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.
Manager IT Support at Naubahar Bottling Company (Pvt.) Ltd. Gujranwala Pakistan
Real User
Top 20
May 5, 2025
The biggest issue with Microsoft Exchange is its high cost, especially in pricing for license upgrades and expansion to more users. The solution is not cost-effective for companies in economies with limited resources.
The filtering of spam needs significant improvement, as many spam emails are not getting detected. Exchange should provide higher security and better spam filtering.
Sometimes the client part generates some trouble. It can be very slow, though this might be related to our company's installation and configuration rather than the product itself.
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.
IT Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
Aug 22, 2024
More AI features would be good. For example, maybe AI could suggest sentences or enhancements to paragraphs while writing an email. So, the CoPilot integrations could be further improved.
At the end of the day, the biggest area for improvement is having better and more knowledgeable support technicians. Anytime I have to call in with issues about Microsoft Exchange, I know more about it than the consultants or some other people to whom Microsoft pays to offer support for the product.
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.
Everything is useful. The only useful thing Microsoft Exchange could do is give us more of a discount on pricing because it's so expensive. Regarding the calendaring functions of Exchange, there is a problem when scheduling an event for the whole day. When you click the whole day event, the scheduling doesn't really work. For example, if I schedule a meeting with you and block your whole day, instead of just putting a time from morning to afternoon, other people can still block your time, which results in double booking. It's kind of a bug that allows people to double-book. So, the scheduling isn't working properly yet. We also faced challenges with backup services. You need to use a third-party backup solution to back up the whole Exchange server properly. You can't use the native Windows backup services. It's like they're forcing me to buy another product, which means additional costs. The backup solution and the double booking issues. If Microsoft Exchange can fix these two things, then it will be very good.
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.
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.
Chief Operating Officer at Anyrobotics RPA Experts
Real User
Aug 9, 2023
There are some bad days or hard ways when it's tough to connect with people who don't have MS Teams products. But this is only a hard situation when we need to communicate with people outside MS Teams. So the connectivity could be improved. Another area of improvement is the sharing of files, the sharing part of Teams. How I can easily share information files or video files with the colleagues I'm working with? So, this is an area for valuable improvement. Another area of improvement is support. It should be faster and more clear, and more human.
The default storage capacity is too small. Though the mailbox size is one terabyte on the cloud, the default mailbox size can be increased for on-premise products.
I can't say there are any missing features. I'd like the archiving process to be faster. They could offer better performance and enhancements throughout the product.
The only thing that could be improved is the pricing. They could make it more competitive. The price is a lot. That said, the product works, which means you're kind of caught between two realities. You want to pay for something that works. You just don't want to pay too much. If they could get it to be more affordable, then they will have a greater uptake in users. All the people that are using G Suite, the free version, would likely actually move over to 365.
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.
IT Cordinator at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jul 24, 2022
The licensing could be better. There are several levels of licensing depending on the number of users and features but it lacks the breakdown of what's included in the license, and the possibility to customize what you really need. There are likely to be features included that you don't need but there's no opt out option for those.
IT Engineer at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Apr 27, 2022
The management of .pst files and archiving need improvement. Because there are so many threats these days, better encryption and security would be good as well.
The only and main issue I had was when we had to verify the domain on the tenant. There are issues when you add your domain to Microsoft Tenant, and you try to create that. Which is a problem for me.
Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Dec 8, 2021
The security for the email technology could be improved. For the next release, there are some features on the cloud-based Exchange that aren't included on-prem. It would be great if these features were made available in the next release. For instance, integration between Exchange and its on-prem calendar is not available for the on-prem solution.
Solutions Architect at Vvolve management consultants
Real User
Oct 22, 2021
Microsoft could improve on Exchange's hybrid deployment or HCW. They need to improve on that because I was having many issues with HCW in our environment at times. And there are certain things I'm not clear about, like eDiscovery on our on-premises level. There were some features that I liked, such as Unified Messaging and Advance Search, but Microsoft removed them in 2019.
ICT Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Sep 21, 2021
They could continue to improve the consolidation and integration of mailbox services to make them more flexible, easier to deploy, and more manageable.
Test Automation Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Aug 26, 2021
For me it's sufficient. I don't see much that can be improved. I'm not sure if the security is enough. That said, for my purposes, it's fine. However, I am aware there are always new vulnerabilities and security threats to worry about. For new users, it might take them some time to get used to the product.
Solutions Architect at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Real User
Aug 21, 2021
There are limitations in terms of the number of emails that can be sent in a minute, which makes it a little difficult for the marketing folks. The products or the updates that come in are more frequent. If I want to move from Exchange on-prem to Exchange Online, there are prerequisites that need to be met. They always have prerequisites for the latest one, but not all customers will have the latest infra. They might have a six or three months old version, but the expectation is the latest one. This prerequisite is a little inconvenient for those customers who wish to migrate to the cloud. The response time of their support can be improved.
Head Of Information Technology at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Jul 19, 2021
From a reliability perspective, they need to improve the search engine, it is not very powerful. The security is not the best, it is not able to filter some of the spam and malware emails that pass through no matter what security protocols that we have set. Recently we had two incidents where we had to stop the business for one day. I am not sure if it is a problem with our implementation, or is it a problem with something else.
From a security perspective, Microsft Exchange can be improved. All that needs to be added is security, but that's an internal hierarchical problem from the product itself and not the end-users.
Vice President at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Feb 22, 2021
There is a lot of spam email that comes in, so they should add functionality to help fix this problem. Better integration with other service providers would be helpful.
IT Manager at a renewables & environment company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Jan 3, 2021
Its search functionality can be better. It is currently not really easy. It has the capability to search your mailbox, but it has some restrictions in terms of the number of results that you can retrieve. You can only get around 250 results. If you want to do a deeper search, you need to use different functionalities of the product. The policy that we have for handling emails is that we do not delete emails at all. If I insert the text that I am searching for in the Search field, it only retrieves a limited number of emails. To search for an email from 2010, I need to use different search functions to find what I am looking for. Microsoft can also improve its licensing for its products. Microsoft's licensing is not very easy to understand. It can sometimes be really complex to understand what you need to have in order to comply with Microsoft licensing.
Project Manager at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Dec 23, 2020
In terms of what should be improved, they should probably move to a cloud option like Office 365. We would like to get this functionality without the need to deploy complex hardware and software solutions. This should be the next thing, making Exchange more related to Office products, which are more cloud-oriented, less on-premise or desktop-oriented solutions, like the direction Google is strongly moving towards.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Aug 19, 2020
It's not always the finest solution in terms of integration with products that are not from Microsoft. It integrates very well with Microsoft products but not with third-party products.
When we started using Exchange on the cloud, we had a lot of initial problems relating to our main database and we also experienced issues with the accidental deletion of inboxes, amongst other things. In fact, many of the files we had moved to the cloud had disappeared. There also seems to be a problem with the retention of information. For example, if you delete something, you may have a problem restoring the entirety of the inbox, so if somebody leaves and you want to backup your data, you need to download it to your local servers. This is a big area for improvement.
Research Analyst at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
MSP
Jul 26, 2020
Exchange can be a little finicky, sometimes, or flakey. Last week, for example, I had gone into my calendar to check on some briefings that I had established, and then went back into my inbox, and suddenly the view had changed. I had no idea what it was that I had done, and I couldn't figure out how to get that view back. I took a productivity hit as a result of that, trying to fix it, due to the fact that it just wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't what I was used to working with. Two different tech support people had to work with me in order to get the view back to what I wanted just so I could be productive. The fact that I messed around trying to get that view back, and could not figure it out for myself, and it took two different tech support people to help me get back to what I had before, is an area of improvement. I have no idea what it was that I did that caused the view to change. All I was doing is going from the calendar back to the inbox, and it was somehow different. It may have been a UI bug. I'm unsure. The second tech person that was working with me to try to get the view back the way I wanted it, told me one time his cat walked across his keyboard and it totally screwed things up for him. He had no idea what had happened, and he had to go back and re-set up a lot of configurations. That tells me there must be something wrong in the design, if small things can happen to set it off like that.
In terms of probability, every now and then there are changes coming and going. The changes are not that frequent because every month they got updates back, so that is an issue.
It requires a lot of maintenance. I think the cloud solution would be better and easier to manage as well. Deployment should become a bit easier, the process is a bit complicated. You have to have done it one or two times before you get it right. The first time you do it, it won't be perfect. There are a lot of complications compared to Gmail For Business, which is a bit easier when it comes to configuration.
Built to deliver the enterprise-grade security and reliability that businesses require, Microsoft Exchange provides email, calendar and contacts on your PC, phone and web browser.
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.
Microsoft Exchange is a little bit difficult. The challenge lies in the cloud implementation.
The biggest issue with Microsoft Exchange is its high cost, especially in pricing for license upgrades and expansion to more users. The solution is not cost-effective for companies in economies with limited resources.
I do not have any notes for improvement.
The filtering of spam needs significant improvement, as many spam emails are not getting detected. Exchange should provide higher security and better spam filtering.
Sometimes the client part generates some trouble. It can be very slow, though this might be related to our company's installation and configuration rather than the product itself.
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.
More AI features would be good. For example, maybe AI could suggest sentences or enhancements to paragraphs while writing an email. So, the CoPilot integrations could be further improved.
At the end of the day, the biggest area for improvement is having better and more knowledgeable support technicians. Anytime I have to call in with issues about Microsoft Exchange, I know more about it than the consultants or some other people to whom Microsoft pays to offer support for the product.
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.
Everything is useful. The only useful thing Microsoft Exchange could do is give us more of a discount on pricing because it's so expensive. Regarding the calendaring functions of Exchange, there is a problem when scheduling an event for the whole day. When you click the whole day event, the scheduling doesn't really work. For example, if I schedule a meeting with you and block your whole day, instead of just putting a time from morning to afternoon, other people can still block your time, which results in double booking. It's kind of a bug that allows people to double-book. So, the scheduling isn't working properly yet. We also faced challenges with backup services. You need to use a third-party backup solution to back up the whole Exchange server properly. You can't use the native Windows backup services. It's like they're forcing me to buy another product, which means additional costs. The backup solution and the double booking issues. If Microsoft Exchange can fix these two things, then it will be very good.
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.
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.
There can be occasional challenges during the product's implementation phase, making it an area where improvements are needed.
Some users encounter stability issues. I connect with the support team through my local partner, which takes time.
There are some bad days or hard ways when it's tough to connect with people who don't have MS Teams products. But this is only a hard situation when we need to communicate with people outside MS Teams. So the connectivity could be improved. Another area of improvement is the sharing of files, the sharing part of Teams. How I can easily share information files or video files with the colleagues I'm working with? So, this is an area for valuable improvement. Another area of improvement is support. It should be faster and more clear, and more human.
The default storage capacity is too small. Though the mailbox size is one terabyte on the cloud, the default mailbox size can be increased for on-premise products.
It is important to have the updated version for scalability.
I can't say there are any missing features. I'd like the archiving process to be faster. They could offer better performance and enhancements throughout the product.
The security features could be improved. There should be a better policy management system.
The solution needs a lot of resources to run efficiently. It would be nice if it used less resources to run on-premise.
The only thing that could be improved is the pricing. They could make it more competitive. The price is a lot. That said, the product works, which means you're kind of caught between two realities. You want to pay for something that works. You just don't want to pay too much. If they could get it to be more affordable, then they will have a greater uptake in users. All the people that are using G Suite, the free version, would likely actually move over to 365.
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.
Microsoft Exchange could improve the archiving of emails and the performance.
The licensing could be better. There are several levels of licensing depending on the number of users and features but it lacks the breakdown of what's included in the license, and the possibility to customize what you really need. There are likely to be features included that you don't need but there's no opt out option for those.
Microsoft Exchange could improve by adding artificial intelligence.
Microsoft Exchange could improve the price.
The price of Microsoft Exchange could improve, it is priced high.
An improvement would be to combine Exchange and Teams so that emails, calls, and chats can be integrated into one window.
The management of .pst files and archiving need improvement. Because there are so many threats these days, better encryption and security would be good as well.
Microsoft Exchange could improve by being more secure. We are always looking to have more security.
The only and main issue I had was when we had to verify the domain on the tenant. There are issues when you add your domain to Microsoft Tenant, and you try to create that. Which is a problem for me.
One thing for improvement would be to have an offline version of Exchange available for use if our connection goes down.
The security for the email technology could be improved. For the next release, there are some features on the cloud-based Exchange that aren't included on-prem. It would be great if these features were made available in the next release. For instance, integration between Exchange and its on-prem calendar is not available for the on-prem solution.
While this solution is cost-effective, in general, the price could be better. If it was the same product, and slightly cheaper, that would be amazing.
We would prefer to be able to manage the solution on the cloud.
Microsoft could improve on Exchange's hybrid deployment or HCW. They need to improve on that because I was having many issues with HCW in our environment at times. And there are certain things I'm not clear about, like eDiscovery on our on-premises level. There were some features that I liked, such as Unified Messaging and Advance Search, but Microsoft removed them in 2019.
They could continue to improve the consolidation and integration of mailbox services to make them more flexible, easier to deploy, and more manageable.
For me it's sufficient. I don't see much that can be improved. I'm not sure if the security is enough. That said, for my purposes, it's fine. However, I am aware there are always new vulnerabilities and security threats to worry about. For new users, it might take them some time to get used to the product.
There are limitations in terms of the number of emails that can be sent in a minute, which makes it a little difficult for the marketing folks. The products or the updates that come in are more frequent. If I want to move from Exchange on-prem to Exchange Online, there are prerequisites that need to be met. They always have prerequisites for the latest one, but not all customers will have the latest infra. They might have a six or three months old version, but the expectation is the latest one. This prerequisite is a little inconvenient for those customers who wish to migrate to the cloud. The response time of their support can be improved.
From a reliability perspective, they need to improve the search engine, it is not very powerful. The security is not the best, it is not able to filter some of the spam and malware emails that pass through no matter what security protocols that we have set. Recently we had two incidents where we had to stop the business for one day. I am not sure if it is a problem with our implementation, or is it a problem with something else.
From a security point of view, Microsoft should enhance the new features. Technical support could also be better.
I think it could be more scalable.
From a security perspective, Microsft Exchange can be improved. All that needs to be added is security, but that's an internal hierarchical problem from the product itself and not the end-users.
There is a lot of spam email that comes in, so they should add functionality to help fix this problem. Better integration with other service providers would be helpful.
They could improve on the search function, it takes too much time.
Its search functionality can be better. It is currently not really easy. It has the capability to search your mailbox, but it has some restrictions in terms of the number of results that you can retrieve. You can only get around 250 results. If you want to do a deeper search, you need to use different functionalities of the product. The policy that we have for handling emails is that we do not delete emails at all. If I insert the text that I am searching for in the Search field, it only retrieves a limited number of emails. To search for an email from 2010, I need to use different search functions to find what I am looking for. Microsoft can also improve its licensing for its products. Microsoft's licensing is not very easy to understand. It can sometimes be really complex to understand what you need to have in order to comply with Microsoft licensing.
In terms of what should be improved, they should probably move to a cloud option like Office 365. We would like to get this functionality without the need to deploy complex hardware and software solutions. This should be the next thing, making Exchange more related to Office products, which are more cloud-oriented, less on-premise or desktop-oriented solutions, like the direction Google is strongly moving towards.
The pricing could be better, and it could have an easier implementation.
It doesn't work very well on a virtual machine. We had to move it around. There are also issues when you try to move it between computers.
In the version we have, I would like to see better communication between the end device and the Exchange server.
It's not always the finest solution in terms of integration with products that are not from Microsoft. It integrates very well with Microsoft products but not with third-party products.
When we started using Exchange on the cloud, we had a lot of initial problems relating to our main database and we also experienced issues with the accidental deletion of inboxes, amongst other things. In fact, many of the files we had moved to the cloud had disappeared. There also seems to be a problem with the retention of information. For example, if you delete something, you may have a problem restoring the entirety of the inbox, so if somebody leaves and you want to backup your data, you need to download it to your local servers. This is a big area for improvement.
Exchange can be a little finicky, sometimes, or flakey. Last week, for example, I had gone into my calendar to check on some briefings that I had established, and then went back into my inbox, and suddenly the view had changed. I had no idea what it was that I had done, and I couldn't figure out how to get that view back. I took a productivity hit as a result of that, trying to fix it, due to the fact that it just wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't what I was used to working with. Two different tech support people had to work with me in order to get the view back to what I wanted just so I could be productive. The fact that I messed around trying to get that view back, and could not figure it out for myself, and it took two different tech support people to help me get back to what I had before, is an area of improvement. I have no idea what it was that I did that caused the view to change. All I was doing is going from the calendar back to the inbox, and it was somehow different. It may have been a UI bug. I'm unsure. The second tech person that was working with me to try to get the view back the way I wanted it, told me one time his cat walked across his keyboard and it totally screwed things up for him. He had no idea what had happened, and he had to go back and re-set up a lot of configurations. That tells me there must be something wrong in the design, if small things can happen to set it off like that.
I think that improvements should be made in creating greater abilities for Microsoft Exchange in terms of Reasearch and Development.
In terms of probability, every now and then there are changes coming and going. The changes are not that frequent because every month they got updates back, so that is an issue.
It requires a lot of maintenance. I think the cloud solution would be better and easier to manage as well. Deployment should become a bit easier, the process is a bit complicated. You have to have done it one or two times before you get it right. The first time you do it, it won't be perfect. There are a lot of complications compared to Gmail For Business, which is a bit easier when it comes to configuration.