Microsoft Exchange Reviews

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. 

We use the platform for scheduling and managing meetings. We regularly use the calendar function to select and integrate schedules with Microsoft Teams for seamless communication and collaboration.

One major area for improvement is the need for repeated authentication when running a meeting. This requirement for users to sign in and authenticate their mail each time they access the service is complicated, as employees need to be able to access their accounts anytime, anywhere. Additionally, the functionality for replying to conversations using a link has deteriorated in the newer version of Outlook, an issue that needed to be present in previous iterations.

We've been using Microsoft Exchange for three years.

The setup was straightforward, particularly because it is cloud-based, simplifying the installation process.

We currently utilize Python AI tools to handle graphical views, financial documents, and financial questions, which complements our use of Microsoft Exchange.

We use the calendar to schedule meetings, and it integrates with Microsoft Teams.

Overall, I rate the product a five 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.

My use case for the product varies depending on the industry. It involves email management, scheduling, and collaboration to support real estate and managed IT services operations.

The platform's most valuable feature is the mailbox roles. I am currently using the 2019 version and previously used the 2016 version. The mailbox role hosts all the mailboxes, which is essential for our email management needs. 

They could offer simultaneous features for Exchange Online and on-premises versions. Specific features such as litigation hold and audit setups should be available on-premises. Additionally, a clear roadmap for future versions is crucial for administrators to plan and implement upgrades effectively. 

I've been working with Microsoft Exchange since 2014.

Microsoft Exchange on-premises is very stable as long as the resources are allocated correctly and the system is properly set up and administered. 

I rate the stability an eight.

I rate the product scalability an eight. 

Microsoft provides very good technical support, especially with an Enterprise Agreement.

Compared to previous versions, the initial setup has become much more straightforward. 

We implemented the product with the help of our in-house team. 

The platform can help save on-premises costs. In the past three years, the cost changes have shown that for an organization with 500 to 1,000 users, Exchange on-premises is more cost-effective over a five-year ROI. 

The platform has a reasonable price. 

We evaluated several other email management solutions to determine the best fit for our business requirements. 

I recommend Microsoft Exchange to others due to its robust features and reasonable pricing. Setting up Microsoft Exchange has become much more straightforward compared to previous versions. The overall setup experience has significantly improved over the past six to seven years, making it easier for administrators.

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

I use Microsoft Exchange more for organizing tasks than as an email client. We have integrated Exchange with Teams for organization and communication.

The most used feature of Microsoft Exchange is the email capability, especially since it integrates with the calendar. We integrate Exchange with Teams, and the single sign-on feature is very helpful. I use Exchange to organize tasks with implemented rules, and its integration with Teams enhances our organizational abilities.

The filtering of spam needs significant improvement, as many spam emails are not getting detected. Exchange should provide higher security and better spam filtering.

I have been using Microsoft Exchange for more than ten years.

The solution has faced performance issues, especially lagging, in recent updates.

Scalability is not a major issue, as it's easy to scale up and provide Exchange access to new users.

I do not need to contact Microsoft directly as the IT department handles any support interactions for us.

Positive

The initial setup of Microsoft Exchange is straightforward. It requires simply having a user and password to initiate, and a lot of the process is automated.

Microsoft Exchange saves time by allowing users to send emails or set schedules instead of making calls or holding meetings.

I can recommend using Microsoft Exchange as it is a functional product, but users should be aware of cybersecurity issues and potential spam. It is important for users to be cautious when opening or forwarding emails. My total rating for Microsoft Exchange is eight 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. 

My deployment model for Microsoft Exchange in this moment is for a company that uses Exchange Server on-premise solution to support its infrastructure services.

Although we keep all user data in the cloud, we have some kind of hybrid solution. It's Exchange service; our installation of Microsoft Exchange service is on-premise to cloud solution from Microsoft. In this moment, we are using some hybrid solution, although that on-premise solution is mostly for supporting our company infrastructure.

The best features of Microsoft Exchange, which I have answered many times in my trainings, is that it was a very compact, still extensible environment for user communication. There was a very short moment when it included messaging and instant messaging services, similar to messenger. It was not the best, but what was the best point is that it was complex, but simple to use with a clean interface for users. This could be a very short expression of the feeling.

Areas of Microsoft Exchange that have room for improvement could use some deeper thinking. I believe there could be better communication between Exchange Online and that cloud-oriented service and this Exchange server; some more precise communication to accept it as a single point of communication.

Another point would be that I would appreciate as a lazy administrator if there were better performance and monitoring available directly to the users and to the server. I can do that, but I need to at least have some knowledge and improve the scripts and so on. I would appreciate better performance, monitoring, and availability monitoring of Microsoft Exchange available to admin.

I have more than 25 years of experience with Microsoft Exchange, as I have been working from the beginning of Exchange Server.

I would rate technical support from Microsoft Exchange as great because we also had some issues while upgrading the system and maintaining it. The response is not immediate, but we are not paying so much money. As a general customer, I was very satisfied. They were fast enough and very skilled to support our needs.

Positive

My initial setup of Microsoft Exchange was very easy, and I am still doing it frequently; it's very easy to set up the environment.

I'm not a reseller and I have a loose connection to Microsoft solutions. I was not only a user, it means I was administrator of the system, administering it, so I was not a real user; my users were clients of the server. I was indirectly, loosely connected to Microsoft because I was also Microsoft certified professional. I was evaluated as having knowledge and I was also teaching it, so I had better connection to the server information.

The protocols I most utilize with Microsoft Exchange for integration are historically linked because now there are not very many ways to use Exchange since it became a messaging service. Today's world internet is communicating through SMTP, so SMTP is most important. We can say that is the only one, but there are still some extensions for reaching this Exchange server. In this moment in a Microsoft environment, there are different protocols that are good such as EWS.

It's something more advanced or some improvement of HTTP, because HTTP communication is used to communicate to web pages. You can access Exchange mailbox in the same way, but it's not called HTTP; it's a little bit enhanced protocol called Exchange Web Services, EWS. There are still ways to connect to your mailboxes.

Data loss prevention in Microsoft Exchange is critical for me. We use only part of these services because in the past, Exchange Server served and maintained user mailboxes. Now, I'm hired for an organization that moved all user mailboxes to cloud. We are still using Microsoft environment, and it's still Exchange server, but it's not directly accessed; it's called Exchange Online.

Regarding security, we now only use security infrastructure of Microsoft Exchange. That's very important. We have protected communication to Exchange server, using HTTPS connections to communicate to Exchange server and SMTP. Although SMTP protocol was built to communicate between mail servers, and the first internet was based as a free communication without any protection, now we are more concerned about security. That's why we also use the security part of SMTP, TLS, and so on. We use it, and we evaluate it as good at least.

Regarding the price of Microsoft Exchange, I don't really know, because now I'm completely disconnected from this due to working for a big company. In the past, I remember Microsoft Exchange was not the cheapest solution, but as it was very complex, covering many features needed for common users, it was an acceptable price. The ratio of power and price was very good.

I rate Microsoft Exchange a nine out of ten.

Microsoft Exchange is a user-friendly product that is easy to manage and configure. 

Some users encounter stability issues. I connect with the support team through my local partner, which takes time. 

I have been using the product for ten years. 

I rate the product's stability a seven out of ten. 

I rate Microsoft Exchange's scalability a nine out of ten. My company has around 4000 users. 

The tool's deployment is simple. 

I rate Microsoft Exchange's pricing a six out of ten. 

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.