ZohoMail - has anyone used it?

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Aaroona

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#193828 25-Mar-2016 16:30

I currently have an Exchange Online subscription with Office 365- I have 2 domains hosted there for email.
My 1 year subscription is almost up, and I like to shop around for other options regularly before resigning any agreements.

As a result I came across ZohoMail. It looks to be a good option and ever so slightly cheaper per month than Office 365. The interface looks clean and appears to be pretty functional for what I want (especially using multiple domains, where it takes a more Google approach to email aliases).

https://www.zoho.com/mail/

Has anyone used this service before for a period of time? Would you recommend it? Keeping in mind I only require 1 licence/user - they do have a free tier, however I want multiple custom domains, so I need to pay, which is fine.

tardtasticx

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#1519727 25-Mar-2016 16:40

I use it for my domains email and it works really well. I don't think I've ever had any trouble with it, had the same domain there for a couple of years now.
I think you'll like it.

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Aaroona

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#1519730 25-Mar-2016 16:44

tardtasticx:

I use it for my domains email and it works really well. I don't think I've ever had any trouble with it, had the same domain there for a couple of years now.
I think you'll like it.

That's good to hear.

How have you found the availability? Do you use ActiveSync? Does that seem pretty reliable?
I think in the last year I've only had a small 10 minute outage with office 365.

michaelmurfy

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#1519731 25-Mar-2016 16:44

Yes zoho is pretty good. Not as feature packed as Office 365 however.

Aaroona

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#1519733 25-Mar-2016 16:47

michaelmurfy: Yes zoho is pretty good. Not as feature packed as Office 365 however.

I'm only looking at using it for email, but what features do you feel it lacks? Or are you meaning over-all polish?

tardtasticx

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#1519735 25-Mar-2016 16:57

Aaroona:

tardtasticx:

I use it for my domains email and it works really well. I don't think I've ever had any trouble with it, had the same domain there for a couple of years now.
I think you'll like it.

That's good to hear.

How have you found the availability? Do you use ActiveSync? Does that seem pretty reliable?
I think in the last year I've only had a small 10 minute outage with office 365.

I don't think I've ever had an outage/downtime while using Zoho. I tend to just use the mobile app on iOS though which for me is better than default iOS mail.
Don't think I've ever configured it on a native email application before so wouldn't be able to comment on that side of things.

Looks like on the status page there were two x two minute outages last week for imap, https://status.zoho.com
can't say I noticed tbh haha.

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timmmay

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#1519743 25-Mar-2016 17:18

Zoho is pretty reputable. Check out FastMail as well. Australian company, I've been using them for email for a couple of years with no problems at all. Works great, and is really reasonably priced.

Aaroona

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#1519744 25-Mar-2016 17:21

timmmay:

Zoho is pretty reputable. Check out FastMail as well. Australian company, I've been using them for email for a couple of years with no problems at all. Works great, and is really reasonably priced.

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately they don't support Activesync though. I'm pretty glued to the simplicity of Activesync, makes for moving/resetting devices pretty easy (plus the obvious benefits of calendar/mail/contacts over the one protocol)

kingjj

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#1519749 25-Mar-2016 17:32

Another option to consider is MXRoute.com, the owner for it is very active on LEB and really open to sorting any kinks or adding any features you see fit to ask for (they support a lot out of the box inc ActiveSync). There was a special on offer on LEB earlier this month that I believe is still active, here, which gets you 30gb storage with unlimited domains/accounts for $25 USD per year. Otherwise, like others I've used Zohomail and found them very reliable, I left as it didn't make sense to pay to run it when I had my own servers. Otherwise they were non-offensive and it just worked.

Aaroona

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#1533718 15-Apr-2016 20:17

tardtasticx:

I use it for my domains email and it works really well. I don't think I've ever had any trouble with it, had the same domain there for a couple of years now.
I think you'll like it.

how are you finding the spam management? I see their forums are overrun with spam complaints at the moment.

grant_k

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#1533739 15-Apr-2016 21:13

Aaroona:

tardtasticx:

I use it for my domains email and it works really well. I don't think I've ever had any trouble with it, had the same domain there for a couple of years now.
I think you'll like it.

how are you finding the spam management? I see their forums are overrun with spam complaints at the moment.

I used Zoho mail for 2 or 3 years but eventually gave up on it as it kept spitting the dummy about forwarding spam. Zoho's spam filtering is hopeless which meant we needed to forward the email from our domain to Gmail and use its much more capable spam filter.

Unfortunately my wife's email address was published on the web in various places using plain text at one stage -- unfortunate, but I can't do anything about it now. So she gets a lot of spam and we are reliant on a good spam filter to avoid going crazy. Gmail's spam filter handles it all with just about 100% accuracy. It's very rare that anything gets through but it means that we need the unfiltered email from our domain to be forwarded to Gmail.

Zoho's email hosting service would suddenly stop forwarding email without warning, but if I logged into their server I could see the messages piling up and notice that forwarding was disabled. I then had to forward all the useful messages manually and re-enable forwarding, only for the same thing to happen again a few weeks or months later, after a seemingly random interval.

After about a year of this I looked for a better alternative and have been very happy with NET24. It costs only $5+GST per month to host all the email for our domain, with up to 5 mailboxes. Forwarding large quantities of spam doesn't cause any issues at all and it just runs like clockwork, month after month.

If you don't have much spam coming in, Zoho might be OK for you, but I wouldn't bother with it again.

Aaroona

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#1533748 15-Apr-2016 21:33

grant_k:

Aaroona:

tardtasticx:

I use it for my domains email and it works really well. I don't think I've ever had any trouble with it, had the same domain there for a couple of years now.
I think you'll like it.

how are you finding the spam management? I see their forums are overrun with spam complaints at the moment.

I used Zoho mail for 2 or 3 years but eventually gave up on it as it kept spitting the dummy about forwarding spam. Zoho's spam filtering is hopeless which meant we needed to forward the email from our domain to Gmail and use its much more capable spam filter.

Unfortunately my wife's email address was published on the web in various places using plain text at one stage -- unfortunate, but I can't do anything about it now. So she gets a lot of spam and we are reliant on a good spam filter to avoid going crazy. Gmail's spam filter handles it all with just about 100% accuracy. It's very rare that anything gets through but it means that we need the unfiltered email from our domain to be forwarded to Gmail.

Zoho's email hosting service would suddenly stop forwarding email without warning, but if I logged into their server I could see the messages piling up and notice that forwarding was disabled. I then had to forward all the useful messages manually and re-enable forwarding, only for the same thing to happen again a few weeks or months later, after a seemingly random interval.

After about a year of this I looked for a better alternative and have been very happy with NET24. It costs only $5+GST per month to host all the email for our domain, with up to 5 mailboxes. Forwarding large quantities of spam doesn't cause any issues at all and it just runs like clockwork, month after month.

If you don't have much spam coming in, Zoho might be OK for you, but I wouldn't bother with it again.

Thanks, I think you've confirmed my fears.

I really wish that Gapps was cheaper than Office 365 Exchange services, then I'd just use that. The office 365 interface is just a little clunky, and I feel a little too expensive for what I need p/m.

I had a look at Net24, but unfortunately they don't support activesync :( Otherwise, it sounded good.

timmmay

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#1533833 16-Apr-2016 05:55

I think Google Apps had a price reduction recently. As I said before, FastMail is very good, but doesn't support ActiveSync. Just use IMAP like most people do - unless a few minutes delay is an issue for you.

Incindre

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#1534521 17-Apr-2016 18:51

Only been using their free service for a couple of weeks, all we literally need is a service to do basic email (and it does just that for free). User interface is nice and it was fairly easy to set up... but not for one of our domains which was making use of a Github static website. You have to do some funky things to the ANAME/CNAME/MX records to get it to work with a domain using Github for web hosting.