There’s a huge war of territory going on between Microsoft Exchange and Google Apps. While Lotus Notes is getting outdated, these two hosted email solutions are the pre-dominant choices that users have. While both of these are similar in nature- taking care of your email domain and all- but in objective, they differ by miles.
Let’s start by getting the most basic factor accounted for Microsoft Exchange is directed at making profit and profit only. But Google Apps is a service; like all other initiatives by the company, it does aim for more than making money from consumers.
Most editions of Google Apps are free. Google Apps Free Standard Edition, supporting 50 users and full collaboration and productivity, is completely free. Google Apps for Education, aimed at schools and universities, is also free including special features. It’s only the Google Apps Premier edition, aimed at corporate houses, that comes at a cost of $50 per year per user. And it’s this corporate field where the real war between these two software giants plays out.
Microsoft Exchange comes for $10 per month per user, which makes it $120 a year; more than double of what Google Apps Premier costs. And how do the services fare when put head to head?
They both work from browsers now, but Google Apps shows better and more intuitive service and interface because it was built for the browser.
Exchange and Google Apps both work from mobile devices.
Both the services feature email, messaging and stuff; but Google Apps has in-built video chat support as well.
Google Apps offers a full productivity suite in Docs. Microsoft does nothing like that. To share documents in Exchange you have to pay extra for SharePoint.
Exchange offers 1 GB storage per user. Even Google Apps free editions offer more than 7 GB. Google Apps Premier allows a whopping 25 GB.
Google Apps has better security. With Gmail’s spam filter and the silently efficient Postini, Google’s core-deep security system gets reinforced with unbeatable vitality.
And the most frustrating thing that can happen to you in the world of email domains – I mean downtimes – are almost non-existent in Google Apps. Its premier edition comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Exchange figures show its performance being way less than that.
Extra feature in Google Apps like Video, Sites take communication and profiling to a new innovative level. And Wave makes things faster than ever with real-time support. Microsoft Exchange has no such extra features.
Well, that was a short overview of the head-to-head scenario; and Google Apps beats Exchange in every area by miles. With its innovative framework and simplicity in the way all the applications merge together to execute all your corporate needs is just amazing.
No wonder two million companies have already switched to Google Apps. When it comes to services, Exchange is not a competition at all!
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