88 replies to this topic

[chaznet]

While your post promotes 4Smartphone.net, it should be pointed out that with the Exchange-2007 rollout, they have increased pricing substantially while at the same time slashing storage space limits from 2 gigs (for the Pro plan) to 1 gig. At $14 per month there's a $4 increase (40%) over previous pricing with 50% of the storage. They asked me to pay the balance of the increase, pro-rated, for the remaining 6 months of my contract. When I complained they offered to not charge me more, but shorten the time I had left on my pre-paid service; a creative way of 'charging me more'... They charged me a hefty cancellation fee when I opted not to participate in their new pricing plan. This was their explanation:

4SmartPhone has decided to move to the Exchange 2007 architecture and equipment for many reasons, and one of the most important was because we could go to a passive-active cluster server configuration in order to provide seamless failover when a cluster node is unavailable or is taken offline for maintenance. This architecture while very reliable does comes at a price. Our Microsoft Exchange 2003 architecture did not have that robustness. As for the $9.95 My Hosted Solution price we cannot match it, you get what you pay for...

Fortunately, I found another company that has worked out flawlessly for the past few months. IT-Solutions-Now ( http://www.myhostedsolution.com/ ) . Their Hosted Exchange 2007 service is $9.95 per month, with >>>unlimited<<< storage space, and contractually it's month-to-month with no fee to cancel as with 4Smartphone.

Not sure what they were referring to by 'you get what you pay for'. So far, after 3 months, I'm getting exactly the same service, at $60 less per year, with unlimited storage.

4Smartphone was a great service when they were the only-kid-on-the-block. They aren't any longer, and have lost their competetive edge...

windows said:

And I can now advise guys that 4smartphone now have Exchange 2007 servers available which offer:

• HTML email support for WM6
  
• Server search and mail retrieve for WM6
  
• Remote machine wipe via OWA
  
• Much much more

I've been lucky enough to be able to migrate to the new system to test it out and it works superbly.

So if you are a 4SP customer and use WM6 it may well be worth you contacting them about migrating over to Exchange 2007...

[tonybro]

Chaznet,

Thanks for the sensible response and rejoinder - a worthwhile statement of the situation as experienced by yourself.

I'm sure many readers will take what you've said and investigate further. ;-)

[neilm]

Definitely food for thought!

We have had some discussions about this in another thread (can't find it at present!) and I think a lot of users will leave 4SP due to the big increase in costs.

It will be interesting to see how HTCMail pans out, and what the monthly charge will be.

[The Guru]

Yep 4SP were one of the best originally but as you say these days the price has gone up dramatically for what folks see as a more restrictive service.

[plexhost]

PlexHosted offers Hosted Exchangediscount. Exchange 2010 25Gb + Free ActiveSync + Free 100 Mb SharePoint just at $6.95!

[neilm]

Thanks for that link Plexhost- presumably you are the developer of the program?

Things have moved on a bit since this topic was created 4 years ago, but a lot of us remain with 4SP- currently I am on their Exchange 2010 host at $11 per month, which is good value overall. The upcoming Office 365 may provide another piece of competition

[The Guru]

Yep still with 4SP myself but on the 2007 platform as my account has yet to be upgraded to Exchange 2010.

[neilm]

From my experience you won't be 'offered' the upgrade.

I had to subscribe to the 2010 version as a new account then cancel the old one; despite their promises I was not credited with the unexpired portion of the old account

Their free download of Outlook is still OL 2007, but as I already have Office 2010 it doesn't matter.

[The Guru]

Well that is what I had assumed myself but I was on the 2003 platform and got that upgrade eventually free of charge, so working on that basis if I wait long enough....