Microsoft Exchange vs. AppRiver from OpenText

You can use Microsoft Exchange Server with peace of mind for e-mail, calendar, communication, scheduling, and collaboration services. Microsoft's Exchange Server is a product designed to provide users with access to the messaging platform from mobile devices, desktops, and web-based systems. Telephony features in Exchange Server support voicemail. Exchange Server successfully offers high availability service with Microsoft Exchange Database availability groups.

Incentivized

AppRiver is great for both small and large organizations. Small businesses are unlikely to have much if any technical support staff available to them, for which AppRiver would be a great help. Likewise for large companies, having AppRiver can save your tech support team from dealing with basic, common, and repetitive application support, and allowing them to better focus on more important tasks at hand.

Incentivized

• As we have a large user base of 11,000 users we use MailTips to avoid people getting confused with people with similar names in the organization.
• The integration between Teams Meeting and Resource booking is generally very good. The Scheduling Assistance makes it easy to scan calendars and find free periods to provisionally scheduled events.
• Marking yourself as Out of the Office and busy is easy, as is sharing your calendar within the team/organization or individuals.
• Voicemail integration and the ability to receive missed chats in your inbox are highly used and useful.

Incentivized

• Very useful daily quarantine list emailed to users.
• Suspicious emails can be viewed online in their sandbox to check validity before releasing from quarantine.
• Multiple ways to filter emails (domain, email address, text, etc)
• Link protection is one of the newest options available and we absolutely love it!!

Incentivized

• The two main factors for the better reliability & Uptime of internally hosted Exchange Server depends on Exchange Server configuration and the level of investment the organization is willing to provide for hosting the Exchange Server On-Premise Environment. As the data is stored in the organization’s hardware, any disaster may lead to the loss of email and servers.
• Losing data might affect business continuity and rebuilding it can be costly.
• Security remains a major concern.
• Security of data loss is main concern. To ensure that, organization needs to configure networks, systems and Exchange platform against possible threats.
• Hardware and license costs are high.

Incentivized

• They do not support DMARC and DKIM at this time and I don't know when or if they ever will.
• Their SPF record is not great and can possibly cause issues, at least that is what my support company has told me.
• Scanning of links in emails seems super limited and or non-existent. THings get through with completely bad malicious all the time and I assume they are not scanning them or they don't have a proper AV on their end.
• Once a domain is whitelisted any bad emails that may be spoofing that email domain are let through and no other filters apply to the emails. It's frustrating to have to white list 20+ individual email addresses from a company and not be able to white list just the domain and not feel secure doing that.

Incentivized

It is the best, and perhaps only, email solution worth considering.

Incentivized

Microsoft Exchange is well suited for inexperienced Messaging Admins and veterans alike. If you have no idea of the fundamentals of modern email (SMTP, mail headers, MX Records, SPF/DKIM, Encryption, etc.) and just need to get people's mailboxes and calendars the support they need, you can use it with confidence. If you are an old pro and want to leverage and dovetail your Powershell and AD with Exchange, you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Incentivized

AppRiver is very easy to use. A new employee can begin using it on their first day.

Incentivized

Exchange is setup with multiple servers behind load balancers to provide high availability.

Incentivized

I would say it's the best email product I've experienced.

Incentivized

We have a good enterprise agreement with Microsoft which affords us quick phone support. I have found the support staff knowledgeable and prompt with a solution when required. At times it may be difficult to schedule a call back, this is mainly due to our need for calls early in the morning which happens to be during a shift change at Microsoft support.

Incentivized

AppRiver's live support is above what I expected, and I use it exclusively. I always get a professional, courteous, and knowledgeable tech that is easy to understand within a few minutes of placing a call. If you do have to leave a message they have always promptly returned my call.

Incentivized

Implementation/conversion can be quite complex and, unless you have certified Exchange administrators in-house, you should strongly consider a 3rd party consultant for this implementation.

Incentivized

Most of the 365 subscriptions include desktop and cloud versions of Microsoft programs. These "traditional" software may be installed on a desktop computer and used offline without any problems, as long as you have a working Internet connection. Because so many firms still transmit each others file's developed locally using these applications, despite this being an era of cloud computing– there is a strong case for keeping desktop versions available.

Incentivized

AppRiver requires the least amount of management time, the pricing is better and the minimums are such that almost all SMB's won't be buying shelfware. If you are an MSP, become a partner and you will see spam problems become a thing of the past.

Incentivized

The only time Exchange has failed us is when we did something to cause the failure.

Incentivized

• It has been an important factor in allowing seamless communication with clients and scheduling business meetings, which in turn works in the company's favor.
• Haven't noticed any negative impact Exchange has had on our ROI. The support team is also responsive and helpful.

Incentivized

• Efficiency, teams adapt quickly to changes or new business needs.
• Support gives us alternatives on how to establish new timings for new business lines on email.
• An increase in profit owing to a reduction in the amount of assistance our in-house IT staff is required to provide.

Incentivized