Umbrellar vs Openhost email plans

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mdf

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#242500 31-Oct-2018 14:33

Does anyone know the differences between Umbrellar and Openhost's (as I understand it, owned by Umbrellar) email plans?

Umbrellar offers an unlimited mailbox, 10GB plan (Mail Ultra Starter) for $25 per month / $300 per year.

Openhost offers an unlimited mailbox, 10GB plan (Platinum) for $12 per month / $144 per year.

So far as I can tell, both are NZD and exclude GST. Just looking for a breakdown of features in either. Perfectly happy with the higher priced Umbrellar option if there are features I would actually use.

Edit: adding links

allan

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#2117496 31-Oct-2018 17:24

Having a quick look at those links, Umbrellar appears to be offering full email, calendar, contacts, tasks and notes together with Activesync support (presumably running on Exchange), whereas Openhost is offering email only with SMTP, POP & IMAP support.

chevrolux

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#2117526 31-Oct-2018 19:37

I wouldn't use either when Office 365 is $7/month for a proper exchange mailbox... and then $15/month for email and full office suite.

Edit: Plans...
https://products.office.com/en-nz/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?tab=2

Business essentials only $6.90/month.... I would suggest infinitely more solid than Umbrellar email.

stinger

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#2117581 31-Oct-2018 21:06

I use Fastmail for my mail hosting (US$5/month). I like the fact that all they do is mail (and caldav and carddav), rather than other companies where mail is a small part of their business (as what happened with Vodafone). The fact that they post detailed incident reports and give back to open source are a bonus ✅ as well.

UmbrellarKR

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#2117596 31-Oct-2018 21:27

^^ thanks allan - pretty much what you said :)

Umbrellar and Openhost email run on different platforms SmarterMail+ActiveSync vs. on Plesk Onyx, respectively. What type of features did you want more info on? - Kieran

mdf

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#2117628 31-Oct-2018 22:37

Thanks guys.

Requirements are a simple email solution (though at least IMAP, not just POP) for currently 15 users but perhaps scaling up to 20 over the next 12-24 months. Currently on Office 365, but we've recently added several staff members that do need an email address but typically only send/receive very occasional emails, in the order of 1-2 emails per week (though other users are quite heavy users). Even the Office 365 Essentials Plan - which I think is incredible value if you even use half the features available - is looking a bit spendy at $6.90/8.30 per person per month when you use almost none of the features. Works out to be around a dollar an email for the lowest users.

Low users will be fine with mobile-only access (perhaps with occasional webmail access). High volume users may want something more sophisticated, but I'm happy getting the Office 365 Business / desktop apps for the Desktop Outlook tragics.

I'm also finding that Office 365 for more than a few users can be a bit of pain to manage without dedicated IT support. I was happy dealing with it myself (not a dedicated IT support person) when there were only a few users that didn't change frequently. But the configuration options are increasing and combined with more and more users, it isn't super-straightforward any more. Simple is good for these purposes.

Have heard good things about Umbrellar and Openhost, so was looking in to those and then got confused that even the graphics were the same but the plans different. Open to other suggestions too, but I'd probably prefer NZ (or at least Australia) based.

nzkc

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#2117630 31-Oct-2018 23:05

I'll throw another one in the mix (though I've never used it so cant comment on it too much) with Amazon Work Mail: https://aws.amazon.com/workmail $4/mth/user for upto 50GB of storage. USD, so what...approx $6 NZD?

Samsung

Shop now on Samsung phones, tablets, TVs and more (affiliate link).

Shindig

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#2117643 1-Nov-2018 06:04

I subbed to Openhost for a year or so when my business was first starting up. Openhost email offering is basic, but does the job to say the least. Customer support was excellent and it was cheap.

I've sinced to gSuite.

The little things make the biggest difference.

mdf

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#2117715 1-Nov-2018 09:57

Thanks for the suggestions; I certainly hadn't come across the Amazon offering before.

I'm still thinking that paying for GB/overall capacity is going to be much more cost effective for us than paying per mailbox, so I really like the two Umbrellar/Openhost options. Though I fully appreciate we are in a bit of an odd position as to how we use email. I still need to work through a few things, but @UmbrellarKR I may be in touch again in a few weeks to see if I can arrange for a trial or demo to have a look at the features and functions of the two offerings.

kobiak

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#2117717 1-Nov-2018 10:05

If you don't mind Russian servers, free option https://connect.yandex.com/

Yandex is Russian IT giant.

helping others at evgenyk.nz

GoranZ

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#2117844 1-Nov-2018 13:49

If you are already in the O365 ecosystem then you can add email only for $5.50 per user per month;

https://products.office.com/en-nz/exchange/compare-microsoft-exchange-online-plans

This is RRP - if you have your O365 through a Tier1 CSP partner it can get a little cheaper .. works fine with Windows Mail client if they don't have Outlook or use web option.