Hosted Exchange Mac/Blackberry

[ladysman]

I've searched and searched and have seen a few companies mentioned such as interweb, sher, etc. I originally was set on GetSyncd from some threads on this forum but can't find those threads anymore.

GetSyncd has been great at quickly answering my questions (i'm sure they all are ) but i'm looking to see if others are using this service with a Mac/blackberry combo (Sorry, they need the verizon network for it's better coverage in this area).

This setup will be for a small business that has 8 employees all with macbook pros and all with blackberrys. I am leaning towards getSyncd but i'm open to other options and suggestions which is i'm hoping you all can provide.

Any other feedback is appreciated!

P.S. I should note that they currently pay a local company an astronomical fee to host a very old exchange environment. I'm trying to get their website and exchange hosted somewhere else to keep costs down. I would need this to work with Snow leopard Mac Mail or entourage 2008.

 

[wilderness1957]

www.getsyncd.com they sync mail, calendar, contacts to blackberry and iphone seamlessly. It is amazing how great they are! Using them has saved me HUGE amounts of money! When I first started looking around for a provider theyoffered me a week free trial and helped me get everything up and running. 3 days into the preview I signed up for service. I even had an issue that turned out to be my fault on my vista computer. Filed a trouble ticket around 11pm on a friday and recieved a response about 5 minutes later. They walked me through fixing the issue that night which ended up having nothing to do with them but a bad network file on my pc. They really put the customer first! Can't say enough good things about them. feel free to contact me offline if you have more questions from a customers point of view.
Chris

 

[labman]

Sorry

No thread bumping here you might have better luck though on a black berry forum or at least reqesting the thread be moved to the mac section rather then the iPhone forum. Good luck

 

[Bbusyb]

Our company uses Hosted Exchange services from a company called Intermedia.

We went with the 10 user Small business plan as we needed 7-8 users initially it and made more sense go for that plan then getting the Minimum plan ad pay the additional fee per user. so for 10 user accounts we pay $120 which works to $12 per user per month, which is apretty fair price.

Now if you want Activesync, Goodmobile Sync or Blackberry server, they do offer it, but charge extra. Blackberry is the most expensive, with I think $10 or $15 per month per account with activesync the cheapest at $5 per account per month.

The nice thing is that you can get any of these services per account so you only pay for it if you need it. We've Only used the blackberry sync once as one of our workers was using a blackberry. It works fine as long as your cell phone provider supports it and you have a enterprise plan as they need to open a few ports if you want to use your own exchange server.

As for the Mac support, they include a licence for Outlook or Entourage as part of the service so if need you can get it. I'm currently syncing My account with Mail and Entourage on my MBP, Outlook on my Dell and My iPhone and it works seamlessly.

 

[bmw000]

I use Sherweb. Awesome service and support!

 

[JeffTL]

I believe GoDaddy's hosted Exchange service includes BlackBerry Enterprise Server -- there's a thing in the management console for inputting BlackBerry PINs. I use mine with the built-in Snow Leopard apps and an iPhone and it's great.

 

[MooneyFlyer]

We had tried a handful of the hosted services and they all seemed to work reasonably well. Several had extra costs for setup and use of blackberry devices. We ended up going with Google Apps. $50/person/year. Works with Macs, Windows, iPhones, Blackberrys,etc... Found that it was much less expensive than others and had upside on the service as well (such as doc sharing / etc.)

 

[ladysman]

thanks for all the replies. I have contacted the following companies and am going over their prices for our needs and checking around here on their service.

1) Intermedia
2) Sherweb
3) 123Together
4) Apptix
5) GetSyncd (Kerio, not exchange)
6) Mailstreet

Mailstreet read my message but no reply yet.

If any of you have experiences with these (besides those that replied already) or other suggestions, i'm still open. I have about 2 weeks starting next monday to get this done.

 

[smoked]

I've used Intermedia before and had very few problems.

Currently been using Apptix for over a year with no problems to speak of. Mix of Windows and Macs and iPhones.

Only problem with Macs is Outlook Web Access is only the 'lite' version.

 

[ladysman]

I've used Intermedia before and had very few problems.

Currently been using Apptix for over a year with no problems to speak of. Mix of Windows and Macs and iPhones.

Only problem with Macs is Outlook Web Access is only the 'lite' version.

Why did you switch from Intermedia?

Also, doesn't apptix include Entourage 2008 so you don't have to use OWA lite?

Thanks for the help again guys.

 

[ladysman]

Just wanted to update this thread that we opted for Apptix. Service has been outstanding and setup was pretty easy. Most time consuming was converting their outlook email to mac. The app from www.littlemachines.com was well worth it!

They include a full copy of Entourage which i'm having issues with. on 3 (of the 6) macbooks, it installed fine and works great. On the other 3, it doesn't work. All 6 are using the Home and Student edition of Mac for office. I know it's not suppose to but it did work on 3 of them.

Bascially I've tried every way to install this and nothing works on the other 3 macbooks. Differences are the 3 workings are Snow leopard upgrades where the others came with Snow Leopard installed.

Anyone with some info as to why it works on only half of the macbooks? Any help is appreciated.

 

[smoked]

Sorry can't help with the problems. I did just buy two new Macbooks with SL installed. I installed Entourage 2008 on them and have had no problems. However, I bought Office 2008 Business Edition licenses and installed Entourage via the Office DVDs. So maybe MS has 'fixed' it so you can't install it as they claim.

Maybe if you downgrade the machines to 10.5, install (and verify it runs right), then upgrade to 10.6?

 

[ladysman]

Sorry can't help with the problems. I did just buy two new Macbooks with SL installed. I installed Entourage 2008 on them and have had no problems. However, I bought Office 2008 Business Edition licenses and installed Entourage via the Office DVDs. So maybe MS has 'fixed' it so you can't install it as they claim.

Maybe if you downgrade the machines to 10.5, install (and verify it runs right), then upgrade to 10.6?

The business opted to simplify things and bought a 3 users license for the Standard edition. Everything is working great. We are coming up on a month of outstanding service.

We do have a few complaints:

1) It prompts for a certificate each time the user opens Entourage. For while it was only once it did this. Now it's a few times a day. I'lll be calling them again to see if there is a resolution yet. A few weeks ago there wasn't.

2) OOO isn't working yet. We've called them one other time and they noted the CNAME was wrong. We fixed the CNAME but it didn't fix the OOO. They won't be OOO for much until summer so it's not a big deal now.

Other than that, there are no complaints that i'm aware of!