TECH SWEETSPOT
by Manel Sweetmore

Last month I introduced you to set-it and forget-it backup (link to last month’s newsletter). In this issue I’m going to address another mission critical tool for entrepreneurs – email. Below I will introduce you to the benefits of using a Hosted Exchange service as your email provider. Most providers will allow you to use your own domain (ie you@yourcompany.com) or assign you an address (ie. you@serviceprovider.com) on their domain depending on your needs.

All of us at one time or another have had our computer die, or at the very least were caught without our laptop for a couple of days. I personally have carried my laptop on a beach while on vacation in Mexico – not because I needed to use it but because I was concerned it would get stolen. Not that I cared about losing the machine, but I hadn’t backed up my outlook in a couple of weeks. Now I have a hosted exchange account and my email is continuously backed up by the host and available to me anytime on any computer with the familiar outlook interface. The advantages don’t stop there. If I work on any computer other than my laptop, I don’t have to organize my messages once I get back to my own machine. Everything is automatically synced. If you delete a message or move it to a folder on the web interface, that is where you will find it next time you log into your own machine. For those of you that like to have a home and work machine, this is also the ideal solution – in fact you can have as many machines synced to the same account as you like.

If you are not a lone warrior and have a team that you work with, there are a few more advantages of your entire team being on the same host. You can share calendars – with different levels of permissions, from just showing when you are available, to your full calendar details – which allows the group to plan meetings without the usual multitude of email exchanges. One can send out meeting invitations that automatically show up on the other individual calendars and invitees can confirm or reject the invite with a couple of clicks – if you can’t imagine how helpful this is and you have a team of 6 or more people, trust me that once you have it you won’t know how to live without it. One can also use the tool to schedule resources such as a conference room or projector and keep a calendar for each resource. There are a few more workgroup features, like shared folders, that allow for posting of messages and files for common use by the group.

If you are a mobile professional, a hosted exchange account combined with a Windows Mobile 5 operating system device (more on these in a future article) will give you BalckberryTM like push email. But this is corporate level push email. Your inbox will be fully synced, meaning that you delete an email on your mobile device and it deletes from outlook. No more having to clean up the inbox after a day of mobile mail activity. Additionally, if you update a contact or task while on the road it will automatically sync to your desktop – or vice versa if your assistant (if you are not too boot strapped to have one) adds an appointment to your calendar it will show up on your mobile device in minutes.

This solution proliferated in the last couple of years. If you are interested in this service you can Google “hosted Exchange” and you will get pages and pages of providers. The best deal I have found (and personally used) if you are a single user is from 1and1. For $6.99 a month you get 1GB of storage and all the basic features including the Microsoft push email. You will find that most of the services range from $10-$12 per mailbox per month. Many require that you have 3 or more accounts. The main comparison points are how much storage per account and uptime. Additionally, if you are married to a Blackberry device or one that uses Good Technologies many of the providers will also offer syncing with these devices although I don’t feel they are as robust as the native Microsoft solution. Most providers will give a 30 day free trial and 1and1 will give 90 days.

If your success depends on email and you are processing 50+ emails a day you shouldn’t be without a hosted exchange account.