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Comment by duck | Hacker News Reader

Exchange - gmail

I see this comparison so often, but it really is apples and oranges. I love gmail and use it daily, but it isn't a replacement for Exchange. First, gmail is just a client... you have no control over the server aspect with Google. That is fine for a lot of small businesses, but for most mid to large companies that isn't an option.

Does Exchange cost a lot of money? Yes, but with that you get a first class messaging platform that you control.

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Experience with typical large company email: regularly unavailable. Silly limits on attachment size. Limited control. Crap UI. Down regularly. Takes days to get a new email set up. Takes day to troubleshoot problems (ie. emails that become unavailable). Costs heaps, need dedicated "IT Support staff" (don't get me started on that).

Experience with Gmail: pay 20$ for heaps of storage. Very large attachments no problem. Almost never down, and when it is, it's taken care of pretty soon.

Has some annoyances though - for example you can't send a batch file in an attachment. It's obviously a good idea for security reasons, but when you're a bunch of developers, it's kinda useful!

The business (premium) version of Gmail on Google Apps provides an Exchange connector for Outlook and sync for mail, calendar and contacts, and is a direct competitor to Exchange Server itself. Even Standard edition for small businesses is a real alternative to running an in-house exchange server, even if they still use an Outlook client. So it's fair to say with Google Apps that Gmail is both a web-client and server-side offering.

Except the connector for Outlook is an absolute load of crap, hogs bandwidth, regular hangs up and doesn't receive e-mail or won't send an e-mail and you have to restart Outlook. It's getting there but it's not there yet

I just don't get this insistance on control over utility servers. If we take sensitive businesses out of the equation there's really no argument for it. How many times has gmail been down for me? Never. What about exchange/lotus notes? At least once a month. And even when they work they're shit.

In my experience even small businesses often believe their data/privacy is too important to hand over to someone else.

I'm sure Google does a better job at securing their server than most small businesses.

I'm sure most small business can secure their servers from Google infinitely better than Google can secure their customers' data from themselves.

Point being, maybe companies are not worried about Google's ability to protect them, but are worried about Google.

Certainly, there are horror stories about Google's customer support.

When you're using gmail, you also dependent on the internet connection. And my opinion, for business email, having abc@yourcompany.com looks better than abc@gmail.com

You can get abc@yourcompany.com in gmail. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/gmail.html

if you use the internet, you are dependent on the internet connection.

1. You can have gmail offline easily, using a variety of clients.

2. You can have x@yourdomain.com, no problem with gmail for business.

Things like email retention and recovery are two big features regarding control that I don't think Google gives you (at least last time I looked at it).

You can add on Postini services to cover that if you need it

For business, I'd definitely choose exchange over Gmail. Especially exchange 2010 with the great web app.

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