Business Email - Office 365

Small businesses need a robust e-mail solution just like any large corporate enterprise. Traditional POP3 mailboxes are no longer adequate for the simple fact that we now access our e-mails from multiple and different client devices: Desktop PCs, Laptops, Smartphones and in recent years Tablets. And while IMAP overcomes this limitation of POP3 – it does not provide additional functionality - such as a shared contacts address book for example.

Further, both POP3 and IMAP are often limited by mailbox size by your ISP - which can quickly fill up – causing problems sending and receiving mail when your mailbox is full. For these reasons alone, small businesses should consider a “hosted” Microsoft Exchange service as their business e-mail solution. Now, most ISPs offer a hosted Exchange solution. But why not consider getting it from the people who actually created the solution in the first place?

Savoir Technology recommends Microsoft’s Office 365 hosted Exchange e-mail service. Whether you are a sole-trader or professional individual, a husband and wife team, a company with dozens of employees - the solution is entirely scalable and can support large businesses with hundreds and even thousands of employees.

What’s Office 365?

Office 365 is a subscription-based online “cloud” office and software services suite which offers access to various services and software built around the Microsoft Office platform. The most basic and cheapest subscription plan available is the “Exchange Online Plan”. This plan consists of: Microsoft’s Exchange Online service only.

What’s Microsoft’s Exchange Online?

Microsoft Exchange Online is an e-mail, calendar and contacts service solution delivered as a cloud service and hosted by Microsoft directly in their datacentre in the Rep’ of Ireland - with a failover backup datacentre in Holland. The service is based on the industry standard Microsoft Exchange server e-mail solution.

• Each user gets 50GB of online e-mail storage space and can send and receive messages with attachments up to 150MB in size.

• E-mail is automatically synced across all your client devices: PCs, Laptops, Smartphones and Tablets*.
  

In addition, Exchange Online offers:

• Continue to use your traditional Office Outlook desktop client software (must be 2016 version or above). 

• A shared global contacts address book for all users.

• Individual and personal contacts address book.

• Personalized calendars for each user.

• Calendar and contact sharing with other users.

• Web browser based access to e-mail, contacts and calendars using the OWA – Outlook Web App (similar to Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.). Therefore, no need to have Outlook desktop client on all your computers.

• Mobile access to e-mail, contacts and calendars on Windows Phone, iPhone/iPad, Blackberry and Android based smartphones and tablets.

• Appointment and Meeting Requests.

• “Out of Office” automatic messages.

• 99.9% uptime** commitment with a financially backed service level agreement from Microsoft.

• Continuous data backup between globally-redundant datacentres.

• Existing historical e-mail messages from your current e-mail solution can be imported via a PST file or you can start with a clean slate.

• You can continue to use your own custom business domain name.

• You can create e-mail “distribution groups” for departments, teams, etc. all for free. Example: sales@<yourdomainname>.co.uk

*Works with both Windows PCs and Apple Mac, Windows Phone, Blackberry, iOS and Android based smartphones. Windows 8, iPad and Andriod tablets are also supported.

**Uptime and Availability are not synonymous. A system can be up - but not available, as in the case of a network outage with your Internet service from your ISP.

How Much Does it Cost?

The plan presently costs: £3.00 per user per month + VAT. You have to commit for 12 months.

Plan subscription fees are paid directly to Microsoft Corporation. Payment can be debited monthly or paid in advance for a 12 month period if preferred. When you register with the Office 365 service, you will be asked for payment details. Debit or Credit cards are accepted.

Other Office 365 plans exist - which offer more features and benefits - but these obviously cost more. Compare the various Office 365 subscription plans, costs and features.

Savoir Technology can help you to:

• Choose an Office 365 plan.

• Sign up to the Office 365 service.

• Link your business domain name to Office 365.

• Create your user e-mail addresses and mailboxes.

• Migrate your historical e-mails to Office 365.

• Train you on how to use Office 365 and the Outlook Web App (OWA).

• Setup your Outlook desktop clients, your smartphones and tablets to access your Office 365 e-mail.