Thoughts/Experience on hosted exchange

[iBS23]

The short version: Just left former big firm to join small firm. Small firm is in dark ages (they use aol for email addresses! )and I'm pulling them out. Getting a domain name and web site is in the works and I'm now thinking about email. I was just going to use pop3/imap access and be happy with it, but I am now thinking that the shared calendars, etc might be nice to have.

Anyone have any experience with a hosted exchange server?

 

[mkrishnan]

Exchange is a super nice thing to have... in terms of hosting services, is there anyone who uses any of the open-source alternatives? Just thinking out loud, one danger for a small company, especially if they do not have great discipline in constructing their annual budget so projects get ongoing support, is getting caught in any kind of squeezes related to licensing and the update calendar of Exchange and Outlook....

On the other hand, I guess Exchange will probably have more support for mobile devices (although it's a bit problematic on the iPhone) than most of those other solutions.