Microsoft Exchange Online Reviews

We use Exchange Online to host our company email.  Now that O365 admin portal has been becoming more and more powerful I rarely find myself needing to use the Exchange Admin portal.  

We have many customers that use Exchange Online. All of which has become much easier to manage over the years as the O365 admin portal has developed. 

I have made about 10 migrations from Gmail, ATT, Amplex, 2007 - 2013 on prem Exchange servers to Exchange Online. The uptime and stability is far better than any on-prem or hosted solution I have used in the past.

Being a MS partner gives you central administration over all of your customers.

- O365 Admin portal
- New admin reports
- Office 365 Secure Score 
- Integrated Security
- Ease of migration from anywhere
- Intuitive GUI for control (Has greatly improved)
- Filters
- Granular control
- Encryption for HIPPA standards
- Central administration over all applications and clients
- Built in support ticket system
- Free mobile applications (applies to specific subscriptions)

Microsoft does not provide an automated way to migrate Public Folders. At this time you will need to run a series of complex PowerShell commands.

Supposedly Microsoft has done something about the public folders, however I have not investigated it.  This may or may not still be an issue.  

The dashboard reveals when there are issues but none that my customers have ever experienced.

Exchange Online is extremely scalable. I know a company that migrate over 10k mailboxes. I am sure there are many companies that are much bigger yet.

Customer Service:

10 out of 10

Technical Support:

10 out of 10

As stated earlier, I have used Exchange on premises solutions, google, ATT, Rackspace and other solutions. They all do mail and do it well, however the ease of integration, simplicity of administration, and the overall support is the best! 

There is a learning curve when migrating from other solutions. Once you understand the process it is straight forward

All implementations were performed by me.

Currently as a Microsoft Partner we do not pay for an E3 license of O365 which includes Exchange Online. As for customers they are billed directly from Microsoft.

As a partner of record on each customer Microsoft pays out residuals as long as the customer continues to pay for the service.

If you are not a partner the ROI is based on the fact that you no longer need to pay for hardware/software, hardware/software maintenance, and labor to perform upgrades, maintenance, and troubleshooting of hardware/software.

The plans can be confusing. Take time to understand what you need, what you will need in the future, and buy a plan accordingly. 

Gmail, ATT, Amplex, other ISP solutions, On-prem Exhange. 

Moving to Exchange Online open doors for many options that come with O365 and Azure. As technology continues to move forward it is pushing us to the cloud. Starting with email in the cloud open doors for other solutions that may fit your business. 

In our organization, we use Microsoft Exchange Online to send and receive emails, schedule meetings and appointments, manage calendars, book rooms, and manage resources. It's an essential tool for us. We implemented Exchange Online to support our users by managing licenses and creating new mailboxes, shared mailboxes, distribution groups, M365 groups, and security groups. It also helps us manage calendar permissions and other tasks.

In my organization, we initially used Microsoft Exchange Online just for sending emails, but now, with the integration of Microsoft Copilot, we've seen significant improvements. Copilot helps analyze emails and provide analytics, making it an essential feature for us. It's been a great addition, and our management finds it very valuable.

One of my favourite features is the Microsoft Calendar, which we use for booking appointments, scheduling calls, and managing resource rooms and devices. The Online Mailbox feature is also crucial because it allows us to communicate effectively within and outside the organization, contributing to our business growth.

In terms of areas for improvement, I think Microsoft could enhance security. Right now, there are limited options for security within Exchange Online, and much of it relies on third-party security and compliance tools. I'd like to see more security features directly integrated. One specific area that needs improvement is the configuration of SMTP for third-party applications. It's challenging to manage without an on-premise SMTP server, and this is an issue many organizations face, including ours. If Microsoft could offer better SMTP configuration for third-party applications within Exchange Online, it would greatly benefit us.

I’ve been working with Microsoft Exchange Online for the past four and half years across different organizations, including SEL Technology and CCS, and now at my current company. I’m a Microsoft Office 365 administrator working at a US-based multinational company. I’m an IT professional and a subject matter expert for Microsoft Exchange Online. As a technical support engineer for level two and level three, I provide customer support for various Outlook-related issues such as delegate access, mailbox queries, permissions, creating new mailboxes, and managing SMBL.

In terms of stability, I'd give it a nine because it's very stable compared to other messaging systems.

For scalability, I also rate it a nine since it's highly scalable.

It was easy to implement. Microsoft provides all the necessary documentation; I'veconfigured it myself for my organization without any issues. It's simple enough that even a quick learner can implement it. Setting it up takes about an hour or two, depending on the configuration, but it can be done within a day for a new organization in the cloud.

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.

Overall, I would recommend Microsoft Exchange Online to others because of its easy implementation and the range of features it provides at a reasonable price point. It includes everything needed without requiring third-party vendors, making it highly efficient. However, due to the SMTP configuration issues, I would rate it an eight out of ten overall.

We use Microsoft Exchange Online for sending emails between companies.

The best thing about Microsoft Exchange Online is that it's integrated with the Outlook application. Google also has the same solution, but Microsoft is more integrated with Outlook because the Outlook application is its own product.

The configuration of the solution's on-premise version is a little bit difficult, and its troubleshooting is more difficult than the installation itself. You need to configure load balancing, high availability, databases, and user policy to complete the configuration. If anything happens, it will take a very long time to troubleshoot.

We have been using Microsoft Exchange Online for ten years.

All of our users are using the solution.

The technical support for the solution's on-premise version is a little bit slower.

The solution's pricing is reasonable. It's not very cheap, but it's reasonable somehow. It depends on the plan because the cloud users do not buy Microsoft Exchange Online separately. They take a Microsoft 365 plan. It's very rare that a customer comes and says that he needs only emails.

Customers purchase the plans of Microsoft Office, including Windows license from the cloud, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint. All these products come with the bundle of Microsoft 365. So, the pricing depends on the plan you are going through.

Most of the customers want to send emails securely. Things changed when the cloud came. Microsoft Exchange Online is still important as on-premise for the government of Saudi Arabia because they have a policy that they don't allow their data to go on the cloud.

Most of our customers use Microsoft Exchange Online, which is a great solution because it reduces the headache of technical support. Very few users who deal with the government still use the solution's on-premise version. I would recommend the solution to other users to send and receive emails. It's a very great solution.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

I manage the tool. All of our business activities happen with the help of the tool. We also have SharePoint integrated into it. We have several other packages listed on the Exchange platform.

The product enables us to have remote meetings. Several valuable resources like SharePoint are available to us. It has been our basic tool for communication in an enterprise environment. It's user-friendly. The interfaces are quite friendly. We can navigate around interfaces and tasks. It has several productivity tools attached to it. I can have it deployed on the local computer and the cloud. As long as we have access to the internet, the tool is accessible anywhere in the world. It is a seamless and excellent product. It is a critical support platform.

The solution must provide better security features. It provides two-factor authentication, IPSec, security payload, and other authentication and encapsulation. I want more consignment of the access to identify users.

I have been using the solution for about 15 years.

The tool’s stability is excellent. The server hardly goes down. In ten years, I hardly recall any downtime.

We have more than 300 to 400 users.

The support is excellent.

Positive

We chose the solution because our sister companies and other associates were using it.

The setup was not difficult. We created a domain and implemented it with the help of a third-party company that is a partner with Microsoft. I do the annual renewal of our licensees. We have moved from enterprise licenses to educational licenses. Educational licenses have certain benefits and discounts.

The product is very cheap. It is relatively affordable.

If someone plans to use the solution, they must consider the number of users. They must choose the license model depending on their organization. The documentation must be put together in detail, and the right model must be chosen. Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

I work for civil ministries, and we exclusively use Microsoft products because we get them for a low price.

I handle security with Fortinet, and I run virtualization with Citrix. Those are my main tasks.

Microsoft has many consultants who can provide support.

Some of the Microsoft implementations of protocols are far from standard. They make their own standards, and you're out if you can't convert to them. With other Unix-based solutions, we had more flexibility to react to special problems we needed to solve. We can only solve the problem now if the problem is solvable with Microsoft.

Similarly, it is tricky to integrate Microsoft Exchange Online if you are in an infrastructure provided by other vendors. We have had an alternative solution to Exchange since 2016, and if we had problems, it was never a problem with Microsoft. It was a problem with the alternative product. The problem is that Microsoft has a standard, and you need to stick to it.

Even if the reason for the problems is Microsoft, the SMTP stack in Exchange is far from the RC of SMTP. If the alternative solution makes extensions to DNS for their active directory and if you use an RC DNS server, you would have problems with some of the records that Microsoft produces. They are not replicated. If you begin with Microsoft, you make everything Microsoft. It is difficult to mix Microsoft with other vendors or with other products. And you get less support if you want to choose a solution other than Microsoft.

Moreover, Exchange Online should work on integration with other services like Teams because when they work together, you gain benefits that other companies might not be able to give you.

I have been using Microsoft Exchange Online since 2012, and we will use it in the future.

We formerly worked with Unix-based mail servers. The positive side is that you're flexible. You could use different hardware. You get limited with Microsoft.

Microsoft solutions are expensive.

I prefer to use solutions like LibreOffice since they are free and cheaper, but our partners might have problems reading our data, and we would face difficulties cooperating.

The main problem with Microsoft products is that we get very dependent on them. Until 2016, I had to make decisions for the budget for the Southwest of Germany, and when you work with Microsoft, your budget is fixed to them, and you lose your ability to work with other solutions. That was a bad situation for us.

If you don't plan to use other solutions in the future, it's a good product. Otherwise, you have to be prepared that some problems may arise. Once you get married to Microsoft, it's a fierce divorce if you want to leave. I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.

The primary use case of Microsoft Exchange Online is for emailing.

The most valuable feature is the cloud environment.

The deployment is complex and has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The deployment takes some time because it is complex.

We required 14 people for the deployment.

We have a three-year license for $25,000.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We have 700 people using the solution.

I recommend Microsoft Exchange Online to other users.

I cannot put everything on 365 because it's obviously not as fast. We have Microsoft Exchange because we have a lot of emails. Most of our emails, about 80%, are on Exchange Server locally, and just 20% are on 365. We use Microsoft Exchange as a hybrid solution. The users who are accessing from outside and the users who are on our priority list outside of the organization are on 365. But the other people that are local are on Exchange Server.

There are more than 200 people using this solution in my organization.

It's easy to use and there is more integration. We have Dynamics and 365 as a hybrid solution. Integration with the Microsoft applications is the key for us. It has better integration with other solutions.

The ActiveSync services and the mapping services could be improved.

There are a lot of issues with security. We had one issue, a bug, with the Active Directory services.

The cost of the license could be lower, and the security features could be better.

I've been using Microsoft Exchange since 2016.

It's quite stable.

It's a core product from Microsoft, so it's quite stable because of that.

It's scalable. I chose this solution because it's easy to scale services. Services like Active Directory and ActiveSync aren't available in other solutions.

We don't have plans to increase usage right now.

Technical support is good.

Installation is easy. 

For installation, we have only two admins that can work on this solution.

The pricing is really high. It's higher compared to other services.

The license is yearly.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

Exchange Online plays a significant role in our business. It controls all our emails, so we'd be in a lot of trouble if we didn't have that. It's an essential product.

The problem with Exchange is that the attributes aren't flexible enough. I'd like to see more interaction with Office 365 and tighter integration between on-prem Exchange and Exchange Online. There's still a disconnect between mailboxes and the cloud. 

I've been using Exchange Online for the last 20 years.

Exchange Online is pretty scalable. We have about 6,000 users at our company.

I rate Microsoft support six out of 10. 

We were using a Windows NT 3.5 20 years ago and an on-prem version of Exchange.

Setting up Exchange Online is straightforward. I rate it eight out of 10 for ease of installation. The total time of deployment was a couple of days. I have eight staff looking after it.

There's a licensing cost, but it's included in our Azure pricing, so I'm not really concerned about it.

I rate Exchange Online seven out of 10. There's no alternative to it unless you want to use some Unix system, like Apache. People don't use Apache for wide-stream things like email and stuff like that. The only equivalent is a Linux-based or Unix-based solution, and who wants to do that?