Comparing Hosted E-Mail Competitors

Corporate e-mail services are a popular hosted service, and in addition to the many service providers who already offer hosted Microsoft Exchange Server through Microsoft’s Service Providers License Agreement (SPLA), Microsoft itself began offering hosted Exchange in 2008. Some companies have found Google’s Gmail, when purchased as part of a commercial Google Apps contract, to be an acceptable substitute for Exchange, and in Nov. 2009 Cisco Systems entered the competition with hosted e-mail built on PostPath, an acquisition that duplicates Exchange’s functionality. While all of these services can work with Microsoft’s popular Outlook client software, Google’s mail uses the more generic POP3 protocol, while Microsoft and Cisco support Microsoft’s Messaging API (MAPI), which can deliver a better user experience in many cases.

This chart offers some of the key pricing and service features for each plan. Ongoing competition between these and other companies means that both prices and features are likely to change rapidly.