Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Exchange

Overview

What is Microsoft Exchange?

Microsoft Exchange is a secure email / messaging gateway with file archiving and encryption / data loss capability, available as a hosted service (Exchange Online) or installed (Exchange Server).

Read more
Recent Reviews
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 7 features
  • Data Loss Protection (66)
    8.6
    86%
  • Management Tools (78)
    8.4
    84%
  • Threat Detection (65)
    7.9
    79%
  • Customizability (76)
    7.9
    79%
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is Microsoft Exchange?

Microsoft Exchange is a secure email / messaging gateway with file archiving and encryption / data loss capability, available as a hosted service (Exchange Online) or installed (Exchange Server).

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

91 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is FileWall?

odix - a provider of Enterprise CDR (Content Disarm and Reconstruction), is now offering its own native application for securing Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes. CDR technology is a detection-less method to disarm zero-days and Windows Defender (formerly APT)’s in files, that the vendor says is…

What is RMail?

RMail is RPost’s software-as-a-service solution that enables business users to track and prove email delivery and encrypt sensitive emails. Available as a MS Outlook add-in and for other popular software platforms, RMail works with any email address without any customization required. RMail…

Return to navigation

Product Demos

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 - Convergent Crew Dispatch System v1.1 Demo

YouTube

How to understand Microsoft Exchange Online Mail Flow

YouTube

How to Configure & Migrate Hybrid Exchange and Office 365 | Full Step by step Demo | Video 1

YouTube
Return to navigation

Features

Secure Email Gateway

Secure email gateway software prevents the transmission of emails that contravene company policy or contain malware, phishing attacks, spam or other unwanted emails

8.1
Avg 8.4
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Microsoft Exchange?

Microsoft Exchange Video

What is Microsoft Exchange online?

Microsoft Exchange Integrations

Microsoft Exchange Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft Exchange is a secure email / messaging gateway with file archiving and encryption / data loss capability, available as a hosted service (Exchange Online) or installed (Exchange Server).

Reviewers rate Data Loss Protection highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of Microsoft Exchange are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(599)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 25)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Aarti Agrawal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I have been working as a Microsoft Exchange administrator, providing advanced technical support for Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange users of our clients. Microsoft Exchange is a great product in the Microsoft Suite, via which all issues related to Microsoft Outlook can be addressed by the administrator. From basic issues like extending mailbox capacity to whitelisting or blocking domains and senders across the organization, this product does it all. The UI is user-friendly and easy to learn.
  • Provides enhanced security
  • Out of office and automatic replies
  • Shared contacts across organization
  • Shared Calendars across organization
  • Easy access to Outlook administration tools
  • Mac and Linux integration can me made smoother
  • Might be a little expensive for small organizations
  • Web access can be improved to be more like the application
Microsoft Exchange is a must for organizations using the Microsoft suite of applications. The easy User Interface helps in quickly and smoothly managing the mailboxes of users and working on any issues around them. One of the best things about this is the ease with which the administrators can block or whitelist domains or particular senders across the domain. This ensures enhances security against spammers and hackers.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As expected Microsoft Exchange Server serves as an Email server, enabling us to contact external partners, and hosting our user's mailboxes calendars, contacts, and tasks. It also integrates with our Skype for Business Server that covers our conferencing needs. We have chosen to install a pair of Microsoft Exchange Servers, in order to increase their availability.
  • Email Exchange from and to internal and external partners
  • Host user calendars
  • Host user mailboxes
  • Would be nice if all management options were available in the GUI management.
  • Would be nice if there were less technical users / mailboxes in the AD.
  • Would like to see simpler implementation of DAGs.
  • Access to log files could be easier. A tool to search them / filter logs would be nice to have.
Would see Microsoft Exchange as a suitable solution for medium / large companies. Smaller companies are probably better off using a simpler implementation of an Email server. Also, the licensing costs are considerable so smaller companies probably will have a difficult time to manage to pay them. Large companies would be probably the best fit for an Exchange Server implementation.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Maintaining different user's mailbox's was difficult in the past now that the Microsoft Exchange online comes with robust 99.9% uptime with Outlook with office 365 bundle we all can sync all our emails files everything anywhere any device with just one login. Where I manage user's in my project and its pricing is very flexible per user per month like subscription so any user leaving or joining the project can be easily scaled.
  • robust uptime for all apps including outlook one drive with email protection filtering and anti- spam subscriptions
  • integration with Mac and Linux can be improved
In my production environment we manage a very big client and its user's use Office 365 so from an admin perspective the dashboard is robust and where we manage user's lost file backup's and any issue's with adding or removing user's form directory using Office 365.

Outside the production environment we use Microsoft Exchange everyday. Its email functionality with integrated calendar and Teams or Webex meeting scheduling add-in's and calender updates whenever there is a meeting prior to be more productive. Great integration features.
Sachin Vinay | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have been using Microsoft Exchange servers for the past years with an O365 app subscription. It provided us with an efficient way of managing emails with advanced features like voice messaging etc. It has worked well with traditional outlook clients. We could continuously get good feedback from our clients regarding the feature-rich solutions of Microsoft Exchange.
  • Efficient mail delivery and handling.
  • Secure mailing protocols with anti spam features.
  • Connect relevant mails well making the search faster with its AI features.
  • Budget is definitely high for a medium level organization.
  • On Premise Microsoft Exchange server requires a good pre-required server hardware.
  • Works best only with other O365 apps integrated.
Highly efficient and feature-oriented if we have other O365 apps like one note, calenders included. It will be relatively easy to synchronize emails effectively with calenders and teams for any professionals. Not suitable if it is a non-Microsoft local environment.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Exchange is used as the groupware server backbone for a set of collaboration experiences connected to the Microsoft Office 365 product suite. Specifically, it provides the server infrastructure for managing email traffic and calendar events. For accessing applications powered by Microsoft Exchange, individual company users can access locally-installed Windows applications or web experiences via browsers.
  • Routing emails to the appropriate individual or group.
  • Providing advanced email management options, such as filtering and routing.
  • Providing calendar collaboration, with the ability to control who can see my calendar.
  • Exchange spam filtering can be inconsistent at times.
  • Exchange task integration is lacking key features such as schedule integration.
  • According to IT colleagues, Exchange servers are tedious to manage and upgrade from a set-up administration perspective.
Many organizations have standardized on Microsoft Office as a productivity suite, so employees can access applications such as MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. For these companies, MS Exchange is the ideal infrastructure choice to support email, calendar, and task collaboration. Especially for companies who still require or desire an on-premise implementation of MS software.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Exchange as our main email server which is now hosted online - Office 365 Suite
  • An excellent email server
  • Spam filtering system
  • Shared mailbox across multiple departments
  • In-built firewall for inbound and outbound emails
  • Integration with other mail server/services
  • Archiving can be better implemented
  • Online web interface appears crowded
  • Settings options slightly confusing
Microsoft Exchange is an excellent email server with inbuilt spam filtering for junk emails. It also integrates easily with your calendar from different vendors. The main email client Outlook works well most of the time but only on Windows machines. It appears to be a half-backed software on macOS
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Exchange for all of our email handling.
  • Spam filtering
  • Data loss prevention
  • Reports and metrics on email usage
  • High availability and uptime
  • Ease of access
  • User friendly
  • The documentation is not always up to date.
  • Microsoft occasionally changes things without informing us.
  • The administration interface feels somewhat clunky.
We have dozens of domains and send out thousands of emails every day along with receiving thousands more. Microsoft Exchange allows us to manage all of this easily. Any organization that needs any form of automated email system will likely benefit from Microsoft Exchange. The newer Exchange has also greatly decreased the amount of time spent on managing/administration of email which is a great benefit regardless of the business size. I feel that any business larger than a few people and without a dedicated email engineering team would appreciate Exchange.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Exchange for all our employees, at our organization level as well as the client level. Our clients usually have remote VMs with different mailboxes, most of which also use Microsoft Exchange as the primary tool to manage all work needs. It is an excellent tool to work remotely, having an in-built calendar that helps with scheduling appointments and meetings and makes sure you do not miss any of them. The calendar is also well-organized to keep your daily schedule in check. The mailboxes themselves are feature-packed with the security and efficiency that comes with a brand name like Microsoft. I love the filtering and search option which lets you sort through your emails to find the most relevant ones. Working in a remote team that manages several applications, I get hundreds of emails daily that can be hard to navigate through to find the ones relevant to myself, but the Exchange sort/search feature makes it pretty easy. It can also look through deleted emails, which is a lifesaver. The storage issue is also not a bother. We also integrate it with O365, which gives you access to hundreds of more features with the entire Office bundle of applications, all over the cloud. Attaching and editing documents within the mailboxes itself saves a lot of time.
  • An in-built calendar to manage your daily work schedule. Let's you create events, invite a particular group of people, accept invitations, and remind you of your upcoming meetings and tasks.
  • I also like the daily emails we get from Exchange that ask you to set aside time for yourself or your other hobbies to take a short break from monotonous work.
  • The email categorization feature is pretty good, especially the sort/search filtering option to navigate through your emails, which can also go through your deleted emails.
  • It has an excellent spam-filtering feature which greatly reduces the chance of malware and spam. I have hardly seen spam emails get through their filter. On the other hand, it also recognizes emails from external organizations that may be spam, but are important work emails.
  • I wish there are more options in the email filters. For example, I have been unable to find a way to look for emails from a particular date without scrolling through all the emails containing particular keywords.
  • Third-party application integration isn't very well developed. It could have been a great option to widen the scope of usage for Exchange.
  • The UI is fine, but it could be a bit more robust and intuitive. Pop-ups and dialog boxes especially have poor design, which reduces the user experience.
Microsoft Exchange is one of the best options for an integrated email platform with O365 integration because no one does Office integrations like Microsoft. It is also relatively inexpensive for large organizations. The support team is also very helpful. Although I wish the sync between devices was smoother. It may be due to security issues, but sometimes I have trouble connecting on my phone to my organizational emails. You need a plethora of apps installed, which ask you to log in occasionally, which can be a pain when I just want to quickly go through my emails. This hasn't been a problem on iPhones though. Anyways, Exchange is the best choice for when you need to work a lot with emails and meetings and need a proper system to keep them all organized.
Andrea Bardone | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's my default application email. I never had a problem in the 25 years that I have use it. I advise you to use it, you could do all features about email management. I integrate also the exchange server of my customer with API integration and it worked very well.
  • Rules
  • Filter
  • Search
  • Tagging
  • View additional mailbox in mobile device
It manages a lot of emails, it's good for searching with a lot of parameters, and it manages distribution lists and shared mailboxes. It is good for rules, sometimes I don't understand the logic con the unread email. It works offline very well. In comparison with Gmail, it has "annul features" while you're sending the email, and the tagging features in less friendly.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Microsoft Exchange for the past 8 years for Emails, Calendars, and Contacts. Microsoft Exchange has good support for organizations which our company desperately needed. We have multiple companies and email domains and wanted a single place to manage mailboxes and user info. Microsoft Exchange helped us achieve this goal.
  • Mail Deliverability
  • SMTP Server Reliability
  • Support for Mobile devices
  • Could have better spam filtering.
  • Better Security.
  • Be more modern, without going to the cloud.
I would only recommend Exchange Server is on-premise email storage is absolutely necessary. For new companies looking for email hosting, I would go for Microsoft 365 instead. Exchange Server has lost any reputation for being secure in the past few years, and without a managed team, in-house or consultant, I don't think it's a good fit due to its maintenance requirements. It is NOT a set it and forgets it application. It needs backups configured, those need to be tested, it needs extra spam filtering software in my opinion, and it needs constant security patches.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Exchange is like the heart for communicating in our Organization. We use it for basically all our communications. Microsoft exchange is used for doing follows on pending action items, sharing status updates to clients or users, syncing up with the team, etc. This is very easy to use and has all the features that an organization needs to work efficiently.
  • All in One Solution - From sending emails to setting reminder, it does all.
  • Ability to create variety of rules for receiving emails.
  • Multiple folders can be created and different retention policy can be applied.
  • Better view when multiple emails are opened.
  • Better filtering of spam emails.
  • Recovery of deleted emails can have more options.
I have been using Microsoft Exchange since the start of my professional career and its user-friendliness and ease of use helped me with the transition. It helped me in making my work efficient and allowed me to keep track of the tasks I am working on and allowed me to relevant updates to the stakeholders in a timely fashion.
June 07, 2022

Microsoft Exchange

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Combined with Microsoft Outlook/Entourage, Hosted Exchange (Fresh Email) gives important informing highlights that go past straightforward email and permit business clients to assume command over their inbox. These functionalities incorporate: Contacting the executives, occasion and schedule the board, asset planning, and organization, task the board and shared envelopes (see underneath for subtleties). Delegate admittance to permit others to check assigned parts like email, undertakings records, and Schedule Server and client-side standards and spam sifting to deal with the progression of approaching messages Multi-hued hailing to stamp messages for follow-up, prioritisation, looking and Classification Recuperation of sent messages capacity to erase and supplant an uninitiated Messages Out-of-office programmed to answer.
  • Out-of-office automatic reply
  • Delegate access to allow others to check designated components like e-mail, tasks lists and calendars
  • Recovery of Sent Messages
  • Should be easy to use.
  • Enhanced security
  • Should have anti spam detection.
Microsoft Exchange was intended for ideal security and protection, with an assortment of elements at both the server and letter drop level. Microsoft Exchange Server utilizes Kerberos verification, an organization security convention that gives shared validation to an organization association. Extra security convention support incorporates Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), empowering clients to carefully sign and encode messages and connections or to get to their letter drops safely, without a VPN association, while working external organization firewalls. Against spam highlights incorporate the help of constant Safe and Block records and both server-side and client-side message sifting in Outlook to assist with diminishing how much spontaneous garbage email messages.
Donald Mascola | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Exchange is our corporate email communications system of choice. Allows our multinational workforce to communicate seamlessly and share files of all types. It also integrates well with all other Microsoft products, particularly the Teams application. Simply put it is the gold standard for email platforms.
  • Ease of management
  • Active Directory Integration
  • Great security features
  • Easy mailbox management
  • User comfort and familiarity are unmatched
  • Would love to be able to shrink database size.
  • Better built in spam filtering capabilities.
Simply put, Microsoft Exchange is the gold standard for your corporate email backbone needs. There is a reason for its incredibly large martketshare worldwide. Would not use anything else for email.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Exchange was used across all 3 of our corporate branches. This made it possible for all emails to be hosted in a central location for staff across continents to access.
  • Microsoft Exchange offers a Desktop Client called Outlook to manage emails, calendars & contacts
  • Microsoft Exchange offers a feature to have staff's mailboxes, calendars & contacts shared when given permission to rest of the team
  • Microsoft Exchange offers a Public Folder mailbox location for the entire office team to access
  • Microsoft Exchange should offer an option to spam/filter out junk emails
  • Microsoft Exchange is currently missing a shared Calendar feature that will allow for reminder notifications
  • Microsoft Exchange should provide an option for the office team to fill out group surveys or event sign ups
Microsoft Exchange is very well suited for larger organizations that have offices spread across the globe. This way all staff can still access their mailboxes from any where. But for smaller individual offices, it may be more advantageous to just sign on to a web service to access email instead of Microsoft Exchange.
Andrew Shannon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Exchange across our whole organization because nowadays everyone needs email. Email is now the most effective form of communication for our business, when 10 years ago it was the phone, but now everyone prefers an email instead. Having our own in-house Exchange server makes sense for us because of the number of users we have, it's better than the cloud based subscription services for email, we get all the benefits of Exchange without any of the subscription costs.
  • Calendaring between organization members, scheduling meetings with other in-house team members is super easy and allows you see their available times easily.
  • Mobile device syncing, you can sync up an iPhone or android phone with your email account simply and always have your phone in sync with your desktop.
  • Laptop on the go access. The latest versions of exchange, 2007 and up, allow you to sync a laptop with your exchange server and it will stay in sync with your inbox no matter where in the world you go, with activesync built into exchange. No need to reconfigure your inbox when youre inside or outside your corp network.
  • Spam filtering and content rule creation. You can block unwanted emails right from the server with exchanges builtin spam filtering, or create your own rules right on the server to block unwanted non-spammers.
  • Scalability - it can be difficult to scale up your server when you need more hard drive room. Virtualizing your Exchange server can help a little with this.
  • Upgradeability across versions - it can be difficult to upgrade your Exchange server to the newest versions of Exchange, Mmicrosoft recommends you build a whole new server and migrate your mailboxes to the new server instead of doing an in-place upgrade of an existing server.
Exchange is a great option for organizations with more than 75 employees who rely on email heavily and have users with large inboxes, who want to be able to backup and restore their email quickly and easily. If you have less than 75 employees but more than 25, you might also be able to go with a windows essential server which has Exchange for up to 75 users only and it still makes a lot of sense, but you cannot grow bigger than 75 employees ever without adding another server that runs the full blown exchange. if you have less than 25 employees or don't use email much, then you probably should stick with Office 365 and cloud based email.
Zakarieya Abderoef | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We are currently using Microsoft Exchange as our primary email system and it plays a critical role in our organization. It is used as a communication and collaboration tool by all staff members. In addition it is used for scheduling meetings with its calendar function and many of our staff relies on its search capabilities to locate important information and business documents.
  • MS Exchange is a very flexible and versatile collaboration tool. It's very easy to deploy and maintain once you have the necessary MS Exchange knowledge. Also there are many 3rd-party add-ons available which can enhance the capability of MS Exchange such as spam filters, antivirus software, etc.
  • Since MS Exchange is such a vital tool in most organizations, there are many ways to make MS Exchange highly available. A number of these HA options are based on standard Microsoft methodologies and may not necessarily result in additional costs for software.
  • MS Exchange is used by a large number of businesses and organizations around the world which simplifies integration with business partners.
  • MS Exchange Server does have its pitfalls. There are many times where users complain of losing emails or they cannot locate emails using the search function. Also, MS Exchange Server does not have the best out-of-the-box troubleshooting and mail tracing tools.
  • The MS Exchange platform is extremely vulnerable against possible threats and hacking. It is therefore important to increase the network security around the Exchange Server to limit attacks. Also, you will need to ensure that the system stays updated with the latest security patches and service packs. The extensive maintenance required for supporting MS Exchange Server needs to be taken into account. You may need an Exchange administrator to continuously monitor and support the system which may increase operational support costs.
Any business or organization who needs to take control over their communication and collaboration systems would be ideally suited for to leverage the capabilities of MS Exchange. Even small businesses can benefit. The advantage is that there are no additional costs for creating new mailboxes for users. Since most users are already running MS Office they would most likely have access to MS Outlook and can thus easily integrate with MS Exchange Server. Also MS Exchange supports mobile devices with an email application which makes it ideal for both onsite and offsite workers.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use MS Exchange as our collaboration software for staff and faculty. It addresses meeting scheduling, room bookings, personal calendar and email communications for the business.
  • Seamless integration with MS Outlook, client for Windows and Mac, Mobile devices and Web access.
  • Incorporates calendar, email, contact list and tasks within the software. All information is kept in the mailbox database on the Exchange servers.
  • High availability. The clustering that MS uses for Exchange has come a long way. Their Database Availability Group technology keeps a copy of the database(s) on each host within the cluster. We have not experienced an outage since implementing Exchange 2010, over 6 years ago. We are now running Exchange 2016 without issues.
  • Some of our customers have asked for a feature called 'plus addressing'. This is widely used in the Linux/Gmail email systems but is not available on Exchange.
  • Inbox rules. The basics are there, however, there is some need for a more robust method of catching and sorting email. Some rule editors include a RegEx editor that would allow for this.
  • As of a few years ago, MS has been focusing more on their development efforts on their cloud solution and now so much on the on-premises application. Most feel that the new features do not make it to the on-prem application, forcing corporations to migrate to the cloud.
  • Anti-SPAM and AntiVirus. MS Exchange has never done a great job of keeping the bad email out of the system. This has opened up an opportunity for other companies to take advantage of selling an email firewall to catch a bad email before reaching Exchange.
Microsoft Exchange is well suited for an organization of over 1000 employees. The cost of the physical servers, Exchange itself and a full-time admin, is not feasible for a smaller organization.
Jane Updegraff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microsoft Exchange currently underpins our email servers and failover email servers. The exchange serves every employee (that has an email address) across our entire enterprise. I've been using and managing Exchange for over two decades at three different companies. What it does is act as an email flow (receipt, delivery, handling of various types) manager and it controls all aspects of an end user's email handling, although not the end user's experience. The end user's experience is provided by any of a number of email "clients" or software packages. Exchange is what works in the background and the email client is what is used to interface with the user so they can send and receive the email.
  • Exchange does a great job of delivering emails using all of the well-known mail protocols. It sends using SMTP like all other mail handlers and it receives mail using POP and IMAP. It's extremely reliable and it can be configured for adequate failover.
  • It's very good at managing email traffic on-premise, or inside the edge of a corporate network. If you want absolute control over your email and you want to keep all of it in-house and not in the cloud, Exchange is perfect for that.
  • Exchange is fast. It's processing speeds are impressive, and mail can be handled in enormous quantities, even by a very modest Exchange deployment of one or two servers.
  • Exchange can't handle spam filtering very well on its own, or rather, it can do spam filtering based on subscription services, but no one really publishes subscription services anymore, at least not for free. So you generally have to find a third-party tool to help filter spam before it gets to your Exchange server, and if you do not do that, your users will get a lot of spam unless your Exchange administrator is constantly tinkering with filtering.
  • Exchange servers are resource-needy in several areas, as one might expect. It requires sturdy, well-provisioned hardware (read that as a big server or really big server depending on how much mail you expect that it will handle) and it needs a very large bandwidth internet pipe because of the sheer quantity of in and out traffic. This is, of course, strongly dependent on the number of your email users and the types of emails they typically send. But in general, you will need a big internet circuit and bog server to handle email traffic.
  • Exchange is an on-premise solution that must be run on your own hardware. That involves large capital outlay. It's not always the right choice as a result.
Exchange is the long-established email server of choice for Microsoft shops that want to host their own email servers. This is true for small, medium and large enterprises that use Microsoft products. If you do not want to host your own email servers, if you are not a Microsoft shop, or if you expect to handle very small amounts of email (companies with under 100 email addresses, for instance) then this solution is probably not for you. For a very small enterprise, it would be too expensive to implement and license and in addition, it requires specialized knowledge to deploy, so for many micro-SMBs, cloud-hosted email is much more affordable and hassle-free way to handle your corporate email. Cloud-hosted email is also becoming more popular in larger enterprises, primarily because it's so inexpensive and removes the need for any initial capital outlay.
Christopher Kaldenberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Exchange as our primary method of email communication for internal business users, contact center agents, and for business-to-customer interactions.
  • Microsoft Exchange offers the best integration with Active Directory.
  • Microsoft Exchange offers a great web management interface for administrators.
  • Microsoft Exchange web services provide key functionality on how we integrate emails into ACD workgroup queues for customer support purposes.
  • Microsoft Exchange could use more canned mail filtering tools to block spam.
  • Microsoft Exchange should include it's own quarantine solution.
  • Microsoft Exchange requires external recipients to become Exchange mail contacts before you can add those recipients to a distribution group.
Microsoft Exchange is well suited for a business that can afford the pricing structure, as well as afford the additional costs to improve mail server security.
Curt Sminkey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Microsoft Exchange across our entire global organization as an email solution. We utilized database servers at multiple major datacenters we had around the world. We also used multiple Database Availablity Groups so that a server failure would not affect service.
  • It integrates very easily with Microsoft Outlook which many people are familiar with.
  • I found it was far and away better than other products for calendars - resource calendar, calendar delegates, syncing between client and server, etc.
  • Overall all easy to manage from an admin standpoint.
  • If you are familiar with Powershell, advanced reporting and admin functions are very easy.
  • Easy migration to move from OnPrem Exchange to Office 365.
  • Exchange is pretty much an industry standard at this point.
  • Large database sizes can be difficult to manage.
  • The internal spam filter is very basic. Larger organizations will want to use a separate product.
  • Maintenance/Licensing cost can be very expensive.
I personally don't know of any scenario where it is not appropriate. I've worked with email systems that all have major flaws in how they are managed or used by an end user and the quirks with Exchange pale in comparison. I've worked in large scale organizations and very small businesses with less than 100 employees and Exchange scales well for both.
Ian Hansen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use Microsoft Exchange Online extensively, and have some clients that needed to have on-premise Exchange servers that we also set up and configured. Exchange provides us e-mail, calendaring for meetings and invites, and contact sharing. I also appreciate how it integrates with the other Microsoft Office suite applications such as Teams and Word.
  • Rules and filters for sorting e-mail
  • Customization of e-mail formatting and views
  • Inviting multiple users to meet and reserving resource rooms for meetings
  • Installation requires extensive knowledge/certification
  • Hardening to make secure requires additional knowledge
MS Exchange is beneficial for large-scale business organizations or non-profits that require collaboration. Its features are robust and extensive and support and documentation is adequate to maintain. Any business that wants to stay organized and have a universal platform that ties well into other collaboration tools such as Teams should consider Exchange or Exchange Online. Smaller organizations may not need all the features.
Gary Lamontagne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Microsoft Exchange across our entire organization. When looking for an email solution, we needed a product that would allow shared calendars and email. Microsoft Exchange does just that and does it well. We previously use a POP3 mail solution from our ISP that was tough to manage, and a nightmare to migrate.
  • Archiving
  • Spam detection
  • Sharing calendars
  • Sending and receiving email
  • SMS messaging capability would be nice
  • Easier tracking of email failures
  • quick chat between users would be nice
Microsoft Exchange is well suited for a company that needs to host their own email on-site and has the staff to properly administrate it. It is less appropriate in a small company without a dedicated IT person.
Andrew DeLira | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use exchange for all of our internal email for all employees from c level to support as well as provide a hosted exchange environment to our hosting clients. that are available in 3 different tiers. The calendar, and contact list are vital as well as being able to use it on multiple devices it is a great service
  • Works on mobile devices.
  • Calendar syncing.
  • Contacts syncing.
  • Renders some HTML emails horribly.
  • Use fewer resources on a PC.
  • Search could be better in Outlook.
Microsoft Exchange has been a great product, however, when it comes to spam protection it's not the best. For larger companies with spam filtering, it would be perfect if everything works how it should all the syncing with mobile and multiple desktops as well as OWA web access it's just great.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Everyone in our organization has an email account with our on-premise Exchange setup. This is our primary system of communication internally and externally. We also utilize multiple public calendars to manage meeting and event times for our conference rooms. Most employees setup their email account on their mobile devices so they can stay up to date with the constantly changing schedule.
  • Almost everyone, whether in a small non-profit or fortune 500 company, is familiar with Microsoft products. Having an Exchange server that 'just works' with their Outlook desktop program and mobile devices is a huge time saver for any organization.
  • The calendar function is extremely useful. Shared and public calendars make it easy to schedule meetings and confirm availability. Being able to attach documents to calendar events is a plus as well.
  • The ECP GUI is admin friendly and allows our junior IT staff to assist with account creation and other basic tasks.
  • Better built-in spam filters/protection. It would be nice to not have to immediately purchase a spam filter appliance or pay several dollars per mailbox to cut down on spam. This may be a pipe dream since Microsoft is all but dragging people from on-premise to O365.
  • No way to disable ECP from being exposed to the outside. It would be nice, for security purposes, to be able to just have it accessible from the LAN.
  • CAL licensing can be a pain to manage and keep track of.
Any large organization with a dedicated IT staff can save money by having an on-premise Exchange server rather than paying a monthly fee per mailbox every month. Also, any organization that uses Outlook for the desktop email clients will enjoy the ease of setup and use. Non-Profits also have the benefit of reduced software licensing costs for Windows Server and Exchange Server but this is now a moot point with up 300 free mailboxes in O365 for qualifying non-profits. Any small startup that doesn't have the capital to invest in servers, licenses and other costs would not be well served by Exchange. Any organization, whether small or large, will need IT services, either an MSP or dedicated staff, to manage Exchange. If you do not have the staff then Exchange is not for you.
April 05, 2017

Exchange It Up!

Stacey Branham | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

In my current position, I am responsible for migrating our United States origination from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange 2016. This includes the Exchange architecture, setup, migration and management.

Exchange 2016 is now our primary (and only) email solution for our entire origination across multiple continents.

The reason we switched to Exchange from Notes, is because Exchange provides up-to-date email technology, redundancy/failover, low cost of ownership, scalability and excellent performance.

  • Exchange provides protection of sensitive data though DLP (Data Loss Prevention) and compliance regulations.
  • Exchange makes use ease of access by integrating with Lync/Skype for Business/SharePoint as well as personal archives and large mailbox support.
  • Exchange provides multi-layered anti-spam protection keeping your users safe from email threats.
  • Exchange provides email anywhere through the use OWA, Outlook Anywhere, and mobile devices support with ActiveSync.
  • Exchange provides different levels of admin access by using RBAC (Role Based Access Controls) to allow administrators and helpdesk to manage mailboxes and users efficiently.
  • The main issue I have with Exchange is the web-based Administrative Center. Compared to the Exchange Management Console prior to Exchange 2013, it's slow and you don't have as many options. That being said, is the reason every Exchange admin should learn PowerShell to do their job efficiently.
  • Exchange is quite the resource hog and does need some initial investment into server hardware/VM infrastructure and storage. Luckily Exchange can run on big, cheap disks quite well.
  • Depending on the environment it does take quite a bit of knowledge to setup and configure. There are tons of guides out there to get you where you need to be.
In a nutshell, Exchange is well suited to any organization that uses email. This includes Exchange on-premises or hosted on Office 365. In my experience, it bests any other email solution in performance, cost of ownership, reliability, and redundancy, and ease of use for end-users. On-prem Exchange might less appropriate for very small organizations, but those can easily be set up on Office 365.
Return to navigation