MobileMe for small business use???

[Craig1981]

Hey,

I am thinking about signing up for a family pack of MobileMe to use on the small business I run. We only have 3 people and soon will all have iPhones and all have Macs.

Can you use the main 20Gig iDrive as a server and access from different accounts? Then use the extra 5Gig drives individually?

Thanks

 

[Macsterguy]

I would advise that...

I would advise that you get your answers directly from your local apple store.

I personally would not depend on mobileme for your income. You could use it to sync your contacts, calendar, bookmarks among the 3 of you on your mac's and iPhones.

You could use an iMac as your server and buy Mac OSX server and load it on all of your mac's in your office - see: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/

 

[jdee2wheels]

I've been using mobile me since it launched and generally think it's convenient to have and seems fine for the casual user.

I'd never use it for business though. It's way too flaky and unreliable at this point if you need to depend on it. Push works most of the time, but often enough a contact or event doesn't sync correctly. Sometimes it will push eventually, sometimes not at all.

Maybe if they get it all worked out in the next few months it would be good for your purposes...but it's half baked at this point

 

[TLewis]

I am thinking about signing up for a family pack of MobileMe to use on the small business I run.

How important is email and the other services to your business?

Mobileme makes no guarantee of service availability or data integrity. For example, what would happen to your business if you were one of the people who had no MM mail service for 7+ days? What would happen if your idisk files were to suddenly disappear (like those of this person)?

 

[d21mike]

Mobileme makes no guarantee of service availability or data integrity. For example, what would happen to your business if you were one of the people who had no MM mail service for 7+ days? What would happen if your idisk files were to suddenly disappear (like those of this person)?

And what does "Guarantee" really mean? Like 99% uptime or we will give you a free month. Or what?

I have been using GoDaddy for some time and have had very few problems. But they don't "Guarantee" anything.

Read: 11. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY.
https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/agreements.asp?ci=8924

I think a lot of small businesses use them.

Whatever service you use I think you need to consider having a backup plan.

In my case I have been using GoDaddy for email and web hosting for many years with very little problems. I did have a problem with my web site (it was my mistake) so I contacted them to get a restore of a database file. They were able to do it but it took a while and I had to pay extra. Since then I don't put anything on their site that I also don't have duplicated on my own local servers.

As far as MobileMe Contacts and Calendar I have Sync Copies on my PC and I also do a backup every night. As far as email on MobileMe, so far it is just a copy of my main email. I am still on Trial of MobileMe, but if they can continue to perform (I have had very few problems), I may convert to purchase and use it for others in my office that also have a iPhone. For me it is this or an Exchange Service.

I am just saying that you should provide you own insurance. And if you do and you need the Mobile Solutions provided by MobileMe then it might just be a cost effective solution.

Also, keep in mind that most businesses should have their own domain name for web sites and email. MobilieMe currently does not allow personal domain names.

 

[Craig1981]

Thanks for the advise guys. The difficulty in just having an office server is that we are often out of the office for days or weeks at a time. Often in different countries. Thought MM would be perfect for keeping files in a central easy access location.
Maybe we can just make sure everything put on MM disk is backed up in the office every day.
And yes we have our own url and emails but was thinking of forwarding them to MM for the push.

 

[t0mat0]

It's explicit in the T& C that it's for personal use.
I'd imagine there were other ways to share files. But if you have a fall back route, it seems it might be a useful route. A shared email account perhaps? Just use the emails for the files? Depends on what you need to share. There are plenty of in the cloud data services i'd imagine.

 

[HLdan]

It's explicit in the T& C that it's for personal use.
I'd imagine there were other ways to share files. But if you have a fall back route, it seems it might be a useful route. A shared email account perhaps? Just use the emails for the files? Depends on what you need to share. There are plenty of in the cloud data services i'd imagine.

For small businesses Mobileme is still being used in the "personal use" type way. Apple's T&C just mean that MM is not for use in corporations or big business. Mom and pop and small start up businesses can deal just fine with MM once Apple irons out the kinks.

 

[mrtune]

You should have a look at google apps.

http://www.google.com/a

 

[webguy]

Have you considered going a different route, like hosted exchange or hosted kerio. Or even bringing and exchange or kerio mail server in house. That is what we do for a lot of our clients.. Most use Kerio Mail Server or they use a hosted service of Kerio Mail Server because it provides the same services as Exchange at a much better price.

Here's a link to www.KerioMailHosting.com they do hosting of e-mail but, you can also talk to them about running your own server if you would like to bring it in house.

That would give you push mail, syncing of contacts and calendars, and would also provide you with webmail, and more than just IMAP or POP3 on your desktop.

 

[Sesshi]

As an extension for this question, is it possible to get rid of @me.com/@mac.com and set the sender as another domain?

I never use Mobileme / .Mac - despite being subscribed to it since '06. It's probably time I did, and I wouldn't mind having one of my personal email addresses on it - which are obviously on a different domain. I can set up a redirect fine, but at a cursory glance there didn't seem to be a reply-to entry that worked.

 

[hardliner]

Solution for another sender domain

There you go my business partner:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/524301/

 

[Sesshi]

Thanks. But... er... if I have to use a third-party email server to insert the outgoing address, I might as well... use... the... third... party... email... service? Similarly for the DNS method.

That seems more like a solution to use Mail for the sake of it. So it is as typically Apple as I thought? If it's not brain-dead simple / simplistic for the most undemanding users, it is ludicrously kludgy? Surely they've moved on a little?!?

 

[thelonepixel]

Craig,

For your small business I would suggest your setup Google Apps Standard Editions for email and setup a single DropBox account for all 3 users for your file share.

Google Apps Standard Edition (Free)

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

DropBox ($99/year for 50GB or $199 for 100GB)

http://www.getdropbox.com/

 

[icafelawrence]

An apple consultant in my area recently wrote a blog article about utilizing ical Server, mobileme and an app called busysync and he's running with that VERY successfully. He explains it MUCH better than I do, so click this link to see the article....

http://bestmacs.com/2009/10/mobile-calendars/

 

[phatlipboardz]

I wanted to second the google apps and Dropbox feature.

My website is hosted with Hostmonster, however I have my email and calendars running through Google.

I use Dropbox for all of my work between three computers and share folders with my clients so they can access "community files."

I also use Bascamp to help stay on task, assign to-do lists, and upload files for certain clients that I don't necessarily want to share entire folders with. We can chat and exchange messages in a central location.


But again, Dropbox and Google Apps are awesome.

 

[317342]

Google Apps, definitely.

 

[lostinspace2011]

Sharing contacts and calendars

You may also want to try out Address Book Server which let;s you share contacts and events between macs. Unlike MobileMe this lets you run your own server on your own hardware, so your data never leaves your network, unless you want it to.

http://www.addressbookserver.com