Microsoft Exchange Reviews

We use Microsoft Exchange primarily for mailing purposes, both internal and external. We integrate it with other Microsoft tools like Outlook, Word document collaboration, Teams, SharePoint, and more.

The integration of Microsoft Exchange with other tools allows for seamless collaboration and increased productivity within teams. The tools integrate with one another easily, allowing for features such as shared mailboxes, message traceability, and enhanced security and compliance features.

Microsoft Exchange offers several valuable features including the feature of shared mailboxes, the ability to integrate with other platforms, security and compliance features like Purview, conditional access, identity and access management, and scalability of mailboxes.

Microsoft Exchange and other Microsoft solutions like Office 365 need to provide more detailed information for customers regarding the features and functionalities included in their plans, as some features are only available at an additional cost.

We have been using Microsoft Exchange for nearly three to four years now.

There were some glitches, though they were minor, occurring in single-digit percentages, such as downtime where the mailbox was not connecting.

The mailbox scalability is one of the strong points of Microsoft Exchange as it is highly scalable from 50 GB to over 100 GB.

If an individual cannot resolve an issue, they can raise a ticket with Microsoft at any time. Microsoft provides a good knowledge base through their TechNet portal.

There are no significant hiccups in the installation of Office 365, which works similarly to a SaaS.

From a productivity point of view, the productivity increased by 30% to 50%.

The licensing and pricing are quite costly, which can demotivate customers from opting for features and upgrades. However, the solution provides value for money if one is well-acquainted with Exchange and Office 365.

Microsoft should focus on improving the clarity of its plans and pricing to avoid customer confusion over what features are included.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I use the product to help customers build their infrastructure, support their existing operations, or troubleshoot their Exchange environment. 

My use cases span setting up on-premises solutions to configuring hybrid environments involving Office 365.

The platform has significantly streamlined communication and collaboration for my clients, offering reliable email and calendaring services. It also provides compliance features like email journaling, which is critical for legal and regulatory purposes.

The Database Availability Group (DAG) is the solution's most valuable feature. It ensures high availability and resilience, allowing seamless recovery from potential failures and making it a reliable option for business-critical operations.

The solution's hybrid deployment process could be improved, particularly for customers who initially started in the cloud and may want to return to an on-premises setup. Microsoft could make this transition more flexible.

I have been working with Microsoft Exchange since version 5.4.0, which has been approximately 27 or 28 years.

The product is stable when implemented by experienced professionals.

The platform scales well, especially with the use of hybrid cloud environments. However, to maintain performance at scale it may require careful management of resources and configurations.

Microsoft’s support for Exchange is adequate, but their shift away from partner-focused business models has caused delays in getting timely support. Their support team may not always have the depth of knowledge needed, particularly for complex on-premises or hybrid scenarios.

For someone with my level of experience, the setup is straightforward. However, for less experienced users, the complexity of configuring Exchange, especially in hybrid environments, can be challenging.

I handle the implementation in-house due to my extensive experience with Exchange. However, for those who have in-house expertise, engaging a vendor with specialized knowledge is crucial for a smooth setup.

The product pricing is reasonable if you utilize its full suite of features. However, it may feel expensive for users who only require basic email services.

Exchange was selected based on its advanced features, such as archiving, legal compliance, and multi-site support, which were not fully available in open-source alternatives.

I advise investing in proper training or expert support is essential for maximizing the product's potential.

Overall, I rate it a seven out of ten. 

The solution's most valuable feature is Outlook, as its users are comfortable using it.

There will be no next release of the tool because Microsoft already announced that Exchange will reach the end of the support phase after October 2025. The only option people will have is Microsoft Office 365 or Exchange Online. Microsoft Exchange will not be updated in the future. The last release of the tool was in 2019, and it had extended support. After October 2025, no matter what, Microsoft will not provide support or updates for the tool.

The tool is not easy to use. Every person has to have at least administration-level experience to use the tool. From an improvement perspective, the tool can be made easier to use.

I have been using Microsoft Exchange since 2003, so it has almost been twenty years. My company is a Microsoft partner and reseller.

The product is stable, but since Microsoft 10 will stop working after 2025, the majority of users are trying to move on to cloud services, like Office 365, which I think is easier for users to access. As it is a cloud tool, you have to click on the mailbox users and reset the password.

It is a very scalable solution. There are thousands of mailboxes being used by the customers, and all are happy with the tool.

It is a very easy product to use. I received support during the deployment phase. The tool is very easy, and we can find any resolutions we want on Microsoft's forums, so there has been no need to get support from Microsoft.

I don't have the technical skills of other tools. The majority of customers are using MDaemon and IBM Lotus Notes. Few customers migrated to Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange.

My company helped our customers implement the tool, as we deployed the product as part of our after-sales services.

The solution is easy to deploy.

The solution deployment time depends upon the customer's environment, and it may sometimes take two or three days to a few months. If it's a fresh deployment, it hardly takes three to four days. If there is a migration or operation process involved, it will take four months to complete the migration process.

For migration, I have a team of five people for the post-development phase. I am also a Microsoft-certified trainer, who has been using Microsoft for thirty-five years.

The tool's setup phase was managed by the local partner or the one who supplies the tool.

I have not calculated the tool's return on investment for my customers because we don't teach the customers about Microsoft Exchange since they already know what Exchange is, and they don't ask for products from its competitors in Pakistan, so I am not talking about the whole world. In Pakistan, Microsoft Exchange is a well-known product among customers, and so they don't ask for an alternative. Customers just say that they want Microsoft Exchange because a majority of the banks, financial sectors, and multinationals use microservices.

Instead of using Microsoft Exchange, I recommend Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange to others.

I recommend the tool to all companies, especially financial sectors and multinational companies.

In terms of the tool's security measures, the majority of things are covered already in a timely manner. Microsoft is using the security patches which offer the capability of securing Microsoft Exchange's environment.

I don't think Microsoft Exchange has AI.

I have not used the tool for any AI projects.

When dealing with most third-party products, customers have the tools they want in place. Customers mostly want to relay the emails on some services and not deal with the integration part. I have not integrated the tool with any third-party solutions.

My company has other solutions, and as far as the technical expertise is concerned, we can sell other tools. In the local market, we can find many technical people for Microsoft Exchange compared to other products. Our customer recommends we provide them with Microsoft Exchange so that they aren't stuck as far as the technical part is concerned. It is easier for Microsoft to find technical people than for other solutions.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

Microsoft Exchange is the main mail server of Microsoft. It's a popular mail server, so a common use case for Microsoft Exchange is for small, medium, and enterprise-scale businesses. It's a mail solution, voicemail solution, live calendar solution, etc.

What I love about Microsoft Exchange is the good integration since 2013, particularly its integration with the calendar and other software such as Zoom, TeamViewer, AnyDesk, etc.

After 2022, users of Microsoft Exchange have to migrate mailboxes to Microsoft Exchange Online, and what I'd like to improve is for Microsoft to publish more on-premise versions for customers using Microsoft Exchange. Having more security is another room for improvement in the solution, particularly for mailboxes that develop the Exchange Edge rule to protect internal mailboxes.

What I'd like to see from Microsoft Exchange in the future is for Microsoft to still update the latest, existing version which is 2022. I'd like Microsoft to still push more cumulative updates for Microsoft Exchange 2022.

I've been using Microsoft Exchange for two years.

I'm impressed with Microsoft Exchange, and I'm rating it five out of five, stability-wise.

Microsoft Exchange is a scalable solution.

Setting up Microsoft Exchange from 2016 to 2022 in an SMB environment is straightforward because Microsoft combined all the cache, hubs, and mailboxes into one server. For large enterprises, the initial setup for Microsoft Exchange isn't as straightforward because large enterprises require more sophisticated setups.

How long it takes to deploy Microsoft Exchange depends on the size of the environment. For example, if I'm going to implement the solution in a small or medium-sized customer environment, then the deployment would take approximately one to two days, but if I'm implementing Microsoft Exchange for a more complex environment that has a minimum of 10 mailboxes and multiple sites, the deployment alone can take up to one week.

My team is responsible for deploying Microsoft Exchange for customers, so the implementation is in-house. I lead the deployment team.

The ROI you get from Microsoft Exchange can be very, very broad in terms of values. The solution, particularly the on-premise version, can save you additional costs compared to deploying it on the cloud, but the downside is the maintenance cost, and during new releases or updates, you may want to schedule the downtime in advance.

I don't have enough information about the licensing costs of Microsoft Exchange, but I do know that you need two types of licenses to run it. You need the product key and the client access key to activate Microsoft Exchange. This means that apart from the standard Microsoft Exchange licensing fees, you have to pay additional costs.

I'm working in a professional service company that's implementing Microsoft Exchange on-premises for customers. I implemented the solution on-premises in 2016, 2019, and 2022. In 2016, I also performed a migration from Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft Exchange Online.

My current company has between fifty to one hundred users of Microsoft Exchange, but in terms of the number of clients my team has implemented the solution for on-premises, it's potentially five thousand.

Deploying Microsoft Exchange for SMB would require just two people, but deploying it for enterprise-scale businesses would require a minimum of three people. Maintaining Microsoft Exchange requires five to seven people for SMBs, and up to twelve in enterprise environments because maintaining the solution isn't as easy.

My advice to anyone looking into implementing or using Microsoft Exchange is the same advice I give to my team every day, which is to be more aware of new information found on the internet in terms of troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange problems. You should also keep on training about sophisticated setups for the solution because you deal with aggressive customers, so I encourage my team to learn about Microsoft Exchange designs, troubleshooting mechanisms, etc.

I'm rating Microsoft Exchange as nine out of ten.

My company is an implementer and consultant for Microsoft Exchange, not a reseller or retailer. The customer is responsible for purchasing the Microsoft Exchange license.

This solution handles all of our primary functionality including email, message delivery, message archiving and calendars.

The primary features I use are email and calendar.

In our current situation, the disappearance of sanctions would be a tangible improvement. We are basically cut off from technical support and it's very difficult to obtain any updates.

We have been using this solution for four years. 

This is a stable solution.

This is a scalable solution. We already have over 10,000 users in Microsoft Exchange and the total size of the databases exceeds several hundred terabytes.

In all large corporate installations, the first level of tech support is always the local support team. Only if they aren't able to handle the case, we contact tech support in Microsoft. For now, because of sanctions, this option is quite limited.

Neutral

We had used IBM Notes before but it is an inferior product compared to Exchange.

I barely had any issues with initial setup of Microsoft Exchange. It involves a few clicks on the initial setup dialogue and that's it.

This solution is used by many large organizations and I don't know of any viable alternatives. If there are a large amount of users in an organization, Exchange is probably the best option. If there are less than 1000 users, opensource software may be a better alternative.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We wanted to centralize email to a specific server. We needed to manage the Exchange from one place and centralized everything. We chose Office 365 for all of our mailboxes, and the emails run through Exchange. With one click, we can access all of Microsoft's products.

Everything is good.

New features come in regularly.

It helps users communicate effectively with outside parties.

The whole Microsoft Team has created a great tool that has helped improve our capabilities and productivity. We use the solution daily.

Technical support is good.

We have witnessed an ROI.

The solution is stable.

It can scale well. 

The solution is serving the purposes we have. 

The cost could be cheaper. 

I've been using the solution for 13 or 14 years. 

The stability is fine. There have only been one or two incidents where Exchange did not work. However, for the most part, it is issue-free. There are no bugs or glitches. 

We currently have 12,000 mailboxes that leverage this solution. 

The solution is scalable. It is very easy to expand usage. 

We do not have plans to increase usage at this time. 

Technical support is fine. We haven't had issues with them. We've found them helpful. 

The initial setup of the solution is okay. It depends on the level of knowledge of the people setting it up. I found it easy since I have past experience. It needs to be implemented with people with past experience. It is easy to upgrade.

The time it takes to deploy depends on the number of mailboxes. 

We have a team that handles deployment and maintenance. We manage the solution for ourselves and sometimes for our clients. 

We are able to handle the implementation ourselves. I'm quite comfortable with the process and can do it myself. It does take a certain level of knowledge.

I have witnessed ROI while using the solution. It has good value for money. However, it depends on the use case. It's a journey for every organization. Each business might witness a different ROI across a different amount of time. 

The pricing model is a bit costly. They should work to lower the cost for the Indian market.

We pay for the solution yearly.

We're a Microsoft partner. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. I'm not sure which version number we are on. We migrated from on-premises to the cloud three or four years ago. 

We are a telecom service provider and have integrated Microsoft with a variety of products. It also integrates with mobile. It allows us to provide multiple services, including control and command centers. 

Technology is moving fast in this space, and there are more service providers out there. Many people are beginning to look at Google as an alternative. However, I've used Exchange for the last 14 years, and I am very familiar with it. Still, others are coming up fast, and more competition is on the horizon.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We are a consulting company. We deploy Microsoft Exchange. One of our clients has been working with a file drive endpoint with Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft 365 Exchange. We use the latest version, which is a hybrid platform with Microsoft 365. I also work with departments in the government that use the solution for email purposes.

The maximum number of users that I am working with is approximately 20,000 users at a time. 

We've been using Exchange as an email platform. Our clients require multi-country, multi-regional email collaboration with controlled mail flow. The most valuable feature is the capability of message tracking and the protection of user data.

I would like to see Microsoft Exchange improve its documentation. The legacy version of the solution had very accurate product documentation. Also, they had very good training courses. Recently, as Microsoft has been frequently adding new features, the documentation has not been as detailed. This means that we need to spend more time making use of our own experience to tackle some problems.

New users will need help from technical professionals. There are not many people in the market that have in-depth knowledge of the product. The documentation for Microsoft Exchange is scattered, poorly organized, and often incomplete.

Due to the lack of adequate documentation, users cannot determine the optimal way to operate the system and end up crashing the product. Unfortunately, many of them do not seek help as they are unwilling to pay Microsoft the high cost of professional services.

I have been working with Microsoft  Exchange for twenty-three years. 

Microsoft Exchange has been in the market for more than twenty-five years. It is a stable, mature product. Any concerns with stability usually have to do with the fact that the user is not using the product in the correct manner because Microsoft did not teach them how to operate the solution correctly.

As long as you have a good plan, Microsoft Exchange can scale very well. However, the solution does consume a lot of web resources if deployed on physical hardware or on VMware. For example, I have an organization that has 200 users and Microsoft has eaten up more than 100 gigabytes of memory.

If you use Microsoft Hyper-V, the scalability is good. 

It is not unusual that when you implement the solution and you need information, you can not find it, or it is not very detailed. You will then need to engage with the Microsoft support team. You will need to spend a lot of time making use of your own experience to tackle some problems.

Microsoft charges very expensive professional fees for support services. Unfortunately, the quality of support is very low. They are not grooming sufficient people to support the end-users.

Positive

The initial setup of Microsoft Exchange is not complicated. However, if you need to set it up to work in harmony with any other program, you need a very in-depth understanding of the platform. 

Licensing costs for Microsoft Exchange have increased, but are still fair. For some users, the cost is high considering the number of functions and features they will use. 

The advice I would give to anyone considering this solution would be to use the latest online version. It is the only way to get quality support when you encounter any type of problem.

If you are not going to use all of the functions and features and only require primitive functions, this solution may be too expensive. When you consider the cost in terms of storage when you are leveraging the online version of Microsoft Exchange, it is quite a good investment.

When considering just the product itself, I would rate Microsoft Exchange a nine out of ten.

The features I find most beneficial for my work are primarily centered around mail flow management. Mail flow rules, tracing, and the ability to set up rules and generate reports within the Mailflow section are particularly useful. Additionally, the convenience of connectors to other third-party systems and the ability to manage alert policies proves beneficial.

The product or service could be improved in terms of Microsoft Outlook client compatibility. The transition from old versions of Outlook clients to newer ones would enhance administration and maintenance processes, particularly switching to the web version.

We have been using Microsoft Exchange for four and a half years.

I rate the product's stability a nine.

We have 4500 Microsoft Exchange users in our organization. We plan to increase the number of users up to 5000. It is a scalable platform. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

We encountered significant challenges with response times and communication. In one instance, we had to escalate two tickets to the regional manager due to the lack of response from Microsoft engineers. It took two months to receive a resolution.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward and fast, taking only a few days. This swift migration to the cloud within days was particularly notable for a bank, demonstrating the efficiency and effectiveness of the deployment process.

We recently transitioned from on-premises Exchange servers to cloud Exchange, primarily for enhanced security and ease of management. In the past, we had shared mailboxes with multiple users who were accessing them simultaneously, posing security risks and management challenges. With the switch to cloud Exchange, we adopted shared mailboxes with individual user access, providing better security and accountability. This transition also streamlined our operations and reduced maintenance costs. While we still maintain a hybrid environment with Azure Active Directory, all our mailboxes are now on cloud Exchange.

It has indeed improved our email system. In the past, with on-premises Exchange servers, there was a higher risk associated with granting extensive access to Exchange admins, potentially exposing sensitive data. However, while transitioning to a cloud Exchange admin center may offer less flexibility for admins, it provides a more organized and structured approach. The preset scenarios and settings reduce the likelihood of incidents caused by manual admin actions, thereby lowering the personal impact on the overall system.

The calendar and scheduling functionality of Microsoft Exchange has been essential to my daily workflow. As a user and a manager, I rely heavily on the calendar feature to organize my tasks and appointments. I utilize color-coding for different types of events, set up repeated meetings efficiently, and sync my calendar with other planning tools seamlessly. Overall, it has had a very positive impact on my productivity and activity management. The flexibility and plethora of features, such as customizable settings for meetings and the ability to share calendars, add groups, and specify user permissions, make it an indispensable tool in my work routine.

Compared to other platforms like Google Workspace, it provides seamless connectivity between Teams, Outlook, Exchange, and other Microsoft products. Additionally, recent updates have improved connectivity between tools like Planner and Projects, allowing seamless task management across the platform.

I rate it an eight out of ten.