Shop Around for Email Hosting
This weeks’ article is directed specifically at Businesses that are using Telstra to host their email accounts. If you have your own domain name through Telstra or anyone else and are using Telstra to host your email accounts then you will be told that this system is getting decommissioned. You will also be told that you will need to move your email accounts over to a plan on Office 365 – again through Telstra. This is NOT the only option and may prove way more costly than several other options.
Many business owners are falsely under the impression that to maintain their existing email addresses they have to keep all of their business with Telstra – this is not the case. Whilst we do recommend Telstra for your phone lines and Internet connections (as they do own all of this infrastructure), this is where OUR Telstra recommendations stop. There are several other big Australian companies such as Melbourne IT that specialise in domain name hosting and email hosting providing these services from their own extensive infrastructure.
In the case of a new customer that we picked up this week we saved them just a few pennies compared to the Office 365 plan they thought they would have to go to with the closing of Telstra email hosting. This company already had 50 email accounts running on pop3 through Telstra and didn’t need any fancy exchange facilities. They just wanted to keep a simple and robust email system for their 50 users. Looking at a 5 year business plan on Office 365 they were quoted $15 per user per month – a total of $45000 over the next 5 years.
Going to Melbourne IT for email hosting for the same 50 users and the same 5 years cost $750 in total – no that was not a mistype, the total here is less than one thousand dollars!!! To also get the use of Microsoft Office – which was bundled with the Office 365 offer, they can still purchase 50 copies of Office 2013 Home & Business for $13500. This suited the business well as they are also due for new computers in either case, to be able to run the latest 2013 version of Microsoft Office. The saving here over the next 5 years – a total of $30750.
Once again in the case above I must reiterate that both a simple and robust email system & computer system was all that the customer wanted and needed – so we designed the solution to best fit their requirements. In the above case they will still keep their Telstra phone lines & their Telstra Internet connection but it will be bringing in emails that are hosted on Melbourne IT’s own extensive email hosting infrastructure – which is as secure as any in the country.
If you also currently have your business emails hosted by Telstra then do not believe everything that a Telstra backed salesperson tells you is gospel. Most often when a Telco says “it can no longer maintain an existing system” – they should be saying “we want you to push you to this new system to make more money from you”.
It may take some searching, but try to seek out an independent opinion & quote from an independent IT company or IT consultant so that you can make a more informed decision about your real IT needs.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
For more advice and assistance from Kerr Solutions, like and follow us on Facebook