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

3,603 Views
2,954 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Microsoft Exchange Online

Read 90 Microsoft Exchange Online reviews

4,431 Views
4,254 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online

July 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

Ramkumar Kolpurath

Co-Founder & CTO at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Seamless email communication improves cost-effectiveness and security with valuable tracking features

The features of Amazon WorkMail that I have found the most valuable so far include sending emails and tracking whether the email is read or not. I find the feature that checks how many emails have been successfully sent and how many of them have been opened very useful, because in our application, we know the usage of the emails. The encryption of emails, both in transit and at rest, has benefited our security strategy as it is a layer of security that provides us better confidence for customers and also internally tracks the security aspects. The encryption meets my expectations.

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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

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

"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."

"The product is very user-friendly."

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

"Amazon SES is very easy to configure."

"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."

"It is highly available and scalable. It is also highly reliable. I don't lose any of the messages or emails. If there is an issue where the email sent operation failed, Amazon as a platform ensures that the send operation is retried, and the email reaches its destination. This way, it is highly reliable."

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

More Amazon WorkMail pros

"It is very manageable."

"Exchange Online is consistent. It's easy to deploy and scale out to all of our organizations."

"The best thing about Microsoft Exchange Online is that it's integrated with the Outlook application."

"The most valuable feature is the cloud environment."

"Microsoft Exchange Online's resiliency is its most valuable feature."

"The platform's security and compliance features are good."

"All of the Microsoft Exchange Online is very useful, such as the sections, the information protection, and the mail flows."

"A good investment."

More Microsoft Exchange Online pros

Cons

"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."

"The product should improve technical support."

"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."

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

"There is room for improvement in the scalability."

"WorkMail is not available in all the regions."

"I would like to see detailed reports on email success and failure rates."

"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."

More Amazon WorkMail cons

"Technical support can be improved by shortening the response time and increasing their knowledge."

"The interface is a bit confusing."

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

"I feel that there is a need for improvement in the product, considering that there are some concerns with the tool's integration capabilities."

"The solution's performance can be improved when you are trying to access it remotely."

"When we need to purchase additional licenses for additional users, the process is slow."

"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."

"The stability of the solution on Mac products has room for improvement."

More Microsoft Exchange Online cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."

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

"There is an annual license required to use this Microsoft Exchange Online."

"Microsoft solutions are expensive."

"I would say the solution is reasonable and affordable."

"This is an expensive solution."

"There is a license required for the solution and it is paid annually."

"Microsoft Exchange Online is too expensive."

"We pay per user per year for the cluster with over a thousand users."

More Microsoft Exchange Online pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

University

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

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

Comparisons

Google Workspace vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 76% of the time

ProtonMail vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 3% of the time

SendGrid vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 2% of the time

Fortinet FortiMail Cloud vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 1% of the time

ZeptoMail vs Amazon WorkMail

Compared 1% of the time

More Amazon WorkMail Competitors

Google Workspace vs Microsoft Exchange Online

Compared 48% of the time

Open-Xchange vs Microsoft Exchange Online

Compared 10% of the time

Zoho Mail vs Microsoft Exchange Online

Compared 6% of the time

ProtonMail vs Microsoft Exchange Online

Compared 5% of the time

Zimbra Collaboration vs Microsoft Exchange Online

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Exchange Online Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon WorkMail

July 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

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon WorkMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon WorkMail vs. Microsoft Exchange Online and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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