Microsoft® Exchange & Rackspace® Email Exchange Hybrid
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Because they want to pay a lower price with RackSpace Hybrid. Certain users having Exchange, others having Rackspace's own email.
https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail-exchange-hybrid
So RackSpace calculator = $1000 a month for 100 Exchange mailboxes
Office 365 E1 = $800 a month for 100 user accounts.Why go with RackSpace? Because they can give you IMAP style cheaper.
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@dafyre said:
Out of curiosity, why not consider going all-in with Office 365?
If you have large scale and a large percentage wanting non-Exchange, Rackspace Hybrid is really effective. It you are 90% Exchange, then not. But if you are 90% non-Exchange, it's awesome. Especially for those of us who prefer the non-Exchange portion of the email service.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
So RackSpace calculator = $1000 a month for 100 Exchange mailboxes
Office 365 E1 = $800 a month for 100 user accounts.That's completely misleading as E1 is not Hosted Exchange. Exchange is $4.
E1 is used to make the hybrid solution look dramatically better than it is. Because Rackspace's Exchange offering is 250% higher than Office 365. But if you use actual Office 365 pricing, it is nearly impossible for the hybrid product to compete because it takes so many accounts to offset every Exchange account. With the E1 pricing, it would take less than one to one.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Actual pricing:
Office 365: $400/mo
Rackspce: $280/moSavings: $120/mo
But that's only if you are willing to be 90% on Rackspace Email. It's a great idea. I've yet to find any company willing to:
- Go 90% non-Exchange, or even 80%. And it is around 75% that you get break even.
- Not use the push technology on the non-Exchange which raises the price and makes it nearly impossible to break even.
- Deal with the management overhead of managing two different email solutions where people working internally have to "know" the email capabilities of the people with whom they are interacting.
- Have to tier every employee into "have and have nots". If you have factory workers or the like, it can work. But rarely works out.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Why go with RackSpace? Because they can give you IMAP style cheaper.
It's not "IMAP" any more than Exchange is. Rackspace Email is not Exchange, but both are equally IMAP and not IMAP. Both do web, IMAP and push. They are peers.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
So RackSpace calculator = $1000 a month for 100 Exchange mailboxes
Office 365 E1 = $800 a month for 100 user accounts.That's completely misleading as E1 is not Hosted Exchange. Exchange is $4.
Yes, but that's the plan which comes close to RackSpace's pricing. Unless RackSpace are thinking of something else.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why go with RackSpace? Because they can give you IMAP style cheaper.
It's not "IMAP" any more than Exchange is. Rackspace Email is not Exchange, but both are equally IMAP and not IMAP. Both do web, IMAP and push. They are peers.
...But they are not the same.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Actual pricing:
Office 365: $400/mo
Rackspce: $280/moHow'd you get those numbers? For 100 Exchange Mailboxes on RackSpace? I'm not talking about their Hybrid option.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
So RackSpace calculator = $1000 a month for 100 Exchange mailboxes
Office 365 E1 = $800 a month for 100 user accounts.That's completely misleading as E1 is not Hosted Exchange. Exchange is $4.
Yes, but that's the plan which comes close to RackSpace's pricing. Unless RackSpace are thinking of something else.
Are they reselling Office 365 now instead of their own solution? Traditionally it was not the same thing and not directly comparable.
But, more importantly, if you need email, it doesn't matter which plan Rackspace offers, as Exchange is $4. So my price for email is $4, no matter what comes in RS' package.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Why go with RackSpace? Because they can give you IMAP style cheaper.
It's not "IMAP" any more than Exchange is. Rackspace Email is not Exchange, but both are equally IMAP and not IMAP. Both do web, IMAP and push. They are peers.
...But they are not the same.
Not the same, but offer all the same connections. They are equally all of those things. One is not "more IMAP" than another.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Actual pricing:
Office 365: $400/mo
Rackspce: $280/moHow'd you get those numbers? For 100 Exchange Mailboxes on RackSpace? I'm not talking about their Hybrid option.
How do I get which numbers? Office 365 is $400, it just is. We are a partner with both of these email solutions and have worked with both for a long time. I assure you, O365 is $4/mailbox. The Rackspace price I took from the calculator that you showed.
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@scottalanmiller said:
But, more importantly, if you need email, it doesn't matter which plan Rackspace offers, as Exchange is $4. So my price for email is $4, no matter what comes in RS' package.
That makes no sense. They can set the price at what-ever over inflated value they want. And knowing RackSpace, I bet it's closer to $15 per mailbox.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But, more importantly, if you need email, it doesn't matter which plan Rackspace offers, as Exchange is $4. So my price for email is $4, no matter what comes in RS' package.
That makes no sense. They can set the price at what-ever over inflated value they want. And knowing RackSpace, I bet it's closer to $15 per mailbox.
I don't even know what you are talking about. Office 365 is $4, plain and simple. You can may more for that if you look for a way to do it, but it doesn't change how much the email costs, the rest is just your donation to your company of choice.
Office 365 has a set price. If you go to a reseller for some reason, they are allowed to mark it up. But that would be the dumbest idea ever. Pay more, get less.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But, more importantly, if you need email, it doesn't matter which plan Rackspace offers, as Exchange is $4. So my price for email is $4, no matter what comes in RS' package.
That makes no sense. They can set the price at what-ever over inflated value they want. And knowing RackSpace, I bet it's closer to $15 per mailbox.
I don't even know what you are talking about. Office 365 is $4, plain and simple.
To be clear:
Rackspace Price is X, They don't set the pricing for Microsoft's offering, They set the price for their own RackSpace Exchange offering. Which is likely over-inflated to the moon.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Rackspace Price is X, They don't set the pricing for Microsoft's offering, They set the price for their own RackSpace Exchange offering. Which is likely over-inflated to the moon.
Correct. They do not set the price. And the Microsoft price for Hosted Exchange is $4. That's where I am getting the price for O365. Microsoft sets it, not Rackspace. Rackspace quotes a different thing that isn't applicable to a discussion about email pricing to make O365 sound expensive in comparison.
Rackspace Exchange is $10, 250% higher than Office 365's pricing of Exchange.
Their "cost savings" calculator is misleading of O365 pricing, which is my point. RS does not get to set that price.
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Right, so what I'm saying is that the closest plan they are using on their calculator is E1.
What does not help, is Microsoft push their E plans or 365 business plans, Exchange Online Plan1/2 are not listed on the menu bar.
https://products.office.com/en-gb/business/enterprise-productivity-tools
I can't click straight towards Exchange Online Plans. So most people get to be taken for a ride by RackSpace because of that.
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Rackspace's Exchange offering does offer some nice things like 100GB mailboxes instead of 50GB. But if you don't need that (we sure don't) it's worth exactly zero. And you don't get support from the Exchange team but only from a third party. As this isn't open source, that's a huge negative. Also a big negative is RS' recent decline in support quality. Not that MS is good, but RS doesn't have the edge that they used to have. Larger users are routinely having major support issues with them. Their idea of fanatical support has dropped to "a little below industry average" support. Still decent, but not something you'd pay for.
Rackspace does bundle in Skype for Business, which we get with O365 and turn off as it is worth than useless. But if you want that, it's an added feature. If you don't, it's in the way. So you could take this as a benefit or a deficit depending on the situation.
But RS Exchange is not comparable to E1 as it lacks Sharepoint, the key upgrade feature of E1 over Hosted Exchange. It's far more like Hosted Exchange.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Right, so what I'm saying is that the closest plan they are using on their calculator is E1.
Ah, and I don't agree. I see the closest as Hosted Exchange and Hosted Exchange being the only one applicable to a discussion about email. Unless the purpose is added E1 features, it's a red herring.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
What does not help, is Microsoft push their E plans or 365 business plans, Exchange Online Plan1/2 are not listed on the menu bar.
https://products.office.com/en-gb/business/enterprise-productivity-tools
I can't click straight towards Exchange Online Plans. So most people get to be taken for a ride by RackSpace because of that.
@Dashrender and I have had this discussion too. But anytime I Google Hosted Exchange, it takes me directly to the $4 plans every time. I've not had the issues having those plans front and centre when I look for hosted Exchange offerings.
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For reference, when talking email, the crossover point in cost savings is 75%. If you have 75% non-Exchange or more, Rackspace's hybrid offering savings money compared to Office 365's email offering.
Of course the two solutions are different. Even if the cost is exactly the same, RS offers twice the storage on one quarter of the mailboxes, but O365 offers double on three quarters of them. RS offers Skype for Business for one quarter of your users, O365 offers a unified experience for all users. It's two very different approaches.
But it is very important to understand that when talking email between the two solutions, which is essentially all either one is, that 75:25 is the reflection point for cost savings. And it isn't just 75% today, you have to maintain that ratio for forever or you start to lose money. And at break even, I think far less than 5% of businesses would prefer the weird complexity of the hybrid model compared to the unified "everyone gets the same features" model.
