Microsoft Exchange Online Reviews

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.

Microsoft Exchange Online is used for emails and it does a fantastic job. 

The only reason why you would choose an online solution is the company that you're working at is they do not want to have an onsite server. The companies that want something on-site would choose the on-premise version.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Exchange Online is if you have people that are geographically distributed from each other is good. For example, if you have people in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, having an online solution works best because then you can reach the scale of the data centers that are available by Microsoft. Additionally, if you're only going to have two to three people using the solution the cost is a lot less than having an onsite server and licensing. It is highly beneficial in these areas.

The online archiving option works well. If you have a lot of emails and you want to keep them indefinitely, then you can use the online archive. It's available permanently and you can store quite a bit of email inside it.

I have been using Microsoft Exchange Online for approximately four and a half years.

The stability of the solution is good. I've only had an issue with it once or twice, but that was due to undersea cable damage.

Microsoft Exchange Online is highly scalable.

We have a lot of users using this solution.

The support from the vendor is fine. However, it could be faster, and some of the agents could be more knowledgeable, but it is a large solution, there's a lot of information that the agents have to work with. I can't always expect when I get connected to the first-level agent that they will know absolutely everything. Sometimes there's no replacement for pure experience.

I rate the support from Microsoft Exchange Online a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of the cloud version is similar to the on-premise version. You can have a straightforward or semi-complex deployment. Cloud deployments do not become as complex as the on-premise version, but they can, depending on how it is used. 

The deployment of the solution only takes five minutes. It is very useful when deploying from scratch. As soon as you have the domain up and running it is complete and ready to go.

The license for the solution is cheap, but it could be more affordable in the long term.

We have one level two or level three engineer that does the deployment and maintenance of the solution. The online version does not require a lot of people to run it.

I recommend this solution to others and they will not regret it. They should not use other solutions.

I rate Microsoft Exchange Online a nine out of ten.

We're using Microsoft Exchange Online for our emails.

What I like about Microsoft Exchange Online is that it's a very convenient solution because it's part of the Microsoft business suite. This is the first email service I've used that lasted for many years, and I'm still using it because it's very convenient and it's suitable for my needs.

Microsoft Exchange Online is the best product in the world for me because I don't remember any other service that's so well-accepted.

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.

I've been using Microsoft Exchange Online for more than ten years.

Microsoft Exchange Online is a stable product, in particular, when it's on the cloud. It's stable when it's dependent on the cloud, but if it's deployed on-premises, Microsoft Exchange Online is not stable.

It's a very old product with the same code, even on Windows. Nothing's changed, and my company is using Windows NT for Microsoft Exchange Online with Unix as the code.

Microsoft Exchange Online is a scalable solution.

We haven't used the technical support for Microsoft Exchange Online.

Microsoft Exchange Online is the first service I've used, and all the new services in the market are a little bit different from this solution. Microsoft is a very old company, and almost all of my colleagues started with Microsoft products, so it's just natural to continue using Microsoft Exchange Online.

Microsoft Exchange Online is easy to install.

There is a license for Microsoft Exchange Online and I have information on that, but there have been so many changes to the licensing and it's a completely different story nowadays. Microsoft has been pushing users to buy a package of products under one license. Users are becoming more dependent on Microsoft rather than independent, that you can't decide anymore, and from my point of view, that is bad.

My company evaluated Qualitas, Unix, HP, and IBM.

In my company, Microsoft Exchange Online is deployed both on the cloud and on-premises.

More than two thousand people use Microsoft Exchange Online in my company of four thousand employees.

At the moment, there's no plan of increasing usage of the product because of the current crisis.

In terms of whether I would recommend Microsoft Exchange Online to others, with the integration it has, it depends on the focus of the company. For small markets, Microsoft Exchange Online is "too big" because it has a lot of services and you'll be paying for services provided in the package, with some you don't get to use. For end users, this would be difficult, but for companies, especially bigger ones that would have a choice, Microsoft Exchange Online is a good product. My recommendation would depend on the case because every user is different, for example, the purpose is different, the business is different, etc.

My rating for Microsoft Exchange Online is seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for email and calendar functionality.

It works. It does what it's supposed to do with minimal issues.

It's one of the products that Microsoft has absolutely done its very best with.

The solution is very easy to set up and quite quick to deploy.

Right off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that I would change to improve Exchange.

The pricing could always be better.

Right now, I'm writing documentation to upgrade the existing Exchange and Active Directory from 2016 to 2019.

When you migrate from on-prem to cloud, if you choose to or are forced to do the hybrid, they need to devise a way to undo the hybrid. At present, once you establish a hybrid organization between cloud and on-prem, there's no way to undo it. Fixing that would be most beneficial. At the last organization I was at and did a migration, I had 31,000 users, and my largest mailbox was 90 gigs. It took three months to complete the migration.

We had no choice but to put it into hybrid mode due to the period of time. The MX record can only exist in one place. Therefore, you can't route mail from one system to another system. All the mail had to be routed through the on-prem and then synced from the on-prem to the cloud until everything was in the cloud. Then we were able to move the MX record from being on-prem to being in the cloud. Then all mail could be received in the cloud. However, then there was no way to tear down the Exchange organization on-prem. We are still left with a server, server maintenance, licensing, OS upgrades, patching, and everything on the on-prem server. The on-prem server is literally sitting there doing nothing except filtering air in the data center, costing me power, time and cooling. Therefore, fixing that would be awesome.

I’ve used the solution throughout my career - for over 30 years.

Typically, by the time I open a ticket, and they get back to me, I've figured out how to fix it. I don't call them until I'm really stuck.

They're not very good. I have had one of their technicians call me back more than once, and I'll go, "I figured it out, I fixed it." They flat asked me, "Well, how did you fix it?" I'm like, "You're Microsoft. You figure it out." They may not have the best understanding of the system.

Neutral

I've used Exchange my entire career. My best friend is currently trying to get rid of Lotus Notes where he's at. He's been working on that for a year now, and it just doesn't seem to want to go away. I've always been with this product. I did a bunch of work with GroupWise and got GroupWise out of the environment and so forth - replacing that with Active Directory. However, that really didn't have a mail component to it.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy.

The pricing is always something that could be better. We always like to work towards protecting our budget.

I know what the cloud cost per user is. I don't have what the on-premises costs are.

I’m a customer. I don't have any direct relationship with Microsoft.

I’d rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It's an excellent product. It's an excellent mail system. It does exactly what it's supposed to do. If you are under 5,000 employees, I would say that Microsoft 365 is the way to go. If you're over 3,000 or 5,000 employees, I would have some serious conversations about on-prem versus cloud. Once you get over about 3,000 or 5,000 employees that are mail users, the cloud really starts to get much more expensive than on-prem.

We use the solution to manage calendars and the entire online and on-premises suite. It is used in large corporate banks.

One of the important features is the collaboration tool used in Office 365. The security and DLP mechanisms are also quite good.

The solution’s pricing could be better.

I have been using Microsoft Exchange Online as a reseller for three to four years.

The collaboration speed has some issues, but it is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight-point five out of ten.

The solution is scalable. When you reach certain volumes, the default limits on the packages essentially allow you to use the full spectrum anyway. 

The solution’s packaging makes it difficult to scale to the enterprise level without significantly upgrading the packages and negotiating higher limits on certain things, such as API calls, to accelerate data transfer.

Around 3000 users are using this platform.

I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.

Microsoft technical support is making some improvements, but it can still be time-consuming to get an answer to a basic question. I often find it easier to troubleshoot the problem myself.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes around a week to complete.

Exchange Online deployments can be complex, especially when migrating existing data from on-premises to the cloud. Much planning and preparation is involved, and the process can be lengthy.

The product is expensive and has an annual subscription.

It's difficult to compare Exchange Online to other solutions because of its unique feature set and collaboration capabilities. For example, Google SaaS is quite limited compared to Exchange Online.

We require a full-time team of four or five engineers across different divisions to look after this solution.

I recommend this solution. You’ll find it difficult to find a better solution with all the same features at the same price point. Most other competing solutions don't have the same feature set for the price. 

Overall, I rate the solution an eight 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 solution is basically for access and it provides the ability to just receive and send emails. It also works with calendars and contacts and all of that.

The solution works very well. It's one of the best options available. The access it provides is good. 

It has an easy initial setup. 

Technical support is helpful.

It is scalable.

The solution is quite stable. 

It has okay pricing. 

We'd like to have the ability to recall emails on the web. I'm not sure if that is available yet.

I haven't used the solution for too long and need more time to see if other improvements are needed.

The cost could be a bit lower.

We've had clients complain about some aspects of Microsoft Bookings. It would be great to have an opinion platform back on Bookings. 

I've been working with the solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. The only thing that is not so stable is Microsoft Teams. However, Exchange has good reliability. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

I love the scalability. I like that I can start wherever I am and scale up or down. I love the flexibility it gives us.

We have about 50 people on the solution presently. 

Technical support is great. I've raised some requests, and they were helpful and responsive. 

We did not previously use a different solution. 

I took part in the implementation process. The initial setup is pretty straightforward and simple. 

The deployment didn't take more than an hour. 

We have two administrators that are global admins. We have one admin that is specifically for Exchange. 

The pricing is fine. I've discussed this with customers, and they have found the price point to be fair. When you compare it to others, like Google, it is competitive. If it could be lower, of course, it would be ideal.

The solution costs $12 to $16 per user per month. 

I currently support Microsoft products. I don't sell Microsoft. They also have my test environment, where I test a few things.

Everything is available in the documentation. It's a great solution. Everything you need is there.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. There's always room to improve still. 

We primarily have it for our customers. We primarily use the solution with mobile access, and it's just for having the ability to send and receive emails. It also works with calendars and contacts. 

The solution generally works well. We can send and receive emails just fine. 

It is useful and easy to use. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

It's scalable.

The solution is stable.

Technical support is great.

The solution offers great documentation. 

We'd like to have the ability to recall emails. 

I've just used it for six months and am still working to understand the general landscape.

The pricing could be a bit lower. 

Certain items have been removed from Mircosoft Booking. They should re-add the capabilities it had before. 

I've been using the solution for six months at this point. It's been less than a year. 

The stability of this solution is pretty good. We do find, however, that Microsoft Teams is unstable. Exchange, so far, has been great. 

This solution is definitely scalable. We haven't had any issues at all. I love that I can start with what I actually need and scale up or down as needed from there. 

Right now, we have about 50 people on the solution. 

Technical support is great. We're happy with its capabilities. There is also useful documentation that can help users understand the solution. 

We are not using any other solutions. 

The setup is pretty straightforward. It's not overly complex. It just took about an hour to set up everything. We simply had to go through some documentation. After we did that, it was very easy.

We have two administrators that can handle the management. They are global Microsoft admins. We also have an Exchange admin specifically. 

The pricing is fine. I've had similar conversations with my customers, and we've found the cost is fair. However, if it could be lower, that would be a plus. 

The cost is around $12 to $16 per user.

I'm an end user. We also currently support Microsoft products. 

Everything is available in the documentation, and there is great support. It's worth the price, and other users would enjoy having it.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.