It’s surprising how much time businesses waste on something as simple as email. Some are still using web-based email (like Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL), and others are using old fashioned “POP3″ or “IMAP” platforms. If you fall into one of these categories, read on.

A few years ago, Microsoft Exchange was reserved for big companies with big budgets. It just didn’t make sense for small businesses to spend thousands of dollars purchasing and running their own Exchange servers in-house.

However, fast forward to today, and we have hosted Exchange. In a nutshell, it offers all of the benefits of Exchange without needing to purchase, run and manage a server of your own. It runs “in the cloud” and is managed by a third-party company like AppRiver, SherWeb, Rackspace, or, new to scene, Microsoft. Pricing starts as low as $6/user/month, and robust spam filtering is included.

The benefits

The primary benefit of Exchange is its seamless syncing between desktop and mobile devices. This means that you’re always connected to your email, contacts and calendars; whether it’s via Outlook, on your phone or from an Internet café in Aruba. If you delete something on your mobile phone, it’s deleted in Outlook when you get back to your desk (or vice versa). The same goes for contacts and calendar events. Everything just works.

Besides everything being in sync, Exchange also shines when it comes to sharing contacts and calendars among your team. For example, if you want to have a global address book that everyone uses throughout the company, create one in Exchange and share it with your colleagues. Or, if you want to schedule a meeting with your team, have Outlook find the next available day and time that everyone is available.

Automatically backed up

Besides the syncing and team sharing capabilities of Exchange, one of the hidden benefits is that your email, contacts and calendars are always backed up. You don’t need to worry about it. A copy of everything is kept “in the cloud” with your service provider.

A time saver

At Forge3, we’ve been running hosted Exchange for a few years now. Since switching to it, we’ve saved approximately five hours each month as compared to the previous email solutions that we’ve used. Most of this time-saving is a result of being able to work remotely and manage emails once from anywhere. In other words, we don’t need to delete emails from three different places, etc. And, we’re better able to quickly response to clients and prospects.

What about Gmail?

Some companies are now trying Google’s “business-class” version of Gmail. On the surface, it appears to offer many of the benefits of Exchange. However, in our tests, it’s still not as good. If your experience differs, let me know in the comments below.

The bottom line is that Exchange is the de facto standard for top-notch business-class email. You should be using it. Contact us if you’d like some help.

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