail SDK.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Exchange Online helps protect your information with advanced capabilities. Anti-malware and anti-spam filtering protect mailboxes. Data loss prevention capabilities prevent users from mistakenly sending sensitive information to unauthorized people. Globally redundant servers, premier disaster recovery capabilities, and a team of security experts monitoring Exchange Online around the clock safeguard your data.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Bank Alfalah Ltd., Paderborn-Lippstadt Airport, Blue Star Infotech, Scitec Nutrition, Resolution Films, British Airways, Empire Cinemas, InnoGames

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online

June 2025

Free Report: Amazon WorkMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online

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